Yesterday morning, at 10 am, the historic announcement was made as to who will be the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury: Dame Sarah Mullally, the current bishop of London, and former Chief Nurse—appointed to that role when she was 37, the youngest ever appointment. As I have set out previously, the Church of England faces a range of challenges, chief amongst those (but rarely discussed) the looming demographic crisis for its clergy. But the ABC is not the C of E’s pope, and we already have a saviour in Jesus, so we would be mistaken to look to a new leader to solve all our problems. We tried that last time, and it did not end well.
So what is Sarah Mullally like? And will the challenges she faces be easier or harder given her own temperament, experience, and outlook?
In the news (which I spent most of yesterday involved in) much was made, for good or ill, of the fact that she is the first woman to be archbishop since the office was founded in 597. Although there is always symbolic significance to this, my sense is that this is more important to those outside the Church than those on the inside. After all, it was one of the early triumph’s of Justin Welby’s time in office that we reached a settlement enabling women to be ordained bishop ten years ago, a long time after the first women were ordained presbyter in 1993. (The key question here was that of the exercise of authority over men for ‘traditionalists’, and the validity of ordinations conducted by anyone ordained by a woman.) It will make it harder to repair relations across the Anglican Communion (on which, see below), and those who do not recognise the ministry of women (either conservative evangelicals or traditionalist Anglo-Catholics) will feel more marginalised in the Church. But it is not quite the Rubicon that many have claimed.
For those questioning the choice of the Crown Nominations Commission, my response has been: ‘Well, who else could have been appointed?’ One of Justin’s legacies to the Church has been much greater division and polarisation on contentious issues; this means that, for a process that looks for a consensus candidate, anyone who has spoken out, for example, on sexuality—either asking for radical change, or calling for faithfulness to the doctrine of the Church and the teaching of Jesus—is going to find it hard to command wide enough support. Tragically, this means that a good number of evangelical and orthodox bishops were ruled out from the start. But it also means that any of those who signed the letter of 44 bishops, calling for clergy to be able to enter same-sex marriage, was also not going to be appointed.
Although the CNC process is supposed to be strictly confidential, last Wednesday the Daily Telegraph claimed to know the four who were shortlisted: Pete Wilcox, bishop of Sheffield; Guli Francis-Dehqani, bishop of Chelmsford and always the bookmakers’ favourite; Michael Beasley, bishop of Bath and Wells; and Sarah. (Note: I have since been informed that no paper correctly reported the shortlist, so this list is close but not completely correct.) It was unlikely that Pete Wilcox, an evangelical, would gain consensus following a previous evangelical appointment. Guli signed the letter of the 44, and so would have been a divisive choice. That left Michael, aged 56 with less than three years as a diocesan, or Sarah, with eight years experience of leading the most complex and divided diocese in the Church—both in the ‘moderate liberal’ branch of the C of E. Given that, I don’t think the decision was a surprise—and I cannot think of an obvious workable alternative.
The appointment of Sarah to be bishop of London was another of Justin’s legacies (note to anyone in leadership: your appointment of others is often the most lasting legacy you leave). It is something of an open secret that the four candidates for London at the time were Sarah, Paula Vennells (of Post Office fame), Chris Cocksworth, bishop of Coventry, and Graham Tomlin, bishop of Kensington. When Sarah was appointed with the strong support of Justin, both Chris and Graham moved on to non-episcopal roles, despite the fact that they could have been excellent senior appointments.
One of Sarah’s challenges, therefore, is to signal clearly that she is not another Justin. I understand that she has done this before, in that she signalled in London very clearly that she was not going to be another Richard Chartres, who, loved though he was, was not someone who believed in transparency and process, but exercised his power with somewhat unpredictable autonomy. I was fascinated to read this testimony from Gerry Lynch, someone who knows Sarah and has worked with her, which he posted on Facebook:
It’s not easy to give a fair and balanced public assessment of someone you know personally, even slightly, but here is my best attempt as someone who knows Sarah Mullally slightly—she was Canon Treasurer at Salisbury Cathedral when I arrived in the city 12 years ago.
The strengths: Sarah is a superlative behind-the-scenes operator of the Church’s machinery; she knows what governance is about and how to make machinery of governance work. Her colleagues regularly spoke exceptionally highly of her in this regard, spontaneously and without prompting, when she was in this diocese. She has succeeded as a liberal, Central Tradition, Bishop of London, in holding together a notoriously difficult diocese with large blocs of Conservatives on both the Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic ends of the C of E. It isn’t even that the Diocese of London is a microcosm of the entire Church of England—it’s actually far more difficult and far more divided than most of the rest of the Church, and it has been for decades. I presume that’s why she got the job—she’s seen as the person to improve the operation of central machinery and hold the Church together in an era of threatened splits and repeated criticism of poor governance.
The weaknesses: Sarah isn’t a great preacher and isn’t a great public communicator. She’ll have people round her to help with this. She’ll need them…
Gerry is certainly right on the last point; her opening address was much more reassuring than it was exciting, and she is not a compelling communicator.
The other things that clergy colleagues from London repeatedly mention is her kindness and willingness to listen. Marcus Walker shared this lovely anecdote on Twitter:
I am glad we will have a ‘pastor pastorum’ again—a shepherd of the shepherds. I will never forget what happened when I discovered I had Covid one Saturday morning towards the end of lockdown. I tweeted out, rather mournfully and without much expectation of success, a plea for anyone in deacon’s orders and free to come and deacon at our Sunday service. Within 30 minutes, Sarah had DM’d me and offered to step in, even though she was supposed to be on holiday. She did so, although we did get her to celebrate rather than deacon!
Evangelical friends have repeated how pleasantly surprised they have been at her willingness to work with them, engage, and treat them with respect and kindness. Although he had his moments, I don’t think Justin really merited the description ‘kind’ from many that worked with him.
Kindness is an essential of Christian leadership, though on its own it is not enough. The tendency to want to be kind to everyone can backfire, and the danger is that you say to each person or each group the thing that you think they want to hear. Justin repeatedly did this for other reasons, and that was one of the things which sowed division: on sexuality, each group believed that they were going to get what they wanted, on the basis of his promises, and when the process became public, all sides were dismayed.
Sarah does seem to want to take quite a different approach. In the Religion Media Centre discussion, which you can watch here, Justin Humphreys of the safeguarding organisation ThirtyOneEight, observed:
Bishop Sarah has spoken in her address this morning of needing to acknowledge the problems with power and culture within and across the CofE. I would be keen for us to discuss what it might take to model a different way of managing power and changing culture. I think everyone is keen to see a different style of leadership modelled.
The danger here is that Sarah will, out of kindness, want to reassure ‘conservatives’ of various colours. But, out of kindness, her natural instinct will also be to reassure those who are campaigning for the doctrine of the Church to change, and those who do not abide by the discipline of the Church in their relationships. Without the guiding and shape of other theological and institutional insights, the result could be incoherence and contradiction—neither of which end up being kind.
These tensions have been evident in her involvement with the LLF process, to which she brings a very mixed legacy. Following the debates in Synod, and the failure to make much progress on the key issues around pastoral provision and the responsibilities of clergy in the light of the unchanging doctrine of the Church on marriage, Sarah took on chairing the Next Steps group.
In that capacity, she repeatedly reassured Synod that the Church’s doctrine of marriage, set out in Canon B30, that marriage is, ‘according to the teaching of our Lord, a lifelong and exclusion union between one man and one woman’ and that there were no plans to change this:
Mullally reiterated that the Bishops had taken the view “that the doctrine of marriage was unaffected by the proposed prayers of blessing”, and that “the right context for sexual intimacy is within lifelong, committed, and faithful relationships…The doctrine of the Church of England on marriage as being a lifelong, faithful relationship between one man and one woman is unchanged…The Prayers of Love and Faith … do not indicate any departure from the orthodox doctrines of the Church of England.” (February 2023)
Mullally reiterated that no change of doctrine was envisaged; that all that was being introduced was “pastoral provision in a time of uncertainty.” And that the prayers “did not change the doctrine of marriage.” (November 2023)
On the other hand, when pressed by Clive Scowen in a motion to publish the legal advice, she refused, claiming that the substance of the legal advice was already contained in GS 2328—something which few found convincing. This illustrates the danger of always ‘following due process’: when the process doesn’t give the answer you want, the temptation is to skew the process, then hide behind the ‘due process’ claim.
By contrast, Michael Beasley dramatically blew the whistle on this in Synod in July 2024. He highlighted the sexuality elephant in the room, that the introduction of stand-alone services would undermine previous commitments by the House of Bishops that the Prayers of Love and Faith would not contradict holy matrimony. He said that legal advice given to the Bishops stated that the stand-alone services must not resemble marriage services, but many now worried that they did, and would therefore be indicative of a change of doctrine—and even claimed that what was being brought before Synod had not in fact been discussed in the House of Bishops, despite claims to the contrary.
Behind all this, of course, we can see the hand of Justin Welby himself, desperate to move the debate to the conclusion he wanted before his term of office ended. The question then is the extent to which Sarah felt obliged to go along with this—and the question now is whether she will adopt a more honest and open approach. In relation to the use of power, someone said to me that she is not the kind of person to bang the table—or try and turn the tables over (unlike Justin). The problem is, as Justin found out in the end, on our doctrine of marriage, the tables are firmly screwed to the floor and are not for overturning.
The irony here is that the LLF process might well be formally brought to an end in the Synod of February 2026—which will be a month before Sarah is installed in Canterbury and officially takes up office. So in theory she could inherit a clean sheet, and be able to focus on other things.
Her position on this is one of the questions hanging over the future of the Anglican Communion. In theory, the Communion was represented for the first time on the CNC—but the appointment process was opaque, and bizarrely two of the five came from Wales and New Zealand, two of the smallest, fastest shrinking, and most liberal parts of the Communion. Such a result undermined any confidence that this group would really be representative of the concerns of the Communion, especially in Africa and Asia.
It was no surprise, then, that GAFCON, representing the most ‘conservative’ voices in the Communion, rejected Sarah’s appointment outright, on the basis of both her sex and her teaching.
It is with sorrow that Gafcon receives the announcement today of the appointment of Dame Sarah Mullally as the next Archbishop of Canterbury. This appointment abandons global Anglicans, as the Church of England has chosen a leader who will further divide an already split Communion…
[D]ue to the failure of successive Archbishops of Canterbury to guard the faith, the office can no longer function as a credible leader of Anglicans, let alone a focus of unity. As we made clear in our Kigali Commitment of 2023, we can ‘no longer recognise the Archbishop of Canterbury as an Instrument of Communion’ or the ‘first among equals’of global Primates…
Though there are some who will welcome the decision to appoint Bishop Mullally as the first female Archbishop of Canterbury, the majority of the Anglican Communion still believes that the Bible requires a male-only episcopacy. Therefore, her appointment will make it impossible for the Archbishop of Canterbury to serve as a focus of unity within the Communion.
The statement from the much larger Global South Fellowship of Anglicans (GSFA) led by the delightful Justin Badi, was more measured, but equally clear:
[W]e are deeply saddened that the person still perceived by many to be the spiritual leader of now some 100 million Anglicans worldwide has played a leading role in the Church of England’s departure from Anglican tradition and the clear teaching of Scripture in matters of marriage and sexuality.
When the Church of England’s General Synod opened the door to the blessing of same sex relationships at its February 2023 General Synod she described this as ‘A moment of hope’. For us, it was a moment of lament because we believe that the teaching of Jesus and the whole of Scripture is fundamental to human flourishing, both now and for eternity, and should not be compromised by the pressures of a particular culture.
Sadly therefore, our position must remain as it was in our Ash Wednesday statement of February 2023 when we stated that we were no longer able to recognise the then Archbishop of Canterbury as the ‘first amongst equals’ leader of the global Communion.
Someone said to me: ‘The appointment of Sarah Mullally is the last nail in the coffin of the Anglican Communion’. I don’t think that is the case; as both statements make clear, it was Justin Welby who put the nails in the coffin. The task for the next archbishop was to begin to remove the nails from the coffin, take the lid off, and see whether the corpse could be revived. I am not sure that Sarah will be in any position to do that—and I suspect it will not be a priority. And in any case, there is no possibility of any kind of Lambeth Conference during her time in office. I think Communion matters will remain on ice (in every sense) during her term.
Within the C of E, Rob Monro, bishop of Ebbsfleet who provides alternative episcopal oversight for those not accepting the ministry of women, gave a cautious welcome:
The appointment of an Archbishop who is a woman will be a significant milestone for our denomination and for the wider Anglican Communion. It presents particular challenges for those who have a complementarian understanding of Scripture, and the roles of men and women in ministry; but Bishop Sarah has a long track record of gracious engagement, and real understanding of the particular theological convictions we hold.
I have no doubt she will continue to work hard to enable the Five Guiding Principles to be upheld with a clear conscience, and in a way that ‘contributes to mutual flourishing across the whole Church of England’.
He seems confident that Sarah will resist the pressure from WATCH and others to dispense with the current arrangement. And the statement from the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC)was also guarded but clear:
We therefore pray that God will enable Bishop Sarah to hold to the apostolic faith and call the Church of England to recommit to the historic doctrines and formularies entrusted to it. We pray that this might be a moment where the current drift away from a biblical and Anglican understanding of marriage and sexual ethics is either halted or a way is found to secure biblical convictions in the Church of England for the future. Above all, our hope is that she will lead the Church of England in presenting the unchanging good news of the gospel afresh to our needy world.
In 2 Timothy 1:14, Paul implores Timothy to ‘guard the good deposit’. We pray that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, Bishop Sarah will be enabled to do the same.
On the other two big issues—finance and safeguarding—Sarah will be facing challenges. However, on both it feels as though we have sailed through the choppiest of waters, and, as with the LLF process, there is a sense that she will be inheriting a much more straightforward situation.
Gerry Lynch hopes that she might shift direction on finance:
One of Justin’s key projects was lavishing resources on attempts to establish new megachurches in the Charismatic Evangelical mould while normal parishes struggled to pay the bills. Some of these attempts worked—one quite near me—but most failed on their own terms, yet this model retains substantial institutional support. Will this continue or will a fairer distribution of central resources now come about?
Yet we have just had a huge debate and recalibration this year, signed off at last July’s Synod, which has involved a major further investment of £43m into dioceses. I cannot see Sarah wanting to open up that complex debate again.
And on safeguarding, the debate on independent scrutiny and independent operation of safeguarding has been had, whilst the Redress Scheme is about to be put in place. These two were the big challenges, and there is a sense of a kind of truce now in place. Some outspoken critics claimed that Sarah’s appointment is a ‘disaster’, and that she is implicated in the case of Alan Griffin’s suicide. But others have commended her for her willingness to meet with and listen to survivors—the very thing that Justin failed to do, and which proved to be his undoing.
But for me, one of the most fascinating things is the implications of both her move and her age. She will be 64 by the time she is installed, and so is likely to have less than six years in office—with the exception of William Temple, who died in office aged 63, she will match Donald Coggan in having one of the shortest tenures since Richard Bancroft in 1610. This looks to me very much like a ‘caretaker’ role, as Coggan’s was explicitly intended to be.
And what is equally fascinating is to consider who her successors will be. I can, off the top of my head, think of at least six strong evangelical contenders to succeed her in London. And in six years, when she retires, the expectation will be that an evangelical is appointed to succeed her in Canterbury. We are likely to have an evangelical in Durham very soon (as we nearly did); we have an evangelical in Winchester; and, with a liberal in Canterbury, we will surely need an evangelical appointment to succeed Stephen Cottrell in York when he retires in three years’ time.
I strongly suspect that Sarah’s time will be marked by very little dramatic happening—which we could do with. And in six years’ time, it could be that every senior bishopric in the C of E is occupied by evangelicals—a completely unintended result of Justin’s mostly liberal appointments. So exciting times could be ahead, but not for some while yet.
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I thought you might like to know that the reception of her appointment in English Baptist circles has been anecdotally positive, even celebratory in some circles. This appointment comes only a year or two after the centenary of Baptists ordaining women.
Those people who did express caution, did so much more in terms of her capacity to actually change anything, or her ability to build unity, than in her gender or experience. It seems she is well liked, and the London Baptists (which like the CofE tends more conservative than liberal) seem to respect her, and her ecumenical openness.
Almost all the harsh criticism I’ve read has come from Americans.
How fascinating. Thanks. People like a nice person!
With the current state of church, politics and media in the US misogynistic voices are encouraged and anyone more liberal told to be quiet. As an example the defense secretary has been amplifying a pastor from his denomination who has been saying that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote (!) and he also is trying to push women out of the military. Received opinion amongst national leadership is that gender equality was a horrible mistake.
This is giving a very false impression of how Americans really feel because people do fear that if they speak out they will experience consequences for doing so.
‘Anyone liberal told to be quiet’…? I am wondering what circles you move in…?
Theres definitely a attempt to create the impression that criticism of the government is a near crime. The president has even claimed its a crime for people to criticize him on TV.
Wierdly I think you actually agree that women’s equality is a good thing so im not sure why youd be a apologist for the Trump administration on this.
‘an apologist for the Trump administration’? Huh???
Ian
You mockingly denied that the Trump administration is suppressing criticism of (extreme) conservative attitudes to women.
No I didn’t. There is plenty of liberal comment on social media.
Ian
Youre not listening
I am listening. And I think you are mistaken. OK?
Ian
You’ve now claimed both that I am wrong and also that youre not telling me that I am wrong about life in the US under Trump.
Specifically American Roman Catholic and Baptist Trump supporters. American liberals and Episcopalians have been supportive
You are almost certainly right, but the circles one moves in online tend to be echo chambers.
Though, many of the Baptist circles where Europe and America overlap seem to equally be critical of trump. Those American pastors I know personally who are fans of him are of the free evangelical persuasion.
That’s not what I am hearing in the USA.
Thanks Ian. An interesting analysis.
1. “Bishop Sarah has spoken in her address this morning of needing to acknowledge the problems with power and culture within and across the CofE. I would be keen for us to discuss what it might take to model a different way of managing power and changing culture. ”
Do you think that a small but important start would be to reinstate Bernard Randall’s licence to officiate, and bring forward the INEQE audit for the Diocese of Derby?
2. Do you think that a more significant and perhaps necessary step would be for her to encourage /persuade Stephen Cottrell to move on?
