Gay Before God: An Awakening Love Forbidden by the Church

by William Bruce

  “I think we need some tact and understanding if we are to sort this one out,” interjected the bishop, fearing a forceful response to the archdeacon from Richard.

  “Maybe, but has it got us very far. Let me see him, and I promise to be gentle, well as much as I need to be,” responded the archdeacon.

  “I do not think you need to see him at this point...” began Richard.

  “Let the archdeacon meet him,” interrupted the bishop. “We are all working on this together, and our different approaches will win through I am sure. I will try to see this Terry, and maybe meeting a bishop will make him see sense. Anyway, I am sorry but I must get to the Cathedral to meet HRH.”

  “Yes, why wasn’t I invited to join the welcoming party as well?” asked the archdeacon, rather annoyed.

  “Nothing to do with me, I am afraid, something about Cathedral protocol,” quickly added the bishop glad to be halfway out of the room. “Anyway I must go. We will speak again about this matter. Every blessing.” And with a wave of his hand he was gone.

  Chapter 8

  “He wants to see you this week.” The secretary’s voice on the phone had none of the lightness of previous contacts.

  “Oh,” said James, somewhat taken aback by the force of the demand. “Friday evening any good?”

  “7 o’clock would be fine. I will put it in his diary straight away. Thank you James, Good-bye.”

  Before he could reply the phone had gone dead. There would be no sympathy there, he thought, and wondered what it was the archdeacon's secretary might know, that disgusted her, and what had frosted her view of him. He was sure the bishop would have spoken to the archdeacon and had perhaps asked him to check if James had taken up the episcopal advice.

  James was now staying several nights a week at Terry’s cottage, though he had not officially taken up residence. Victor had moved to his own flat in the nearby town. It was too close for comfort, but Terry had already started looking at houses in other villages so that they could make a fresh start.

  Friday evening came, and with some trepidation James drove the 55 miles across the flat lands to the archdeacon’s house. It stood as a new building, ugly in character and not particularly well constructed, sitting on a plot of land that had been so obviously carved from the old rectory garden. In the driveway there was only one car, the large purple model, a little too grand for an archdeacon, but no doubt an indication of where the owner was destined in preferment. At least, thought James, the archdeacon is alone and he did not have to face the secretary’s distain.

  “Good evening, James,” went the greeting when the archdeacon opened the door. “I was so pleased you could come,” hinting perhaps the pleasure was not to be sustained or real.

  “Evening, archdeacon,” replied James, quite weakly, standing on the doorstep and beginning to feel a chill in the air. He put his hand into his pocket and could feel the stones, now in their small bag Terry had given him. He rubbed them between his thumb and finger. He could feel Terry's presence and Terry’s love.

  The archdeacon was a small fat man with a bald head. Before ordination and his meteoric ecclesiastical career, aided no doubt by some good connections, he was in business. No one was sure what kind of business, and around the subject hovered a mystery no one dare penetrate. His commercial experience was the fresh approach the church needed, as he often said. He was keen on what he called ‘the interactive dialogue with the world’, which meant adopting the practices of the market-place in order to keep the institution going, sometimes forgetting what the institution was for in the first place.

  The dialogue between the archdeacon and James was to be rather one-sided.

  “I know what has been going on,” said the archdeacon, after the pleasantries were well and truly out of the way. “I have been told.”

  “I told the bishop as soon as I could,” explained James, keen to show he was trying to be honest and open, but these qualities did not impress the archdeacon. “I didn’t think anyone else knew, except Richard of course.”

  “But there you are wrong,” the archdeacon was triumphant. “I had a call from the two people in Church House saying you were seen in a pub together. And you had been seen coming out of the cinema, as near as damn it, hand in hand.”

  James was somewhat stunned by this revelation, thinking the evidence against him was slender and circumstantial. All they could really convict him on was his own confession.

  “Everyone knows, it is common knowledge,” continued the archdeacon, “Charles has passed a whole file on to Richard, and it is probably only a matter of time before the press gets hold of it. This can’t go on, James. You know it can’t. You are ruining your career, your vocation, and your family!”

  James wondered at the order of those things, feeling he was listening to a sermon, and therefore felt strangely detached.

  “You know how difficult it will be for the bishop when he goes to Lambeth,” said the archdeacon in mounting anger, apparently supporting someone whom he usually faintly praised. “You are fortunate you are in this diocese. If it was elsewhere you would have your bits cut off!” It was the talk of a bully who tells you that you are lucky to be beaten by him rather than someone else at the other end of the playground.

  James bristled at this kind of talk, and saw he had lost all hope of a reasonable dialogue. The archdeacon was not going to listen, far less understand the feelings he had. There was not in any case an opportunity for him to reply.

  “You have got to ask yourself, if we had known what we know now, would we have ever appointed you in the first place!”

  A silence descended on the room. The archdeacon was using it as time for James to think, to come to his senses, perhaps to break down so he could be counselled back to sensibility.

