Bishop of Burnley Philip North said the agenda was not being set by the poor and was instead directed by the middle classes who were detached from the issues affecting disadvantaged people.
The Church is no longer "adequately present" in poorer parts of the country, he told the Church Times.
It is "so disconnected from many of these communities that it no longer hears what they are saying", he added.
"We then listen to the poor on condition that what they say backs up our own pre-conceived arguments.
"They have become for us an illustration, or a theological idea, anything other than people.
"An example is the debate on human sexuality.
"This is indeed an important debate, but it has come to dominate the Church's agenda to an extraordinary extent, pushing almost everything else to the bottom of the list.
"By prioritising this one issue to such an extent, we risk failing to hear other cries of pain."
Bishop Philip said the Church had been taken by surprise over Brexit and that it did not understand why some Christians would have voted to leave the EU.
He said the Church was part of the "middle-class Establishment bandwagon of outrage and horror".
The Brexit result was a "patriotic vote from people who were fed up with having pride in their nation, its flag, and its armed forces misrepresented as intolerance or racism," he said.
