The Church of England’s ‘Living in Love and Faith’ (LLF) project concluded with a consultation period, when people – especially those who had taken part in the LLF Course – were asked to feed back and comment on LLF. The main way to do so was by filling out an online questionnaire, though it was also possible to send in articles, poems, artwork and even multi-media contributions.
The consultation period ended on 30 April 2022, and since then the LLF team have been analysing the responses – a mammoth task, as there were well over 6,000 of them. They published the results on 2 September 2022 as three documents:
The main report: Listening with Love and Faith (95 pages)
A more detailed technical report: Listening with Love & Faith – Responses in More Detail (154 pages)
A reflective essay entitled Friendship and the Body of Christ (71 pages)
These PDF documents can be downloaded from https://www.churchofengland.org/resources/living-love-and-faith/listening.
The initial reactions have been varied, with some progressive voices saying the report doesn’t amount to much, but the Equal Campaign takes a more positive line – see Nic Tall’s thorough article entitled ‘Living in Love and Faith – What the Church of England Really Thinks‘, which is well worth reading. As a taster, here are Nic’s ‘main headlines’ from the report:
- Most want the acceptance of same-sex marriage or blessing of same-sex partnerships.
- There is a strong desire across all Church traditions and perspectives for the Church to be more welcoming.
- There is a willingness to acknowledge a diversity of views and to aim to keep the Church together.
- The Church now looks to the bishops to give clear, bold leadership and bring us to a position of clarity so we know where we stand.
Clearly there are aspects of the report that we can use to encourage the bishops to lead the Church into the “radical new Christian inclusion” that we were promised in 2017.