Im alan little. My guest today is the former bishop of edinburgh, richard holloway. He entered a seminary at the age of 1a, intent on becoming a monk. He rose to become the leader of the Anglican Church in scotland. But he gradually lost faith in many of the certainties in christianity, including the existence of god. He finally resigned from the church, accusing it of cruelly persecuting gay people. So did his own loss of faith betray those he once preached to . Richard holloway, welcome to hardtalk. At the age of 1a, you left your Working Class Home in the West Of Scotland and went off to a very austere place in england called kelham hall, to train as an anglican priest. To train, in effect, as a monk. What was that like . It was lovely. I was a romantic wee boy who wandered the hills at loch lomond, where i grew up. The hills give you a sense of beyondness, of otherness, but that was also related to me and the kind of love for western movies, this Idea Of The Lonely Hero Riding on and rescuing. I got kind of bitten by that. Then i was discovered by the local priest of the episcopal church. My wee cousin died, he invited me to join the choir. The beauty of it somehow consumed me. He talked about the given away life, this mystical thing called a vocation that some people had, to give themselves to a great purpose. I went to him when i was 13 and said tentatively, i thought maybe i was hearing this call to give myself away to some great purpose called the priesthood, the given away life, the surrendered life, the lonely hero. He said, well, well send you to this place. I was due to leave school at 14. Theres a monastery in england that trains poor boys for the anglican priesthood. It was a wonderful place. It was a kindly, eccentric, mad place. These lovely old monks trained us. Not very well, they werent trained teachers. It deeply embedded itself in my psyche. But it was a strange disruption, from a random street in alexandria, to this big manner, some Mansion House on the banks of the trent. You say in your book, leaving alexandria, the name of the town you grew up in, that you were looking for something called transcendence. What do you understand by that . I think were all, to some extent, i think we Human Animals are very strange creatures. Were not comfortably embedded in nature, the way my wee dog is, or cows in the hills are, or kangaroos in the outback. Were conscious of ourselves, were aware of being strange creatures in a universe that doesnt explain itself, that doesnt offer an immediate manual of meaning. I think the human animal, therefore, hungers for meaning and purpose in an apparently meaningless and purposeless universe. So were very divided, and religion has been, traditionally, classically, one of the ways in which the question has been answered, yes, there is a meaning, there is a purpose, and you can cooperate and give yourself to it. Im no longer as comfortable with religions certainties, but im certainly still addicted to the search, the strange human passion for finding meaning, beauty and joy. And thats the transcendental itch. This experience, going to that place at the age of 14, cut you off from your family, though, didnt it . It did in a kind of emergent sense. It never cut me off from their love. But what i increasingly had was the past, because it started me on this long journey to education, to self reflection, to intellectualising things, to thinking about things. I came from a culture that was embedded in hard work. It didnt, in a sense, educationally evolve. So, increasingly i did feel a bit of a stranger, but a loving stranger. You tell a very affecting tale in your book about writing a letter to your father, trying to win him back for god, and forjesus. I know, it was horrible. Every year, on good friday, we fasted all day. We had a devotion called the three hours which were exactly corresponding with three hoursjesus had on the cross. They were always emotionally very intense. It was a visiting monk who preach to us. I was fired up by the desire to spread the word ofjesus and god. Between the end of the three hours and when we have our tea, broke our fast, i wrote my father a pious letter, calling him back to god. Writing the book, i realised that as i was writing that, id been in three hours intense devotion, he was probably facing the next three hours of his shift in a terrible factory. And so i sent this pious appeal to him. He had the grace never to reflect to it. But im still ashamed. And you found the letter much later, didnt you . Yes. In my mothers drawer, yes. Religion gives you permission to perform these discourtesies. Yes, deeply ashaming. You say that it all started to change for you when you hit puberty . Yes, because sex hit me. Id gone there as a wee prepubescent boy. Id caught this monastic, romantic vocation, wanted to give myself away. And part of that was celibacy. I discovered during an easter vacation, i used to work in a farm at kildavin, just outside balloch. I cuddled a land girl, and i had my first sexual experience. I didnt know what it was, just this thing surged through me. And the same thing happened that night. And i knew it was sinful, because christianity had this problem with sex from the beginning. Not in a sense where were saying this is a big thing that could ruin lives, get it right, be careful about it. The kind of christianity i inherited saw sex as intrinsically bad, and really good, godly people didnt do it. They were virgins, they were celibate. I was pulled in this terrible tension. And that was a secret i brought back to kelham, aged 16. Looking at all these holy people, assuming they didnt have sexual thoughts, none of it was hitting them. It was only hitting me. And when did you abandon celibacy, then . Youre married, you have three daughters. When i got married, yes. But even that was a struggle, because i still felt this strange pull that marriage was second best, it was a concession. The Prayer Book Wedding right says that. It says marriage is a gift created by god as a gift for those that did not have the gift of