Last Rites by Michael Hampson

Extract from Last Rites published in The Times 19 September 2006

The official 1991 report Issues in Human Sexuality contained just enough to allow gay clergy to remain in post with some degree of integrity intact. The report asserted that insofar as the bible mentioned homosexuality at all it was generally negative, and that this was reflected in the tradition of the church, but so many respected theologians were now taking a different view that the church could no longer cast out homosexual couples and instead must welcome them. It then asserted that this liberty could not be claimed by the clergy for themselves because they have to epitomise a higher standard, a morally confused argument that also introduces a moral separation of clergy and laity unprecedented in four hundred years of Church of England history. Despite this conclusion the bishops would not become ‘more rigorous in searching out and exposing’ gay clergy. On the contrary, the clergy would be welcome to share their homes with their long term same-sex companions and it would be improper for anyone to assume anything irregular in such an arrangement or to ‘infringe their right to privacy’ by questioning them on the subject. The policy was ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’.

I now know that this key section was written not by the report’s authors but by the House of Bishops, with each party fighting over its key words and phrases in a desperate attempt to find a text they could all sign.

Despite the report there were intermittent campaigns by obsessive fundamentalists throughout the 1990s determined to be more rigorous in searching out and exposing gay clergy even if the bishops would not. Most of the campaigns were run by just two individuals, David Holloway of Jesmond and Tony Higton of Hawkwell in Essex. With society at large still mostly hostile to the idea of gay clergy, and the church hierarchy at best ambivalent, most gay clergy chose to keep their heads down and get on with being clergy. In the entire decade only two Church of England parish priests came out as gay. The confidential database of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement lists more than eight hundred self-identified gay clergy who have had contact with the movement, many of them in long term stable partnerships. I lived quietly in my little curate’s house with ‘my friend from undergraduate days’, and kept to the ‘don’t tell’ policy. Before I moved to my second curate’s post I made sure I had the support of my new vicar. I realised after a year there that I knew the people and the place well enough to survive any unwanted exposé. I would keep my head down for a few days while it all blew over, then maintain a dignified silence and get back to work.

Not many months later I found myself staring into the abyss that could have meant putting that plan into action. We had a major event planned in the parish, a turf-turning ceremony for the construction of the new church and community centre. As well as being the curate responsible for the new church I was the chair of the Community Association that had secured the funding and would now build, own and operate the centre on behalf of both church and community. With less than twenty-four hours to go, I had a phone call from the local independent radio station. I responded cheerfully, expecting to be asked about the event planned for the next day, but that was not the reason for the call. ‘A clergyman in Essex has declared in his parish magazine that all gay clergy and those who support them should declare themselves and then resign. How do you respond to that?’

There was silence for a while as the words hung in the air. They spoke first. ‘Is now not a good time? Shall we call back in a couple of hours?’ They were handing me a stay of execution.

I called the archdeacon for advice. He was not surprised and said I should refer the radio station to the diocesan press office, and might like to speak to the press office myself for reassurance. I called them and they knew immediately what was going on. ‘Tony Higton again. We spend all our time clearing up his mess. Just refer them to me.’

I calmed myself and waited. When the radio station called back it was to apologise. They had been put up to it. They had been told that I was some kind of gay rights spokesman. They had been encouraged several months before to make my presence in the town into a news story. The trendy young adults who ran Harlow independent radio decided that ‘there is a gay man in Harlow’ did not count as news, so Mr Higton wrote his piece in his parish magazine and called back saying ‘now it’s news’. Reluctantly they called to see if there was half a story. As soon as they realised I was not the national spokesperson that I had been made out to be they were appalled that they had been used, and appalled at the thought that they had caused someone an afternoon of anxiety. They could hardly have been more apologetic. They sheepishly turned up with a tape recorder the next day to cover the other story.

You forget that homosexuality is an issue when it is just your ordinary life. I forgot as I applied for the post of warden of the diocesan retreat house, a twenty-three bedroom house set in delightful gardens in a small Essex village with a programme of residential and day events throughout the year. It needed somebody with both a breadth of spirituality and a talent for organising major projects. With ecumenical experience in Harlow and having chaired the new building project there – by then with dozens of staff and an annual turnover well into six figures – everything seemed to fit.