Bernard Randal is free, isn’t he, to apply for posts at present? Is there anything stopping him doing that?
Another important move would be to reinstate the licence/PTO of Jeremy Pemberton. He isn’t free to apply for such at present.
Neither are in Sarah’s gift. But encouragement might be offered….
Jeremy Pemberton is living in contravention of his ordination vows and Canon law, specifically Canons B30 and C26.
I am not aware that Bernard Randall is similarly contravening his vows or canon law.
From what I have read about the case I would consider Bernard Randall to be an active safe guarding concern. Mostly because he has shown contempt for both the welfare of gay children and the need to temper his language around children more generally.
It’s a tough moral position being a priest. It comes with responsiblity.
….what have you been reading? Did you read the sermon that caused the ridiculous “outrage”?
“Seems to me” he was protecting children and spoke with care.
Ian
As I understand it he told children at the school at which he was employed that they didn’t have to follow the school rules preventing bullying of gay children. Hes since shown no willingness to understand why he was let go.
Read the sermon! I think that’s completely wrong. Where did you find your information?
What you actually need to read is the judgement of the tribunal. It’s 78 pages and can’t be summed up in two sentences.
Ian
I read about it in the news.
I wouldn’t want him in charge of my kids and they are both independent minded older teens – never mind young impressionable minds.
He needs to actually repent, not just demand that he was somehow in the right.
“I read it in the news”. In our post-truth environment, I can’t think of a worse way to find truth. I trust almost no-one, on any side, to not be spinning, and spinning wildly.
Peter Jermey: absolute rubbish and slander, You should apologise and withdraw your fallacious comment.
Peter, James
What happens about his case isnt up to me and Im not that interested in it. I so think hes behaved arrogantly and destructive without care for children and those are exactly the attitudes in churches that allow for actual physical abuse of children.
I suspect you disagree with me because you like what he said.
His message was on the topic that it is possible and allowable to have more than one opinion.
Are you a tyrant, Peter J, that you don’t even allow a message as mild and as bland as that?
Christopher
He told a group of school kids that thry could ignore school rules on bullying. He was rightly fired for doing so. AFAIK he hasnt apologized or shown any remorse.
If hes a Christian he should practice repentance not arrogance
Where did he say children could ignore school rules on bullying? Can you quote, please? Otherwise you are libelling him as well as me.
The judgement against Bernard is a disgrace. He has been exonerated by every participating body, except the CofE! His sermon was an excellent, well-founded attempt to provide a Christian pathway through the gender/sex mess that has been created. He was found guilty by the CofE of upholding it’s own doctrine.
If I gave a speech at my work encouraging rebellion against company policy I wouldn’t expect to keep my job long. Worse he did it with children. Worse it was related to safeguarding.
Have you guys learned nothing from Welbys mistakes?
First, the company was a Christian company.
Second, he did not say people had to think the Christian way. He just said they were allowed to do so: it should be allowed to be an option for them.
Heinous, I know.
Christopher
It was a school. He told the kids they didn’t have to follow school rules about not bullying gay kids
Whoever said it was not a school?
And secondly, why are you implying that this particular school was not a Christian company when in reality you know that it was?
Christopher
You said it was a Christian Company.
I probably said that because it was true.
Two great ideas…
Thanks Ian, it seems to me that the symbolism of a female ABC will also be important/powerful inside the church. Both among all women (especially ordained ones) as symbolising the end of the boy’s club mode. And among men who might find our sexism or our snobbery a bit exposed.
Do you think Justin exemplified that?
“symbolising the end of the boy’s club mode. And among men who might find our sexism or our snobbery a bit exposed.”
Thank for this Peter. I think it’s important. The stuff about the feminisation of the church needs to be called out for exactly what it is : alpha male, sexist, misogynistic nonsense. 2000 years of patriarchy didn’t stop women going to church.
Justin clearly had a difficult childhood and one can only guess at how much more mess Eton and Iwerne added to this. What a toxic combination.
The fewminisation of the church is exactly what has happened with all this “wouldn’t it be nice if we all just loved one another” hippie claptrap that the message gets diluted to. Yes it would be lovely, but first who is ‘we’ and second, since not everybody does love everyone else, what is to be done about it? The answer to the latter question is the gospel, which is divisive as Jesus himself warned.
Oh for an Alpha Male at Canterbury. That – i.e. leadership – plus holiness are precisely the two qualities needed. Either without the other isn’t any use. Both together is wonderful.
Good luck finding an Alpha Male amongst CofE priests (no offense Ian!)
I think you have just proved Anthony’s point!
And there is the problem. It was not so in the Victorian era.
It wold be hilarious, if it were not tragic, that we are hearing denials of the feminisation of the Church of England when it has just appointed its first female Archbishop of Canterbury in a history of more than 100 incumbents stretching back to 597AD. In view of 1 Timothy 3:2 it represents a colossal rebellion agasint biblical standards, and therefore against the order created by almighty God, who will have the last word.
I thought it more an opinion than a point, but its actually pretty close to something said elsewhere- youre not going to get a great ABC when you dont have great bishops to choose from.
Someone formed at Iwerne nevertheless ended up being less Iwernesque than any of his predecessors.
Christopher
I dont know about Iwerne, but Id say Welby was a example par excellence of aloof Etonian ruling class
Pushers of same sex intimacy certainly seem often to be elitists.
Christopher
Im certain I know more pushers of same sex intimacy than you do. All of the ones I know hate elitism and want more power to working people
Working people as in union members?
Christopher
No.
Great. You must mean more power to employees like me.
2 out of 3 people in my church are women. I don’t think that is unusual. The men who do show up are usually there to support their wives (or find a wife). Churches aren’t particularly masculine spaces.
In 2 Timothy 1:14, Paul implores Timothy to ‘guard the good deposit’. We pray that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, Bishop Sarah will be enabled to do the same.
It is an elementary qualification of being archbishop that the office holder be a Christian. A Christian is someone who has received the Holy Spirit. The Spirit comes to all who repent and understand who Jesus is; indeed that understanding comes through the Spirit. No one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by him. By the same token surely no one indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and therefore by God, can say that the Spirit is female. Yet Mulally told her diocese, “We partner in the transformational work of the Holy Spirit, as she breathes life and warmth into weary places, tired bones, cold homes and broken relationships.”
A second basic qualification is that an archbishop should be a spiritual leader, not primarily one it is hope will ‘improve the operation of central machinery and hold the Church together’ – though managerial competence is expected (I Tim 3:4f). To exercise spiritual leadership one needs an intimate knowledge of God and of his Word (I Tim 4:6), and one needs to be a man. Ian has not said anything about the first, but it is clear that Mulally does not know the Word well enough even to know that it always refers to God as ‘he’. Regarding the second, Mulally is herself not a man. No doubt that is why she might prefer to understand, and teach, God as female rather than male.
The apostle Paul said, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” (I Tim 2:12f) Paul’s reasoning goes back to the Creation itself. Like the truth that God created the heavens and earth, and that woman stands to the man as the Church does to Christ, this is spiritually discerned, but instinctively – and despite a lot of recent indoctrination to the contrary – probably the majority of both men and women still recognise that Paul’s blunt and unapologetic statement reflects a real difference in the psychological make-up of the two sexes.
The denial of this teaching by church leaders has gone hand in hand with an unholy revolution generally in ideas about marriage and sexual purity. The whole of society has been feminised, and instead of standing against the decay, the Church has been part of it. As long ago as 1991, it was apparent that female Anglican ordinands typically had masculine personality traits, and male ordinands female traits. Women outnumber men 2:1 in the C of E. Broadly speaking, the institution does not exhibit manly virtues and few men are attracted. In the church I left a few years ago, the vicar is a lesbian and shares her preaching responsibilities with her lesbian partner. The two churchwardens are likewise female. While this is an extreme case, it is symptomatic of how the Church has lost its way.
In appointing Mulally the Church has been disobedient to the doctrine of Christ in many respects. In consequence, it will continue to decline. The corruption of Christian spirituality by the promotion of the female and the denigration of the male, institutionalised not least in the promotion of women to senior positions of leadership, is now irreversible.
I have read the text of Mulally’s first address as archbishop. I do not find any reference to ‘problems with power and culture’ (thankfully).
It is a bit bizarre that you quote that single verse, out of context, without demonstrating any apparent awareness of its problems.
St. Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 2:12-14 do indeed reach back to creation. They remind us that the distinction between man and woman is not arbitrary but woven into the fabric of God’s design. However, Paul’s appeal to Adam and Eve is not about domination, worth, or weakness of just women, but about order and symbol. About the way creation mirrors divine wisdom. Sexual difference has theological meaning – complementarity – and this cannot be erased by cultural pressures.
However, the Catholic Church doesn’t interpret Paul’s injunction as an absolute ban on women teaching or exercising any form of authority in the Church. It has to be read in the context of the epistle. Scripture itself honours women such as Priscilla, who instructed Apollos (Acts 18:26), and Phoebe, whom Paul calls a diakonos of the Church at Cenchreae (Rom 16:1). These examples show that the apostolic Church valued the active witness and leadership of women.
Where the Catholic Church – and presumably Anglo-Catholics – draw a line of distinction is in the matter of ministerial priesthood. Christ, in calling only men as His Apostles, acted with divine freedom and purpose. The Church therefore recognises that she has no authority to confer priestly ordination on women.
This is not a matter of social convention, but of sacramental sign. The priest stands in persona Christi capitis – in the person of Christ – in relation to His Bride, the Church. The masculinity of the priest, then, is not an expression of privilege or of feminine failure. but of symbolic fidelity to the nuptial mystery of salvation: Christ giving Himself in love to His Bride.
At the same time, the Catholic tradition has always exalted the dignity and authority of women in other modes of service. The Church honours countless female saints, theologians, mystics, and doctors whose wisdom and holiness have shaped the faith of nations and corrected popes. Above all stands Mary, the Mother of God, who is greater in her holiness than any bishop or priest. The Church is Marian before she is Petrine; her deepest identity is feminine, receptive, and fruitful.
You speak of the “feminisation” of the Church and the loss of manly virtue. There is indeed a crisis of spiritual fatherhood in the West, among both clergy and laity, where men often fail to model courage, sacrifice, and fidelity. This decline cannot be blamed on women. The Church needs both the masculine and feminine fully alive and sanctified.
As St. John Paul II wrote in Mulieris Dignitatem, there is a distinct “feminine genius” that mirrors God’s tenderness and capacity for self-gift. The problem is not that the Church has become too feminine, but that she has lost a clear sense of how the masculine and feminine should complement one another in Christ. True renewal requires recovering the mutuality of the sexes – men exercising fatherhood in service and self-giving, women expressing motherhood in wisdom and love.
From a Catholic standpoint, the question of a woman serving as Archbishop of Canterbury must be understood within a larger issue, namely, that Anglican orders are not recognised as valid by the Catholic Church. Since Apostolicae Curae (1896), the Church has held that the Anglican Communion’s break with apostolic succession and sacramental intent means its ordinations no longer participate in the sacramental priesthood instituted by Christ.
Thus, the matter of whether a woman can hold that office is, from a Catholic theological perspective, a question of ecclesial polity rather than sacramental authority. Our concern is less about the individual’s sex and more about the absence of apostolic continuity that alone guarantees sacramental efficacy.
We share a common desire: that the Church might once again stand as a sign of holiness and truth amid the decay of modernity. We Catholics believe this renewal will come not through the exclusion of women, nor through the clericalisation of women, but through a rediscovery of the divine meaning of sexual difference, a difference that images the very love of Christ the Bridegroom and His Bride the Church.
The Church is renewed when men and women together embody that mystery: men through courageous, self-sacrificial leadership and spiritual fatherhood; women through their maternal holiness, receptivity, and strength. In this unity of love, both reflect the face of Christ.
If the Church can recover that mystery, she will again attract both men and women to holiness, not by imitating the world’s hierarchies of power, but by manifesting the divine complementarity inscribed in creation and redeemed in Christ.
But nowhere does Scripture say that the divine difference between the sexes is a difference in authority. In fact, Paul says precisely the opposite: in 1 Cor 7.4 women should exercise authority over their husbands *in the same way* as husbands do over their wives. It is a very clear and unambiguous text.
Ian, that’s a good point. You’re right to note that Scripture never says the difference between the sexes is one of authority, and 1 Corinthians 7:4 does show a beautiful kind of mutuality between husband and wife.
In that passage, Paul isn’t talking about hierarchy or leadership at all. He’s addressing the everyday reality of marital love. His point is that in Christian marriage, neither spouse can use their autonomy selfishly. Each belongs to the other completely. That’s the heart of love as self-gift, and it shows the full equality and reciprocity of man and woman in marriage.
But Paul’s talking here about mutual belonging, not identical symbolic roles. This text is about the interior logic of love, not the structure of how that love is represented in the Church. That’s why the Catholic tradition reads 1 Corinthians 1:7 alongside passages like Ephesians 5. There, Paul isn’t contradicting himself. He’s completing the picture. In Corinthians, marriage is about mutual service and shared authority. In Ephesians, he goes deeper; it becomes an image of Christ and the Church.
So, when Paul talks about the husband as “head,” he doesn’t mean superior or dominant. He’s describing a sacrificial pattern of love. The husband’s headship is meant to reflect Christ’s initiating, self-giving love; the wife’s “submission” mirrors the Church’s receptive, fruitful response. Both are active, both necessary, both dignified, just expressed differently.
In that sense, the texts, Corinthians and Ephesians 5, harmonise. Corinthians shows the equality of love; Ephesians shows the symbolic difference within that love. Equal dignity, distinct form.
“Authority” in Christianity can’t mean domination. In fact, every form of authority in the New Testament is redefined by service. When Paul calls the husband “head,” he’s talking about a cruciform kind of leadership – the call to love in a way that lays down one’s life. The same pattern defines the priesthood: a priest doesn’t rule over the faithful; he stands in the place of Christ the Bridegroom, pouring himself out for His Bride, the Church.
That’s why, in Catholic thought, the difference between male and female roles, especially in the priesthood, isn’t about who’s higher or lower. It’s about symbolic representation. The sexes are equal in grace and dignity, but distinct in how they reveal the mystery of Christ’s love.
In marriage, husband and wife share real mutual authority, but their love still takes a form that mirrors Christ and the Church. In the Church’s life, men and women share equally in baptismal dignity and mission, but the priesthood, as a visible sign of Christ the Bridegroom, is reserved for men. That difference isn’t a denial of equality; it’s a deeper expression of unity-in-difference, the nuptial logic that runs through all creation and redemption.
So Corinthians and Ephesians illuminate each other. Corinthians gives us love as a reciprocal gift; Ephesians gives us love as ordered communion. Both together reflect Paul’s vision of the mystery of Christ and His Church – two who are one flesh, equal in dignity, distinct in form, made for communion.
Scripture reveals a divine pattern of symbolic headship, not as domination, but as representation, through which masculine and feminine together show God’s creative and redemptive love. In that sense, authority isn’t a privilege; it’s a cross. The husband’s headship, like the priest’s, only makes sense as self-giving love. To lead by serving, to possess by giving, to govern by loving. In that pattern, man and woman together reflect the mystery of God.
Your disquisition on M/F complementarity feeds off a lot of things that no one is actually saying. E.g. no one is suggesting that Paul’s reference to Adam and Eve is ‘about domination, worth, or weakness of just women’. As soon as one opens up this issue, people come out with their political declarations and add to the existing divisions with a dozen more.
“Authority” in Christianity can’t mean domination. In fact, every form of authority in the New Testament is redefined by service. You would be hard pushed to find anyone not agreeing. Maybe you are just debating with yourself? For you yourself start by referring to Phoebe, whom Paul calls a diakonos of the Church at Cenchreae (Rom 16:1). These examples show that the apostolic Church valued the active witness and leadership of women. – of women exercising [a form of] authority in the church. In fact the word diakonos means ‘servant’.
Matt 20:
“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your diakonos, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave.”
Matt 23:
“Call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your diakonos. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
Phoebe served the church. She was also a ‘patroness’. As you say, there are many ways in which women can serve and be honoured in the church. In the Church of England, indeed, they do practically everything that the vicar does not do – from treasurers and churchwardens to those making coffee and decorating the church with flowers. Men have more and more withdrawn from service.
It remains true that Scripture ‘does not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve …’ One reason for this, I think, is that once women become teachers in significant numbers, the role starts losing status in the eyes of men and they no longer aspire to it. Exactly this has been the fate of primary and secondary school teaching. The proportion of male teachers in secondary schools has dropped to just 35% – down to 15% in primary schools. This is not a good thing.
Scripture’s teaching is based on a realistic, non-naive understanding of man and woman. We’ve lost this understanding, because there are few men now with the wisdom and, alas, courage to teach what Scripture teaches – on this subject, and on all the hard truths that our modern age finds unpalatable.
‘It remains true that Scripture ‘does not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve …’ No it doesn’t.
It remains true that, ripping that verse out of context, ignoring its complexities, mistranslating the key term here (authentein) as if it mean ‘exercise authority’, which it does, and for some strange reason elevating this one text and making it trump all the much more common and clearer texts in which women exercise authority, lead, teach, and are apostles, will lead you to the position that you have.
‘I can do all things through a text taken out of context’.
The Roman Catholic church could also use some female priests after male sex abuse cases amongst some of their priests. Jesus used Mary Magdalene to spread his word. I don’t see men being reluctant to become surgeons as more women do surgery as well
Sieven,
I agree that “authority in Christianity can’t mean domination”. Christ Himself redefined authority as service. This is foundational to any Christian understanding of vocation, whether male or female.
Where we differ slightly is not on the moral tone of authority, but on its symbolic form. The Catholic view of complementarity isn’t about “status” or “power” but about representation. The distinction between masculine and feminine in Scripture isn’t sociological; it’s sacramental. It speaks to how God’s love is made visible in creation and redemption.
You mention Phoebe. She’s a good example of female leadership and service in the early Church. The New Testament shows women exercising real influence: Priscilla teaching with Aquila, Phoebe as a diakonos and prostatis, Junia is called “outstanding among the apostles.” The Church venerates these women as saints, teachers, and witnesses of the Resurrection. Their authority was genuine, but it was exercised within the pattern of service and communion, not in rivalry with the apostolic ministry.
