Category: <span>Online Resources</span>

Category: Online Resources

Online Resources

“But the Bible says …”? A Catholic reading of Romans 1 (Alison, 2004)

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What has pushed me in the direction of offering this reading is really two things: in the first place, I was brought up Evangelical Protestant, and this text, Romans 1, was really a text of terror for me, a text in some way associated with a deep emotional and spiritual annihilation, something inflicting paralysis. So, finding myself ever freer of that terror, it seems proper to try and offer a road map to others who, whatever their ecclesial belonging, may suffer from the same binding of conscience that a certain received reading of this text has seemed to impose. But there is a second reason, no less important to my mind: owing to arguments surrounding Episcopal appointments in the Anglican Church on both sides of the Atlantic, a huge amount of press has been generated in which it has been repeated ad nauseam that “The Bible is quite clear…” about this or that. Furthermore we are told time and again that those who think either that gay people should be allowed to marry, or that being gay should be no bar to Episcopal consecration, are in some way repudiating an obvious written sacred injunction. The impression that “the Bible is quite clear” has passed largely unchallenged in the media, which has found it easiest to present the argument as being between conservative people who take the Bible seriously (and are thus against gay people) and liberal people who don’t (and thus aren’t against gay people).

Online Resources

Challenging deceptive sacrificial notions in Christianity (Alison, 2004)

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And is the crucifixion, James, a religious overcoming of violence, or is it more of the same?
James Alison: It’s the subversion from within of the typical human sacrificial mechanism. If you like, it’s the undoing of religion from within. Now whether you call that religion or not is another matter, I mean the tendency of it is the possibility of the creation of what we would call a benign secular. I think that’s one of the key questions which we’re looking at now, in a world that seems suddenly to have got a lot more ‘religious’.

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Human Sexuality… or Ecclesial Discourse? (Alison, 2004)

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The first point I would like to make is a little provocative, setting up a distinction between the thought of Freud and the thought of René Girard, whose disciple I am. Imagine a Freudian or a neo-Freudian looking at a rugby scrum. We can hear such a person commenting, after a bit: “Hmmm, lots of latent homosexuality around here”. Now imagine a Girardian or neo-Girardian gazing at the goings on at a gay sex club. Such a person might say, after a bit: “Hmmm, an awful lot of latent rugby playing going on here”.

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Following the still small voice: Experience, truth and argument as lived by Catholics around the gay issue (Alison, 2003)

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In the first place what I call “the gay thing” is something which has just happened, and is just happening, to all of us, whatever our own sexual orientation is. You can be as straight as you like, but being straight is no longer the same as it was when there was no such thing as “gay”. Our picture of what it is to be male or female has undergone, and is undergoing, huge changes which affect us not only from without, but from within. We find ourselves relating, whether we want to or not, with each other, and with ourselves, in new ways as a result of something which is far bigger than any of us and which is just happening. Now please note that none of this makes any claim about whether this change is good or not, nor does it make any claim about what, if anything we should do about it. It merely notes that it has happened and is happening to all of us, Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

Online Resources

Honesty as challenge, honesty as gift: What way forward for gay and lesbian Catholics? (Alison, 2003)

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This evening I would like to talk with you about honesty, not as about something obvious, but as about something problematic. This is not merely because it is difficult for me to be honest – and it is as difficult for me as for anyone else, but because I think that the notion is too important for us as Catholics, now, to be left without examination. That honesty has been important for those of us who are gay and lesbian is something which, while it is resoundingly obvious, has not perhaps been examined as closely as it might. The reason why I want to talk about it tonight is that I think we are so close to finding ourselves in an entirely new space in the life of the Church as gay and lesbian Catholics, that I’m very keen that we don’t stab ourselves in the foot, thus slowing down our getting there.

Online Resources

Contemplation and monotheism: On the indispensability of irrelevance (Alison, 2003)

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What I would like to do today is to honour my compatriot, Julian of Norwich, by attempting to boost something which was dear to her heart: contemplation. I want to do this by taking a long way round to indicate that monotheism without contemplation is dangerous, and to ponder why this should be so. To put it in a nutshell, my claim is that monotheism is a terrible idea, but a wonderful discovery. So I am going to ask you to bear with me as I attempt to fly a series of kites with you, and see if, when they are all up there, we can make any sense of them.

Online Resources

Yes, but is it true…? (Alison, 2003)

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The Roman Catholic Caucus of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement held a meeting in St Anne’s Church, Soho on Sunday 3rd August 2003 to respond to the UK government’s proposals concerning same-sex partnership rights. The following was an impromptu theological/pastoral contribution by James Alison, put into writing after the event

Online Resources

Worship in a violent world (Alison, 2004)

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I have been asked to talk to you about Worship in a violent world. As though there has ever been any other. There hasn’t. It is only because of the introduction into our midst of glimpses of a world, not yet our own, where all is peace that we are able to look at our world and refer to it as “violent”, rather than simply normal. The discovery that might is might, a frightening aberration for which we can take some responsibility, rather than right, a natural part of the order of things which just tends to run away with us, is a hugely complex insight whose consequences we haven’t yet worked out. What I would like to do with you today is to stand back and ask what it is that allows Christians to use a horrid word taken from the world of violence such as “worship”; what we mean by it when we do use it; and what indeed do we do that counts as “worship”.

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Ecclesiology and indifference: challenges for gay and lesbian ministry (Alison, 2002)

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It is difficult to think of any subject which has been more used and abused than ecclesiastical language about sheep and shepherds. To such an extent that the very language of the Good Shepherd seems coated in kitsch. And, in the light of recent events in this country and elsewhere, tinged with a sad, and sometimes appalling, irony. Nevertheless, I want to have a go in your midst at recovering some of the sense of this language as a critical tool with which we can begin to see our way forward and flex our imaginations a little as to what we might be doing in exercising ministry as gay and lesbian people, or for gay and lesbian people.

Online Resources

Unbinding the Gay Conscience (Alison, 2002)

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Some of you may have known Benjamin O’Sullivan, a Benedictine monk of Ampleforth Abbey who killed himself early in 1996. As far as I can tell, Benjamin was set up by a reporter from the News of the World, and the only thing which prevented his death from being a murder was that Benjamin himself consented to the voice of the lynch mob and became the hand that put him to death. I felt that his death was brought about because this extremely attractive, apparently self-confident, effervescent young man had been unable to stand up as an ordinary gay man to the voice of the lynch mob. And the reason he had been unable to stand up to them was because he was bound in his conscience. Shortly after his ordination he had expressed a fear to me that he wasn’t really a priest, because “if they had known” surely they wouldn’t have ordained him. That hardly anyone who knew Benjamin well can have failed to know that he was gay is of course not relevant: the person caught in the trap looks at the world through fear-coloured spectacles, and fear darkens rather than illumines what it projects. But this gives a hint of what I mean by a bound conscience: the sort of person who can’t stand up and be what they are, who can’t trust in the goodness of what they are being given to become, whatever the lynch mob may throw at them, the sort of person who labours instead in a world of half-truths, any belonging being a half-belonging, because always feeling that “if they knew” then “I wouldn’t really be allowed here”. Which translates into a permanent and deep feeling of “I’m not really allowed here”.