THE recent decisions of the House of Bishops concerning the Prayers of Love and Faith and same-sex marriages for clergy cause many immense pain (News, 16 January). Parish priests and lay leaders feel the tension of the wider church debates most keenly on the ground. They are weary of the arguments, exhausted by the language of crisis, and frightened by the threat of division.
But fear is guiding the Church towards a dangerous idolatry. The struggle consuming the Church of England now — how to move forward after the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process — is not about technical doctrine: it is a profound spiritual contest over which idol we fear disappointing more: the Idol of Certainty or the Idol of Institutional Peace.
The problem is not the goal of unity: it is the cost that we are willing to pay for institutional preservation. The moment that that cost involves betraying the fundamental command of Christ, the Church has crossed into idolatry. We are dealing with the difference between unity as a divine gift, achieved through costly grace, and unity as a human idol, paid for by institutional compromise.
RADICAL theology, particularly that of thinkers such as Peter Rollins, warns against seeking a God who acts as a guarantor that everything makes sense and all conflicts are resolved. This relentless need to eliminate tension is the Idol of Certainty.
The institutional impulse is to seek the least painful, most diplomatic, solution. We long for a “common mind”, and we want the Anglican Communion to remain whole. But when the preservation of the structure and diplomatic unity is allowed to become the supreme good, the “thing” is prioritised over the person. Unity becomes an idol. It promises peace, stability, and continued status as the national Church. But, to maintain this fragile, negotiated peace, the idol demands the sacrifice of the full, unconditional inclusion of our LGBTQ+ neighbours. Our duty is clear, and always costly: our primary duty is to God, and our derivative duty is to love our neighbour.
The neighbour is the one most exposed to institutional judgement and marginalisation: our LGBTQ+ siblings. When the Church considers sacrificing, delaying, or denying a full blessing to a faithful same-sex couple — not because of a new theological revelation, but purely to appease a faction threatening to form a schism — it trades the neighbour’s worth for the institution’s comfort. Self-preservation (the collective self of the Church) is prioritised over costly love.
This crisis is magnified by the Anglican Communion. We are desperately trying to balance global fellowship against local faithfulness. But, when the Communion’s diplomatic structure insists that the Church of England must halt its obedience to love so as to maintain a specific global hierarchy, we are asked to treat that worldwide structure as a greater authority than Christ’s explicit commandment to us. The Communion, in that moment, becomes the Idol of Global Conformity.
Demanding a “common mind” before moving forward on inclusion is a demand for the Idol of Certainty to protect the Idol of Unity. It is the institutional refusal to act on love until God gives us a unanimous guarantee that no faction will walk away.
WE LOVE the image of Christ as the Prince of Peace. But we must never forget the words of Jesus himself, which offer a rebuke to institutional self-preservation: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
The “sword” is the necessary cutting edge of the gospel. It is an instrument of division, separating radical obedience from comfortable, institutional compromise. The true gospel is inherently divisive. It forces us to take sides between the vulnerable and the powerful. When the Church begins to enact the fullness of the commandment to love the neighbour, we should expect rupture.
If preserving unity means betraying our neighbour, then unity is the wrong goal. If the fear of schism dictates our theology, then the institution has become our true God. We cannot tell a faithful part of the Body of Christ that their full inclusion must be postponed because another part has threatened to leave.
Rollins helps us to realise that those who threaten schism often do so because they are clinging to the Idol of Certainty. The true, deep unity of the Body of Christ is a theological reality established by the Holy Spirit. It cannot be broken by a disgruntled faction walking away, but only by the Church’s unfaithfulness to its Head, Jesus Christ.
The institution that remains, having chosen costly love, is arguably more unified with God than it was before, even if it is physically smaller and weaker. The Church is called to let go of this craving for certainty and choose love in the face of ambiguity. The point is to redefine which unity we are serving: the fragile, diplomatic unity of the establishment, or the costly, radical unity rooted in the life and love of the crucified Christ.
The Revd Benjamin Edwards is the Vicar of Great Barton and Thurston, in the diocese of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich.
