Theology in the Raw - A Theology of Disagreement: Dr. Christopher Landau

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

Dr. Christopher Landau is a former BBC World Service religious affairs correspondent, who left journalism to train as a Church of England Minister. He has a doctorate in Christian Ethics at the University of Oxford on the ethics of disagreement among Christians in the New Testament, later published as 'A Theology of Disagreement'. His latest contribution to debates on sexuality is his newly published Grove Booklet, ‘Compassionate Orthodoxy’ and Sexuality: Seeking Grace and Truth in Disagreement. He is the director of ReSource, a UK charity supporting local churches in spiritual renewal. Join the Theology in the Raw community for as little as $5/month to get access to premium content at patreon.com/theologyintheraw  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology Now. My guest today is Dr. Christopher Landau, who is a former BBC World Service Religious Affairs correspondent who left journalism to train as a minister in the Church of England. He has a doctorate in Christian ethics from University of Oxford, and he wrote his dissertation on a theology of disagreement. And that's kind of the main reason why I wanted to have Christopher on because I think a lot of us are asking questions about how should we actually disagree with each other in a way that is godly and healthy and fruitful. And so that's kind of the focus of our conversation. We also get into applying the theology disagreement with

questions around sexuality in the church, specifically his context in England, the Church of England. So that's where we end up later in this episode. And he also published a booklet called Compassionate Orthodoxy and Sexuality, Seeking Grace and Truth and Disagreement, where he applied his theology of disagreement in the context of sexuality debate. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Dr. Christopher Landau. All right. Hello, Christopher. Welcome to Theology in the Raw. I am so excited to talk to you because your work overlaps with the work that I've been

doing for a while. And without being extremely familiar with your work, just looking at it from a distance, it sounds like we're going to overlap quite a bit. But first, before we dive in, let's just tell our audience who you are and how you get into the work that you're currently doing. Yeah, so my day job, if you like, is as director of a renewal charity here in the UK called

Resource, which grew out of the charismatic renewal and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit within the mainline denominational churches. Our focus has always been about what that means for the Church of England as the established Anglican Church and obviously a key church within the Anglican communion worldwide. But my background was in theological ethics and did a doctorate through the University of Oxford on disagreement among Christians. So that's fascinating. I've never heard of that. I've heard of people exploring how to disagree well. There's a lot of social psychologists to talk about, even like, I'm thinking like Jonathan Haidt

or Adam Grant or others that talk about why we believe what we believe, how to change people's mind. But I've never heard of somebody doing an academic project on a theology of disagreement. Can you open that up for us? What exactly is a theology of disagreement? And what does that look like? Well, yeah. And anyone who's ever done a PhD will know that part of the challenge is finding a niche that no one has completely explored before. So, I had been a journalist before Ordination. I was the BBC's religion correspondent for what we call the World Service, its international radio network. I'd traveled all over the world reporting on religion and inevitably often reporting on conflicts, either within or between religions. That had included

a lot of coverage over the years in various different roles of the divisions in the Episcopal Church following the appointment of Gene Robinson as an openly gay bishop and all of the controversy and splits that followed from that. I suppose at that stage, when I hadn't really been thinking of entering ministry at all, I was nonetheless really conscious of a kind of profound niggle about Christianity's claim to have love of neighbor at its very heart. And yet, love of neighbor seemed quite possible in the wider community, serving the poor, helping the afflicted. But when it was your neighbor within the church with whom you disagreed passionately. Actually, a lot of that love seemed to kind of fly out the window. And there was a phrase in British politics at

the time about the labour movement having become intensely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich and a prominent politician, Peter Mandelson in fact, who is now our ambassador to you guys in the US, had said this phrase. He was intensely relaxed about people being filthy rich so long as they paid their taxes. There was this outcry of, well, could that possibly be consonant with sound socialist labor politics? Within the church, I think we've got a kind of similar foundational problem that we've become intensely relaxed about something as part of our common life, which appalls Jesus and kind of grieves the Holy Spirit. Because actually, as you read the New Testament, this call to loving unity within the body

of Christ is such a consistent call, restated by Paul and other New Testament authors. And yet, I think in the history of the church, we have so often kind of cast that to one side. And so, I was really interested in doing a project which was very much rooted in the text of the New Testament, just trying to kind of take a temperature check of, well, what is the teaching on disagreement and what are the instances of disagreement within the text of the New Testament? And

what do those have to tell us about the biblical New Testament foundation for how Christians might approach their inevitable disagreements? So, yeah, what is the New Testament evidence for this? I mean, you baited us. I would love to hear what passages and themes you looked at. Yeah, so a combination of themes or instances. So, two key themes for me would be from John's Gospel. So, the image of the vine and the awkwardness really of that image being a singular image of us together on the vine. And although we might often think about the vine as a picture of a question of faithfulness to Christ, which obviously it is about that, but there is also this inevitable sense of

if I am faithful and someone else is faithful, even if they choose, for example, to worship in a profoundly different way to me, or if there are aspects of how they choose to order their Christian life which are profoundly different, of course we will subsequently have to disagree and work through whether those are legitimate church dividing issues. But it is a picture of an intense unity. The other image from John's Gospel for me, which I think is profoundly important, is that of the foot washing at the Last Supper, and the fact particularly that both Peter and Judas are included in the act of foot washing.