They had advertised twice and failed to appoint. I had not been looking for a move. I heard about the vacancy at deanery chapter in January 2001, and was encouraged by the assistant rural dean to apply. I made a tentative phone call to the diocesan office asking to see the paperwork. The next morning the phone rang at 8.30am and it was the bishop. I had not yet seen the papers and he virtually offered me the post. Within forty-eight hours he had assembled the entire interview panel of twenty-two on a weekday for a full day of interviews. It turned out that the chair of the interview panel was my former archdeacon, a supporter of gay clergy who knew my situation. I was appointed unanimously. I heard that evening and I was delighted. A few days later I met with the bishop for a first discussion about future plans: more accessible literature, flexible programmes, new programme ideas aimed at a wider constituency, closer integration with parish and diocese, open house and open garden programmes, and simple alterations to the layout of the building which at the time was arranged entirely in single rooms with no facilities.

By convention clergy appointments are kept under wraps until a formal announcement is made simultaneously in every parish affected. We agreed to make the announcement the Sunday after I returned from holiday, six weeks after the interview date, on the first Sunday of Lent. I would leave the parish six weeks later on Easter Day. In the meantime all the arrangements began. The welcome service in the new parish was planned, complete with all the diocesan dignitaries. Assistant bishops, archdeacons and training officers phoned to say how pleased they were with the appointment and how much they looked forward to working on the various plans. There was a diocesan synod meeting where everybody seemed to know already and sidled up with quiet congratulations. It was the talk of the diocese.

I spent the final week before the announcement date working out how to tell the Church Langley congregation. I planned the service around the idea that the church is a community of people, not a building or a hierarchy or any particular priest. On Saturday as usual I made the final selection of hymns for Sunday and printed the weekly bulletins, then settled in the upstairs sitting room to relax for what remained of the evening.

At 9.30pm the bishop rang. I was delighted at this sign of his ongoing interest and encouragement. He asked how I was, and I told him some of what I had planned for the morning. The bishop then explained the reason for his call. He had had an anonymous phone call making allegations about my home life, and he wanted certain assurances. This was not what I expected six weeks after the appointment and less than twelve hours before the announcement.

An awkward conversation followed lasting almost an hour. It was ten years since Issues in Human Sexuality had come out and ten years since I had read it. I could not remember a single phrase of the relevant section but I knew the general argument. I was open with the bishop, as Issues invited me to be, about living with my long term companion, and I declined to say more, as Issues not only advised but insisted. It was not enough. The bishop needed further assurances. I assured him that in ten years of ordained ministry I had said nothing in public or in private contrary to the teaching of the church as set out in Issues, and had no intention of changing that policy. It was still not enough. He could not bring himself to talk explicitly about sex but it was perfectly clear what he wanted to know, as no other assurance would do. He was breaking the rules, asking questions he was not supposed to ask.

It was thoroughly unpleasant, but about 10.15pm that first phone call came to an end. I had persuaded the bishop that the announcement should go ahead. At 10.25pm the bishop called again. He had thought it through and now he wanted the announcement delayed while he considered the issues in more detail. We argued. I had spent all week preparing the service. I had already told key people in the parish. The announcement juggernaut was in motion and could not be stopped without casualties. The bishop conceded that a provisional announcement could be made, a break with etiquette but saving face. Overnight I remembered that the announcement was going ahead in a whole range of partner churches. It was simply not possible to contact them all reliably before the start of their Sunday morning services. If every other church in the area was announcing the appointment it made no sense to make a different announcement at my own church, and in any case a provisional announcement would make the bishop look foolish and indecisive. The appointment would surely be going ahead because Issues was perfectly clear on the matter. For ten years I had faithfully kept to my side of the deal, and the appointment had been unanimous. The bishop just needed time to realise that the policy served to protect everyone involved, himself included. He would take advice from his wise archdeacons and assistant bishops. He would have resolved the matter within forty-eight hours and I could save him any embarrassment by pretending those late night rule-breaking phone calls never happened.

There was no point trying to sleep. I called an acquaintance of many years, a senior priest I had known since before ordination who had been a colleague in one diocese and then another. He was furious at the turn of events and I ended up slightly embarrassed and trying to calm him down. Dozing by 11.30pm I was woken by the phone. It was my priest friend calling back. I picked up the receiver and he just began. ‘How dare they! How dare they! And who is looking after your pastoral care right now? Who cares about you? How dare they! An anonymous phone call? Who the hell acts on an anonymous phone call? How dare they!’, and so on. I was cheered but even more embarrassed. I needed sleep and I had a difficult service ahead.

The service went according to plan. When I made the announcement the logic of the preceding theme fell into place. After the service there were good wishes and hugs all round. People asked my partner whether he was looking forward to the move. We had not really known until that day that they knew such an assumption to be appropriate. It was very affirming for us both.

There were tears in my eyes during the preparation of the altar – I had chosen one of my favourite classic hymns – and again at the breaking of bread. The congregation thought they were tears for saying goodbye to this church. For the preceding hours I had stayed focussed on the task of making the announcement. Having completed that task, I was suddenly overcome by the seriousness of what had happened the night before. As I stood there at the altar those tears were for the possibility that I was now saying goodbye to my entire priesthood.