That’s why the Catholic Church doesn’t deny women’s gifts or leadership. It simply understands priesthood not simply as functional leadership but as sacramental representation. The priest doesn’t “outrank” anyone; he stands in persona Christi, representing Christ the Bridegroom toward His Bride, the Church. It’s not about capability or holiness; it’s about what the sign itself means.
So when Paul roots his teaching in Adam and Eve, he’s not arguing from cultural convention or male superiority. He’s recalling something ontological. That male and female together image God, but in a differentiated relation. The order of creation, fulfilled in the order of redemption, has a nuptial structure: Christ the Bridegroom and the Church His Bride. That’s the theological key.
On the sociological point, yes, male participation in Church life has declined, and feminisation in certain sectors is real. But the answer isn’t to limit women’s service, nor to collapse difference into sameness. It’s to recover a shared spiritual ascesis of fatherhood and motherhood, where both men and women act according to their gifts but in harmony with their symbolic vocation.
As for your point about the sex abuse crisis – that behaviour in indefensible. But the problem there isn’t the absence of women priests; it’s the absence of sanctity. Sin doesn’t disprove the sacrament, though it does call for purification and reform. Many of the holiest and most influential reformers in Catholic history have been women, none of whom needed ordination to transform the Church. Their spiritual authority was profound and prophetic.
Finally, you’re right that the early Church recognised women like Mary Magdalene as witnesses and apostles “to the apostles.” But her mission was distinct from the Twelve. She proclaimed the Resurrection; they were sent to preside at the Eucharist. Both essential, both apostolic, but not identical.
So, to sum up:
– Authority as service, never domination (we agree).
– Men and women share full equality in dignity and grace (we agree).
– Symbolic complementarity, the nuptial pattern of Christ and the Church, gives distinct sacramental roles their theological meaning.
This isn’t politics or patriarchy; it’s about keeping the sacramental sign coherent with the mystery it represents. If we lose that symbolic grammar, we risk flattening the mystery into sociology. But if we keep it, we preserve something richer: the idea that all difference, including between the sexes, can become a sign of communion and gift, not rivalry or exclusion.
IP
I Timothy 2-3 is the go-to place for scriptural guidance on the qualities and qualifications of overseers and deacons. That is the context. If you are saying that I Tim 2:12-14 contradicts other scriptures which bear on the question, then I suggest there is something amiss with your way of reading them ‘in context’. I have engaged ad loc. with the so-called complexities in other posts, so it is untrue to suggest that I am ignoring or am ignorant of them.
I am not suggesting 1 Tim 2 contradicts others scriptures. I am noting that your reading of it, in which you mistranslate the key term and rip it out of context, contradicts other scriptures. I think that gives you multiple problems.
I take your point about sacramental distinction between the sexes and the theological basis why Roman Catholics do not believe females role in society extends to ordination. Most male Roman Catholic priests and bishops are also decent and educated people.
There is no doubt though too that women are statistically far less likely to be sex and child abusers than men. Women and parents in England will therefore have more confidence in the Church of England to tackle this issue now a woman leads it
IP
You mistranslate the key term and rip it out of context I don’t do any ‘ripping’. The blog context is whether Sarah Mulally is a suitable appointment to be an arch-overseer. The biblical context of the verse you object to my citing is the qualities required of overseers and deacons. As for mistranslating the key term, I merely reproduced the translation of the ESV. Contrary to what you say, it is not my translation. I would appreciate a little more graciousness in your replies, please.
Jesus never opposed female ordination and used Mary Magdalene to spread his word. After sex abuse cases involving a few of its male clergy too the Roman Catholic church could also do with some female bishops and clergy
Nor did Paul. Despite what James claims here.
It’s not what James says, it’s what Paul says. Paul never appointed any women to be presbuteroi or episkopoi of the churches. It’s all there in the NT.
The early church knew that.
Christian history knows that. This is the rock of stumbling.
Jesus used all sorts of people to spread his word. He didn’t appoint all sorts to be apostles. You are welcome to your own gnostic sect if you like. We’ll stick with the New Testament.
James
Paul didn’t need to ‘appoint’ them. They were on Christ before he was.
James
And I think you’ll find that Ian agrees with my gnosticism!
Jack,
We agree about women bishops, although I regard 1 Timothy 3:2 as more decisive; for my take on v2:12-14 see
https://church14-26.org/the-role-of-women/
We agree also about the feminisation of the CoE; a survey of the first mixed cohort of ordinands by (Rev Prof) Leslie Francis found that female Anglican ordinands typically had masculine personality traits, and male ones had female traits (in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, vol. 12, pp. 1133-40; 1991).
We disagree about priestly ordination, but let’s leave it at disagreement noted on this present thread.
Anthony, thanks for sharing that article. It’s a serious attempt to grapple with difficult passages, and I appreciate that it recognises Paul’s concern for order, reverence, and the distinct roles of men and women in the Church. But a few key clarifications are needed.
First, the Catholic tradition doesn’t interpret Paul’s instructions about women’s silence as universal bans on women speaking or teaching, but as disciplinary norms tied to the life of the early Church. They express enduring principles – order, receptivity, and respect for apostolic teaching – but their application develops as the Church discerns how best to embody those principles in different times and cultures.
That’s why the Church has always recognised and celebrated many women as teachers, prophets, and spiritual authorities. None were ordained, but all instructed popes, theologians, and the faithful, not by usurping apostolic authority, but by participating in it through the charisms of prophecy and wisdom.
The suggestion that women are more prone to deception or syncretism, or that the “battle of the sexes” is a kind of divine curse, doesn’t fit the Catholic reading of Genesis. The Fall wounded both man and woman. Adam’s failure to guard and Eve’s to discern were joint failures. But grace restores both sexes to a communion in which neither dominates. Christ, the New Adam, and Mary, the New Eve, together reveal the redeemed pattern: masculine and feminine in harmony, not rivalry.
Paul’s appeal to creation (Adam first, then Eve) is about symbolic order. The man’s “headship” (in marriage and in priestly representation) signifies Christ’s self-giving initiative, while the woman’s receptive posture signifies the Church’s fruitful response. Both are active, both dignified, but distinct in form. The Catholic Church’s refusal to ordain women isn’t based on supposed inferiority, but on sacramental symbolism: the priest stands in the person of Christ the Bridegroom, not in virtue of greater worth, but in fidelity to the nuptial mystery the liturgy expresses.
As for Paul’s practical directives about teaching, prophecy, and head coverings, Catholic exegesis reads these as contextual, rooted in the customs of Corinth and Ephesus, where modesty and order were at stake. His deeper point is that worship should visibly reflect the difference and complementarity of the sexes, not erase it. That principle endures, even if its external expressions change.
Finally, it’s important not to confuse “authority” with “function.” Women in the Catholic Church exercise real authority as doctors of the Church, theologians, canon lawyers, leaders of institutions, consecrated virgins, and catechists. The only authority reserved to men is the sacramental headship of the priesthood, and that is an authority of service, not of status.
So while the piece raises valid concerns about order and fidelity, its logic risks flattening the theology of creation and redemption into sexual weakness of women and sociology, as if gender roles were mainly about psychology, or status. The Catholic view insists that the male–female difference is sacramental before it is social.It signifies, in every age, the mystery of Christ and His Church, equal in dignity, distinct in vocation, united in love.
That’s an interesting study by Rev. Prof. Leslie Francis. However, from a Catholic perspective, that kind of finding doesn’t necessarily have the theological weight some might assume. If female ordinands in the Church of England tend to show more “masculine” personality traits, and men more “feminine” ones, that may simply reflect psychological adaptation, not theological disorder. When a Church opens ministries once exclusively male to women, it’s natural that the women drawn to them will have stronger traits associated with leadership or public responsibility, which psychology codes as “masculine.” The same goes for men drawn to a more feminised church culture: they may be more relational, intuitive, or nurturing, traits that the tests label “feminine.” But that’s sociology and temperament, not a statement about divine order.
The issue isn’t whether a woman or man has traits society deems masculine or feminine, but whether their roles reflect the sacramental meaning of sexual difference. Priesthood, for example, isn’t assigned to men because they’re more “masculine” in temperament, but because they sacramentally represent Christ the Bridegroom. Conversely, consecrated women embody the receptive, fruitful love of the Church, not passivity, but the deepest kind of spiritual maternity.
So while the Francis data might show a cultural pattern, one examining pastorally, it can’t serve as theological proof that the Church is “losing its way.” The Catholic tradition resists reducing gender to psychology or temperament: masculinity and femininity are theological realities grounded in creation and redeemed in Christ, not personality profiles.
Jack writes: “The Catholic Church’s refusal to ordain women isn’t based on supposed inferiority, but on sacramental symbolism: the priest stands in the person of Christ the Bridegroom, not in virtue of greater worth, but in fidelity to the nuptial mystery the liturgy expresses.”
But then you have to ask: where does symbolism – sacramental or whatever – come from?
The answer has to be: from the dimorphic nature of human beings as males and females and the Creator’s intention that they be related to each other in a complementary (not indifferent) way.
But how are males and females related in a complementary way?
Biologically in the begetting of children; and in large scale differences based on bodies and psychologies. Speaking in crude and general terms, the task of men is to fight and defend the home. The task of women is to build the home and nurture new life. This does not mean that men do not nurture or women do not fight, but this is basically how it works out.
Despite all the TV shows (which are overwhelmingly aimed at women), women are not really suited to front line police work or combat. Look what happened to that poor woman cop at Manchester Airport.
And men would be hopeless as nursery workers.
The fundamental reason Jesus appointed men to be the leaders of his church is that men need men to lead them spiritually, as spiritual fathers, to help them become the men God wants them to be. Women religious leaders only complicate things, appearing as alternate mothers or lovers.
I don’t think it’s “sacramental”, Jack – although I understand that idea is central to Catholic thinking. The Bible roots it in Creation.
Pastors are spiritual fathers – not spiritual mothers.
Jack,
I’m simply doing my best to understand the relevant biblical passages. I’m not engaging with Catholic teaching or the extent to which it does (or doesn’t) match holy scripture. I’m sure you have summarised the Catholic position accurately.
I think he has – up to a point. I don’t think Jack has given enough weight to the sacrificing priesthood understanding of the ministry.
In Catholic theology the priesthood is re-offering the sacrifice of Calvary in each mass, and because the OT priests were the sons of Aaron, Catholic thinking sees a continuation here of that office: the old type and antitype way of reading Scripture.
Catholic sacramentalism is focused on the symbol of the Eucharist and who “offers” it, whereas the Bible takes a much larger view of what being male and female Christians is all about.
That’s why it doesn’t matter all that much to me who leads the communion prayers or whether that person is ‘ordained’; the NT seems much more interested in teaching and discipline than in the precise ordering of liturgical acts. The Pastoral Epistles make it clear what the NT ministry is all about: it is about teaching the faith and building up the Christian community. And Paul is clear who and what an ‘episkopos’ is (the husband of one wife, sober, an apt teacher etc). There were plenty of female-led religions in the Greco-Roman world, so the models did exist. But Paul didn’t go down that road. He specified male leadership, as Jesus did. This fact is rooted in Creation.
James,
I agree with much of that but having an ‘ordainedpriesthood’ necessarily causes pew Christians to believe that they are not priests, and need priests to represent them before God. This is untrue; the New Testament is clear that they/we ARE priests, with Jesus Christ as our great High Priest. This misunderstanding over our identity has grievious effects, not negligible ones – it is disempowering, and it throws all of the expectation of ministry onto the professionalised class. That is too great a weight to bear, and parish priests typically either burn out or become indifferent.
Anthony:
I agree. All Christians are priests. NT ministers are not called ‘priests’ but ‘elders’ or ‘overseers’.
Some are called to this ministry. But everyone has responsibility for everyone, and even a new Christian can be a pastor to an old one.
If God could speak through Balaam’s donkey, he can speak through any of us.
James,
Does the Anglican service of ordination have any words to say about being “ordained as a priest”? The problem is that with administration of the sacraments limited to ordained persons, who alone may lead services, give sermons, wear vestments etc, the CoE’s practice actively promotes the illusion.
Others can preach and lead, and often do.
Given the state in which Justin Welby left the Church of England, it would seem obvious that his successor should be someone capable of radical repair work. That implies at very least someone who, whether quietly or loudly, had profound disagreement with Welby’s policies and his style of pursuing them. Whatever her gifts or lack of them, Sarah Mullaly’s track record tells us she is clearly not that person.
More fundamentally, it seems to me that assessing someone’s suitability for taking on an important job requires that you know what the role is meant to achieve and therefore have a clear idea of what the person appointed must be equipped to do. It’s the kind of thinking that starts with a clean sheet of paper before ever you delve into the particular issues (problems) which are currently outstanding.
In the role of ABoC we should surely be looking for a true man of God, at very least a fearless prophet and powerful preacher (confident in apologetics) whose own relationship with God (known for his constancy in prayer) was something about which no one could have any doubt. The twin roles of speaking to both church and nation about the Lord Jesus Christ while also facing up to the mountain of organisational and moral issues which beset the C of E combine to present a mammoth task. Creating and leading a united team of bishops to assist in these things means possessing energy, openness, and also humility, on a heroic scale.
And in the case of today’s Church of England (as it exists in England’s current circumstances) I would be questioning whether the tight entanglement to an essentially atheist state establishment is tenable any longer – ie are the ‘benefits’ in terms of influence and witness to the nation more than outweighed by the felt need to compromise with power rather than condemn its repugnant deeds and policies? Perhaps someone who has the mental resilience to contemplate leading the C of E to separate from the state is one of today’s essential requirements?
I realise the appointment’s now been made. I was just musing for a couple of moments…
Except that Justin’s legacy was *both* the state of the Church *and* the process and people who might or might not continue that.
As I point out, part of Justin’s own legacy has been to hamper its removal. And yet, in the longer term, we might just be able to do that.
In terms of style, use of power, personality, and commitment to process, Sarah looks to me to be quite the opposite to Justin, don’t you think?
Part of the problem with Justin is that he was given such positive PR, not least by Nicky Gumbel and others, that evangelicals in particular remained in denial about his true intentions and left it far too late to push back. Not being an insider I had no personal experience of the atmosphere he created around him but his public utterances raised severe doubts for me right from the start.
It’s certainly true that the atmosphere (and possibilities) can change overnight once a good person takes over in what seems to be a hopeless situation. Now she’s no longer constrained by Justin’s leadership Sarah’s own instincts and leadership potential will soon become clear: she could surprise us all! Let’s hope she’s really up for it.
It’s time to drop the dodgy ideology along with the internal and external politicking: ‘past put behind us’ etc, give God a chance, make things simple, get back to the basics, prepare the parishes for witness and growth, and get out there with the gospel. England’s crying out for it. Prayer and preaching are essential groundwork. The practice will be a constant battle for most of us, but the theory is unbelievably simple. And if the Holy Spirit is given a chance…
I am not sure anyone knew Justin’s intentions until it became rather late…
I don’t think Justin knew his own intentions until the February 2017 general synod. He was very firmly opposed to any kind of debate about sexuality until the bishops were told what they could do with their take note paper. He had no interest in the matter and was scared about anything to do with it.
Andrew, from my conversations with him, I don’t think that is true. He had changed his mind but avoided saying anything, and his change of mind led to his disastrous comment in 2017 which led to a further eight years of fruitless and divisive debate.
Ian
How can any church have any credibility when the leader is dishonest?
I feel theres a problem in most denominations where it’s easier to get higher up the pole by being dishonest than honest. Why doesn’t the church value leaders who embody the things it says it believes in?
Well, quite. I have been saying that for some years.
It is everywhere. People boxtick in order to get ahead. Freemasonry. Being invited for interview to see if you get on with people socially and are not argumentative with them rather than if you are equipped to do the job.
Christopher
Just like Iwerne!
The fact that I am so very opposed to such things and Iwerne was still prepared to have me shows Iwerne must have been doing something right.
Don
I have misgivings about Sarah Mullaly, but she did immediately understand that Justin Welbys resignation speech in the House of Lords was completely unacceptable.
You can wish for someone perfect in the role, but they dont exist. You have a very small pool of bishops to choose from
Peter
I agree on both counts. But it has to be recognised that the pool of bishops involved strongly reflects the appointment policy of Justin Welby and the C of E’s inner circle around him. In that sense he played a big part in setting a liberal/managerial tone in the C of E hierarchy which will take years to undo – even if Sarah Mullaly recognises the need to do it.
More generally, there’s a whole list of issues by which you might want to judge someone’s suitability for being the leader of today’s Church of England. For example:
Whether you discern the person to have a genuine living faith in Christ
Whether or not you have a problem with female church leadership
Position on doctrine and defining issues which the church should be expecting its leaders to promote and defend
Intellectual gifts, knowledge, ability to teach and communicate in general
Particular known gifts as a preacher, evangelist and prophet
Real experience the person has (and what were the results) of leading an English parish church
What the person’s history tells you about where his/her leadership is likely to take the church (vision and direction)
The person’s known competence as a leader – organisation, administration, clarity of thought, focus, use of time etc
Character – integrity, honesty, wisdom, judgement, humility, courage
Personality – creating a good atmosphere, possessing contagious enthusiasm, approachable, good at handling people, not prone to panic
Personal devotion in terms of prayer life, Bible study, evident walk with God
You might say Jesus used little or none of these criteria when choosing his disciples, but they were about to go on a 3 year intensive course with him before their leadership skills would be tested! Sarah Mullaly doesn’t have that luxury!
Don
Or, as with Justin Welby, just pick him because he went to Eton and is friends with all the right people
Yes, I fully agree. Like all establishments the English establishment’s first instinct is to promote its own interests; a major component of that is recognising and promoting who is ‘one of us’ and bearing down / destroying if necessary anyone who refuses to fit in. And that raises the question of whether any Christian church should allow itself to be entangled with the secular state in the way that the C of E has become.
As one example, I was horrified (but not surprised) to learn that a former MI5 chief was to chair the CNC when it came to choosing Welby’s successor. Whether or not he is a Christian is not the point. We can be sure that organisation has loyalties and powers which look to other authority and work on behalf of other interests than either the Church of England or the ordinary people of England who, if democracy is real, are the ultimate sovereign authority in the nation. But I’m going down a pretty deep rabbit hole…!