And although we would often see foot washing in terms of the servant leadership that Jesus offers, and of course that's a key aspect of the foot washing, actually St. Augustine and some other theologians have also showed it as a picture of the mutual love within the emerging Christian community. And it's of course at that point within the Last Supper that we get that amazing verse in John 13, verse 35, by this they'll know that you are my disciples. See how you love one another. And for me, there's something absolutely crucial about that because I think, you know, Christian

churches are often fantastic about loving their neighbor in the community, neighbors who may have no faith or another faith entirely. My hunch is that actually we probably find it hardest to love our neighbor within the church when we disagree with them. Sometimes these disagreements are about things as apparently insignificant at one level as church seating or musical choices or whatever. And yet we know that these are the kinds of things that can kind of tear fellowships apart. And I think the other key text I would mention straight away is Acts 15, which is interesting in two ways. One, because the disagreement between Paul and Barnabas is, in most translations, the one place where actually our English word

disagreement is used within Scripture. And that's an interesting example because they do part ways and they get on with the mission of the church having had a sharp disagreement. And yet somehow in facing that and then recognizing that they were both engaged with the mission of the church, actually the mission continued to flourish. So good or loving or effective disagreement doesn't necessarily mean that we always have to stick together, for example. But of course that comes just after the Council at Jerusalem with this fascinating question of how Gentile believers are to be incorporated into the Christian faith and whether they have to fulfill the existing historic Jewish customs. And of course the Church comes up with a compromise

and it engages in perhaps the earliest examples of some kind of synodical reasoning together. And ends up with this wonderful phrase, it seems to me, when they use this phrase, it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us. And I think so often in church disagreements, the Holy Spirit doesn't get a look in because we are charging forth in our human strength and not really loving our neighbor particularly. And it seems to me part of the call if we are trying to approach disagreement in a recognisably Christian way is to say, what does it mean to involve God in this, to root this in prayer, and to dare to believe that we can approach even our thorniest disagreements with the hope of a resolution which says it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us. And of course, Acts 15 involves a compromise.

And sometimes you would hear Christians facing contemporary issues today and think that it would be never possible to be a faithful Christian and to compromise on anything. But they do compromise on those early dietary customs. So, those are some teasers as we set out. I was asked recently about the Paul and Barnabas split. And the question was, is this portrayed as a good thing or a bad thing? I mean, Luke just kind of records it, but as you know, and many people know, I mean, there is this kind of narrative intention. You know, Luke and other authors who are writing narrative, they'll describe an event and sometimes they describe it in a way that's like the reader is supposed to see that this is kind of a critique or the reader is supposed to see that this is

something like a positive example. Do you think that Paul and Barnum is splitting, still pursuing the mission, but saying we, for right now, we can't do this together, that's a good thing? Or is that a bad thing? Or do we know? I think what's interesting is that it's one example among many where the kind of thing which today we might be tempted in the church to say, we've just got to hush this up, we've got to sweep this under the carpet, let's pretend nothing ever happened. And instead, a number of the biblical authors seem quite relaxed about sharing the problems and the challenges of the early church so that presumably we

can learn from them. And so, this disagreement isn't hushed up. We are told about the fact of it, though we're given pretty little detail. And so, we don't know, for example, whether it is doctrinal, though it seems to be more of a personality issue. But I think what's interesting is that we learn that the disagreement happened. So, actually, if we're facing disagreement in the church, we shouldn't feel as though we're somehow facing a different kind of problem to those in the early church. But also, actually, the mission continued. Possibly even the mission spread wider because of people going in different directions. So, I would agree that it's an incident that you can't load too much onto. But I love the fact that, just as with Paul's letters, full of the chaos

in Corinth or whatever, this sense of actually the problems of the church shouldn't be airbrushed out because we can learn from them. And this may be for me partly my journalistic background where in a sense, a decent journalist is wanting to shine a light believing that more people knowing the truth of a situation, even an uncomfortable situation, is ultimately a good thing. Yeah. And didn't, is it in Timothy, where Paul refers positively of Mark, where at one point he didn't want to bring along John Mark, but then later on we see John Mark as part of Paul's ministry again or something? So do we have a glimpse of some kind

of reconciliation? Or am I reading too much into that? I think there can be hints of that. And, of course, I think the other lovely example of that is with Peter, who gets his feet washed despite his betrayal and becomes the rock on which the church is built. This sense of flawed characters, nonetheless, moving to a place of restoration and rehabilitation is also part of the warp and weft of scripture in a way that we can be too easy to write people off in the church or to see someone fall from a great height never to return to public ministry. And I think sometimes we have to ask ourselves, are the ethics at the very heart of a Christian vision within the New Testament actually mapping onto how the church is operating in the world

today? And I think, you know, the question of how we respond to cancel culture, for example, with a gospel full of mercy and forgiveness is a huge challenge. Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned earlier that Christians seem to divide over what is most, oftentimes more trivial matters. The color of the carpet, the sound of the music, whatever, the date of the women's retreat. Why is that? Is that unique to Christians or is that any kind of organization or institution or social community tends to divide over trivial things?