  Just then James felt a vibration in his pocket, and he was sure the archdeacon had noticed. A text had arrived and James knew exactly whom the message was from and what it would probably say: ‘Just a quick text to say I love you, never forget it xxx’. The vibration slightly unnerved the archdeacon. He knew what it was because he was man with all the latest technical gadgets, but he had no idea what the message would say because he had never sent nor received such a text.

  “You have got to decide. I will give you a week. Charles says he can’t keep it out of the papers any longer. Either get rid of Terry, or resign. I need to know by next Friday.” Having put the challenge, the archdeacon let it rest. He felt he had handled it well, though perhaps a little too harshly.

  “I am not asking,” he continued after a while in a more conciliatory tone, “for you to deny what you have to do. There are saunas you know, and lay-bys. Can’t you just get it out of your system? We are not the thought police. What you do in private out of the public gaze is no business of mine.”

  This was the archdeacon being at his most pastoral. He was giving James a way out of his dilemma, not to be with Terry, which was all too serious, but to satisfy his natural urges in a way that would not hurt the institution.

  The full implications of what the archdeacon was saying did not dawn upon James straight away. Only later did his disgust at such suggestions well up inside of him. He had never been to a sauna or used a lay-by for some kind of anonymous sex. It was the sort of activity that appalled him. He couldn’t divorce sex from love, the physical act from his emotional involvement. Maybe that was his problem and the archdeacon was right. Perhaps James, like some love-struck teenager, had lost sight of reality, aligning everything to the heartbeat of Terry. And yet James knew he was so fulfilled in Terry’s presence and so complete in his love, it was hard to deny the purity and the essential goodness of their relationship.

  “If you resign you will never get a job. You haven’t got any transferable skills. And what about your pension?” This was the archdeacon’s trump card, carefully held back until now. It had worked before in getting clergy to see sense.

  For James it had the opposite effect. To him the priesthood had never been a lucrative
occupation. He had not come into it for the money. For the last twenty-five years ever since he was a teenager he had served the church more often as a volunteer than a paid employee. He had put in countless hours in visiting the sick and lonely, preparing for services, cleaning churches and tidying up churchyards, sitting on committees plodding through eternal agendas, staying up late to write articles and sermons, tolerating the whims of bishops and archdeacons, and drinking endless cups of tea with old ladies. It was not a remunerated occupation but a vocation and a way of life. You did it because you wanted to serve God and believed in the Gospel, for there could be no other reason. And at the centre of that belief was love. Love for God and love for other people. If the church isn’t about love and doesn’t understand love, and can’t cope with those who fall in love, then it had lost its way and had become nothing more than a national institution for the defence of perceived morality and the guardian of a few ancient buildings.

  “You are throwing everything away, and you will be poor!” The archdeacon’s words were not as wounding as he hoped.

  James was beginning to see the archdeacon had no concept of what love was, true love that set you on fire, made you do mad things, capable of changing your life. James was becoming certain this was the kind of love Jesus talked about, and the kind of love the disciples had felt for him in the way they were able to express it in first century Palestine. For James it was not about sex and inappropriate activities, or even in the incompatibility of various genital organs, a point he felt sure the archdeacon was able to raise. His love for Terry was about commitment, dedication and sacrifice, and honesty and integrity and if that can’t be found in the Gospels it can’t be found anywhere. How else would there have been the energy and passion that brought the church into being, allowing it to spread from place to place, and to conquer the hearts of countless generations? Surely, thought James, at least in the beginning, it was not done for job security, for money, or for a good pension? The archdeacon had exposed his weakness, a disconnectedness with the faith that drove James into ordination and had sustained him over decades of ministry. At the very place where he thought he might have found understanding he had discovered a rotten deceit.

  The meeting ended abruptly. James had a sense he would never see the archdeacon again, such was the new ultimatum now handed to him. All the work he had done, with competency and some innovation, seemed to count for nothing. He was being asked not to change but to cover up what he did, to live a lie.

  After taking his leave, James did not turn to wave at the archdeacon as he got into his car. If he had done so he would have seen the archdeacon had already gone indoors, out of the chilling wind. James drove home knowing now the church was not going to support him. He was facing a crisis in his life, not entirely of his own choosing; he was hurting inside and pushed to the brink of sanity, but the church could only pontificate and moralise, and suggest as a compromise the practice of dissemblance. It would not stand by him, care for him or love him.

  The drive back across the flat dull landscape was tedious. James noticed the weather had turned much colder and the bitter wind off The Fens was pursuing him. Before long it started to snow, and the swirling white dots and dashes filled the light of the headlamps. The whole landscape was being transformed into an icy mass of black and white. It was not beautiful, as sometimes such a scene can be, but forbidding, brittle and chilling. In James’ mind it was like Narnia in reverse, the reinstatement of a cold and inhuman order, the prospect of painful wintry times ahead.

  What spurred him on in this journey was the goal of being with Terry. He knew he would have the fire going, soft music in the background, perhaps even a glass of wine waiting to be poured. When he walked through the door Terry was there to meet him and hear the story.

  “I don’t think they will fire you,” said Terry, not quite understanding what the church is like. “On what grounds?” he asked, perhaps not realising the magnitude of the scandal of illicit love.

