‘At last,’ you, or we, might think: a diocesan bishop who has spoken his mind.

Others, of course, might wish that Bishop Steven hadn’t spoken his mind, for his is a challenging mind.

I was pleased to receive a copy of Together in Love and Faith which I read with great interest. In some ways I found myself more interested in + Steven’s journey and his theological method than in his conclusions.

I would want to gently suggest that Together in Love and Faith should be used as an exemplar of Theological Reflection (and Narrative Theology) on ministry courses irrespective of whether tutors share his conclusions.

In his pamphlet Steven draws on scripture, reason, tradition, and experience. He not only cites Scripture but describes (pages 25 & 26) his seven-fold methodology for engaging with Scripture (let me stress that one more time: his seven fold methodology).

There can be no doubt that as someone schooled in the Charismatic Evangelical tradition Bishop Steven continues to take Scripture, and the primacy of Scripture, very seriously indeed. To deny this is to refuse to engage with his overall argument. And yet many of his critics have, and no doubt will continue to do so, favouring instead pre-prepared, ‘oven ready’, and simplistic rebuttals.

Now to be clear I haven’t always agreed with Bishop Steven on a whole range of issues. When I served in the Oxford Diocese I was a frequent, but hopefully friendly, critic. On some issues I still believe, perhaps arrogantly, that I was more right than wrong, and on other issues I have had to reluctantly concede that he was more right than wrong!

Some of our conversations over the years have been robust, yet we remain respectful of each other. But even when I have disagreed with Bishop Steven I have always had to concede that he is a deep thinker, There is genuinely no laziness in his thinking. If you are going to push back you really do need to have thought through, war gamed even, your own position. So I find the question raised by one critic, ‘what was Bishop Steven thinking,’ interesting, for, to say it again, the one thing we do know about him is that he does think. (He also feels).

Bishop Steven has clearly been thinking about his response for an awfully long time; too long, as he acknowledges, for some of his more progressive critics. Mea culpa.

‘Better late than never,’ isn’t however a position I would want to take, and I certainly wouldn’t warm to such a criticism from elsewhere, for to repeat myself, what we have in Together in Love and Faith is an insight into the heart and mind of a diocesan bishop struggling, personally, pastorally, ecclesiologically, and doctrinally with the church’s most contentious issue. Together in Love and Faith must, on these grounds alone, be regarded as a gift to the Church of England, if not the ‘church catholic.’

To return to the ‘oven ready’ rebuttals, of which ‘he has just capitulated to society, or culture,’ is the easiest, and ecclesiologically most shallow.

It surely stands to (ecclesiological) reason that a bishop in an established and national church, a church which (rightly or wrongly) sits in the legislature, should spend a considerable amount of time thinking (for again that is what Bishop Steven does) about the relationship between church and state, or state and church?

But it is also surely wrong, and ecclesiologically myopic, to suggest that in thinking about the relationship between church and state, to conclude that the Church of England should simply accommodate itself to the state, or as various critics seem to advocate deliberately set itself over and against society, for as Bishop Steven writes:

‘Whenever the Church faces a question about an ethical point or doctrinal understanding or adjustment to advances in knowledge, it is vital for the Christian community to take this question to the Scriptures,’ (page 25).

This statement, even if Bishop Steven’s methodology and consequential conclusions are to be rejected, must surely leave no doubt over the primacy of Scripture in his thinking and reasoning. Scripture, for Bishop Steven, still seems to carry the trump card, as indeed it does for many of us who advocate for equal marriage and the blessing of civil partnerships.

As a quick aside: his method of biblical exegesis is in many ways ‘old fashioned,’ (traditional even), with it’s stress on the use of analogy (cf Origen) in biblical reasoning, what + Steven offers is decisively not some uber liberal, progressive, ‘let’s throw away all the rules,’ model of biblical exegesis, whatever his critics say.

So to conclude in just forty eight pages Bishop Steven offers a thoughtful (theological and narrative) reflection where his data sets include the personal, the pastoral, the ethical, and the doctrinal, all considered through the primacy of Scripture, and where he also reflects on, as any member of the clergy in an established church should, the nature of the relationship between church and society, or state.

Disagree, by all means, with his methodology, but please leave the oven ready one liners on the shelf; they really don’t help.