Did you know he is an evangelical?
Yes, I seem to remember reading that. But I’m not questioning the particular man’s integrity in any way (whether he’s an anglo catholic, liberal, or evangelical); for good or ill I couldn’t possibly know.
It’s about the optics of who should be picked to chair such an influential decision-making body to appoint the leader of a Christian church, even if it is an established church. And at a time when the C of E has been riven by pressure to fall in line with ideologies which have captured the secular state I should have thought it needed to be exceptionally careful about the need for transparency in all aspects of the process. Not choosing someone whose past career unavoidably made him privy to all kinds of establishment secrets and loyalties would seem a common sense approach. Likewise I don’t think a Prime Minister (whether Christian or atheist) should have any connection with the matter whatsoever!
There’s a bit of a danger here, maybe, of tracing everything wrong with the CoE to the flaws of Justin Welby. You don’t have to be his biggest fan to think that perhaps there is a lot more to our predicament than that….
Peter
Honestly he was the direct cause of a lot of trouble and the embodiment of other problems
* caring more about people’s social status than whether they had basic morality
* dishonesty
* doing/saying things you dont actually believe are right
* lack of empathy
* treating churches like businesses with profitable and unprofitable customers
Largely in agreement with you. Early on he struck me as a rather depressed individual with little joy in the Lord.
His terribly conflicted relationship with his mother was a shock to learn about, and despite all the leftwing views he displayed, he was and is essentially a public school snob.
His catastrophic farewell speech showed his true colours.
Absolutely not. The whole point of the Church of England is to be established church with the King as its Supreme Governor offering weddings, funerals and baptisms for all parishioners. While also being the only denomination in England including Anglo Catholics and evangelicals
Nothing bout the Gospel and converting England, then? I thought so, You’re a civic religion chap, Simon – a worshipper of royalty and the class system.
I agree with Steven Robinson. Your blog is dominated by the machinery of organisation and procedure in the C of E and pays scant respect to the spiritual qualifications of the candidate- which seem to be rather lacking. If anything, she seems to qualify for the type of description given by Paul in Romans 16 vv 17-18.
The whole rigmarole of senior appointments in the Anglican church is as farcical as the elaborate robes and mitres which these people give themselves. Why don’t you and other commentators address the basic issue of disestablishment? Cut this church off from its ridiculous entanglement with the state and see whether it sinks or swims.
So you don’t read my weekly articles on Scripture?
You don’t watch my weekly videos on Scripture?
You haven’t read the repeated engagements with the substance of the debates on migration, on sexuality, on mission, on the nature of church, leadership, and finance?
You haven’t read my books on Revelation, on the end of the world, on sexuality, on mission, on spiritual disciplines?
I am trying to work out to whom Paul’s words about ‘creating divisions’ applies to here…
Absolutely not. The whole point of the Church of England is to be established church with the King as Supreme Governor offering services, weddings, funerals and baptisms for all parishioners. Including evangelicals and Anglo Catholics.
There are already plenty of non established Roman Catholic or Orthodox churches for Anglo Catholics and non established evangelical Pentecostal, Baptist, Methodist and Free Churches otherwise
Nope. The whole point of the Church of England is to preach the word and rightly administer the sacraments.
I wonder who will be the next Bishop of London?
That’s a great question.
If you ignore the issue of her gender then she is the obvious choice – I hope she wont continue down the path of caring more about establishment perception than basic morality
Oh dear, the most senior position in the CoE has been given to someone who endorses same-sex sexual relationships. Not a good omen.
…who has repeatedly reaffirmed the Church’s doctrine of marriage, that it is unchanged, and that the bishops have no intention of changing this.
Not changing it – but certainly ignoring it and undermining it, by formally affirming homosexual relationships and allowing clergy to enter sane-sex civil marriages,
This is what Mullally intends to do, and I think Ian actually understands this.
I hope we’re all in favour of ‘sane-sex civil marriages’…
There is nothing sane about sex!
No, she has never said to my knowledge that clergy can enter same (or sane) sex marriages. She was not amongst the 44 who signed that letter.
No need to when others will do the job for you. If you support LLF and don’t expressly support same-sex marriage, all that means is you haven’t joined the dots.
You are saying ‘sex outside of marriage is OK as long as it’s homosexual sex.’
That’s what I mean about her theological incoherence and illogic.
Like Welby, she has very thin theological grounding and is quite undistinguished as a preacher and teacher.
In other words, she cannot do the primary work of a bishop, to understand and teach and commend the New Testament (and biblical) faith.
She is a product of the Establishment as well – in this case the NHS.
The C of E establishment doesn’t care for theology and has no interest in evangelising unbelieving England or Muslim England.
It is just the LibDems at prayer (sometimes), happy to be given seats in the Lords and a big role in coronations. That’s about it.
James
I have several friends who are cofe priests in civil partnerships. Theyve agreed not to have sex. Thats a huge huge sacrifice that you will never have to make.
Please have some respect for them and stop de facto accusing gay priests en mass of dishonesty.
How on earth can the church repent of homophobia if gay people are still being treated this way?
Largely in agreement with you. Early on he struck me as a rather depressed individual with little joy in the Lord.
His terribly conflicted relationship with his mother was a shock to learn about, and despite all the leftwing views he displayed, he was and is essentially a public school snob.
His catastrophic farewell speech showed his true colours.
I find it very odd, given the amount of time you have given to that subject on your website, that you dont seem to think the Archbishop’s personal views are particularly important. Yet you made a big deal of the former one changing his own mind on the issue. Just because she may not ‘push’ it, doesnt mean she should have been given such a position.
The interesting thing is that, akin to Rowan Williams, she does not appear to think that her personal views should determine the Church’s teaching or practice. Unlike Justin.
She doesn’t seem to think that her personal views should be determined by the Church’s teaching either. Let’s face it, she is not a thinker, she’s a middle manager. Rather like Welby.
Logically that means although she doesnt agree with the church’s teaching or practice, yet has just been appointed to the highest position in said church. How is that ok?
James, the dangers of not having a fully independent thinker (and neither Abp Welby nor Pope Francis was anyone’s fool) in charge were again shown plainly since 2013.
Hi Ian,
I’m not sure she’s especially sound on this, if you remember her comments after LLF were passed:
“During a press interview about the bishops’ proposals, when asked whether allowing blessings means that sexual intimacy in same-sex relationships is no longer regarded as sinful, Mullally replied:
“What we’re doing is proposing prayers for people … within that relationship … we’re specifically saying it is a faithful, lifelong relationship between two people. … So there will be the opportunity for those people in a same-sex relationship to come and have that relationship blessed. And, of course, some of those will be sexual.”
To be honest, I think she’s continuity welby maybe not in tone but instutitonal, not theological, a good middle manager maybe – but not going to lead decisively, or think radically about how to engage with ‘the quiet revival’. Worryingly, I think she’s not going to reach Reform (the party) – and actually I think we need to be doing that right now, because we’re potentially close to having a government that has never done any thinking about religion at all.
I get that there are few other options (I had hoped that Philip North might be a radical choice.. everyone, including women, who have worked with him have found him to be incredibly good, they tell me) but I am just a bit deflated that this is the best the church can do.
No, she certainly is not sound on this. Which is why I and others have repeatedly reminded her what the teaching of Jesus and the doctrine of the Church is, and how she is bound to that.
Even Farage has not said he will reverse gay marriage in the UK. If the voters elect Farage to control their borders and reduce immigration that is up to them but the Church of England has no control over immigration policy and it should rightly oppose any hostility to refugees, Jesus after all was himself a refugee
Simon
Its desperately sad when people with multiple relationships behind them then feel a need to make remarks against gay relationships! In the political sphere it seems all of the anti SSM people have really interesting sex lives themselves.
Simon Baker: most sexually active homosexuals have had numerous sexual relationships in the course of their lives. The barriers to sexual intimacy are much, much lower there because there is no chance of pregnancy, and homosexual men have the same sex drives as heterosexual men without having to overcome female reluctance. Even anonymous sex is part of that world, which it isn’t in the heterosexual world. This well-known fact explains why homosexual men have such high levels of STD, and why few of them are interested in getting hitched to one man for life.
Quite so. How many people coming here illegally from France are refugees?
James
Female reluctance?
What planet do you live on?
There have been female prostitutes for thousands of years and phone apps now enable anonymous sex for heterosexual men too. The issue is not depriving same couples of the opportunity of a relationship and marriage but promoting marriage and committed relationships for both heterosexual and homosexual couples
was Jesus a refugee?
James
I don’t think its true that most gay people have multiple partners in their lives.
I think some gay men have a very large number of partners, which skews the average. And the average is skewed further by these surveys making no attempt to be representative of different types of gay people
It doesn’t matter what a random person thinks, it matters what the statistics say.
And when it comes to church members who are gay you have zero statistics Christopher.
So it’s lucky that that their number/percentage is not even the topic under discussion, then.
Christopher
The average heterosexual has 5 sexual partners. Does that mean most straight Christians are adulterers?
That is not the figure I have read, but you are entirely oblivious to the fact that the figure is in our society always changing. And to the second fact that the post sexual revolution figure bears no resemblance to the pre. Of course if a society turns away from Christianity things will get chaotic.
Christopher
You cant have it both ways.
You cant claim ultimate authority in statistics when it comes to gays and then claim they are wrong and dont matter when it comes to straights.
If youre going to use average number of partners to damn all gay men then im going to call you an adulterer.
If you libel, then you should be classified by readers as someone who cares nothing for truth or lies. The latter is disgusting.
Christopher
So its “libel” if I point out statistics about straight people, but its perfectly reasonable for you to talk about statistics about gay people?
The libel was your ugly words ‘I’m going to call you an adulterer’, not anything to do with statistics.
Christopher
You called me an adulterer first. I was merely turning your claims about statistics back on you to prove that you are wrong
Thomas
I’ve thought it very unlikely that they would choose anyone at odds with LLF (either more conservative or more liberal) because id have thought the commission would want to avoid being seen as over-ruling synod on the matter. She’ll stick with no sex, no marriage, but allow blessings and CPs.
Indeed and yes only heterosexuals who have never had sex before marriage and never been divorced or are celibate can really tell same sex attracted not to have relationships
Simon Baker is speaking like a non-Christian with no sign of living in the light of Christ’s sacrifice and authority over the Church.
The Church does not consist of those who have never sinned but those whose sins are forgiven by Christ and who do not teach that their sins are to be emulated. Paul considered himself ‘the chief of sinners’ for his persecution of the Church. He also knew he was called to be Christ’s apostle. These two facts are central to the Gospel.
Sarah Mullally is confused on this basic point about conversion. So is Simon, by the look of things. Christ’s work is not to confirm us in wrong but to forgive us and to change us into an obedience that pleases God. Liberals always get this wrong because they have a weak idea of sin and a weak idea of how the Holy Spirit works in the lives of believers.
Simon
Yes, as a matter of good practice, people who are not single and/or abstainent should not be demanding either of others.
Peter Parker
Im pretty sure she opposes them actually. I hope she does not do a Welby and lie about what she actually believes
I dont think she does per her previous comments.
Peter
Could you share what her remarks on SSM are – Ive googled and cant find her saying anything at all on the matter
She welcomed blessings on same sex relationships in church. Noone with a brain thinks that’s not blessing same sex sexual relations and therefore approving such sexual relationships.
Peter
But in the context, the church of England allows celibate civil partnerships *and* successfully lobbied the government to keep them as a legal option.
You cant both teach that gay people must abstain from sex and then disbelieve that any gay people are abstaining from sex, because then youre making the problem being gay rather than gay sex.
Officially the Church of England teaches that it isnt a sin to be gay, although they’ve not been good in ensuring consistency in this.
Anybody who wants information about the Alan Griffin safeguarding mess can get all relevant information (to my knowledge) by reading the Coroner’s “Prevention of Further Deaths Report” at
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Alan-Griffin-2021-0243-Church-of-England-Published.pdf
in conjunction with the comments lasting 5-10mins from 10:45mins at Anglican Unscripted 934, viewable by tacking
/watch?v=E83Bk4xMSLw
onto YouTube’s home address. I’d add that, as I don’t understand how a bishop oversees his or her bureaucracy, I’m not sure how responsible Sarah Mullally actually is. That is a further issue which I leave to others.
The Griffin case was subject to an independent review. You can read the report here: https://www.london.anglican.org/articles/fr-alan-griffin-diocese-of-london-publishes-independent-report-and-response/
Worth noting the comment of the reviewer: ‘Whilst it is very clear that improvements to practice are necessary, I acknowledge that significant progress has already been made. In particular, the Diocese has a strong leader in Bishop Sarah and I can see she is driving that positive change. It now requires collective effort across the entire diocese with new and improved practice being ‘lived and owned’ by the whole church community.’
The problem is that both the Coroner’s Prevention Report and the subsequent independent review use the criteria of the world rather than the Bible in looking at Alan Griffin, and neither of them mentions the character of Martin Sergeant.
This is very true. It is regarded as a matter of irrelevance whether AG was what they call ‘sexually active’, and a second matter of irrelevance what ‘HIV status’ was. These are, in reality, highly relevant. Nor do they show their reasoning.
Someone might have spotted this already, but the C of E first ordained women as priests/presbyters on 12 March 1994, not 1993.
Thanks! 1993 was the sign off I think…?
And so Ian ends on his ever hopeful note: “And so, girls and boys, although it’s a mess, in six years’ time our club might just be in charge!”
But probably not. Haven’t evangelicals been here before?- with so-called evangelicals at the helm. What did George Carey’s leadership mean? The debacle over Peter Ball seems to be the lasting menory of those years, besides the vast transformation of the clergy into liberals through women’s ordination and the disappearance of Anglo-Catholicism. And Justin Welby was feted at New Wine at the start, among people who thought his HTB background would lead to a new ascendancy – only to see him push the LLF agenda and lose the trust of the Anglican Communion.
Ian wont like me saying this, but Justin Welby gave unprecedented power and resources to evangelicals, especially HTB, and it seems doubtful that status will ever come round again. Evangelicals need to learn to share in mission and resources (and stop denouncing people with slightly different theology to themselves) if they want any say over the CofE going forward. The days of getting money to subsume middle of the road parishes almost certainly left with welby.
I’ve no idea why you think I won’t like you saying that. I am well aware! But the resources are open to anyone who wants to apply, and has a vision for mission. Anyone.
If you say so! Ive seen many a disgruntled parish priest wondering why all the money and resources are being funneled to HTB plants (often full of nice middle class people!). Maybe parishes arent aware they can ask for a cut of the pie?!
Thanks for this post, Ian, which sets just the right tone.
There was a brief profile of Bishop Sarah on BBC Radio 4 this evening at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b09jqdst
It’s from when she was appointed to London so it’s several years ago. I knew very little about her but she comes over extremely well in it as a person of real faith, integrity and humility, willing to listen and to work with those who disagree with her, including in London where I hear that her generosity of spirit has not always been matched by others. It looks like a hopeful appointment that may help to move us away from the growing tribalism that has so blighted the C of E’s life in recent years. We must pray for her as she faces the negativity that some seem to revel in and that she will continue to be faithful.
On a related point, is there someone who has the ear of GAFCON and the GSFA and is trusted by them who can gently explain that the C of E (in common with many provinces including some who are in GAFCON) has for many years fully accepted the ordained ministry of women as bishops, priests and deacons, whilst making provision for those who cannot accept their ministry? So it’s entirely appropriate for the new Archbishop to be a woman and there’s no reason why either group should protest because of that. Would the Bishop of Ebbsfleet be in a position to act as a bridge builder here?
Well, I try to do that here!
Thanks. I just thought that +Ebbsfleet could speak on behalf of the bishops to help GAFCON and GSFA avoid further misunderstanding and help them adopt a more charitable tone. They both seem to have rushed to judgement without a full grasp of the situation.
Tim, you use the word ‘misunderstanding’, but I cannot see any points that have been misunderstood.
Thank you, Ian, for a very level-headed piece, which I’ve found most encouraging.
Thanks!
A good article. Mullally is primarily a unity candidate, respected by the main wings of the C of E. She will also be more supportive of Parish ministry and leave LLF as a settled decision of Synod, no going back, no moves to same sex marriage in churches either.
Gafcon were never going to get a candidate they wanted acceptable to most Anglicans in the established Church of England anyway. In any case the Anglican Communion plans to rotate its symbolic head amongst Anglican Archbishops globally rather than always being the Archbishop of Canterbury
I think I would agree with you on almost all of that.
Good to see we agree on that Ian
Any woman who claims to be a Christian and fails to speak out for unborn babies being murdered in their thousands by their mothers when asked and who thinks two chaps rogering each other is ever ‘godly’ behaviour is more servant of Satan than holy shepherd in my view. The people pleaser woman is yet another disaster for the c of e sheep. An apostate Sin- loving church overrun by wolves appoints one of their own. It is awful.
Jeannie, you are of course right, and one clear barometer is the questions to which someone disdainfully and uncaringly gives no answer (because their conformist and feminist (?!) thought system has been exposed), e.g. Sam Margrave’s question on the sexualisation of children at Pride and queer theory- and numerous other anomalies exposed by the endless litany of pertinent questions on LLF at recent synods. Although the appointee is as far down the LLF rabbit hole as almost anyone, making this the choice least possible to disentangle, this is especially tragic because one can list several clearly good qualities and perspectives she has. She is a victim of the incredibly harmful ideas that were swirling around in her formative years, and secondly of falling short of the level of thought or independent thought needed to question these (e.g. her wholesale acceptance of the meaningless pro life vs pro choice framework, cynically devised. Life is not something that anyone can be anti, human life is not just any old life, a parent is not just any death-enabler, and the common word ‘choice’ means nothing close to ‘choice to kill off your own offspring’. The figure of the malevolent nurse or nanny is one of the most gruesomely memorable from Gilliam’s Python animations and features on the recent Python stamps. Being a midwife is a colossal calling , one suitable to baby lovers, because of the baby’s infinitely intricate perfection and innocence. It is hard not to ‘get’ that, because humans in their magnificence are the standout reality of our world. Not only to fail to get it but to reverse and ‘trash’ it -no, no, no. And that shows what a watershed moment this is.)
Christopher
Id wager Ive been to far more Pride events than you. As with any public events, it is up to parents to decide what is suitable for their child to see.