What is that? Can you psychologically dissect that? I do see that. I'm like, why is this getting us so upset when there's wars and famines and genocides all over the place? You know? It seems like there's enough to unite us. Why are we dividing over how many songs we sing on Sunday?

No, I think it's a really serious point. And I mean, I grew up in a small historic church in a rural part of England near the Welsh border. One of my reflections on life in that church growing up was, well, what were the distinctives about the common life of the people there? Obviously, what they did on a Sunday morning was distinctive, but what really set them apart from, say, the local amateur dramatic society or a musical club or a sports group? actually, I think it's a really serious question for any local church community, is the way that we live our common

life one where the kind of ethical life of that community does reflect some distinctive Christian virtues. And for me then, it is a spiritual question about our own discipleship. You know, have we gone sufficiently deep in this life of faith such that not only do we, for example, know our Bible well. There might be some churches where, you know, really your biblical literacy is the sign of, you know, the depth of your commitment. Or in other places, it might be the amount of time you're giving to certain ministries. But actually, what about your character? Do people see a bit more of Christ in you? Do they encounter someone who is demonstrating

the fruit of the Spirit, for example? So that question for me of are we seeking more of the presence of God to inspire us to become more Christ-like is really the root question. And I fear that so often it is over these niggly little surface level issues that we demonstrate actually we haven't got a very forgiving manner or we're not very merciful because we can't even forgive someone who's put the flowers in the wrong place, let alone committed some kind of mortal sin or whatever. I think you're absolutely right to make that connection. For each of us, therefore, to ask the question, is the church that we are part of recognisably functioning as something

that feels like part of the body of Christ as described in the New Testament? Of course, there will be differences. Of course, there's a huge amount that has changed between then and now. But actually, can we feel that we really are tracing a meaningful line back, particularly to the ethical principles at the very heart of the faith as articulated? This episode is brought to you by Mitapure by Timeline. Mitapure is the only Urolithia A supplement on the market clinically proven to target the effects of age-related cellular decline. And now you can take this powerful supplement in gummy form. That's right, the first ever longevity gummies

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Appear Gummies. Just head over to timeline.com forward slash theology gummies to get started. That's timeline.com forward slash theology gummies. Your sales will thank you. Now, you do have parts of scripture where there is, I would say, a pretty aggressive attack, or at least address of people within the church, or at least on the purview of the church, where they're either teaching wrong things or behaving in immoral ways. I'm thinking, you know, a Jude in particular, goodness, that one chapter is extremely aggressive toward

false teachers. Second Peter 2, Jesus blasted some religious people. Paul had some strong words, you know. How do those factor in with a healthy theology disagreement where we are trying to demonstrate to the world that we love one another, but when do we get our Jude on? And I guess the obvious answer is, well, yeah, that's heresy, that's false teaching. Is that really what it comes down to? Because the problem there, I guess, is who determines what's false teaching? I get called a false teacher every single day. So people were blasting me like Jude was blasting his people. It's like, well, I don't know, who determines what

is false teaching or not? So I know, I guess those are two kind of related questions. Yeah. So, I mean, firstly, on the kind of false teaching thing, I mean, of course, that's a huge issue. And of course, it can become very destructive in terms of the common life of the Church. I think one has to take seriously that the New Testament various authors are defending the place of orthodoxy and defending the need for the Church to remain faithful to its teaching, but there will always be some level of contestation around that. Absolutely. Can you just remind me of the first part of your question again? Well, yeah, what kind of situation would elicit a Jude-like response in terms of Christian confrontation?

Oh, yes. And, I mean, people will often say to me, oh well, you know, Jesus turned over the tables in the temple, so why can't I? And I find that slightly frustrating as an answer, but particularly because I think we do need to make some kind of distinction between what Jesus is saying to those outside of the kingdom, to religious leaders who are not yet following him and who are resistant to the way of the kingdom, and make a distinction between that and the way of life within the kingdom that he's describing. So if you were to contrast his attitude to certain Pharisees, for example, with the Sermon on the Mount and the picture of blessed other peacemakers, that's a very different context

into which he's speaking. And I would say that we need to take seriously his call to those early disciples to foster that mutual love between themselves as a sign that they are his followers and that that is something uniquely attractive to those outside the church. And of course, that has to be held alongside a faithfulness in terms of following. And yes, Jesus does say, get behind me, Satan, to Peter. So, it's not as if we're seeing a kind of whitewashed version of Jesus where we're kind of ignoring certain aspects. But it does seem to me that the overwhelming message we get from him in relation to the disciples

is that actually this love that you have is a gift of God and is a sign of the kingdom that you're called to proclaim, and it is worth fostering and protecting. Would you say that, again, going back to Jude or 2 Peter, these really aggressive attacks on false teachers, that Jude and others would presume that these are not actually Christians, but they have infiltrated the church. I think there's also a piece of financial gain. They're after financial gain. They're pretending to be Christians.

