The most fully human and complete person who ever lived was Jesus Christ.

He never married, he was never in a romantic relationship and never had sex.

If we say these things are intrinsic to human fulfilment, we are calling our Savior subhuman.

That is the voice of Sam Aubrey, speaking before the Church of England's general centered

in London on February 15th, 2017, there who talked about separating self-identity from sexual

fulfilment was a profound moment captured on video, Sam joins us today on the podcast

from his office in Oxford.

This video clip of your brief address went viral, as they say, Sam.

Take us into the clip I just played.

What's the setting and what was unfolding at the moment?

The general synod is the governing body of the Church of England, which is the main

Anglican denomination in England.

It acts as the Parliament of the Church, and so it gathers twice a year I'm one of the

elected members on that synod, it has a mixture of bishops, clergy and laity.

That particular session of synod, we were having a debate about whether the Church of England

should allow and accept and bless same-sex partnerships and or whether it should redefine

marriage to include same-sex couple.

That was the context of the particular meeting.

I've always known that the debates and the meetings at synod are live streams, there are

peculiar people out there in the world who like to watch and there are synod debates for

some reason.

I had literally no idea that the words I was going to say in that room would be extracted

...