Larger Pride events tend to have special family sections with content appropriate for children. Smaller events tend to be family friendly by their very nature
I have never seen a child sexualized at Pride. I am not going to defend the millions of Pride events across the world and say they are all perfect at child protection, but I would make the very clear claim that they have a better record than the church does
Ultimately Pride is a protest movement for equal rights under the law, its not a creche.
So it’s not the slightest concern to you that children are in environments where their sexualisation has greatly magnified chances of happening . That is the sort of person you are, is it? Getting children in sexual spaces both verbally and actually has often seemed to me the main common denominator of the movement of which you are part, whether it be drag queens or primary classifications according to sexual preference, making sure guards are dropped in lyrics of pop songs etc.
What is ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ but proselytising small children into gender dysphoria? What did Jesus say about those cause little ones to go astray?
What are displays of male virtual nakedness in the street other than invitations to gay orgies?
This is nothing to do with ‘equal rights’, it’s about asserting homosexuality in the public square.
And since homosexuality requires heterosexuality to keep it in existence, recruitment is always a priority.
Straight people have been getting children in sexual spaces for centuries.
Two wrongs make a right, so case solved.
Christopher
No, Christopher, I was disagreeing with you that children are in “sexual spaces”. Thats just something you made up.
The sexual revolutionaries are always trying to bring LGBT (an essentially and primarily sexual classification) to remarkably young children, and also drag queens, suggestive visual media, tiktok, and so on. They can’t leave them alone. Remarkably few of them are parents themselves.
Christopher
Puberty happens to remarkably young children. Blame God for that, not gays.
We cant win an we?
If we have adult events you complain that they arent suitable for children
If we create child friendly content you complain that we are targeting children
Meanwhile ignoring the epidemic of kids *actually being abused* in the church of England and most other denominations
What epidemic is that?
Safeguarding is to the fore everywhere.
The Churches rank safer than average among organisations.
What you are voicing is a stereotype put about by unscrupulous and semi-truthful secularists, often in the media, who want to gain territory from Christians in the public space.
When they want to find a large church scandal, they generally have to go back many decades.
Otherwise, awful scandals will of course arise more often depending on how large the organisation is in the first place.
Christopher
Pride events are statistically far safer than churches for children. You need to repent of your arrogance and accept that most gays are not as evil as many church leaders.
In fact all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, even you
What equal rights do gays not have under the law nowadays?
Given that sexuality is a ‘protected characteristic’, you actually have MORE rights today.
I had to reread Penelope’s comment. Penelope’s definition of ‘slightly’ is thousands of percent. Has there been a larger inaccuracy? It is utterly huge.
Peter, can it be true that you still don’t get it? If there are, say, 40 times more ‘straight people’ than there are msm, then the person capita risk, i.e. the risk, is 40 times higher, or 3900 percent higher for msm than for‘straight people’. If that awful figure has actually diminished even to reach that figure, then we both were and are in the realms of the grotesque.
If it’s a protest movement is it not time to end it, at least in western countries, where everyone now has the same rights? The only exception is gay ‘marriage’ in some churches, and I would imagine the vast majority dont care about Christianity? What exactly are they still protesting about?
Yes, of course it’s time to end it. The original purposes of Gay Pride, later Gay & Lesbian Pride, were to protest against anti-gay discrimination, harassment and bullying, to agitate for legal equality, and to give people who were still hiding fearfully in the closet a chance to come out in a supportive ambience.
Those purposes have now long evaporated, at least in the civilised western world, and “Pride”, as it has now become, is merely a carnival which achieves nothing beyond making some extra money for local businesses (hotels, pubs, cafés etc.) and giving various attention seekers and fetishists an opportunity to make public pillocks of themselves. It was time to ring down the curtain more than a decade ago.
We don’t have the same rights here in the US. The UK is better, but theres still human rights issues, such as conversion therapy/exorcism on minors, healthcare provision etc
Healthcare provision? The lifetime cost of drugs to keep someone with HIV alive was 320,000 pounds in the currency at its value 10 years ago. You guys get a better deal in healthcare and free speech than heteros. Do stop whingeing.
Exactly. Disease is a result of not sticking to natural law. Secondly the sums involved are vast. Thirdly. the sums are shared between all of us.
But have I ever heard a word of gratitude for any of that? These sorts of signs are telling.
Not that ALL disease is a result of that. We are presently talking of one that is.
Christopher
Well all those who got HIV or hepatitis through blood transfusions will, no doubt, be edified by your beliefs.
Peter Jermey
When you speak of “conversion therapy”, do you mean the old type, which purports to change people’s sexual orientation, or the new type, which purports to change people’s sex? The former is a big, cruel, time-wasting con. The latter is an even bigger, crueller and more destructive con. Whatever, I will just observe that to ban the former, even for adults who desire of their own free will to dabble in such hocus pocus, while allowing the latter to be practised even on minors, would be an absurdity, and an iniquitous one at that.
With regard to healthcare, I would be interested to know what kind of healthcare is available to the straight majority but is denied to the gay minority, since I am not aware that there is any such. Even assuming – for the sake of argument – that there is, I can only express my astonishment at the stupidity of anyone who seriously imagines that the ludicrous spectacle which “Pride” has become will do anything towards redressing the inequity.
PCD, they would not get HIV by blood transfusions had other people not caused the whole thing by contracting it by going against natural law. Obviously.
And that is, of course, why the HIV blood-transfusion utter tragedy happened precisely when it did and not at another time.
You are now pretending that I am victim blaming when the logic of my first para is so obvious.
Anthony
Youre way out of date. HIV is not a gay disease and there are now drugs to prevent transmission.
William
We can perhaps agree that conversion therapy, whether dressed up as healthcare or exorcism, should be prohibited on people who have no consented and maybe also on people who have not had informed consent?
I can not imagine similar practices being carried out on straight children and young adults with grave consequences and everyone being ok with it. Its a glaring example of discrimination by the government against gay and trans people
Peter Jermey
We can perhaps agree – or then again, perhaps we can’t – that attempts to change people’s sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual (or vice versa, for that matter), and attempts to “transition” people from one sex to the other, are both forms of conversion therapy, that both are futile, and that to call either of those practices “healthcare” is a flagrant abuse of language.
Of course HIV is a gay disease inasmuch as per capita homosexual sexual activity is easily its chief risk factor. But that also applies to the majority of other well known current STDs.
The later development of drugs for the benefit of the self indulgent, at vast expense to everyone else, is scarcely to the credit of the said self indulgent.
Christopher
Firstly, HIV is not a homosexual disease.
Secondly, I am sorry to hear that you don’t think your taxes should go towards treating smokers and alcoholics.
‘HIV is not a homosexual disease’. What do you mean by that?
It is reckoned that, in the US, half of all gay men will be HIV positive by the time they are 50. This is because of the patterns of sexual relationship prevalent amongst men who have sex with men.
Rates of STDs generally are much higher amongst MSM for the same reason.
Best would be to compare that HIV infection-rate with the HIV infection-rate among the 99% of the population who are not MSM (men-who-have-sex-with-men). And then see how many thousands of percent difference you get.
2013 rates of gay-male HIV-contraction in the USA meant that MSM were over 1000 *times* likelier to contract HIV than men who don’t. US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on HIV prevalence in young males – cited by P Ould http://www.peter-ould,net/2013/09/16/some-staggering-statistics
However, abstaining from promiscuity (as opposed to abstaining from homosexual sexual activity) is not the answer, since one story found that 86% of new HIV infections occurred within ‘steady partnerships’: M Xiridou et al., ‘The Contribution of Steady and Casual Partnerships to the Incidence of HIV Infection among Homosexual Men in Amsterdam’ (HIV 17.7 [2003]).
Mid-2018, post the rollout of PrEP at everyone else’s expense, a figure quoted from UNAIDS was that men with ss partners were 28 times more likely than others. Even this is a 2700% rise from one to the other, so you can see how big the other rise was (para 2): 100,000%.
How big do these percentages need to be before HIV/AIDS is allowed to be called a homosexual disease?
It is not that there is a particular correlation of one disease with one demographic group. It is, rather, that that particular demographic group has an intrinsically healthy/lethal core activity which brings much-elevated correlation with a whole string of diseases/epidemics. To describe their health hazards has taken a 1000-page book.
The dodges that people keep trying to pull off even when they have been told about them numerous times are: (1) ignoring ‘per capita’: saying that only a minority of the HIV+ headcount is MSM (not surprising when 99% of people are not MSM); (2) say – the media never told me that (true – they didn’t – you know what they are like: they don’t refer to scientific studies’ statistical conclusions at all, and they circularly impose an Overton Window that hides very large truths).
‘unhealthy/lethal’ not ‘healthy/lethal’
William
I oppose conversion therapy for both gay and trans people. I don’t see any contradiction in that. It doesn’t work, it offers desperate people false hope and it fails to acknowledge the reality that some of us have to live with.
It justifies the man in our town who threatened to drown me because I could have chosen not to be gay. If I didn’t choose to be gay then he loses his justification in wanting me dead.
Ian
I mean that HIV is more easily transmitted during risky sex practices. The virus does not discriminate between the orientation of those engaged in such.
Lesbians are unlikely to contract HIV through sex with same-sex partners. Gay men are statistically slightly more likely to contract HIV because of risky sexual intimacy, though I understand that this is changing – either because straight couples are sexually more ‘adventurous’ or more promiscuous.
Re: HIV
In the UK, it now seems to be the case that new cases of HIV amongst straight people now outnumber new cases amongst MSM – probably because MSM are more likely to take preventative meds. The rate is obviously still higher for MSM, but the totals are about equal.
I had to reread Penelope’s comment. Penelope’s definition of ‘slightly’ is thousands of percent. You may look far but will scarcely find a more gigantic inaccuracy, which she will need to retract.
Christopher
I refer you to Pete’s comment. No need for me to retract. Except that it’s now the rates in straight men which are slightly higher.
Ian
I know a lot of gay men in the US who are 50 or approaching 50. Very few have HIV.
Whoever told you it was half was lying to you.
Its interesting I brought up healthcare provision as something that gay people still face discrimination for – I wasn’t thinking about HIV. It shows how little the general population knows about gay people that thats what immediately springs to mind.
My personal problem is that when I access healthcare I either feel like Im talking Martian when trying to talk about gay specific things or that im an exciting specimen for the provider practice their spiel on. Most of the gay people I talk to really want a GP who is gay or at least understands gay people
Drag Queens are usually gay men, not trans people
‘Drag queens’ doing story time in libraries are homosexual men want to introduce homosexuality to small children. “Transgenders” are homosexuals who wish they were the other sex. It’s all a spectrum of dysphoria and confusion.
Transgenderism is largely a male homosexual phenomenon increasingly linked to extreme violence.
Two of the school murder attacks in America were by trans men.
The murder of Charlie Kirk was by a homosexual man, probably in collaboration with his trans boyfriend,
The attempted murder of Judge Kavanagh was by a deranged trans man.
James Thomson
DQSH isnt actually about homosexuality per se (I have never been to one so I cannot be 100% sure). It’s about inclusivity and treating people who are different from you well.
It’s only tangentially connected to Pride and I’m not really sure what Pride has to do with the Archbishop of Canterbury
“Transgenders” aren’t a thing. Trans people come in gay, straight, female, male.
Im only aware of one school shooting by a trans woman. We are suffering an epidemic of public shootings, including school shootings. There are around 300 school shootings each year and 450 mass shootings each year. My kids school is canceled several times a year due to threats about this. The vast vast majority of these shootings are carried out by young straight white adult men with a long term interest in firearms. Not all, but pretty close to all.
Charlie Kirk’s killer was a young cis straight white adult male with a long term interest in firearms.
Kavanaugh’s would be killer was a trans woman.
One of the people who tried to murder Trump was an older cis straight white man. The other was a young cis straight white adult man with a long term interest in firearms.
What statistics are those?
Naturally if ‘Pride’ loosens children’s entire boundaries, the future ramifications are incalculable for every child.
Christopher
Pride is a protest movement for LGBT equality. Kids are often welcome to Pride events if their parents want to bring them, but the goal isnt to loosen children, whatever that means?!
The goal is to be visible and to shame the government into action. Its been phenomenally successful. When Pride started gay people were pseudo criminals, now we can gave relationships, families and even get married. Service providers cant refuse to serve us and we can openly work in almost any job.
But as you can see above, I wasn’t talking about what the goal or intent was. Instead, I was talking about what the inevitable reality and outcome will be.
Christopher
Are there any publicly known cases of kids being sexually abused at Pride events? I dont really know of any? You are damning Pride for a hypothetical while ignoring the fact that churches in lots of denominations, including the CofE, have been engaged in real life child sexual abuse
By loosening their boundaries, with adult approval which has a normalising effect, their entire life is changed, with every single ramification of those loosened boundaries, and then the ramifications of the ramifications. Sometimes things are so big that people don’t see them.
She is Archbishop of the established church of a nation where same sex marriage is legal as is abortion. People in England do not want their established church to spread homophobia nor do they want it to ban abortion again, in any case Mullally has backed marriage remaining reserved for heterosexual couples and sees abortion as a last resort and opposes euthanasia
Simon thinks all ‘people in England’ are the same as each other?
Or else some are more equal than others.
People with dead consciences may not accord any value to baby murder victims- that is an indication of just how bad it is to be a person of dead conscience. It does not escape notice that they high handedly choose life for their own privileged selves. The worst conceivable example of two tiers.
What happened when parliament recently decriminalised post birth ‘abortion’was this-
1. The C of E had to rush around hastily to avoid giving the impression they had no particular interest in something so minor.
2. They issued an anonymous statement from Church House, utterly conformist to the latest transient legal fashion, saying that someone who kills their baby after his or her birth ought not to be classified as a criminal.
3. Many Christians read this with sheer horror, since not only did this spokesperson not speak for them but they voiced something as distressing as it is possible to be.
4. I went round to Church House, in whose name the statement had been issued -on the basis of no vote or evidence whatever- and asked who had made it. And, secondly, why they were hiding so suspiciously behind anonymity.
5. Church House did not deign to answer. However, the veil of anonymity was lifted- only when it could not avoid being lifted and not earlier- at July Synod.
6. Anon was found to be Sarah Mullally. Than whom a more representative voice on post birth ‘abortion’ could have been found. A question to this effect was posed and answered, because of the characteristic and suspicious secrecy and Orwellian claim to speak for those for whom one is absolutely not speaking, who (being moral) are held in disdain. It is salutary to think that in my brief lifetime such an individual would not have been admitted even to the Mothers’ Union. The spirit of true motherhood is somehow being painted as an enemy and is being crushed.
7. This stance means that the individual cares little or nothing for babies bludgeoned to death at birth (or pulled limb from limb earlier). This does not reach the level of rating as a crime. But good people do care, care a lot, and find such deadness of feeling absolutely terrifying.
8. If one of those parents who struck their new baby with a fatal blunt instrument, or whatever, did so because they wanted to go clubbing instead, or similar, in SM’s system of values that wish should be supported s and the killed baby’s life not supported.
Surely that is enough to show how cataclysmically wrong and immoral.
Mullally’s support for abortion is hideous, but also totally lacking in any sense of theological grounding.
But that’s the C of E bishops today for you. Middle managers repeating what they read in The Guardian.
Post birth abortion has not been decriminalised! Perhaps you should do some research Christopher.
?
post birth killers ARE now for the first time decriminalised, some of them, specifically mothers.
Christopher – I think the change in the UK law was to decriminalise women who carry out late abortions themselves, such as taking abortion pills very late in the pregnancy. But it doesnt apply to a woman killing a live baby once born. That is still criminal.
Unless you can point to a source showing otherwise?
Yes, Christopher, we’re still waiting for your source on the legalisation of killing babies post birth.
There are fine lines here. What if they wanted to kill during the birth process?
Or do so later and pretend it had been earlier?
If they are the only person present, then they can pretend this.
So you can provide precise evidence for your claim about it being decriminalised can you Christopher? And statistics about it actually happening?
Read my earlier comment. Post birth would not be worse than pre anyway, but how to define the difference when (a) birth is a process, (b) visible babies are easier to ‘despatch’ than invisible, (c) all dead babies are born, (d) we are talking split seconds of difference?
Science shows that difference between a fetus and a human child is that prior to birth the fetus is a thing but when it enters the birth canal it magically becomes a human being, so it’s all right to kill a thing but not so good to kill a human being – at least if you’re the birthing person. Unless it’s not very healthy or wanted, when it becomes a thing again. It’s also moral to kill the thing after 24 weeks if you’re the birthing person but not if you’re a doctor.
I think that’s how the science works, anyway.
It’s a bit like Gender Science: you are what you think you are.
Idealism has triumphed. Hegel will be pleased.
Christopher you are a master at avoiding questions.
Where is your evidence that this is happening?
Where is your evidence that it is decriminalised?
And if you think birth can take a split second you clearly haven’t witnessed a birth
In the USA, at least, a Bill banning surgeons from sawing off the head of a live baby that is protruding from the mother’s vulva (in an induced or natural birth) was passed in 2003 (the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act). President Clinton had vetoed similar bills passed by Congress in December 1995 and October 1997, so this barbaric practice was lawful in at least some States of the USA until 2003.
Christopher
You are dissembling because it’s not legal. You either made an error or you lied. Asserting that things ‘may’ happen (for which, again, you offer no evidence) is a red herring. Even if it did happen it would be illegal.
Birth takes a while? Who knew? But how is that the point? The point, as has already been said, is a separate one: that it is impossible to draw a clear line between its having begun and its being about to begin.
Still zero evidence for your claims Christopher. Still zero evidence….
Andrew Godsall:
As you know, Science has shown a fetus becomes a human being magically in the birth canal. Before that it is not human but a thing and a mother can kill it and that’s OK now under British law.
You do understand the science of this, don’t you, because Penelope does.
Science has indeed ‘shown’ that BUT what possible alternative ever was there? It would not occur to one to seek out an alternative. Answers on a postcard.
James T, people do continue under the total delusion that there is a substantive difference between visible baby and out-of-sight-out-of-mind baby; for this we call them to account once and for all.
The present topic, however, is different; whether legality of killing your own child right up till term (what they call 40 weeks but in reality is more like 38) includes post-birth killing or not. (There are so many grey areas. A baby’s head or hand can poke out, and then return back again. Etc..) It would not make a moral difference if it did, but it is still an important definitional question.