They're not just attendees, but they're teachers or influencers. I'm just trying to think of what would be a really clear, modern correlation between Jude's audience and our audience today? What would warrant a Jude-like response? Yeah. I mean, and I think you might think, for example, about certain groups that claim to be Christians, but most ecumenical Christian organizations wouldn't recognize them as Christians. So even a kind of broad ecumenical consensus would not place Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, within that grouping. I certainly think that understanding the context of who the factions or the potential heretics are is really important.

I suppose for me, the other place where there is really sharp teaching of relevance here is James and the sharp teaching about the tongue and the power of the tongue to wreak havoc. That amazing phrase, out of the same mouth comes both blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, it should not be like that. And for me, that was one of those, there were various moments when I was in these libraries in either London or Oxford, you know, doing this research and it was a great gift to be, you know, given some time to read through scripture slowly and kind

of dutifully. But certain moments, and that was a sucker punch moment for me, that sense of this weapon we have. I suppose because I'd been a broadcast journalist and my tongue had been a key part of my professional life to date, to think that the same mouth can both bless and curse. And actually, I'm not called to curse other people. I'm called to bless them and to love them. And so sometimes I think it's about a kind of shift of orientation in that sense. And believing that, for example, the receipt of the fruit of the Spirit, you know, that patience or that self-control is actually profoundly countercultural.

You know, it won't win me a culture war victory necessarily, but it might win me a kingdom victory if you like. And I think it's partly therefore about being willing to say, am I approaching this situation on God's terms rather than just on the world's terms? I think so often there are kind of narrative tracks laid out for us and it's expected that we will kind of follow those tracks. But actually so often Jesus asked another question when asked a question, didn't he? He was refusing to kind of play the games of those who were seeking to trap him. And I think sometimes we're unthinking participants in these narratives that only end in further

division when we are actually called to unity. And for me, actually, the other key question is about baptism. For me, if I meet someone who has been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they are a brother or sister in Christ to me, even if there is a massive kind of denominational separation, you know, and there may be all kinds of things about the way we worship. But if that person is then my brother or sister in Christ, actually, how am I called to approach my disagreements with them?

Well, with the love of a brother, even as I seek to disagree profoundly and contend for what I believe to be true. That's an interesting theological question. Does baptism alone determine that? There's plenty of people who have been baptized who later turn out to be a false teacher. You know, I mean, Hitler is baptized. Actually, I don't know if that's true or not. What if Hitler was baptized as an infant or something, you know, like does that... There's seems like there's got to be more evidence that the person is actually a Christian, more than that, right? Well, I suppose, I mean in the work that I do in my day job, I have some links with the Catholic I do in my day job, I have some links with the Catholic Charismatic Renewal Movement. They will often talk about Catholics who've been baptized as infants learning to live

in the fullness of their baptism. That's a phrase I quite like. In a sense, your baptism has kind of got you over the line into the kingdom of God. This may be a terrible Anglican position that I'm putting forward to you now that will appall people who are listening. But if baptism, whether an adult or a child has kind of, you know, got you over the line into the kingdom of God in that sense, all of us then actually day by day have the challenge of how are we to live that life in an authentic way?

And how are we going to order how we use our bodies, our minds, our tongues, you know, to the glory of God or not? I think it's, I mean, it's similar to, right, the age-old argument about baptism as some, as kind of analogous to circumcision in the Old Covenant, that this marked you out as a member of the covenant. You're in the purview of God's favor, right? You're under the covenant promises. But somebody can be circumcised like Ahab and many others and, you know, fall out of

that. But that doesn't mean that circumcision was simply meaningless. It sounds like you're saying something similar about baptism. I don't know, our Baptist listeners might have theological problems with that. But yeah, I don't want to derail the conversation. I would love to know if you've gathered, I mean, both in your experience as a journalist and then now as an academic expert in the theology of disagreement, if you have learned some really, really good down-to-earth practical pieces of advice practical pieces of advice for Christians who find themselves in situations where, you know, a conversation about politics or theology or in our American context, it's 90% of the time going to be politics. It's just going to explode. It's going to be divisive. You

know, we have these, we often talk about the fear of the Thanksgiving meal. I know this is an American specific holiday, but like all of my friends like, oh no, Thanksgiving's coming up and my uncle's gonna bring up Trump and I either have to shut up or if I say something, it's gonna ruin the meal. You know, yeah.

