Social Cohesion and Community during Periods of Change

Lord Bishop of Bristol Excerpts

Friday 6th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Bristol]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the most reverend Primate for securing this debate and setting its tone. I am also very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sharma, for his impressive speech, and look forward to many more contributions from him in this Chamber. I am glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Elliott, and realise that there is more that unites us than divides us. Indeed, there are overlaps with many of the contributions from the Benches opposite in what I am about to say, because I want to speak of a particular place and of particular people.

I begin with Liverpool, as the noble Lord, Lord Elliott, mentioned. It was David Sheppard who, as Bishop of Liverpool, ordained me deaconess in Liverpool Cathedral and helped me to understand the stresses that port cities experience as global trade and human migration patterns shift. Port cities absorb, endure or thrive on the consequent change. Bishop David and his Archbishop and Free Church colleagues were well aware that social unrest was a symptom of the impact of felt injustice and a stimulus to work to create justice and peace. “Better together” was their theme and their motto in a city divided on economic, racial and religious grounds.

By contrast, my adopted city of Bristol has a long-established tradition of riot. In 1831, as the city expanded and industrialised, there were violent protests focused on a local magistrate and the Bishop of Bristol; both men were opposed to the Great Reform Bill. The jails and the bishop’s palace were destroyed. The cathedral was set on fire. In 1980 and 1986, after years of tensions, violent unrest erupted between the police and those who had arrived after the Second World War at our invitation from the Caribbean and who were the descendants of those enslaved and traded from Africa by Bristol-registered ships. A sense of profound injustice continued to counter the peace and prosperity of the city, which remained fragile.

However, at the same time in the 1980s it was John Savage, a business leader and entrepreneur, formed by Anglicanism’s bridge-building tradition, who led the Bristol initiative to build common ground between the estranged tribes of the city council, the Society of Merchant Venturers and the entrepreneurs and industrialists of the city. John, now a lay canon of the cathedral, understood that, as with so many other places, as the psalmist puts it, a vision is essential if the people are not to get out of hand.

John’s articulated intention was to create a city which by 2050 would be a just, sustainable, healthy and hopeful environment in which all of us could live. There are, flowing from his Bristol initiative, programmes and plans to implement that vision in conversation with the city council. That is the underpinning of Bristol’s one-city commitment, drawing together public, private, voluntary, creative and community organisations. The one-city partners meet fortnightly. They include vice-chancellors, hospital and social care leaders, the community leaders of our many communities and the whole of the not-for-profit sector.

We meet quarterly in a major gathering, sense the stresses which are emerging and look to causes and collaborative responses. Currently, our focus is on reducing knife crime and school absenteeism. The one-city approach was fundamental to our Covid response and to enabling honest debate after Colston’s statue was felled. We are seeking now to forge a new narrative which reflects the experience of all Bristolians. The one-city approach has sustained a culture which nurtures bridging and bonding links and relationships, builds trust and allows for change. My diocese, the parishes and the cathedral play their part. Last year, following prayers as the Ramadan fast ended in an adjacent building, the cathedral welcomed its Muslim neighbours for their grand iftar in the nave itself. St Mary Redcliffe, for a while the preserve of Bristol elites, has re-embedded itself in its local and often marginalised community, particularly welcoming refugees. Easton Christian family centre and Anglican church school and community hub has become, in the name of Christ, a place of prayer and service for all people in a parish that is almost entirely Muslim.

All this has buttressed the bonds of peace, so that when tensions arise around migration, faith and race do not overspill and fall apart. The Church stood in solidarity with other communities to protect the asylum seekers in the hotel in Redcliffe during the riot—the one riot—that we had. Police and demonstrators then communicated to prevent further unrest. The one-city commitment survived and was stress-tested. However, it remains fragile, dependent on healthy state, business and voluntary enterprises. The stresses are now considerable. St Mary Redcliffe and the cathedral need major works to improve accessibility and reduce their carbon impact. They await news from government about the renewal of the listed places of worship grant scheme. Without that 20% grant, projects costed at hundreds of thousands of pounds are now at risk. More seriously, it is the sense of the reduction of the impact on our outreach and our bonding and bridging capital which is crucial. Similarly, as we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, the national insurance increases have had a huge impact.

So I look for some reassurance that the Government will respond to the enterprising work that is being done in cities such as Bristol to build the bonds of peace and to renew the justice in our divided city.

Conversion Therapy Prohibition (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) Bill [HL]

Lord Bishop of Bristol Excerpts

Friday 9th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Bristol]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, for her Bill. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for engaging with the complexity of drafting legislation to prevent conversation therapy or practices, given the variety of views there clearly are in this Chamber and in wider society. I declare my interests: until December, I was one of the bishops leading on safeguarding in the Church of England and I am still co-chair of the APPG on Safeguarding in Faith Communities.

I have been aware for many years in pastoral ministry of some horrific practices, from physical punishment, counselling and prayer techniques akin to interrogation to, at worst, supposedly curative rape. Such practices are used against those in faith communities who are regarded as deviating from the communities’ norms for sexuality and gender identity. These more or less hidden practices must be prevented by statutory provision if they are not already. We should note too that those who are victims should be much better supported. I am also aware of the much more subtle impact on LGBTIQ people of faith—the pressure on them to conform to the norms set by the hierarchy of their faith community. The cultures which pervade many faith communities render those exploring their identity very vulnerable indeed to abuse, as the IICSA report reminded us.

I am relieved that the Church of England is at last owning its homophobia and making some moves to change its culture and practice. Personally, I wish that it would change much faster and further, but I am also aware that, in my diocese, there are very different perspectives in this ongoing debate. I am profoundly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for setting out some of the issues as they affected his own life. In my diocese, the organisation Living Out supports LGBTIQ adults who, exercising agency and autonomy and inspired by their interpretation of Christian faith, seek counselling to support celibate lives or marry someone of the opposite sex. I know too how hard it is to write into guidance or regulation definitions that help rather than harm. The Church of England has wrestled for some years to define spiritual abuse. We have begun to recognise its presence and impact, but are not consistently agreed on its definition or how any definition should be applied in disciplinary process.

I am therefore not yet convinced that the text of this Bill and its lack of agreed definition would give Living Out, for example, the safe space that its members need. But I do believe that we need to keep working at this, and I am grateful for the determined efforts of the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, in the absence of a government proposal. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, who is unable to be present today, and I, want to continue to work to find agreed definitions that protect from harm while continuing to preserve our current liberties.

Gaza: Humanitarian Situation

Lord Bishop of Bristol Excerpts

Thursday 8th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Bristol]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for securing this debate. Today the future seems bleak after Prime Minister Netanyahu, perhaps understandably, rejected a ceasefire because, as reported, total victory may be achieved in months. In my city of Bristol, women from Jewish and Muslim communities stand silently together in public vigil, and those of all faiths and none march each week campaigning for a cessation of violence on all sides.

Total victory within months—what does that mean for the hostages held in tunnels, for the women who are pregnant without medical support, for babies whose mothers have no breast milk? What we see is a horrible inversion of the word of the prophet Joel: the dreams of old men are shattered and the visions of young men are betrayed. The hopes of so many Jews, Muslims and Christians are destroyed. May God and our political leaders have mercy, source aid and work unrelentingly for peace.