CANTERBURY, England (RNS) — The Very Rev. David Monteith has a very public role. As dean of the Canterbury Cathedral, the mother church of the Church of England and the larger Anglican Communion, he oversees England’s oldest and grandest cathedral.
Yet despite his important caretaking role for the Church of England’s most iconic institution, Monteith feels in many ways like an alien.
As a gay man, he functions within a church that does not allow people like him to marry. Nor will it allow a stand-alone church service of blessings celebrating same-sex relationships, only a blessing within a regularly scheduled service.
Monteith, who is 57, has been living with his partner, David Hamilton, a retired nurse specializing in palliative care, since Monteith was 21 years old. The couple registered their civil partnership in 2008 after it became possible to do so. Since then, same-sex marriage has become legal across the U.K., but not in the Church of England.
“The mutual support that we have for one another has been crucial in all of my ministry, wherever I’ve been,” said Monteith of his lifelong partner. “I can’t really imagine having done the things I’ve done without that kind of domestic support and reliability and rock that my partner gives me.”
While some Protestant denominations around the world have granted LGBTQ+ Christians full equality — allowing them to be ordained and their marriages sanctioned in the church — the Church of England has only made tentative steps toward inclusion.
On Tuesday (Dec. 16), the Church of England’s bishops are expected to vote on whether to expand LGBTQ+ rights, as part of the Living in Love and Faith discernment process begun in 2017. But at their October meeting, the bishops issued a statement that there would be no immediate changes to the protocols already introduced, and few expect much to happen.
This has left Monteith dejected.
“I’m pretty fed up with the Church of England as an institution,” said Monteith. “I think it’s actually become more and more homophobic over the years.”
Monteith can list the many indignities he has encountered over the years: the ways reference to his partner is often omitted in the last paragraph of his biography; the time a bishop asked him to make sure his partner was not around when certain clergy visited; the dinner invitations that excluded his partner; the churches he would never be invited to preach at and the fellow priests who avoid talking to him.
Of these slights, Monteith said, “One senses this kind of underlying disrespect and disdain with multiple microaggressions.”
The Canterbury dean is one of nearly 7,000 people who recently signed a public letter saying they were “deeply disappointed” with the bishops’ stonewalling.
“We long for the Church of England to become a truly hospitable Church for LGBTQ+ people, where all may find authentic welcome, safety, and joy in the life of Christ’s Body,” the letter said.
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Chantal Noppen, the national coordinator for Inclusive Church, an ecumenical network of U.K. Christians for full inclusion, said many Anglicans are not OK with the status quo.
“The ones who signed the letter are people who are trying to stay and believe this can change,” she said. “There are thousands more that have already walked away, and we’ll never hear from them, and that should bother us, I think.”
At their October meeting, Church of England bishops agreed that prayers of blessing for same-sex couples may not be used at stand-alone, or bespoke, services because of concerns that it might be perceived as a same-sex marriage service. Instead, the bishops suggested the church’s legislative body, the General Synod, be asked to authorize stand-alone prayers, a change that would require agreement of two-thirds of the synod.
Effectively, that is very unlikely to happen, said Nic Tall, national coordinator for Together for the Church of England, an advocacy group for LGBTQ+ equality. Surmounting that two-thirds threshold is going to be virtually impossible given the increasingly conservative makeup of the synod’s three bodies — the House of Bishops, the House of Clergy and the House of Laity, Tall explained.
The bishops also said that on the advice of legal counsel the only way to allow same-sex marriage for clergy would be to change canon law, a long and cumbersome process that would require Parliament’s approval because the Church of England is the established state church.
“We’ve had clergy who have been feeling, well, maybe this year, I will finally be able to marry my partner of decades-long standing,” Tall said. “And every time we sort of reach the point of any sort of decision or forward progress another hitch is found, and it’s, ‘Oh, well, we’ll have to push the process back a bit.’”
For Monteith, whose calling is bound up with the Christian understanding of reconciliation, these latest actions are a retreat from that teaching.
An Irishman, Monteith was born in Enniskillen, a Northern Irish town 80 miles west of Belfast.The town is mostly remembered for the 1987 bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army that killed a dozen people at an annual gathering for fallen soldiers. One of those injured, Gordon Wilson, lost his daughter, Marie, in the blast, but later said his faith in Jesus led him to forgive the IRA.
That example of forgiveness led Monteith to consider the priesthood. Peacemaking felt to him a worthy mission.
He met his partner at a church in the Lake District of England. Both had been brought up in traditionally conservative homes and were initially tentative about whether they should live as gay men.
“We weren’t sure whether it was right to form a gay relationship or not, but I think through the forming of that partnership we discovered that it was a good way to live,” Monteith said.
Monteith is not by nature an activist. He dresses formally in a black suit with a priest’s collar. In keeping with the season of Christmas, he sports red socks and a red handkerchief in his jacket pocket. Besides preaching at the cathedral on many Sundays, he manages a staff of 250, about 600 volunteers and an annual budget of more than 14 million pounds.
He feels passionately about LGBTQ+ equality but said he’d have to think carefully before undertaking any act of resistance.
“I’m very aware that this is not a small, ordinary parish,” he said. “What I decide to do will be seen, no doubt, by many people, and so it will have significance.”
He’s aware of the theological differences around homosexuality in England as well as among Anglicans abroad, but he thinks a solution can be forged. No clergy should be required to officiate at a gay marriage, if their conscience is opposed to it, he said.
After the bishops’ October meeting, he did pen a blog post expressing his frustration. He wrote that he felt “winded” by the bishops’ inaction. “The sense of being an ‘alien in the household of God’ grows,” he wrote.
He anticipates that some priests may decide to offer stand-alone blessing services for same-sex couples despite the ban and that other priests may decide not to officiate at any weddings at all unless same-sex weddings are also allowed. Both tactics have been used elsewhere in other denominations as a way to press for change.
Monteith tries to hope. The cross he wears around his neck was fashioned by the Saxons, who came to the British Isles after the Romans and under their rule established the cathedral. His particular cross, given to him when he became dean, is etched with a dove of peace. That is meaningful to him — a reminder that though he is weary he still feels his old calling.
“While, specifically, I’m a Christian,” he said, holding the cross in his hands, “actually, my work is to be part of the making of peace and the bringing of people of different perspectives together. I know that peace and reconciliation is hard-won. It’s not cheap. It’s costly to everybody involved, but it starts, in my mind, with the ability to imagine a future in which reconciliation has happened, and that’s the key first step. ”
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