Well, how should Christians biblically approach a situation where the potential for a disruptive disagreement is likely. Do we just shut up and just don't go there? Or is there a way to go there that can be fruitful? Well, and I think it's partly helpful to make a distinction between a disagreement within a Christian context and disagreeing as a Christian at the Thanksgiving family dinner with

anyone and everyone, which may not include everyone being a Christian. Within the church context, I think, and some of this is very obvious, but to listen as well as to speak. as well as to speak. I think Paul's caution about factions I think is so interesting because I think so easily in churches even if they're not formally named there can end up being factions and to ask oneself am I becoming part of you know the contemporary music faction or the anti-contemporary music faction at this point in a way that is actually kind of small p political and destructive. So within my church, the Church of England at the moment, we're still in a kind of endless discussion about sexuality,

which I know we'll come on to later. But actually for me, the question of are people ending up kind of stuck in political spaces where they are defined against another group with whom they disagree. And it's almost inevitable that they can only speak of each other in oppositional terms and see each other even perhaps as enemies. And I think it seems to me that Jesus often calls us to disrupt those factions and to be reminded that we belong at the same table and we're called to wash each other's feet. And actually it might even be in the act of washing each other's feet or sharing the bread and wine together that we are

reminded of the fellowship that we share which is more important than the thing that we were just arguing about. So I think sometimes to find those common practices that we can do together rather than simply entering into the Rao. The other thing that I suggest is in relation to the fruit of the spirit and actually even you might kind of keep a list of the fruit next to your computer screen. And as you're about to kind of type that angry response, you know, just kind of cast your eye down the list and ask, oh, which fruit is least present in this email or this, you know, blog I'm about to release on an unknowing world. And I find that that can actually be quite an instructive thing because if I read through

the fruit and feel a kind of internal voice saying, yeah, what about self-control then? That can often be quite an instructive process to go through. I think sometimes it is at that practical level of asking, what can I do? And I think crucially, it is often about saying the other person may not change in this situation. So therefore, what can I do? And it may be that there are things about them that I need to forgive and as it were, release to God. Not that I'm necessarily excusing anything that were release to God, not that I'm necessarily

excusing anything that they've said or done, but I am choosing to release the kind of pain or frustration that I feel in relation to this person so that I can continue to speak with a kind of recognisable Christian dignity. And all of that, I suppose, is about saying the character formation within the Christian life is something that we don't necessarily take seriously enough. And actually, if we're to take that more seriously, then that will, I believe, definitely improve how disagreements proceed within a church context. Within the family, I mean, I suppose I find myself thinking about certain examples from my own life where I've realized that some of my relatives just know I will go silent or I'll just move the conversation on. Occasionally, I'll just

carry on talking if someone starts. That doesn't necessarily often work. But if you can hear someone saying something that you know is just designed to be a kind of barb, sometimes a kind of, oh, I don't think I quite heard that, but I do think actually gossip, for example, can so easily just become a regular part of family dynamics, or the family WhatsApp group, or the group that doesn't include the person that the group barely exists, so that you can gossip about the person who's not on the group. Those kind of awful dynamics. Again, to find a way which doesn't have to be, I'm a Christian and therefore I do not

believe in gossip, but rather just a kind of backing away from spaces where you're seeing a kind of poisoned dialogue, which isn't doing anyone anything positive. I get asked this question a lot. How do I engage in a conversation with a fellow, with another brother or sister in Christ? And again, it's usually about politics or something, you know, where the person is so stuck in their ways. You know, like they know ahead of time, 99.9% this person's not even going to entertain the possibility of being wrong. My advice has always been like, honestly, I try to read the situation ahead of time. I try to read the person.

If I know them well, I could probably know, you know, I could, I have a better read on the situation. Or even if I don't know them well, I've been around long enough to where there's certain personality traits where within a few minutes I can kind of pick up on, is this a reasonable, curious person? Or is it, or are they just, is the psychological wall so thick that nothing I say is going to get through? I just typically avoid bringing up any kind of conversation or even if they bait me or

want to talk about whatever. I try to avoid it or steer it elsewhere or I just try to as much as I can kind of like yeah okay you know kind of like passively sort of agree just to move on you know like I just I'm just trying to avoid getting into it with the person if I can perceive that it's just not gonna go anywhere healthy is that a good approach or is that or is that a cop-out or how do you handle those situations? Well, I suppose what I encourage is for us to face disagreement effectively. The reason that the book aimed at a more popular audience that I wrote was called Loving Disagreement. The problem is the solution. It was a kind of deliberate play on words in the sense that I think part of our problem is that actually many of us quite

enjoy our disagreements. We quite like niggling away at that person in church who we know that we can say that thing about the sermon and it will just really rile them or whatever. Part of the question is have we become relaxed or even addicted to these ways of disagreement. And in fact, I begin the book looking at the 12 steps of the AA program and inviting people to replace alcoholism with disagreement and just reflect on the ways in which actually disagreement ends up having this kind of hold over us. Unless we're willing to face that reality of the destructive power of toxic disagreement or disagreement that just always ends up in a deeper, more awful conflict, we're never going to make progress. Therefore, loving disagreement is all about saying, well, if Jesus places love God

and love your neighbor at the very heart of his moral vision, then actually, surely we too, even in the context of disagreement, are called to reveal his love through our words and our actions. And so, how are we seeking to do that? And I don't think that sweeping something under the carpet, hushing it up, or just simply avoiding it is fruitful because I don't think, well, and particularly because sometimes that can mean that we're not then standing up for our faith in certain contexts.

