Along with the rest of the Church of England, the Diocese of Winchester is currently looking at issues relating to gender, marriage, sexuality and relationships through a process called ‘Living in Love and Faith’ (LLF).
Because as a whole Church we don’t always agree on these issues, the national Church has recommended a series of resources to help all of us discuss these issues openly and honestly, and to feed back our thoughts. This process, called ‘the listening phase’, heard from many different people within our church communities and lasted for several months up until April 2022. Those responses were gathered into a report, which you can find here.
From November 2022, the Church entered into ‘the discernment phase’ of LLF. Our bishops have been meeting to discuss the issues so that they could present a way forward to our General Synod in February 2023. After this, we entered into ‘the decision phase’ of the process.
LATEST UPDATES
On 12 December 2023, the House of Bishops commended the Prayers of Love and Faith and associated pastoral guidance for use in regular public worship services with effect from 17 December 2023.
UPDATE: The Church of England’s General Synod has welcomed proposals which would enable same-sex couples to come to church after a civil marriage or civil partnership to give thanks, dedicate their relationship to God and receive God’s blessing.
READ THE FULL PRESS RELEASE HERE >>>
Further Resources
The national Church of England has produced a range of resources which anyone can access at any time, to study these issues for yourselves. The main introduction to the Living and Love and Faith resources is here, and you can also link directly to:
- The Living in Love and Faith Learning Hub (which includes the five-session video-based course, podcasts, films, and a large online library of resources about the themes of identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage)
- A chance to order or download a copy of the Living in Love and Faith book
- Some information about the purpose of providing these LLF resources
- A chance to meet some of the LLF team who helped to put these resources together, and to contact them directly
- An idea of the next steps that will be taken, a church communities engage with the resources and then what happens after that
You can also watch this introductory video to the Living in Love and Faith process…