continence. In other words, it was a method, oi a Maintenance Programme for people that couldnt give up the sex habit. So it always denigrated it. There was always the sense that you got a license to perform it, but god would rather you hadnt had to ask for it. Was the question of sexuality the first step, in a sense, of you and the church Parting Company . I think the real kicker for me, i fought my way through and wrestled my way through this stuff intellectually. But emotionally and psychologically, you are always formed by this stuff. I think probably for me the real kicker came quite late in my career in the ministry. It was the churchs continued hatred of gay people, although many of them were, most of my early mentors as priests i realise now word gay men with this divided nature, giving themselves to god and the church, and a church that disapproved of them. The church would say, of course, it doesnt hate gay people, many parts of the church simply dont approve of gay sex. Its a distinction without a difference. If your very urges are condemned as unlawful and displeasing to god, and ive known many wonderful gay priests who live this kind of divided life. I asked one of them, i said, why do you stick with this . He said because ofjesus. He had a Sense Thatjesus would have understood because jesus was surrounded by these discarded outsiders. Thats the bit of christianity that still appeals to me. The group that feel that this man they got absolute acceptance of themselves in their own sense of rottenness. But christianity became respectable, became kind of bourgeois. But the people around jesus never were. For me, the people that carried that virus were the gay people, because they, themselves, felt themselves to be outsiders. It was when the church, which had a dont ask, dont tell policy for a long time, actively started persecuting gay people in the 90s, i think thats when i saw that certain ways of Holding Faith were cruel. I think cruelty is the worst human rights and has to be challenged i think cruelty is the worst human vice and has to be challenged wherever it appears. I think that was the thing that really started me off on the journey that took me away. You say in your book that even at kelham hall, when you were still in training for a monastic life, it was an all male environment. Your first real crush, you say, was with a fellow novice, another trainee priest, a young man. What was that relationship like . It was unnerving, in many ways. I was quite a happy student, worked hard. And then i fell in love with a fellow novice, and plunged me into regret, because i didnt want to be with anyone but him. I didnt fantasise sexually about him, but emotionally i want to be near him all the time. I didnt really know what he thought of me. I thought he was kind of fond of me. I met him 30 years later, on my retreat to come and be a bishop. Wed have a holiday in cornwall together. We had to sleep in a double bed in a farmhouse in cornwall. I was intrigued by the fact that i was in bed when he came back after having brushed his teeth, and he said, ill sleep on the top side of the sheet, to separate us. And i wondered about that, he must have had a wee inkling. When i went to make my retreat at this nunnery, in 1986, before coming back to edinburgh as bishop, they said to me, youll know someone who is here. Hes come back from africa. He is leaving the order, but hes our chaplain at the moment. And it was this guy. I made my confession to him. And then leaving, the last day, i referred to thatjourney because i remembered the Rosebay Willowherb blossoming on the roadsides. He said, we were in love. I said, yes. I said, can i do anything for you . He said, buy me a wee transistor radio. And i did. Youve been a champion of gay people, the right of gay people to join the priesthood. Why . Why does that matter to you so much . Partly because, to me, its a straightforward justice issue. I think the most important Christian Doctrine is the doctrine of the incarnation, which is presupposed in gods love of the world, of nature and all its complexity and plurality. And being gay is part of that. Even though im not sure about god now, im sure that cruelty to individuals who cannot help their colour, their sexuality, their gender, is the thing we most passionately must oppose in politics and religion. And where i saw the church being increasingly cruel to them, and it peaked for me at the Lambeth Conference conference of 1998. So, just to put this in context, you are now bishop of edinburgh, you are the most senior Anglican Clergyman in scotland, and you went to this, these conferences happen once a decade. And you sort to describe as cruelty among your fellow clergymen. What do you mean . There was a debate on human sexuality, essentially about gay sexuality, and whether practising gay people could be ordained. They had been in their thousands for centuries. The african bishops, who were particularly homophobic, hijacked the debate. They wanted the Lambeth Conference to condemn gay sexuality in a famous proposal called 101. It was like being at a nuremberg rally. It wasnt a considered debate, the bible says we cant support this, i want to be compassionate. No, it was ugly, it was cruel. They were saying the kind of thing is that the most horrible bigots say. I came out of it drained. Something died in me. 0utside, on a Wee Grassy Knoll outside the tent where weve had the debate, a Nigerian Bishop was exorcising a young gay man, called richard kirker, trying to cast out the devil of homosexuality. A devil did come out, but it was the devil of homophobia. It has bedevilled the Anglican Church ever since. Were still wrestling it. Secular society has moved on. Anyone under 35just doesnt get it. But were still rabbiting on about it. And it killed something in me. Its said that you threw your bishops mitre in the thames, is it true . Yes, its true. Did get an artist to make me a biodegradable mitre, because i didnt want to pollute the thames river. But, yeah, i chucked it in the thames. You stayed in the church for