But of course, therefore, it does require huge wisdom and care. I mean, I love it when Jesus sends people out on mission and that phrase, you know, I want you to be both wise as serpents and innocent as doves. And I think that has a real bearing here because it's not that we're just called to be kind of a walkover or a doormat where people can just kind of trample over us. But rather, well, what is a bit of the wisdom of the serpent in relation to that? And of course, in that same passage, he talks about having confidence in the face of persecution because the spirit will speak through you. And of course, there will be a variety of

theological interpretations about how much that then maps onto the life of the Christian today. But actually, I think to have a confidence that we can pray and trust that God will inspire us to speak in a more recognizably Christian way if we are seeking to advance the kingdom. Proverbs, is it Proverbs 26? 24, 25? I think it's 26. You know, answer a fool according to his folly. I forget the rest of it. And then don't answer a fool according to his folly unless you be like him. It's almost giving two situations, the same exact advice or contradictory technique, you know, apparently, but not really. Where there are situations where you should answer a fool and other situations where you shouldn't answer a fool. And I guess that's kind of, I don't know, if I can perceive that this person is so stuck in their ways, I would put that in the category of foolishness.

They're not wanting to pursue the truth. They're not open to being wrong. That's a characteristic of being a fool. So I don't know, is that a good application of that verse where I might say, you know what, this person's spouting off about some political thing that is just either annoying or wrong or whatever. And I'm like, you know what, I'm just not going to respond. Or the best, with that belligerent person, I might take the approach of, okay, if I argue back, again, I'm 98% sure it's just not going to go anywhere fruitful

for him or for me, but I might take a curious approach, kind of an investigative journalist. Well, tell me about it. Why do you think Trump is a messiah? What's your love? Would they actually genuinely love to know why you think that, or why you think Kamala is a messiah? I want to be bipartisan here No, I well and I think and one part of the answer is to say well the book of Proverbs might have the luxury

You know pre Christ of just simply labeling someone a fool But I don't think in the life of the church we have the luxury of writing someone off as a fool the life of the church, we have the luxury of writing someone off as a fool. I think particularly if they are a baptised Christian, notwithstanding our questions about, you know, are they living in the fullness of the faith? But if, for example, you know, they are committed to their local church context, even if it's a wildly different context from my own, actually, however foolish I may think they are, I surely have to have hope that any sins that are clouding their judgement can ultimately be faced and forgiven and they can step in a greater freedom. Perhaps that would mean that they would understand my position better. I don't know. I think it's always possible to understand

the other person's perspective better. Actually, this reminds me of a conversation I did for another podcast fairly recently where I was a guest alongside the person in the UK who's been the most vocal critic of what I've written. And to be honest, I was slightly dreading it, you know. But actually, it was a remarkably constructive conversation, I think, because there was a genuine kind of listening and engagement. And to be honest, I felt able to express some of the, you know, core of what I'm suggesting in a way that was far more forthright than

I ever thought really was going to be possible. There was a kind of curiosity about that, but I think it was grounded in a respectful conversation. We were both working hard to try and meet where we could and recognize what was shared, even though the reason that we were both being interviewed was that we had wildly different presenting opinions. I love that. I mean, good faith, forthright conversations that can turn into back and forth or even debates, Those are invigorating.

When people aren't trying to win, they're not trying to defend their position at all cost, but they're trying to mutually pursue the truth together. I love those, but that just seems like those are so rare, unfortunately, these days. This episode is brought to you by Seminary Now. Seminary Now is a subscription-based streaming video platform that delivers exclusive biblical, theological, and practical ministry training from a diverse group of leading educators and thought leaders. It's become one of the go-to resources for pastors, church leaders, and lay Christians who are serious about ongoing learning in our increasingly complex world.

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Go check it out. I would love to... Can we transition? Because you've applied this to conversations around sexuality in the context of the Anglican Church in the UK. You've hinted at that. I would love to know how that's gone for you. Have you been able to shed a little light in what could often be a lot more heat than light in some of these sexuality debates within the church?

Well, so I've recently written a booklet called Compassionate Orthodoxy and Sexuality Seeking Grace and Truth in Disagreement. That's of course a reference to the John 1 vision of Jesus coming full of both grace and truth. It seems to me particularly in relation to the sexuality debates, we find it incredibly difficult to hold both grace and truth together. Sometimes you'll have churches that will be more truth-focused and others that will be more grace-focused. But actually, what does it really mean to hold together the visible compassion of Christ to all people with a faithfulness to orthodoxy and by orthodoxy I mean the faithful proclamation of the gospel from one generation to the next.

