The Bat in the Belfry

Patrick Strudwick is “a multi-award-winning investigative reporter”, according to his mini-bio posted on the top of his index page at the i online newspaper. His bio also tells us that he “was the first LGBT specialist in a British newsroom” and that “he covers health, crime, human rights and social affairs.”

Strudwick does himself a disservice in this mini-bio because it doesn’t mention that he is also a prolific campaigner: he campaigns for LGBT rights and he campaigns against Christians holding traditional religious views on sexuality. He once got a counsellor struck off his professional body after falsely posing as a would-be client claiming to want help to address unwanted sexual attraction.

At the weekend, the i online newspaper published Strudwick’s latest missive: “Meet the gay Church of England priest defrocked for not revealing the details of his love life”.  Unfortunately, it is behind a paywall. But, don’t worry, the i has syndicated it to MSN, where you can read it for free.

The whole article is bizarre. It paints a picture of a Church of England priest, the Reverend Geoffrey Riba-Thompson, who was dismissed from his post as Vicar of Saint Stephens Norbury and Thornton Heath because of a homophobic witch-hunt. It goes on to highlight the “wider problem with how Anglicanism sits outside legislation to which everyone else in Britain is subject”, and says that the Church is exempt from “multiple laws including the Equality Act 2010, the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act 2013 and the Employment Rights Act 1996” and quotes Riba-Thompson saying that the Church “can avoid the intricacies of normal employment law”.

I’ll get back to the actual reasons for Riba-Thompson’s dismissal. For now, let’s address those exemptions.

Church of England vicars are not subject to employment law for one simple reason: they are not employees. They are office holders. This isn’t just an archaic accident of history. It is a right and a privilege that clergy have, and which has been upheld by recent judgments in the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court; and protected in legislation as recently as the Ecclesiastical Offices (Terms of Service) Measure 2009, which states in section 9(6) that “Nothing in this Measure shall be taken as creating a relationship of employer and employee between an office holder and any other person or body.”

As office holders, parish clergy can’t be made redundant, or dismissed for gross misconduct. Nor can they be given instructions as to how they conduct their ministry. Any disciplinary action taken against clergy has to be for specific reasons, laid down in law. If allegations are disputed they are investigated not by the bishop, but by a barrister; and any decision about guilt or innocence is decided by an independent tribunal, with a legally qualified chair, two clergy and two lay people from outside the diocese in which the clergyperson is based.

As for Equality Act exemptions – this isn’t universal. The Equality Act applies to Churches as to other groups. But the exemptions that do exist are obvious and uncontroversial. One of the things that the Equality Act does is prohibit discriminate based on religion. That is a good thing. But it is also a good thing that a Church should be allowed to say that it will only appoint a Christian as a priest; a Mosque will only appoint a Muslim as an Imam; and a Synagogue will only apply a Jew as a rabbi. This is why exemptions exist under the Equality Act.

Now for the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act. This permits two people of the same sex to marry in English law. But it also contained exemptions for religious organisations, recognising that man religious organisations – certainly the majority of Christian churches – the doctrine of marriage is that it is a lifelong union between a man and a woman. The Act allows religious groups to opt-in to performing same-sex marriages; but does not force them to do so if doing so is contrary to their doctrine.

The UK is a country with religious freedom. Nobody can be forced to go to Church, become a Christian or take part in religious ceremonies. But that same freedom applies in reverse: nobody can be prohibited from going to church, stopped from becoming a Christian, or banned from taking part in religious ceremonies. People are free to practice or not practice their faith. And it is for religious organisations, not the State – and certainly not “multi-award-winning investigative reporters” – to define religious doctrine.

That’s the “exemptions” taken care of, why was Riba-Thompson dismissed. The Church of England publishes a list of penalties imposed consent, under the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003. This is not a salacious list. It states the “offence” in simple terms: “Conduct unbecoming & inappropriate to the office and work of a clerk in Holy Orders.

The Clergy Discipline Measure is the law that sets out complaints about clergy. A penalty by consent can only be imposed if two conditions are met:

1. The priest accepts the “charge” against them; and

2. The priest accepts the bishop’s proposed penalty.

If the priest accepts the charge but not the penalty, the matter will go to a tribunal, as described above, who will decide the penalty.

That is all we know about the Riba-Thompson case. The allegations against him are not officially published and there is an undue element of secrecy and confidentiality around the clergy disciplinary process. So all we have to go on is Riba-Thompson’s own account, published in the i newspaper; and other media reports.

Strudwick claims in the article that Riba-Thompson’s offence was that “he fell in love, did not disclose the intimate details of it when questioned – and a member of the public objected.”

You have to drill down a few more paragraphs before you read that the “member of the public” was actually the husband of a man who was having an affair with Riba-Thompson. This is important because one of the protections that clergy, not being employees, have is that complaints can’t generally come from “members of the public” – complaints must come from somebody who has a “proper interest” as defined in the law.

Riba-Thompson was himself married, to another man, according to Strudwick’s article, at the time that the affair with the complainant’s husband began. The article quotes Riba-Thompson saying that he was bored with his husband and so turned to a the Grindr app to meet another man with whom he had sex – it is from this, according to the article, that the affair began.

Some people describe Grindr as a dating app; others as a hook-up app. Either way, according to the article, Riba-Thompson “went on Grindr, the gay dating app, met a man … and had sex.” The article goes on to say that “the pair soon began to realise that there was more to their connection than the physical.”

Strudwick implicitly turns this into a story of a church reacting because Riba-Thompson was in a homosexual relationship. It even quotes Riba-Thompson saying that the Church “can discriminate against gay people, it can discriminate against women, and in this instance, it can avoid the intricacies of normal employment law”.

Riba-Thompson’s offence, as set out in the article, is that of engaging in sex outside marriage, having an extra-marital affair, and also lying to an earlier tribunal (potentially a contempt of court – depending on the details which aren’t given in the article). A heterosexual priest would have faced the same penalty – in fact many have been given prohibition for life for similar offences.

And in many dioceses, Riba-Thompson would have faced a complaint under the Clergy Discipline Measure for entering a same-sex marriage. Under Church of England law, the place for sexual intimacy is marriage; and marriage is a lifelong union between a man and a woman.

Gay clergy are allowed to enter civil partnerships, but must give an assurance to their bishop that they are living within the Church of England rules about sexual activity. But they are not allowed to marry because marriage implies a sexual relationship.

Strudwick argues that the case shows how far the Church is from society. Yet he describes an affair that developed between two married people who met on a hook up app as “a healthy relationship”. If a heterosexual priest had acted in the same way with a person of the opposite sex, they too would have been prohibited.

Being a priest is not a job. It is a calling. And priests are expected to live in accordance with the tenets of the faith. Sleeping around and using hook-up apps is not acceptable behaviour for a priest. Strudwick’s article doesn’t portray a Church that is homophobic and out of touch, as Strudwick suggests. Instead, it portrays a disgraced priest who hasn’t learned, things he has done no wrong, and has no understanding of the Church’s teaching on sexual ethics.