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The Rev. Elsie Bitchface explains all

New Humanist interviews the Rev. Richard Coles, an Eighties pop star turned latter-day small-town English vicar. Excerpt: Coles met me at Wellingborough Station in regulation Rev gear – white collar, black cardi, newish but unostentatious economy hatchback. On the two-mile drive to Finedon, a historic town in the Peterborough diocese, full of lovely buildings hewn […]

New Humanist interviews the Rev. Richard Coles, an Eighties pop star turned latter-day small-town English vicar. Excerpt:

Coles met me at Wellingborough Station in regulation Rev gear – white collar, black cardi, newish but unostentatious economy hatchback. On the two-mile drive to Finedon, a historic town in the Peterborough diocese, full of lovely buildings hewn from the reddish local ironstone, I comment on the sign for The Bell Inn, which has “1042” written on it. This establishment, he informs me, claims to be the oldest licensed pub in the country. “The tourists love it. Of course,” he adds, “it’s all bollocks.” Religious or not, it’s always a thrill to hear a vicar swear, don’t you think? This was merely a hint of the pleasing anomalies, paradoxes and schoolboyish naughtiness that come with an afternoon spent with Reverend Coles (just to put you in the same mood as I was in, I should tell you that the article I read about Coles on the train revealed that while in The Communards his gay codename was Elsie Bitchface. I never actually addressed him as “Elsie”, but the temptation was a constant companion in what followed).

More:

We sceptics sometimes flatter ourselves that we are people who value doubt as opposed to credulous believers, but Anglicanism is as opposed to fundamentalist literalism as we are, and yields to no one in its ability not to be sure. They positively revel in it: “I think the doubt, the bafflements, the anger, the fatigue that you encounter is where it all gets interesting.”
One potential source, surely, of anger and doubt must derive from the Church’s attitude to homosexuality. As he found his sexuality in his teens Coles says he was “aware that who I was conflicted with what the Church would have me be”. He is in a committed long-term relationship – David, his charming partner, is also an Anglican priest with his own colourful stories, including the time he worked as a nurse at the gay nightclub Heaven, helping drag queens come down from bad trips – yet the rules of the Church insist that they remain celibate (a rule that does not apply to the laity). It sounds ridiculous. “It is ridiculous,” he responds. “It’s not as I would have it, but it’s where we are.”

Read the whole thing. For all the eye-rolling this piece provokes about the C of E, the Rev. Coles says some interesting things, and not interesting in an “oh, for heaven’s sake” way.

(Via the Browser.)

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