I think what I would say is that I've just been intrigued that there's been more interest and people have been kind of engaging with these ideas on more public platforms, if you like, than I'd perhaps initially anticipated when I set out to write it. And that's been an encouragement in many ways. I mean, I think one of the key questions for us has been about whether conceptually you ultimately think it makes sense for a church to be able to hold competing positions in tension as a satisfactory kind of ongoing position. Some Anglican jurisdictions around the world claim to do that. The Episcopal Church in Scotland, which is a very small denomination, but that

is the route that they've gone down. Obviously in the US, there are some within the Episcopal Church who would still hold to a conservative view on marriage, but overwhelmingly the denomination has changed. Obviously, ACNA has come into being as an entirely separate jurisdiction. Within the Church of England, we're just getting to the point where the proposals are sufficiently controversial that you might end up seeing some kind of split within the church. It's no longer just a question of how we're facing this disagreement, but actually what is the substance of that disagreement as well. And it seems to me that the kind of twin track solution would make sense if Jesus hadn't said that there's a

singular truth and it will set you free. But that's what he offers to us. And so that combination of a singular truth, but also a relentless compassion, I think creates a space which has huge potential, but is also a bit awkward because we've got quite a lot of conservatives who are busy planning new structures and alternative church within a church or whatever. To those people, I'm saying, well, have you forgotten about the call to Christian unity? Then we've also got people really wanting to push the options available to gay Christians, which seem to me to go further than even a very generous or compassionate orthodoxy could reasonably allow.

And so I'm left kind of in the middle, annoying both groups at one level, because I'm calling those who attempted to separate back to unity and those who attempted to proceed down a progressive path that I fear can only lead us to a split, to restrain for the sake of the whole church, but also to try and work out what might be possible in that space in the middle. So, do you think that the best path forward is for the Anglican Church in England to allow for both positions to have unity around disagreement over marriage? Or do you think that there should be a cordial, gracious, humble split along these lines? For the last 20 years or so, ever since the UK has had some kind of formal recognition

for gay couples, which we've called civil partnerships. And then it was only much more recently that full, equal marriage came in. But civil partnerships, partly as a result of influence from the Church of England bishops, was maintained. So it is still possible to have a civil partnership in the UK, as well as having a marriage, a gay marriage or a straight marriage. From the advent of civil partnerships, the church's position had been that it wasn't possible to determine whether a couple in a civil partnership were faithful to the church's teaching on sex or not. Having a civil partnership of itself was not necessarily a sign that they were having sex outside of marriage between

a man and a woman, was the argument that the bishops put forward. At one level, you might say that is a classic piece of Anglican thudge, if that's a confectionery you're familiar with. This is something the Church of England is often accused of. The thing about that was it did actually hold the church together because in broadest terms, the evangelicals who still believed the traditional teaching on marriage were able to carry on. They were able even to work alongside partnered gay clergy at a local level because the partnered gay clergy had promised that they were ordering their lives according to the teaching of the church. And the teaching of the church hadn't

changed but the church had said, we will offer a pastoral welcome to any couple in a civil partnership. And now what is changing is the services proposed to honour gay couples and meanwhile the state has introduced equal marriage. And so there are so many different factors competing and there hasn't, I think, been as much theological reflection as there needed to be to ensure that there was clarity really about what constitutes a faithful next step at this point. And so it's taken a very long time for the church to determine, does it have a robust theology of marriage or not. And rather to the surprise of those who lean in a more conservative direction, actually the church has said, oh yes, we do actually have a clear definition of marriage, which is between a man and a woman exclusively,

and that sexual intimacy should only properly happen within that kind of marriage. So we're now in this kind of rather curious space where, having articulated that on the one hand, there are also commitments to ensure a better welcome to gay couples. And the question is what kind of welcome is both consistent with the desire to offer a better welcome and the desire to remain faithful to that stated teaching. And so it's a kind of swirling political storm, I think it's fair to say. Well, I'm asking partly for personal reasons, because I'm going to be over in London in June talking

to a bunch of pastors about this issue for a day-long event. So I'm like, I know there's, you know, some overlap, a good deal of overlap, I'm sure, between this debate in England and the debate in America, but there's also some key differences too. Specifically, I mean, we don't have a context like yours where, you know, the church and state has a significant overlap. We've got our own church-state confusions, but it's different than yours. Yeah. So, where the evangelical church is generally at is exploring what exactly it

means to welcome, say, a gay couple who's married legally and yet still hold to the Orthodox view. So, it comes down to ecclesiological questions of what does welcome look like? Like, hey, how are you doing at the door? Or come lead a Bible study. That's the heart of what you guys are wrestling with. Exactly. And one of the questions I've raised is how churches avoid elevating a question about same-sex sexual sin above any other questions of sin. So one of the examples I give is, so what would you do if there's someone in your congregation, perhaps in a senior lay leadership role, who you know to be wealthy and they are just routinely greedy. It is just obvious that they are not using their wealth in a recognisably Christian way. The wealth itself is not a bar to ministry, but

how they are choosing to use that wealth could be depending on whether it is seen to be sinful or not. It would seem to me that there is a kind of analogous question then in relation to someone who says, I'm gay, I'm in the local church, and I would like to serve in this capacity or another. So how are we ensuring that even if a faithful, straight conservative, whatever phrase you want to use, application of sexual ethics is not being applied disproportionately? And partly the challenge is that there is such internal diversity within the Church of England. These different tribes don't necessarily talk to each other. I'm relatively unusual in having grown up in, broadly speaking, one tribe and moved into another. For example, many clergy