Christopher
Still crickets ….
The detail of your analysis, and its attention to substance, is Nobel level.
And your total lack of any evidence or statistics isn’t even O level standard Christopher.
Ah, but observe the reasoning. I have so far found about 4 or 5 ways in which pre- is ambiguous with post-. You are desperately trying to pretend that the 4 or 5 is in fact zero. Not likely.
Christopher you really are quite dim about this evidence stuff it seems.
I observe your circular reasoning, yes. It’s pre O level stuff. You have been asked, repeatedly
Where is your evidence that this is happening?
Where is your evidence that it is decriminalised?
You can’t produce evidence for either
Unless there is a clear line between pre-birth and birth (which is the fiction which you are putting about) then a law that allows the mother to be guiltless in killing up till full term will undoubtedly involve some ambiguous or post-term cases. Even entirely truthful mothers (who are not 100% of mothers) can point at the fact that some points on the timeline are ambiguous as between prebirth and birth.
So long as you pretend there is no definitional question around ‘prebirth’/’postbirth’, when in reality 4-5 factors each produce a definitional question, then you will think you are speaking meaningfully. Anything is possible if you simply ignore central questions.
Christopher
I wasn’t analysing anything. I have been asking, repeatedly, where is your evidence that post-birth abortion has been decriminalised. You claimed it had. I am merely asking for the details of the Act and its date.
Abortion itself is (not surprisingly) a criminal act in the UK.
So whence all the talk of being decriminalised?
Answer: The decriminalisation in question is specifically of mothers involved in this ‘late-term’ criminal act (it is a criminal act because others would be prosecuted, just not the mothers).
And just like millions of killings that actually break the act are treated as non criminal, and have been since 1968, likewise full term killings will be, with regard to the mother. People do not seriously consider doing things any other way. The law does not come into it.
If you think the wording of acts has anything to do with the reality (and ‘interpretation’ will always be pleaded in defiance of the obvious meaning), then you know very well that although 100% of abortions have been against morality, 90%+ have even been against the ‘law’. Why is that? Because the majority appeal (in advance, without knowledge) to likely deterioration of *mental* health – but in the real world mother’s mental health is (naturally) invariably clearly averagely better, over a large sample, if she has not been involved in killing her child than if she has, and few mothers who have given birth say: I wish my child were not alive. Birth provides bonding too. And (1 Tim) a new sense of awe.
Definitionally, full-term / ”40 weeks” is the same thing as the point of birth – good luck in distinguishing between them. And the point of birth is not a point but a period of time. But if a blind eye has always been turned (gruesomely) on so large a scale, it will scarcely fail to be turned on a small scale.
Anthony
Its not, and never was, legal to kill babies in the US. The bills you are talking about are highly political bills designed to trap opponents into voting for baby murder. They are not about criminalizing otherwise legal behavior.
Legal makes it moral , right?
Did you know that laws are made by the haves (who guard their own lives) taking a few steps (whether or not they have any morality or have listened to any debate) in order to vote against the have nots (whom they think they have the right to deprive of life itself, of everything)?
Peter Jermey,
Was it or was it not lawful in some states of the USA before the passage of that Bill to hold viable babies being born just inside their mother and kill them? Yes or No, don’t be bashful.
Christopher
That’s a great many words to obscure the fact that you claimed that post birth abortion had been legalised
For which you still can’t provide any evidence.
Saying it happens or that it may happen doesn’t make it legal. I may shoplift because I’m desperate for a chocolate bar; that doesn’t make it legal.
Anthony
I dont know what “hold them in their mother means”?
In most states abortion is legal, baby killing is not.
In some states abortion is highly restricted and baby killing is not legal there either.
Peter Jermey,
To clarify my question: Was it or was it not lawful in some states of the USA before the passage of that Bill to delay viable babies from being born while they were still just inside their mother, and kill them? Include a Yes or No, please.
98 percent of ‘abortions’ are what people term technically illegal but they still happen within the law. How much more so when mum is the only witness?
Anthony
I cant answer yes or no because I don’t even understand what you are talking about.
How do you delay giving birth and why would you want to?
I believe you understand the question perfectly well.
Anthony
Im not a woman or a doctor. I wasn’t aware you could delay birth. From my perspective you are inventing something that doesn’t exist and then asking me to apologize for it being legal, even though Ive never heard of this happening and actually I don’t think its even possible
Im happy to engage in good faith if you will, but youre just damning me without engaging at this point.
I even told you how the birth can be delayed for long enough to kill the child, by pushing rather than pulling it. That was what I meant by holding it inside its mother, but you managed to find a way to misunderstand me rather than make an effort to see what I meant.
The Church House anon / Sarah Mullally statements avoided mentioning full term, even though that change was the occasion for the vote and the response to it. This also meant that they avoided having to deal with the ambiguity as between full-term (which is not a lengthless point in time) and post-birth. Not that post-birth is morally worse than pre-birth; but *they* probably thought it was.
Christopher
I don’t understand why you would want to kill a baby after its born?
Typically people use abortions either to not have an unwanted baby -and this is usually as early as they can (women arent going to want to delay getting this done)- or because there are serious health implications.
In neither of these situations is there any point in killing a newborn baby. Thats just a sick fantasy of yours
Do not dare to say I or anyone’wants’ to kill a baby when we spend our lives campaigning against it. How can I understand such words, and the words ‘sick fantasy’ as other than deliberately mendacious, shallow and provocative? But such even such words are not worse than the other word you used, ‘unwanted’.
You cannot possibly be that lacking in awe. It merely fulfils the triviality stereotype.
Christopher
You didnt answer the question. Again.
I would not dream of taking seriously the questions of someone who says something they themselves know to be very false as well as ugly- that an anti abortion campaigner ‘wants’ to kill babies, and that it is their ‘fantasy’ to do so. You should be ashamed.
Chris- I literally don’t know what you are talking about.
I am talking about the inaccurate words that you yourself used, and you know it. Scroll back and see.
Christopher
Im just asking YOU why YOU think anyone would want to kill a newborn baby? – if the parents dont want it then it can just be put up for adoption
Him or her, not it.
That is a separate question. We don’t need to know ‘why’, only ‘that’. If it happens, there are reasons why; but you make a fatal error by treating a nontheoretical matter on which there are figures as though it were a theoretical a priori matter. Separately, why would we be able to think ourselves into other people’s shoes at all, let alone people in very different circumstances from our own?
Christopher has been asked for the figures of new born babies being killed several times in this thread. He has not produced this evidence and always evades the question with many words. No doubt he will again….
I opposed that amendment but medical professionals who abort babies after 24 weeks can still be prosecuted unless the life of the mother was in danger. Even if the mother can’t
Gosh, this preoccupation with ‘gay sex’ is tiresome and unedifying.
Indeed so Penny. The comments from Jeannie and Christopher show such little self awareness and then Christopher makes the supremely ironic comment that Sarah “is a victim of the incredibly harmful ideas that were swirling around in her formative years,”.
Of course he will come back with a ten point verbose list of pseudo intellectual and pseudo academic reasons that he is allowed to say this, followed by the usual statistics about what happens when, as Jeannie puts it “two chaps roger(ing) each other”.
It’s teenage playground commentary.
Yes, ‘one night stands’ and abortion are pretty trivial matters, aren’t they. Only theological teenagers like St Paul would be worried about these trifles.
The younger and more immature people are, the better their debating powers, right?
Right?
Not usually, no Christopher. So it’s hard to understand why you debate in that manner and with that level of understanding.
As has been said before, there is no point wasting time with those who try (ironically) to mock the better qualified.
Yet this is an area in which you are not better qualified. Your knowledge of the same sex relationships of people in the CofE seems to be zero. You don’t have any statistics. And you say it’s an unpleasant subject area. And your comments are suitable for a teenage playground.
My daughters are teenagers and their school (unlike primaries) does not have a playground.
A lot of people are telling themselves very different and incompatible stories about what Sarah Mullaly will now do.
That may be inevitable, but the truth is her success or failure will be determined by her convictions and her competence. The evidence in regard to these two factors is mixed.
You need to be heroically optimistic to think she is going to be able to meet the demands of the role.
Yes, you do. She won’t. But as I say elsewhere, we don’t need a saviour. A quiet uneventful six years will be just fine.
Ian,
I am not implying this is true of you, but there is certain insouciance to the general sense that the Anglican Communion perspective does not need to detain us,
There is a likelihood that the Communion will declare the Church of England to be an apostate church in March of next year.
I very much doubt that a quiet few years lie ahead.
The North American, New Zealand, Scottish, Welsh and South African and Irish Anglican churches won’t. The Nigerian Anglican church might but then homosexuality is still illegal there and they are not the most liberal in their views of womens roles either so not really relevant to our established English church. Indeed head of the Anglican communion is likely to be rotated amongst Archbishops of Anglican provinces anyway
Oh but surely we do need a (small s) saviour. I briefly dared to imagine how things would change with Archbishop Ian Paul for example at the helm, taking no prisoners and changing course, exposing and ejecting heresy and sacking wolves and goats left right and centre. Restoring Christ and holiness to the Church. A grown up at last, disciplining and re-educating the spiritually corrupted kids. Then I woke up to this apostate leaking galley to Hell and nothing has changed …except the women-wary are alienated now as well.
But this is what always happens. The most outstanding Christians get overlooked in favour of members of the elite who can be relied on to conform to secular norms (as Christians,no less!). Among the most outstanding UK Anglican Christians of our generation -most of whom are rightly happy to continue in their own ministries- have been the Chadwicks, the Wrights, Andrea Williams, Alister McGrath, Oliver O’Donovan, Christopher Ash, Richard Bauckham, Stott, Green, Dudley-Smith, Baughen and Reid, and so on. Only Williams among the more recent archbishops is in that league, if we ignore substantial blind spots.
Cross denominational appeal is always a giveaway of substance.
And J John and Nicky Gumbel.
I am not sure how easy it is for Archbishops to sack wolves and goats left, right and centre.
If such wolves and goats have contracts of employment then employment law must be followed. If they are employed in a diocese other than Canterbury, the Archbishop can do little more than exhort the Diocesan to sack them. Said Diocesan will doubtless take advice from employment lawyers/ HR specialists.
If the wolf/goat is an office holder rather than an employee, the Archbishop may have rather more scope. However, when Graham Dow sacked a priest- in-charge when he was Bishop of Carlisle, he appealed to the Archbishop of York, and a protracted hearing in a York church ensued. Bishop Dow was also greeted by protesters in his travels round the diocese.
I wish I shared your confidence, Ian.
Six years ago, the Tories roared to an 80 seat majority under Boris Johnson (probably the biggest charlatan in recent British political history).
Now they’re looking at extinction.
A lot can happen in less than six years – especially when so many parishes are close to closing and so many clergy are close to retiring without any replacements in sight.
I’m reminded of that dialogue somewhere in Hemingway:
– How did you go bankrupt, Jack?
– Very slowly at first, and then suddenly.
James, my confidence is in the Church on the ground. By and large, evangelical churches are growing. By and large, liberal ones are shrinking. The C of E is changing shape very quickly. It is not about bishops as such.
I hope you are right, Ian, but the capacity of bidhops to obstruct and undermine is grest. Thst is why evangelicals need to pull out of liberal dioceses and create a National Province – or what Vaughan Roberts calls OOO – Orthodox Ordinary Oversight.
Testing … as a comment of mine didn’t post earlier.
One thing that most of us seem agreed on is that the new Archbishop has not a few notable strengths. Genuine, friendly and pleasant, grounded, effective, humble, someone who knows the difference that Jesus makes. And also a catastrophic dupe of the sexual revolution.
There has been comment on the new Archbishop’s safeguarding record. Such comment conveniently ignores the following-
1. London is a diocese far more heavily populated than most. So what are the odds?
2. It is obviously more urban than most.
3. It has a greater concentration of leaders that take the sexual revolution for granted.
4. All safeguarding cases are can’t win, devil vs deep blue sea cases.
5. Complainants conveniently omit to mention that fundamental point.
6. Some cases were inherited by her.
7. She was not inactive in office, at all.
8. The silly media and their consumers present things as though the top person should personally do everything and should be blamed if they do not.
9. They weaponise a connection at one remove with abuse cases as though leaders were not connected at one remove with trillions of things. Thus they can get leader and abuse in the same headline, with implications for perception, and then place a totally unwarranted disclaimer at the end saying there is no suggestion the leader was directly involved in said abuse. You don’t say.
10. They also equate allegation with crime. Which is exactly the same problem that the highlighted case had.
If she is refusing to be interviewed by Channel 4, or were to refuse to be interviewed by the heads I win tails you lose Laura Kuenssberg, good for her. Finally a Bishop, Dover, called the media directly to account in a recent interview. What they don’t like, they leave on the cutting room floor. And things that they typically don’t like include firstly deviations from that same Overton Window that they themselves imposed, and secondly ever mentioning at all the precise results of scientific or statistical studies.
Christopher seeing as you are so good with the statistics and have completed all the studies I wonder if you could therefore tell us:
1. How many CofE clergy are of same sex orientation
2. How many CofE clergy of same sex orientation are sexually active
3. How many CofE clergy are in permanent same sex partnerships I.e civil partnerships
4. How many of those CofE clergy in same sex partnerships practice anal sex regularly
5, How many married heterosexual CofE clergy, male and female, practice anal sex
6. How many active lay people in the CofE are of same sex orientation
7. How many active lay people in the CofE of same sex orientation are sexually active
8. How many active lay people in the CofE of same sex orientation practice anal sex
9 How many heterosexual active lay people in the CofE practice anal sex
10. How many CofE clergy have sex before they are married
There we are. Ten straightforward statistical questions that will help us discern the precision behind your claims and concerns.
Everything in the world is susceptible of statistical analysis.
Your reasoning is that someone who has studied statistical conclusions more than average is obligated to know statistics about all the other million topics as well.
Particularly on matters that are so private there can be no statistics on them.
But you know all this already, since it is not the first time this sort of list has been resurrected and commented upon.
No, that isn’t my reasoning at all Christopher. My reasoning is that you comment a great deal on what may or may not be permissible for clergy or lay people in the CofE to do. And you put great store by statistics, and precision. But when it comes to actual facts about what happens in reality in the CofE you don’t have a single statistic, let alone a precise one.
What facetious questions. It is obvious, and known to you, that most of the questions are too private to get data on and/or too vague (who counts as active lay and who does not?). That leaves no.3 only. I gather that the policy is not to gather such statistics, but any of us can glean that 20-25 was supposedly the figure in 2017. And the subject matter is unpleasant.
Vague? There is nothing vague about the questions whatsoever. They are quite clear and precise.
You begin by saying that ‘Everything in the world is susceptible of statistical analysis’ and then conclude by saying that some things are private so can’t be analysed.
The conclusion is obvious: if the matter is private stop going on about it!
But many extremely harmful things are private. You think there is a law whereby extremely harmful things cannot possibly be private? The more harmful things are, the more they are likely to be done secretively or under cover. (What you have whispered in private rooms will be shouted from the rooftops – is the Christian way of looking at it.)
You think that by acting shiftily in secret, people make their actions moral thereby?
Secret and private are quite different things and you really ought to know the difference.
If the Kinsey and Masters and Johnson were able to study sexual behaviour then it’s clearly possible. The questions I have asked are relevant and precise.
This exchange, again, seems to me to be fruitless. Worth taking offline?
Andrew forgot to ask how many C of E bishops are in same-sex relationships.
I know of three, including a woman suffragan bishop who lives with her partner but isn’t in a civil partnership.
The Dean of Canterbury is also in a civil partnership, so Sarah, Rose and David will be quite a team.
Since Canterbury Cathedral is currently relying on doubling up as a disco for the over 50s to bring in the money, I hope they have some good dance routines lined up. The Lambeth Walk, anyone?
Christopher
You cant claim to be an organization that cares about morality and then also lie to cover up for child sex abusers. Its that simple.
IDK about Mullallys involvement or lack thereof. It seemed to me that she was actually trying to get people to stop lying.
This Appointment means precisely nothing – you are going to have six years of Institutional Anarchy – a ‘Wild West’ scenario where anyone in ordained ministry in the Church of England proceeds to do exactly whatever they feel like with no meaningful central governance and someone who agrees with everyone even though they have irreconcilable disagreements with each other – it is going to be a time of ‘fiefdoms’ and no controls – essentially it will lead to an accelerated collapse of coherent ministry with open infighting, contradiction, confusion and internicene exchanges.
I am not sure why you are claiming that. Has that happened in London Diocese?
What has happened in London Diocese? I don’t have great details but I do know that some of the biggest churches have opted for Alternative Episcopal Oversight. We will see more of this – although the Bishop of Ebbsfleet says he has an impossible workload now’
Evangelicals will press on and establish opt outs and an Orthodox Ordinary Oversight.
It won’t be a quiet six years, Ian.
“I strongly suspect that Sarah’s time will be marked by very little dramatic happening—which we could do with”.
So, as congregations continue to dwindle, the ratio of (expensive) dioceses to worshippers will increase. For ages, I have been saying that, if parishes can merge, so can dioceses.
Keep all the suffragans but save on the huge cost of 42 diocesan bishops and administrative centres. Obviously, you wrote about this recently, so I’m surprised you’re happy to keep the status quo.
Or are you assuming the turkeys will have the power to stop her celebrating Christmas?
Yes, Ian does rather seem to hope against experience that if the Church of England keeps on doing the wrong thing, we will somehow muddle through safe on the other side of the Jordan. Instead of dying in the wilderness.
James, you didn’t read my article last week about the demographic crisis then?
I did and I agree with your analysis. I don’t see how this can lead to “six quiet years”.
I think thingd a bit parallel to thr deepening mess in Britidh politics: thd Government is deeply unpopular but has a huge majority and no elections are set for four years. But we sense huge dissatisfaction that could easily boil over. The C of E doesn’t do riots. But we could see a lot of fissures and bishops trying to impose themselves on the unwilling.
The Church of England has £8 billion in assets and investments and is one of the largest landlords in the UK. Enough to keep it goung for generations to come
Dave, did you read my piece last week arguing that, er, dioceses should merge?
Yes, but in this article you advocate no changes for six years.
