On the 25th February the Rev’d Nathan Ward was asked by Kent Online to comment on a press release issued by Councillor Dan McDonald. Below you can read in full the press release and Nathan’s response.
Anyone experiencing a personal pastoral need in relation to Living in Love and Faith is welcome to contact Nathan (vicar@rainhamchurch.co.uk) or one of the Diocese of Rochester chaplains:
- The Rev Jane Winter is the LLF Diocesan Advocate – jane.winter@rochester.anglican.org
- The Rev Jim Charles (jimrcharles@me.com) supporting people holding a traditional view of marriage, sexual relationships, the bible and Christian teaching
- The Rev Gordon MacBean (gordon.macbean@rochester.anglican.org) supporting people holding a traditional view of marriage, sexual relationships, the bible and Christian teaching
- The Rev Steve Padfield (steve.padfield@rochester.anglican.org) supporting LGBTQI+ people
- The Rev Joss Walker (joss.walker@rochester.anglican.org) supporting LGBTQI+ people
Press Release issued by Councillor Dan McDonald
Response by Rev’d Nathan Ward
I have read your statement with care, and I want to respond as your friend and neighbour, and as the vicar of St Margaret’s.
Dan, I hear you. And I am sorry.
The pain in your words is real, and it deserves to be met with honesty rather than carefully managed language. You are right that delay has a cost — a human cost, measured not only in people who have quietly slipped away from communities they once loved, but in those who carry the additional burden of believing that who they are is incompatible with faith. For some, that burden has meant profound mental health struggles. For others, it has meant crisis. We cannot speak of this debate in purely theological terms while people are suffering in those terms. I will not minimise that.
At St Margaret’s, you are not a matter for debate. You are not a subject for a working group. You are a person made in the image of God, and your love and your faith are not negotiable. Our LGBTQI+ members are not guests here on sufferance — they are part of the Church, as fully as anyone else who worships with us.
I am also deeply troubled by what you describe in our wider community — the vandalism, the sneering, the hostility towards Pride symbols in our public spaces. No one should have to defend their right to exist in their own town, and when that hostility is compounded by uncertainty about faith spaces, the harm is compounded too.
But I want to say something that I think is important, and I hope you will bear with me — because it is something that often gets lost in how this debate is reported, and it matters.
General Synod is not a remote institution imposing decisions from above. It is made up of representatives elected from across the entire Church of England — clergy and laypeople who reflect the genuine breadth of conviction that exists among ordinary Christians. They hold profoundly different views on this question, and here is what matters: people on all sides believe, with sincerity and with deep engagement with scripture, that their position is the faithful one. This is not a battle between those who take the Bible seriously and those who do not. It is a genuine theological disagreement between people who do.
The Church is wrestling with this publicly, painfully, and at length — and I think that actually matters more than it might first appear. Look around at other institutions — civic, cultural, and religious — that face the same questions and resolve them through silence, or simply never open the door to the conversation at all. The Church of England, for all its frustration and slowness, is at least wrestling with this openly and democratically.
That does not mean the cost of that process falls equally on everyone. It does not. LGBTQI+ people bear a disproportionate weight in this debate, and your statement names that with clarity and courage.
Dan, I want to say something now that goes beyond the two of us, and I ask everyone reading this to hear it.
St Margaret’s is a community that holds people with genuinely different convictions on these questions. Some in our congregation hold a conservative theological view, and they too belong here — not despite their convictions, but as fellow seekers trying to be faithful. Others worship alongside them every week as openly LGBTQI+ people, fully participating in the life of this church. That is not an accident or a compromise. It is what we are, and we are proud of it.
The pain of this national debate is not felt only in one direction. There are faithful people on all sides who find this moment genuinely hard, and that pain deserves to be acknowledged honestly. What St Margaret’s asks of everyone — and what I believe the wider Church must find a way to ask — is that we each walk humbly. Humbly enough to sit with uncertainty. Humbly enough to remain in relationship with those whose convictions differ from our own. And humbly enough to remember that none of us has the full measure of the mind of God.
What I will not accept, in this community or in our Church, is that any difference of conviction becomes a licence to treat any person as less than fully human, less than fully loved, or less than fully welcome. At St Margaret’s, the door is open. Not provisionally. Not pending further discernment. Open.
Dan, I hope we can talk. And to anyone who has felt that the Church has walked away from them — please know that not every congregation has, and this one has not.
All the best,
Rev’d Nathan Ward
Vicar – St Margaret’s Church
0 Comments