  “They will find a way,” answered James, not wishing to pursue the topic. He reached over to kiss Terry, to relax into his presence, to bury himself on this arctic night and hibernate away from the cold and harsh demands of the church.

  The next morning they woke to find the garden and beyond covered in a beautiful white blanket of snow. Even the tiny branches of the trees were encrusted. The sun, now quite bright, began to add brilliance and clarity to the scene. They treaded tentatively out into the yard and along the drive where the cars were parked. Every footfall was a step into a soft, crisp and virginal land. They were like adventurers in a new Eden, breaking ground where no one had been before. They tossed a few snowballs at each other, carefree playing in a carefree world. James was standing by the windscreen of his car, and wrote in the snow ‘I love you, and you love me.’ It was a confirmation everything was as it should be, a wonderful balance in their world.

  Just then the house phone rang, a rude reminder of the reality beyond the snow-clad garden. It was the bishop’s secretary asking for Terry. As James passed the phone over he wondered how she knew the number. The bishop wanted to see Terry, but only him, as soon as possible later that day. Shortly afterwards the phone rang again, and it became apparent a plan had been put into action. This time it was Richard wanting to see James, early next week.

  In neither case was there an indication of the nature of the business, but Terry and James knew this was a coordinated approach.

  “Come in, come in, so good to see you,” said the bishop to Terry when he arrived at the Bishop’s House that afternoon. “I hope there wasn’t too much trouble with the snow.”

  The bishop always gave the impression you were the most important person in the world, at that moment in time, perhaps even a long lost friend stumbled upon by accident. How much this enthusiasm survived once the person was out of sight only the bishop could say.

  “I have been thinking so much about you,” the bishop continued as he showed Terry into his grand study to some rather cheap, modern-looking chairs arranged in front of the fireplace.

  “Tea, coffee?” asked the bishop. “I will just call my wife so she can bring it through.”

  Terry had never been in a bishop’s study before, and what struck him immediately was the grandeur of the décor, the older furnishings and paintings, so obviously from a previous generation, contrasting with the tackiness of more recent additions to the room, such as a signed photograph of the local football team and a teddy bear from a primary school with a little mitre on its head. With his eye for detail he noticed the chaos of papers on two large desks, leaving no room for writing. In the stacks of files on clergy, synod reports, committee meetings, there seemed to be no order to the debris. Also there was no evidence of a computer, the only concession to modern communication being the telephone.

  “Now tell me, Terry,” asked the bishop, once his demurred wife had brought in the drinks, “what is all this about?”

  “How do you mean?” replied Terry, not too sure what the bishop was trying to ascertain.

  “James is a good priest, perhaps one of the best we have got, you know. He has a special job that covers the whole county,” said the bishop, “and he has got a family,” he added with a note of anger in his voice.

  “I know, but I can’t help it if he loves me,” replied Terry.

  “But do you love him?” asked the bishop, summoning up a challenge, “or is he just another notch on your belt?”

  This comment came as surprise to Terry. It betrayed the bishop's view of him, and perhaps of all gay men, as if they prowled around seeking married men to entice into sin. Very quickly the bishop had turned from love to sex, as if in these circumstances that is all it could be.

  “Do you trust him?” was the next approach of the bishop perhaps sensing a weakness to be exploited. “They say in the office he still wears his wedding ring, and goes shopping with his wife. It is not for me to know whether this is true or not, but I am sure it matters to you.”

&nb
sp; The bishop had touched a nerve that could be exploited. Terry was also making sacrifices to be with James, and unless he was sure of James’ love he would feel very vulnerable. He was certain the ring James wore was the one he had given him that night in York. But how could he be really certain, for the surely the bishop would not lie.

  “You know,” went on the bishop, not expecting Terry to add much to the conversation, “I have had to deal with this kind of thing many times, and so often all I have to do is say they will lose their house if they carry on in this way, and it works because then reality strikes.” It was then the bishop remembered James lived in his own house and couldn’t be pressurised in this way. “We can’t go around loving whoever we like, or running off with anyone we fancy, it just won’t do!” the bishop’s argument had become a little too weak, and he could see in Terry’s face he was not really making the desired impression.

  “I know I love James, and he knows I love him. Talk of notches on belts, and taking away houses will not change us. Our love is too strong for that. Why can you not see how special it is?” countered Terry less in awe of the bishop than was expected.

  “You are lost in a mist of love, and all you can see is each other. Don’t you think that is selfish to the core,” concluded the bishop, leaning forward aggressively to make his point.

  “I don’t care,” was Terry’s limp response, beginning to feel intimidated.

  He had wanted to say the love he had for James was affecting him in every way, shaking the foundations of his world, and lifting him high into the sky. He wanted to say such a love could not be wrong, and certainly not selfish, because it was all about giving, opening out, and being free, perhaps for the first time in his life. He knew the bishop could not see it, like hundreds of bishops before. He looked up at the solemn portraits of the predecessors hanging on the walls. Not one of them looked happy or contented, but rather too pretentious in their status and too preoccupied in their responsibilities and concerns. There was nothing of the joy and love of the Gospel in that room, expect perhaps for the little mitred teddy.