There will be big changes, conceivably, because of the GAFCON meeting in March around the time of the enthronement.
The chances of Feb synod tying things up satisfactorily have been overstated IMHO.
The number of Suffragen Bishops could also be halved with the savings from that and diocesan mergers put into parishes
What ‘The Critic’ says about ‘The Lanyard Class Archbishop’:
“If I were to try to imagine a candidate for the new Archbishop of Canterbury who is the furthest away from this [what the Church needs for its revival], the worst and least suitable replacement for Welby possible, I would probably pick someone along the following lines. They’d be a former state bureaucrat who made an entire career out of the sort of bland HR department-inspired managerialism that is destroying the church, probably a senior civil servant in (say) the NHS. They’d be on record as having every tick-box lazy progressive political and theological opinion imaginable. They would, of course, have lived and worked in London for most of their life and be a thoroughgoing metropolitan. They would have no record of any serious theological or scholarly work, but be thoroughly intellectually mediocre.
Whoops, I just described the person announced this morning as the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally.”
Was that written before or after the event?
I am also a pompous man who cares not a jot about how the average English citizen perceives its established church. After years of male sex abuse cases in the church a female Archbishop was needed and Mullally seems a woman of kindness and compassion, something much needed at the top of the Church of England
The full piece from ‘The Critic’: the awful echoes of Justin Welby’s attempt to make Paula Vennells the Bishop of London and state managerialism as a substitute for the Church of Christ holding out the word of life to an unbelieving Britain:
https://thecritic.co.uk/the-lanyard-class-archbishop/
Lee Gatiss and Vaughan Roberts on the deepening mess the Church of England is getting into:
Lee Gatiss on safeguarding in the Diocese of London and the suicide of Fr Allan Griffin and the Coroner’s Report on this;
the problems for the Bishop of Ebbsfleet; and
the movement to form a De Facto Third Province for evangelicals: Vaughan Roberts reports at 29 minutes in what has happened this week:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8FaRknute0
Is the CoE becoming an irrelance?
Is there really going to be a six year hiatus?
I think the author of this piece, has not correctly ‘read the room’ with the CoE’s navel gazing it’s dominating superstructure and the hope expressed was a false one not based on the substance evidence of not only LLF, but of the history of its theological declension ubsumed by extant culture.
It is wondered how the CoE in reflective practice, applies the ‘lettere to the churches’ in the book of Revelation.
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/sarah-mullally-archbishop-canterbury/
Interesting, Geoff, that you think Mark Thompson “has not correctly ‘read the room’”. Or are you not talking about him?
Yes Bruce, Mark Thompson, the author of the linked article.
The C of E is established church of England not a fundamentalist sect
There are other alternatives. You have repeated an unconsidered cliche, which is not to your credit.
Of the two options you mention in your false binary, the one that you much prefer is facile social conformity. Social conformity takes no brains , and those who follows that passive path will correlate with the less brainy.
You don’t define ‘fundamentalist’, but it is clear that Jesus, the apostles and the saints are fundamentalist by your understanding. Who needs them when we have your better advice, with its amazing track record?
I won’t comment on CofE affairs in this case. There are so many obvious challenges–aging, dearth of baptisms, attendance decline that seems irreversible, glut of properties–no new ABC can do much about that.
“I think Communion matters will remain on ice (in every sense) during her term.”
This is surely correct for her and for the CofE.
“Communion matters” will of course be of first-rank importance for, well, the Communion at large. This appointment “puts on ice” whatever role the ABC might think to have in the larger communion, and that has been evolving for a decade now.
I am far more interested in how the GSFA and others–in fact at Welby’s own urging–begin to understand God’s will for the Communion quite apart from any role once played by the See of Canterbury.
Thanks Chris. Did you see my other piece on those challenges?
Yes. My comment really only pertains to the new Anglican Communion reality coming into form.
The ABC appointment is no longer very relevant to that.
Yes, that’s the truth. Anglicanism is now primarily a sub-Saharan African phenomenon with some lively branches in Southeast Asia and Sydney.
Gafcon and the GSFA will hold their conferences and chart their own way.
Justin Welby delivered the coup de grace to the old Anglican Communion, after years of maundering.
The only question is whether evangelicals in Britain will be able to connect with them and maintain a lively fellowship.
Rubbish only the Church of Nigeria has more members than the Church of England in global Anglicanism. The Anglican communion should and likely will just rotate its leadership amongst Archbishops from each Anglican province rather than always having the Archbishop of Canterbury as its head
Simon,
Wake up and smell the coffee. The C of E gets about 600,000 people a week to its services. Maybe 2% of England’s population attends once or more a month. A third of these are over 70. Many of these dear folk will be dead in six years.
The Anglican Communion is dead, a new communion has arisen in the Global South. You may not like this, but that’s the fact. The policies you urge have led to this death.
So still a fair number worship in C of E churches, not to mention those who get married or baptised or have funerals in C of E churches who aren’t regular worshippers. Plus all the paying tourists who visit our great English cathedrals.
The Anglican communion by contrast is only a very loose relationship anyway of global churches which use services based around the BCP tradition and which are Catholic but Reformed. The Archbishop of Canterbury was only ever its symbolic head with no actual power outside England. If having a woman as Archbishop of Canterbury is so devastating for Gafcon then they are welcome to leave. Not does the established Church of England need to be dictated to by the Church of Nigeria not to have prayers for same sex couples, given same sex marriage is legal in the UK but homosexuality is illegal in Nigeria
So Simon keeps whistling past the graveyard.
By 2031 a THIRD of those in C of E parishes will no longer be with us.
But there will still be 13,000 buildings to look after.
Maybe some of these will become mosques.
Simon still doesn’t get the point.
So still two thirds will, not including those who will attend those churches for baptisms, weddings and funerals. In rural areas of course many Roman Catholics and non Anglican evangelicals attend the village C of E church too as there is no church of their denomination in the village.
Church law is also clear that even closed churches cannot become Mosques, only houses, flats, galleries, libraries, community centres, cafes etc
No Archbishop of Canterbury has ever been in a position to do the things that the GSFA want them to do. The Archbishop does not have authority even within the CofE to impose or prevent same sex marriage or change the doctrine of marriage, or impose the ordination of women or prevent it. The GSFA seem to show little understanding of how the authority of the Archbishop works.
If Provinces of the GSFA wish to belong or not belong to the Anglican Communion it is up to their governing bodies to decide that. If they have Primates who simply want to dictate what the Province does, then that seems to fundamentally undermine what it is to be Anglican. We don’t have the same structure that Roman Catholics have. Authority in the AC is not of that sort. Which of course begs the question of whether the majority of lay people in the GSFA actually think the same as the Primates who have been so vocal about it. Plus it is clear that at least some Primates from the Global South have warmly welcomed +Sarah’s nomination.
Who said they did? They have begun resolutely to view the CofE as dying and the ABC as irrelevant. For all the obvious reasons.
As for the Provinces of the Anglican Communion. It surely is past time for a member of the CofE to dream they have sort of opinion that matters, re “what it means to be Anglican.” That ship has sailed. Their job is to see if there is a way to keep the Church of England from dying in ten years, and now to deal with factions that will continue to fester.
“The Provinces of the GSFA” do not wish (or not) to belong to the Anglican Communion. They already do, de facto. The entire idea of an ABC having some sort of say in the matter is now otiose. Welby said as much. He was right and it was better to admit it, given the facts on the ground.
The only real question is how the truly large and growing provinces–Uganda, Nigeria, Kenya, SE Asia, South Sudan–and their friends in Tanzania, Egypt, et al–organize themselves as the Anglican Communion.
God bless the new appointment and God bless the Church of England as it seeks to find it way.
Christopher you ignore the points I make, and don’t seek to address those issues, but that isn’t unusual.
The Archbishop of Canterbury does not have the kind of power you ascribe to them, and never has had.
Any and every member of the Anglican Communion has a right to an opinion about the matter. Lay or ordained. Priest or bishop. Male or female. Global South or Global North. Such is part of what it means to be an Anglican.
“The Archbishop of Canterbury does not have the kind of power you ascribe to them, and never has had.”
Speaking of not hearing: can you read my note again?
The ABC had the power to gather, to call for Lambeth conferences, to tailor the list of invitees, to call for Primates meetings, to chair ACC meetings etc.
Those things are now otiose. To repeat myself.
Well clearly the Church of England is still a member of the Anglican Communion and the Archbishop has no authority to change that fact. No one is denying that the GSFA are also Anglicans are they? And it’s not at all evident that the Archbishop of Canterbury – whoever they are – isn’t able to make invites to Primates meetings etc. I haven’t heard about any changes in the Instruments of Communion. Have you Chris?
But let me get this straight. We are in a desperate situation in terms of global terror and war. But some Anglicans in the Global South think that the most crucial issue at this time is whether people of the same sex who are in a faithful relationship might be intimate? That is the only thing that they want to base their decision about church membership on?
Just out of respectful curiosity, who are you? I’ve meant to ask over the years.
I have ascribed none of things to the ABC you rattle on about. Where did you get this idea?
To repeat.
“The ABC had the power to gather, to call for Lambeth conferences, to tailor the list of invitees, to call for Primates meetings, to chair ACC meetings etc.”
C’est tout.
And as many note here, and as Welby acknowledged, those days are over.
Whatever it is that you do, I’d suggest putting your hand to the plow to see that the Church of England doesn’t age itself out of existence.
Have a good day.
The thing is to interact with the questions and debate Christopher. Interesting that you have become a mouth piece for the GSFA, as if it were some monochrome thing.
To repeat, it is a great shame that they are only focussed on one thing vis a vis membership of the Communion. But clearly as members we shall all have to get along.
Oh I forgot to answer..
I’m retired now but worked closely with Sarah when she was a bishop in the Diocese of Exeter. And know that she is a person of great emotional intelligence, pastoral sensitivity and careful thought, amongst her many gifts.
Thanks. A retired priest in Exeter. I was curious.
You always speak to me as if I am someone you know, and I suppose that is because your know who I am in the public domain. Author of 25 books, academic, former President of ACI, chairs at Yale and St Andrews, presently research Professor at Toronto.
On the other hand, I have no idea who you are, and I am often curious why you dog my every comment, often with personal references to my professional life. And on a very personal basis.
This makes for an odd playing field. You, a retired priest in Exeter, who I know nothing about.
Who describes positions I am meant to hold — “I want the ABC to discipline provinces; I belong to ACNA and helped them get started (ACI opposed then); “We” (meaning “I”) hear you talk about your professional life, when that in fact *is* my life, in the public domain — when any simple respectful search would show they are not my positions.
I know this is the danger of entering into blog domains.
When the CofE dissolves further into irrelevancy, perhaps more interesting topics can arise. Academic ones, ecumenical ones, the Anglican Communion, the history of biblical interpretation, and so forth.
In the context of your retirement in Exeter, and in the CofE, I’d suspect you’ve got your hands full with forthcoming, intramural skirmishing and the fight for survival.
That gives you plenty of scope to carry on in the manner you do here.
These are not my interests. With this new appointment, it is first order business for those interested in the future of the CofE to stay close to that knitting.
Kind regards.
Christopher you never cease to give your many titles and qualifications. I’m delighted you are rightly proud of them. They just aren’t necessary every time you post somewhere. We are simply colleague commenters on a blog.
You seem to have some difficulty answering questions and following an argument sometimes? Maybe it’s a cultural difference.
Whatever Justin *might* have said to Primates, there has been no change to the Instruments of Communion. The Archbishop of Canterbury remains one of those instruments. And the constitution of the Communion is as it was. Numbers are really neither here nor there.
As I asked you earlier, because you clearly have an interest in the GSFA and seem to know a great deal about their interests, I’d like to be clear about their position vis a vis the Communion. So please help me get this straight?
We are in a desperate situation in terms of global terror and war. But some Anglicans in the Global South think that the most crucial issue at this time is whether people of the same sex who are in a faithful relationship might be intimate? That is the only thing that they want to base their decision about church membership on? Is that right?
It is obvious the role of the See of Canterbury now belongs to the desperate CofE.
The rest of the Anglican Communion — especially the GSFA zone — ought to be a model for you.
May your retirement bring you blessings.
There’s one ‘qualification’ you missed, Dr Seitz. An academic and researcher on language and interpretation who had never heard of Paul Grice. Just sayin’
Nothing exists apart from linguistics.
“The rest of the Anglican Communion — especially the GSFA zone — ought to be a model for you.”
No thanks. The homophobic mutterings of men ought not to be a model for anyone, let alone a world wide Church. Why are they so afraid?
Christopher Shell. No, everything is not about linguistics. But if you talk/write about how communication and language seem to ‘work’ then linguistics might just be quite relevant.
As we have said many times before, there are always about ten different meta-dimensions that are certainly relevant. That means that every comment becomes 11 comments or one comment 11 times the length, of which the majority is preamble.
Well said
And some Christians in the Global North.
Gaza, Ukraine, Putin, Trump, stabbing in a synagogue, mosques set alight, Christians being persecuted in the Global South. Crickets.
Two men ‘rogering’ each other. Utter condemnation.
In most of those cases the northern Christians will not be condemning because they hold similar views on state and religion to the offensive parties, which makes serious and coherent condemnation a bit difficult. But there is no such complication in the simple fact that in the Bible God clearly condemns same-sex sex as an expression of (in itself legitimate) same-sex love. It is of course unfortunate they don’t follow the Bible in the other cases…..
God never mentions same-sex love.
Or, at least, no scriptural text does apart from the love between David and Jonathan (and, perhaps, the love between Jesus and the Beloved Disciple).
Given that friendship is an especially godly thing, and the deeper the better, it is not surprising that it figures largely in the 2 testaments.
Silly sexual revolutionaries make out that they have never, in their impoverished lives, heard of friendship (which is the stuff of most people’s lives), so that when it appears it is mistaken for a love affair to be sniggered about.
Christopher
Perhaps you could point me to where I or others sniggered about same-sex love on the Bible.
The reference is to the primary school trope where if you have a close friend there is sniggering from the shallowest about how that must mean you want to kiss or marry them. And by extension the reference is to those older people , who are doubtless the same individuals fast forwarded, who often speak equally shallowly as though love equals sex.
Christopher
No one was sniggering, so your fulminations against primary school tropes is gratuitous. It rather looks as if you are the one assuming that my reference to same-sex love in scripture included sexual intimacy. In which case you are the one sniggering.
David and Jonathan and the Beloved Disciple were both mentioned by you, whereupon your customary level of truthfulness then tries to make me responsible for your words. The thread preserves that for all to see.
Christopher
They were indeed mentioned by me. As two examples of where scripture treats same-sex love. Now kindly point out where i mentioned sexual intimacy or sniggered.
Christopher can’t you see that you value friendship very highly – and rightly so – but then when two examples of very dear friendship in bible are pointed out to you, you immediately assume that means sex is involved? It is only you who has made that assumption.
Your stunning power of understanding powers do not rise to the fact that my entire point is that it was *not* involved. Not only different but the reverse.
As to always trying to claim that those who are denying sexual content are the very ones promulgating it (against every scrap of evidence), that is exactly the amoral and nasty tactic often employed by the sort of people who are desperate to get sexual content into innocent spaces.
As to ‘you never cease to give your many titles and qualifications?, what on earth ‘many titles’ are they? My only titles are Mr and Dr. And you, secondly, lied about the qualifications, [some of] which I mentioned only once. You also, thirdly, lied by omitting the fact that this was only in answer to a question which I could scarcely not respond to. Three separate lies, readers note.
PCD, you used the word ‘same-sex love’ which is ambiguous as between sexual and nonsexual. Whereas I used ‘friendship’ which rules out sexual. Isn’t that the plain difference?
Christopher your lack of basic ability to follow an argument is troubling.
And…
I was referring to another Christopher – Mr Seitz who had also posted here.
Christopher
It’s only ambiguous of you think all love is sexual.
Well, as Christians and particularly the Greek-trained ones know that there are 4 loves, there is no danger of that. But it does show how unusable is the English word ‘love’.
Christopher
No it doesn’t. I don’t necessarily think of sex when I think of love. Unless the context suggests that a sexual relationship is being described.
Yet another misunderstanding.
My point was different. Namely – The English word ‘love’ is not made unusable by the fact that it makes people think of sex whenever they use it (it doesn’t, anyway, do that – though for some it does). It is made unusable because Greek, far superior to English here, has four quite distinct concepts, and one cannot forever be explaining which of the four one is meaning – simpler and far more accurate, therefore, to employ the four concepts themselves and forget the vague word ‘love’. You get my point now?
No, Christopher I don’t. English is impoverished in comparison with koine Greek. However that has nothing to do with the fact that when I mentioned same-sex love on scripture you immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was implying sexual intimacy. I think that’s a you problem.
8.10.25, 3.04 you said that no Scriptural text mentions same-sex love apart from David and Jonathan, and possibly the beloved disciple.
Since Scripture repeatedly mentions deep friendships between men,
and moreover does not have any clear distinction between what we call friendship and what we call love in the first place,
something other must have been implied.
As for ‘that’s a you problem’, that is the sort of nasty and revealing comment that people try to smuggle in.
Christopher
Exactly! I wrote of love. You smuggled in sex.
No, to repeat (and when does anyone ever do anything but repeat in conversations with PCD) PCD had to use a separate category of same-sex love (which is intrinsically, whatever her intention, ambiguous between sexual and nonsexual) when she could easily have used the category of friendship, whose meaning is clear, without complicating things. The concept she says she intended is precisely the one she unnecessarily avoided.
This will, again, be my last repetition of this point.
Really no need for you to repeat Christopher. You misunderstood and that was your mistake.
For the benefit of posterity, this is a classic artefact displaying the normal procedure of this brigade.
There are 2 recurring patterns.
The first is that they use the vocabulary of the sexual revolution, such as ‘same-sex love’) and then say that those who query this (i.e. those who are working against sexualisation) are saturated in the topic of sex, a topic that, they say, had never occurred to themselves.
The second is that they say anyone who objects to their sexualisation patterns of speech protests too much, which must be a Freudian giveaway.
Readers will be interested to see whether either of these patterns, which I have exposed, recurs.
And readers will be able to notice whether Christopher’s obsession with all matters sexual reoccurs, such that every conversation he has must include a holier than thou approach and include sex even when it was not included in the first instance.