For example, many, many clergy will typically marry couples who they know full well are living together before marriage. They might bring their children to the wedding, so it's fairly obvious what's been going on. But they will offer a pastoral welcome to them. So, again, is that something about the church's existing pastoral ministry that can inform how a ministry to gay couples is offered? But where does one draw the line in terms of saying we're not going to actually then affirm and celebrate something which is contrary to the church's teaching?

Of course, to say that is pretty offensive to some faithful, gay Christian couples. So, there is a huge navigation going on. And I think sometimes some of our bishops have been reluctant to actually kind of name some of the reality. And so, there's been an element of obfuscation at times, which I don't think has been helpful. And that goes back really to this call to face a disagreement rather than just to kind of sweep it under the carpet or move on as if there isn't a problem. Does the Anglican Church on paper affirm traditional marriage? Or is that not actually in the historic creeds of Anglicanism?

So, I mean, each member national church has its own statutes and prayer book and liturgy. So part of the reason why this has caused such a storm within global Anglicanism has been it's been a question of, well, how much can Anglicans in one country have an influence on Anglicans in another? And one of the big arguments when, you know, progressive Anglicans in the US were saying, we have every right to ordain Gene Robinson as an openly gay bishop. And then African Anglicans, many of them, not all, but many, were saying, well, that will cause problems to our mission in our context. But actually, that's one of the ways in which we are not like the Roman Catholic Church in terms of a kind of singular church

identity. But within the Church of England, part of what we've been reminded of really is that actually the official liturgy and practice of the Church is quite clear that marriage is between a man and a woman. Our Book of Common Prayer cites that. And then also includes that marriage is a remedy against fornication, and fornication is prayed against in the litany. And it's quite clear that that means any sexual activity outside of marriage between a man and a woman. So for those who are seeking to take the Church of England down a more progressive path, Partly the challenge I think

is about really acknowledging that deep within the existing liturgy and structure of the Church are these understandings of marriage which would need to be dismantled in some way and that obviously is a hugely significant thing. And they're part of the debates as within the Episcopal Church in the states, whether the synodical and other kinds of processes have been followed properly through this. Where do you see the next two to five years, where do you see the Anglican Church on this question next two to five years? Do you have any predictions of what's going to happen? It would be a dangerous thing to make any predictions, but it's interesting. I mean,

at the time that we're recording this, of course, both the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church are without a leader. So we have a new Archbishop of Canterbury to be announced, we believe, in the autumn this year. And so, the person who's appointed, obviously, their prior teaching and commitments on this issue will be heavily scrutinized. And I think there is a weariness within the church that this has been a kind of running sore, if you like, over many, many years. Despite valiant efforts by Justin Welby and his genuine commitment to peacemaking, I think unfortunately sometimes it was heard as a kind of a commitment to reconciliation

without actually tending the wound in the first place, you know, more of a kind of sticking plaster approach at times. And I think that the church has run out of patience with that kind of approach. Is there a massive push right now among progressives and conservatives to get a more progressive or conservative archbishop in place in the fall? I can imagine some people spending a lot of time and energy and money to try to get their guy or girl. Yeah. I mean, we have a very English establishment procedure called the Crown Nominations Commission.

And there is some discussion about how different people end up on this commission and indeed the membership of that commission was changed by the previous Archbishop to include a greater international component and no one is quite clear how that might then affect the balance of power. Would people from the global communion vote this way or that way in relation to the possibility of a female archbishop, for example? So, there are a huge number of things up in the air. I hope it's not a kind of pious cop-out to say, I think we should just pray about this and pray for the people who've been appointed to make the decision.

But, I mean, there have been some interesting twists and turns already. So one of the more progressive bishops who had been thought of as a potential leading candidate actually became elected to the process itself to help choose an Archbishop and publicly said at that point that he hadn't felt an inner call to stand, to put himself forward. And I really admired that because I thought, goodness, I really, really hope and pray that they are all seeking that sense of inner call. But of course, there is a bit of human politics involved as well. We pray that it would seem good to the committee and to the Holy Spirit, whoever is chosen for that position. Christopher, this has been a delightful conversation. I really appreciate

your wisdom. And I know we kind of went in different directions here at the end, but I've always fascinated the politics of the Anglican Church. I guess not all politics, but it sometimes can be. But yeah, I appreciate all your insight. And mention again the popular level book on disagreement. What's the title of that one? Yes. That's called Loving Disagreement. The problem is the solution. Right. Okay. That's a fascinating subtitle. Thank you again for being a guest on Theology in a Raw. Christopher, we really appreciate it. My pleasure. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.