two more years . What is it like to stand by the altar, preaching to people who believe in the resurrection, who believe in the divinity of christ, when you yourself have long since given all that up . That was a slow evolutionary process, it was more the ethical thing that did me. You can deal with doctrinal stuff, it is metaphoric. Not to every priest, not to every believer. But to a lot of people. But the literal truth of the resurrection is nonnegotiable for most christians. I suppose. But i think it has always been interpreted a number of different ways. It seems to me that the resurrection is about more than a resuscitated body walking out of a tomb, whats the significance of that . But resurrection that made the woman go to the front of the bus instead of the back and made Martin Luther king challenge racism, that is real resurrection stuff. Im not interested in the biology of bodies walking out of tombs, im interested in history. A lot of people mysticise these great events. Religion is a story, it is not factual scientific knowledge, it is a fundamental Category Error to misunderstand that. But we have falsely sciencised a lot of things, scared theologians. If it helps you get through life believing those physical things, i wouldnt try to knock that for you, but dont force me to say that they are factual when i treat them as metaphorical and poetic. That makes them even more powerful. Can you understand why a lot of people in the anglican communion, a lot of christians who you lead, feel betrayed by the way in which you have changed your thinking about religion . Sure. I hate hurting people, i did hurt a lot of people. I said that in my final sermon, i said i had become in my 60s the kind of bishop i hated in my 30s. I had to be true to that. It was a slow, emergent process. I get that. I get the complexity of all of this. I hurt lots of people to whom i was a precious source of support. Thats why i had to go away and take a sabbatical from religion. Thats the trouble with religion, it got stuck 2,000 3,000 years ago. It got stuck with women. It got stuck with gay people, it got stuck with ways of understanding the astronomy of the universe. You can keep the best of religion and still intellectually go on. And that, i think, is all i was arguing for. I wasnt saying that you mustnt believe in a physical resurrection or a six day creation. If it helps you through life, do it, as long as it doesnt make you cruel and persecutory, thats not the way i understand these things. Im sure i know how much i hurt people. They wrote and told me. Ive got a big mailbag. There was a kind of helplessness about it. In many ways, i was a divided soul. Its a Classic Scottish thing to be, its What Mcdermott called the antisyzygy, that you can incorporate two contending realities in your own soul. I think thats not a bad way to live, because truth is really simple. Should the church be forced by law to marry gay people, even when it doesnt want to . No, i wouldnt do that. Im enough of a liberal. I dont like the way the french do this. I like a secular society. If people want to cover themselves in a head to foot cassock cloak, i dont want to interfere with that. I quite like the accommodation weve reached in britain, were pretty much a secular society, but historys untidy. There are elements of the old religious domination. I think religion should be free to practice their beliefs and rituals in the sanctuary. What i dont like is when i try to bully people in the secular square. Because we forbid this in the sanctuary, we are not going to let you get away with it in the public square, we must oppose that. I wouldnt want to interfere. And they get opt outs. They discriminate against women, they discriminate against gays. I let them be their eccentric, bigoted selves in the sanctuary. But i stand defiantly against them if they tried to emancipate these imprisoned people. Successive archbishops of canterbury have always prioritised preserving the unity of the worldwide anglican communion. And admitting gay priests would have shattered that community. Werent they right to hold onto that until the church is ready to take that step together . There is an argument for that, clearly. Its this Duality Thing again. If your primary value is institutional unity, if you prize unity above, say, justice, youll do that. And honourable men, and its all men, have done that. I can respect that. But if thats all you have, if you just have institutional unity, if you dont have awkward, maverick people saying you shouldnt be doing that, you shouldnt be penalising gay people and women, thats called the prophetic tradition in christianity. The three classic roles in hebrew religion, prophets, priestand king. Kings rule, Priestsjustify The Rule with godly anointing, and its always the prophets, the awkward squad, who come along and say, thats wrong. If you purge the prophetic element from the church, you purge its cleansing element. Now, its probably not a good idea to make prophets archbishops or even bishops, so probably i was a mis description. I ended up feeling i had to prophetically challenge these injustices. But in my understanding of the ecology of institutions, i know that it takes a while. But its always the awkward sods, the minority that bring change, because the big, powerful institutions never volunteer to empty themselves of power. Male patriarchy in britain didnt volunteer to give women the vote. Women died to get the vote. They chained themselves to railings, and thats what brings change. Ok, i can understand that, but morally, im sorry, i still think that justice trumps institutional unity. And you havent walked away from the church altogether. You still sometimes attend your old church, 0ld saint pauls in edinburgh. Yes. Its a pretty Forgiving Church that welcomes you back, isnt it . Yeah. Well, i think, on the whole, the Anglican Church has been a Forgiving Church. Its been a messy, muddled church. It got hardened in the 90s when it was drifting and they thought the only way for churches to survive was to become very conserv