00:00There were a few things about London in 1980 that were really formative for me. The first
00:26was that it was accessible to the young and the poor. You could arrive in London, you
00:30could find yourself some kind of foothold, a squat, a hard-to-let council flat in what
00:37we now call Zone 1, imagine that, or a cheap rental, imagine that. So you could find it
00:43and you could sort of sign on or get a job in a bar or something like that. But also
00:48it was where in Liverpool, if you were in, I grew up in Kettering, and no disrespect
00:53to Kettering, but when I realised I was gay as a teenager, I didn't think that a life
01:01rich in opportunity would lie close to hand. In the 1980s, if you were a gay man in a big
01:07city, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. So it was a very moment where
01:11we kind of broke through and all of a sudden that little life began to blossom. HIV arrived
01:17and that changed all our lives. And I think there are lots of people who have a confrontation
01:24with mortality on that scale, when they ask to see some of the monuments of the church
01:29and so many of them are men in their 20s who didn't get past 1918. Imagine what that did
01:35to people. And it was for us, when we were very aged, very selective and people were
01:41used to rec. It was that sort of experience and I think, essentially there are two big
01:46spikes in locations in the church of England. One was 1919 and one was 1946. There's people
01:54coming down from conflict, coming in through all that, and all of a sudden places like
01:59this make sense to them. And that's what happened to me, it was in the sort of throes of that,
02:03in the grip of that. I remember, I mean I was a chorister when I was a kid, but I didn't
02:08believe it at all. I liked it, I loved the music, I liked being in church, I liked the
02:12people, but I thought it was all nonsense, a fairytale, that no one in their right mind
02:17could live by it. But I liked being in the church, I liked the atmosphere. Like lots
02:25of people I think I sensed, rather than understood, that these are uniquely distinctive places
02:31and stuff can fit there and resonate there in a way that doesn't go anywhere else. You
02:35get that in churches, but I went down to Nile in Egypt last year and I went to the temple
02:41of Seti, which hadn't been used for its religious purpose for another 4,000 years, but it still
02:47felt like that sort of thing. And I wanted to commit with it again. So I did that, I
02:52went to church one morning and walked through the door very reluctantly, as a sceptic and
02:57an outsider, and they came out a participant. It was that, it was really an intense moment
03:03of conviction.
03:09The minute I got through the door, the minute I found my feet in it, it began to come into
03:13focus, but I didn't want to be a bicker. I knew I needed to, I think like lots of people
03:18I thought I knew what Christianity was, but the Christianity I thought I knew was what
03:24I had experienced when I was a kid. I stopped thinking about it the moment it ceased to
03:28be compulsory. And then when I went in the door again, I realised that there was a bit
03:33more to it than I needed to do. So I went to university. I was 30, hadn't been to university.
03:38So I went to do, this is odd because today I've retraced the steps, I've been to my old
03:42college today. And I did a theology degree and that was wonderful. Fantastic course and
03:49I really enjoyed the intellectual stimulation and I was very, very active in church at that
03:57time. And of course what came into focus was the sense that God might have a plan. But
04:03I didn't want to get ordained so I did the next best thing to get ordained in a church
04:07meeting and I went to work for BBC Radio, which is pretty much like a church radio.
04:12A different kind of church, right? Do you know I was in the arts unit at the BBC and
04:1625% of the people in the arts unit were makerage kids. In a hostile church world back in the
04:211980s where people were very hostile to gay and lesbian people. Well, easily in the sense
04:28that only God didn't have a problem. So I've never felt that for a second that God had
04:32a problem. So I was sorted in a very fundamental way about that. Also I found that most people
04:39are fine actually and if they maybe have a reservation, often getting to know people,
04:45dispels any anxieties about that. I would say that it's probably a more hostile environment
04:50now than it was in 1989. In most places, most churches, in places like Parliament, because
04:57you know everyone's got kids or colleagues or neighbours who are whatever LGBT or whatever
05:04lexicon is, you know? And so we're all used to that and it gets on with our lives. But
05:09for people who find that difficult for reasons of doctrine, that's a very, very tough argument
05:17at the moment. I've never known it in fact quite so bitter as it is now and we're in
05:22the middle of trying to work out that balance. It doesn't just, I mean sometimes I discourage
05:27it but I would worry more if we didn't argue because if we're arguing it means we're taking
05:33it seriously and I don't really think we need to take it seriously. There's a lot more in
05:38the world, right? And I'm very conscious at the moment that I think we've perhaps been
05:46complacent. I can clearly think about what happened in 1962 in Britain. I had a fantastic
05:52education, I went to an independent school. I've had a fantastic education since then
05:59which I had to pay for. Taxpayers paid for it. And I've lived in a world where people
06:04have got richer, where we've been stable and secure and prosperous and most of us have
06:09been healthy and I've started to think that maybe that's just normal and it's not. That's
06:14not representative of most people's lives and experience. Perhaps what's happening at
06:18the moment is an adjustment to understanding that the world is very divided. It's full
06:24of centrifugal force at the moment, it feels like an arm that's happening everywhere. If
06:28you put your head into the hellscape of social media for too long you'll find it out. So
06:35I think it is good to be woken up out of a slumber of complacency. This is my positive
06:43spin.
Comments