For the next ten days the focus was on convincing the bishop. I was called in to see him at the diocesan office and interrogated again. By then I had checked the text of Issues and was able to quote it point by point. He was clearly in the wrong. All he had to do was put the appointment back on track, and if challenged refer to the document and his ‘thorough investigation of the matter’ in line with the terms of the document. He did not commit himself either way. I think he genuinely had not decided.

Nearly a week passed. He called me from his mobile and left a message asking to see me that evening. I was due to be leading the latest part of our parish programme called Through the Bible in a Year, a smart home-grown multimedia presentation across thirty Tuesday evenings. I picked up the message late in the day. I chose bible study over a meeting with the bishop. It went well. I saw the bishop the next day. ‘Michael, we have some hard talking to do.’ There was no talking to do at all. A sacking can be achieved in a phone call or a fax. ‘I hope this doesn’t affect our future relationship’, he said. I was overcome by an unfamiliar calm as I replied: ‘A priest in a diocese this size would only expect to have dealings with the bishop if discussing a move, and I do not expect that I shall ever be considered for a move within this diocese while you are still its bishop.’ The bishop looked away. ‘I suppose that’s right’. I stared out of the window. I resented the tear in my eye.

I had my full response prepared. ‘I’m going to take a sabbatical. I’m going to leave on Easter Day as planned and come back later in the year.’ The bishop objected. ‘Well, if you look in the diocesan guide you will see that you can apply to the relevant department for a sabbatical...’ I interrupted, overcome once again by that unfamiliar calm: ‘You are a bishop, and you make and take appointments. I am an incumbent with the freehold and I am taking a sabbatical. Clergy have been to prison and come out again and still had the freehold. I am taking a sabbatical.’ The bishop conceded: ‘Perhaps it would be a good idea.’

That Sunday, as a church, we should have been counting down the last four weeks until I left. Instead I began the service by saying that I was staying. They cheered. ‘Their loss is our gain!’ shouted one. There was applause and the mood was bright. It became like a celebration. I made up something about ‘unforeseen tensions emerging at the retreat house in the wake of the appointment’. Afterwards they were cheerful with me, but they were taking my partner to one side, gathering round and embracing him saying, ‘you must be so upset’. They knew.

The four weeks up to Easter were a blur. I promised them I would come back later in the year. That promise may well have been the only thing that did bring me back. Holy Week was powerful. Easter Day was a wonderful celebration. They presented me with my leaving present – a watercolour of the new church presumably commissioned when they thought I was leaving. There were mixed emotions all round. Many thought I would never come back.

For the first two months of the sabbatical I was moved to tears at every service I attended. That was part of the mix of emotions. Another was fury at the injustice of a church where a bishop could behave like this with impunity, and at the refusal of anybody in the diocese to challenge him. Before the next meeting of the retreat house trustees each one of them was phoned individually and told that the incident was not to be mentioned. The meeting proceeded as if the entire sequence of events had never taken place. Even in my own deanery chapter those who would be privately supportive sat in silence as the fundamentalist vicar of the neighbouring parish launched a scathing attack on my integrity. Just one said ‘I’ll talk to you afterwards’. I had spent all those years taking such care, in public and in private, never to say anything that could be quoted against me as Issues demanded: a huge personal sacrifice for the sake of the unity of the church. Now that sacrifice had been spat back in my face. And the way the bishop saw me now was so pathetically obsessive. Two weeks before when he looked at me he saw a whole human being made in the image of God, full of faith in Christ, youthful energy, a breadth of spirituality and the financial and presentational nous to turn around the ailing retreat house. Now all he saw were ‘genital acts’. That is a strange and rather disgusting obsession. And there was another twist of the knife: a gay priest in a partnership had only months previously been appointed to a senior post in the diocese by that same bishop. Did that priest lie to give the assurances demanded, or was there simply no malicious phone call prompting the questions to be asked? It is a strange way to run a multi-million pound organisation, or a church.

I looked out of the hotel window over midtown Manhattan and contemplated the options. I could expose the hypocrisy of the bishop, in synod and beyond. I could sue the bishop under employment law and become a test case in the european courts. With the help of some retired campaigning lay people I set part of the process in motion. Three thousand miles away a formal question was put at diocesan synod: did the bishop support the policy laid out in Issues in Human Sexuality. He said that he did, but we all knew otherwise.

I continued researching the options but eventually backed away. I could define myself as a victim in the international courts and the media spotlight, or return to my ordinary priesthood and my ordinary life. After four and a half months I returned to the parish and we had the best three years ever.

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