They will also notice that he must always have the final word on any matter.
On this occasion, it had been implicitly included in the first instance by using a category that both firstly contained relationships that had previously been called homosexual and secondly exluded those many biblical friendships that had not been.
Obsessed with opposing the sexual revolution? – yes, I am – because it damages people and families very greatly, yet this ultimate and largest abuse is positively pushed, ironically, by people who rightly oppose the other kinds of abuse.
Does that make it *my* obsession? Not unless I caused the SR. (It is the obsession, clearly, of those who did so, rather than of those who point out that they did so. This point has been made tens of times.) So unless (a) you think I caused the SR, or unless instead (b) you think that things that fracture families and psyches should not be opposed or talked about a lot, then your position is shown to be wrong.
There we are. As predicted. Christopher had the last word.
And once again divides the world into Goodies and baddies. And he’s a goody. And I’m a baddy.
Those who spread an anti family movement that destroys lives are not all bad – they’ve been misunderstood.
Those who try to stand against that are not precisely good – they’ve got hidden motives.
Very Not The Nine O’Clock News.
Now the serpent was more ‘subtle’ than all the beasts of the field. If we ourselves are to be shrewd, we should begin by not giving him the time of day.
Wake up, guys! Current weekly attendance at CofE estimated 701,000 in a population of 70,000,000. That’s barely 1% of the population, though that being an average probably means around 2% are in reasonably regular attendance. And given current splits, even among those serious enough to attend fairly regularly, quite a large number have only a nominal faith anyway – even among the clergy. And by that weekly attendance figure the ‘national church’ is only about 1/5 of serious Christians in the country. This is rather farcical….
And the sexuality debate has an obvious problem; in the current climate it is unlikely that the state will tolerate for long a supposedly national church seriously out of line with a population accepting a different view; there is therefore massive pressure to conform to society and ipso facto to change Christian doctrine in order to conform.
As I’ve repeatedly pointed out, as an ‘established church’ the CofE is ‘unequally yoked’ with the surrounding world, and is trying to ‘serve two masters’ ( and we have the authority of Jesus that that doesn’t work!). Stop bothering about the sexuality issue and do the more important job of disentangling from the state…..
‘in the current climate it is unlikely that the state will tolerate for long a supposedly national church seriously out of line with a population accepting a different view’. That debate has been had, and the ‘state’ is not going to do anything.
Yup. The state (and most of our population) regard the CofE as irrelevant and not worth paying attention to. I would go with Stephen Langton (presumably a pen-name, or else a real person perfectly-named to comment on this article) and see disestablishment as valuable for spritual renewal. However, asking the decision-makers to give up their seats in the House of Lords?! I don’t know them personally as you do, Ian, but I fear there would be a degree of pushback.
I think that is his real name.
NOT a pen name; and according to another Langton who has done some ancestry research I am almost certainly, despite clerical celibacy, a direct descendant of the original Archbishop…..
Regardless of other practical advantages, the main reason for disestablishment is simply that establishment, and the idea of ‘Christian countries’ in general, is seriously unbiblical. I can see why establishment or similar seems plausible; the NT says it wasn’t plausible to God and He intended another and better way.
Disestablishment would be an utter disaster, ending the links with Parishes and the automatic rights to weddings and funerals for Parishioners. Not just ending the links with the monarchy and the Lords.
However the last laugh would be on conservative Evans like you. Almost certainly a disestablished Church of England would follow its Scottish and North American Anglican cousins and have full same sex marriages within a few years. Liberal Catholics would dominate its leadership like the US Episcopal church and efforts would be made as in the US to kick out conservative evangelicals once and for all from the church and ensure they lost their buildings and got not a penny of the Church’s billions in assets and income
Simon
Don’t see why disestablishment need break the link with parishes more than is already the case as the CofE tries to economise. As for the weddings and funerals these are both solemn ceremonies for serious Christians and it looks a bit questionable that a church should be doing them for people who live in the parish but are not serious enough Christians to attend church regularly….
If a disestablished CofE does go down the ‘liberal’ route on sexuality that will essentially mean it was already pretty much spiritually dead. Liberal churches of whatever denomination tend not to do well because they don’t have a strong message as evangelical churches do. If they kick out the evangelicals but hang on to the property it will effectively be a dead church in gilded rather than just whitewashed sepulchres.
Ian
“That debate has been had, and the ‘state’ is not going to do anything.”
The debate has not been had in a situation where the CofE has clearly come down against same-sex marriage and gay sex. Only in what the state is probably hoping will be a transition between rejecting and accepting SSM. I don’t think there will be the tolerance if a formally state church positively decides against SSM; that will then be an untenable position, and I’m afraid I think you naive not to recognise that.
The leadership of the CoE certainly hasnt come down against that. Unfortunately practice isnt the same as canons, which appear to be becoming more meaningless as time goes by.
When Archbishops behave like regular politicians and speak as the world speaks and thinks as the world thinks then they won’t be tolerated for much, just as other politicians. When they stand in the authority of God and pronounce his Word, his commands, his values, his instructions, his views, his warnings, his rebukes; then they will be respected and valued and listened to. It is precisely because bishops speak as the world that they are not pleasing God nor man. The C of E needs someone who actually follows God and serves him and who will stand and declare the Truth- and importantly stir up the faith and talents in bishops to also stand up and contend for the faith. Not another pro-choice of- murdering- your- own- baby-bless-you-witch who promotes what God clearly stated he abhors. It comes to something when a bog standard regular follower of Jesus takes a glimpse at a new Archbishop’s recent statements and knows that they couldn’t even chat with them about the things of God in a like-minded manner- let alone look up to them in any way. The frog has truly been boiled and I don’t think many of you even realize how well cooked it all is. In the meanwhile poor holy priests keep getting godless wolves and goats appointed over them and around them. It’s appalling.
Ian are you seriously going to allow comments on this blog that refer to Sarah as a witch? You think that is acceptable?
A witch may be described as a woman who uses her powers for ill…as in being a bishop and having the public attitude that it’s up to other women if they kill their babies or not, is a women in power and influence and using it for ill. If ‘witch’ offends your tender sensibilities then I hereby withdraw it and replace it with Wolf.
To return to the plea of my argument, I use Ian Paul’s words to Christian Today of Feb 2023 when asked ‘What is your message to the CofE leadership?’ He said-
” Please, fulfil your vows. Please be good shepherds to the Church. Please uphold the teaching of Jesus and the teaching of Scripture. Please be faithful to the doctrine and heritage of the Church as we have it. If you do not, then there is no hope for the Church of England. The whole point of the Church is to hold out the truth of the Gospel in order to invite people to discover the liberating love of God, which involves repentance and faith, changing direction and receiving the Good News of the Kingdom. If bishops just want to paper over cracks to preserve unity or commend themselves to the surrounding culture, go and find another job. But if you’re going to be a bishop in the Church of England, then please do your job: uphold the truth, preach the Gospel, and see people come to faith. There’s no other agenda.”
The NT pastor was also a teacher (Ephesians, John).
C S Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, points out that the charge to Peter was of course ‘Feed my sheep’ as opposed to ‘do experiments on my rats’ or ‘teach my performing dogs new tricks’.
A pastor who is not a teacher would need to guard against being a therapist or comfort blanket.
Although the deed described is ten thousand times worse than any word (priorities, please), for the love of God don’t cheapen discourse by cliched extreme terms. I understand that words may be used in a technical sense, but that is never going to be immediately apparent to most readers. To be a dupe of a lethal drip-drip societal brainwashing is not to be its originator.
The point is that Ian is the publisher. If Jeannie chooses to demean herself by using such terms about another woman, that is up to her. If Ian wishes his role as publisher of such terms to come in to question when he has written a very balanced piece then it’s a different matter.
Strong opinions are one thing. Very personal attacks with inappropriate language are another.
Comparable was when Tony Campolo addressed a gathering to say: ”Last night 45000 kids died of malnutrition, and what’s more most of you don’t give a ****. And what’s more than that, most of you are more concerned that I said ‘****’ than that 45000 kids died.”
I thought his whole approach was so often just wrong. This particular point of his was very true. People care about language when the realities the language is meant to draw attention to are 10,000 times worse and go unmentioned. Though it is well possible for both to be very bad. Just one of them is relatively considerably worse; both are absolutely bad; and the lesser would not even exist without the greater.
If people actually spoke as though the ”abortions” that occasioned all of this were even a thousandth as bad as they are, then none of the language would be necessary.
I share your concern Andrew. This language appalling and has no place in a Christian discussion thread.
I also agree with you Andrew.
Anyone with any decency or Christian integrity should remove a disgusting slur like that. It is completely out of order. Ian, do the right thing. You’re better than this as your own balanced article shows.
To refer to Archbishop Sarah as a witch is a new low point in the history of these comments below the line. Nor is she a wolf. She is a Christian sister who has spent her life doing good and serving others.
May God bless her and protect her.
Perhaps you will remind us where God says they clearly abhor abortion.
Ex 20:13 was understood to include murdering the child in the womb.
See the Didache, a late 1st century (poss. early 2nd century) summary of the Apostles’ teaching:
‘And the second commandment of the Teaching; You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, Exodus 20:13-14 you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal, Exodus 20:15 you shall not practise magic, you shall not practise witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is begotten. You shall not covet the things of your neighbour, Exodus 20:17 you shall not forswear yourself, Matthew 5:34 you shall not bear false witness. …’
By whom was Ex 20.13 taken to include abortion?
By anyone who can read, has a conscience, and has a basic scientific understanding (even common sense will do).
Christopher
So, only contemporary theologians then? Because it certainly wasn’t thus understood by the earliest readers of the Law. Didn’t realise that you were so keen on reception history.
Yes, they had less science, which enabled them to be more easily led astray from natural law.
Why ‘theologians’? It is a very grand title, but one does not need a grand title to be capable of common sense or logical deduction.
Christopher
You misunderstood me again.
Did the ancient Judahites take Ex
30.23 to include abortion?
Ex 20.13. clumsy fingers.
Well, if they didn’t, then lots of babies can die without anyone worrying. Phew?
Why the Judahites in particular? At the time of the 10 Commandments there were 12 tribes not 1.
It’s like adultery. People did not read the seventh commandment and think – so fornication is therefore fine. Anything that overlaps closely conceptually (in these cases above 50% overlap) is scarcely going to escape scot free. But why would one want to play devil’s advocate in the first place? There are many people to be advocate of, so why choose the worst possible?
The question whether the ‘ancient Judahites’ understood the commandment to include abortion is irrelevant in this context. They were mostly inclined to reject all the commandments. The question Penelope raised was where does God say he abhors abortion. What we have in the Didache is 1st-century testimony that the apostles themselves so understood the commandment. As they were instructed by the Lord himself, and the Lord, when expounding the commandments, interpreted them in the strictest sense possible (Matt 5:19f), I for one am not inclined to question that understanding.
Christopher
Yet again, you didn’t answer my question. I didn’t ask whether contemporary Christians believe that abortion is wrong. I asked if the readers of Exodus – written, as you know, long after the events it purports to describe -would have used its admonition not kill, to include abortion.
You have a knack of avoiding answering the questions I ask.
My question to you was about the Exodus text.
Steven
My reply, which is now under my reply to Christopher, was addressed to you. Apologies if that’s not clear.
You are wrong there. Exodus was written long after the presumed date for the events it narrates, but the Ten Commandments were not.
You have 10-20 devil’s advocate comments without one that ever voices the preciousness of babies.
That ratio is as awful as can be: please desist.
Christopher
Yet again you fail to answer my question. Might it be because you don’t want to admit that nowhere in scripture is abortion proscribed?
Why would other ages and cultures have exactly the same semantic patterns as ours which differentiates between prebirth and postbirth as though it were a significant distinction for anyone other than devious/secretive people?
Cultural hegemony.
Anyway, why are you talking about ‘my question’ as though you had only one? You are well aware of your question on the dating of Exodus and of the Decalogue, and that it was a separate question. And that I addressed it. But I don’t get credit – just blame. Which is not biased at all.
Christopher
You are still avoiding my question with waffle about the date of the decalogue and the date of a redacted Exodus. I asked if the original readers of this text would have thought that abortion was murder.
And those readers (and later readers who were recognisably Jewish) had a different take on the viability and personhood of foetuses from that which developed later on Christianity.
‘Why would other ages and cultures have exactly the same semantic patterns as ours which differentiates between prebirth and postbirth as though it were a significant distinction for anyone other than devious/secretive people?’ (CS)
Another ‘linguistic argument’ to add to the ‘Stupidest Statements about Language’. Thanks, Christopher
Are we to take it that you have ample powers of insult and zero powers of explanatory analysis?
Said Jewish readers therefore ranked low in the science and coherence and accuracy stakes? Since we know better, then, even if you are right, are you asking that we regress? Any takers?
OK Christopher, simple question: How do *you* know that people in other ages or cultures cannot or do not (take your pick) differentiate between prebirth and postbirth? Evidence please.
You mentioned ‘semantic patterns’ so *you* have made a statement about language — *you* are engaging in linguistics. So, do only people who are ‘devious/secretive’ distinguish conceptually or linguistically (not the same thing) between prebirth and postbirth?
The idea that we can generalise about ALL people who happen NOT to inhabit our own culture draws attention to the intrinsic broad-sweeping generality and non-specificness of many linguistics statements.
If they didn’t think it, they were wrong; if they thought it, they were right. How is what people think relevant to what is true in reality?
I didn’t ask what was true. I asked if the original readers of Exodus believed that the proscription on killing included abortion. It’s a very specific question. It has nothing to do with morality or how the redacted form of Exodus developed, or how long it took.
What is true will obviously remain the far more important issue, and that you do not treat it as such immediately invalidates your stance. I am not learned enough in IT to give a reliable answer to the other. I think it is vanishingly unlikely that adultery was thought th exclude other sexual sin, and likewise if killing humans is in the top ten, all killing of humans is not meaningfully different. To be to all intents and purposes the same as one of the top ten worst things makes something a worst thing . You can distinguish the two in your mind but that takes mental gymnastics that you cannot require different cultures, times and languages to share with you.
Neither in OT nor in IT
Christopher
You’re a scholar. Precision and accuracy are important. I wasn’t asking about ethics, I was asking what the original readers understood by the proscription against killing in Exodus. Surely your academic work didn’t contain ideological red herrings?
I’m not an OT scholar. Why does it matter what they thought unless what they thought was correct?
Christopher
So when you worked on the NT ( the Gospel of John, I believed) you argued that the context in which the gospel was written was unimportant?
The stuck record returns. I refer the ??honourable lady to the reply which I made at least once before.
Namely: the context is incredibly important in discovering authorial intent and meaning, but not at all important when it comes to checking whether textual assertions are true or not. The two projects are quite different. Moreover (again to repeat my repetition) on this occasion the second looms much larger than the first, because we are talking life and death.
Christopher
Once again, I didn’t ask whether Exodus 20.13 is true. I asked whether its proscription was taken to include abortion by its original readers.
These are two very different questions.
Surely, as a scholar and lover of evidence, you can see that?
I never raised the issue of whether Ex 20.13 was true. It is a command . How can commands be true? It can be true that they were issued in the way they were said to be. But when I spoke of truth I meant is it true that what you call abortion, a false intransitive, is one of the kinds of murder. I don’t know how many times I have to say I am not an OT scholar, but people will notice that I have to repeat almost everything when you are the interlocutor, and nothing when others are. That is not coincidence.
I don’t agree with ++Sarah on abortion but one can criticise without the horrible language you’ve employed. Its unnecessary.
So we should be mild in the face of the slaughter of the innocents. That impotent response is the best way to ensure it continues, and to ensure we demonstrate that we don’t much care, or want to protect future generations. I agree that the 5 letter word is nasty.
You also ignore all the weddings, funerals and baptisms the Church of England performs for its Parishioners which they only get as if right as it is established church. In any case PM Starmer warmly welcomed Archbishop Mullally and after LLF Labour kept the Bishops in the Lords even as it removed the hereditaries (I would have kept both as a Tory but even Labour has no interest in disestablishment, it is mainly a fringe concern for the likes of the Greens and evangelical fanatics like you).
Yet you don’t care about the Church of England do you Stephen? Your agenda is to turn it into a Baptist church like yours in all but name, free of women clergy, free of Bishops and Anglo Catholics, free of those in same sex relationships. Well tough, Anglicans like me will never accept your agenda and will fight it all the way
Simon
Actually I care quite a lot about the Anglican Church; my early Christian life was largely among Anglicans, and many of my Christian heroes and mentors face to face or via books and other media have been Anglicans – CS Lewis and JI Packer to name just two. Our Baptist church regularly works with local Anglicans, most recently in staging very successful ‘Fun Days’ in a local park.
At the same time it is difficult to ignore that much of Anglicanism is not biblical but the results of distortions going back to what was effectively a Roman imperial takeover of the wider Church in the 4th century CE, and continued in England when Henry established his national church. And I believe Anglicanism would be more effective if it could shed those distortions while keeping the biblical parts of its rich tradition. Women clergy by the way not a problem – we’ve never actually had a full-time female pastor but we have hosted at least one female minister in training and several of our deacons/elders are women, as have been preachers both from within our congregation and outside. Hopefully the CofE will eventually realise that ‘Bishops’ as the CofE does it, and indeed the CofE ‘priesthood’ are part of the afore-mentioned 4th century distortion rather than a biblical view of ministry, and ‘Anglo-Catholics’ are a bit anomalous in a church very clearly founded to be Protestant. Newman had the consistency to realise that and go full RC.
The Bible of course has no problem with men loving men or women loving women – the issue is whether a specifically sexual reationship is appropriate to express such love; and the Bible is rather clear about that….
So as I said you want to free the Church of England of Anglo Catholics and have no recognition for same sex couples in it. At which point the Church of England would no longer be a Catholic but Reformed church but effectively a Baptist or Pentecostal church in all but name
And THAT would be a fate worse than death!
Simon
It is strange how what you value in the CofE are the things in which it is least biblical and therefore least Christian.
Oh you are doubling down are you. You chased me from this blog some months ago and now you are going for it second time.
I use the terms witch and wolf and goats and tares every single day of my life in my regular speech- and sometimes to Bishop’s faces when rebuking them in person. If you require me to write in academic style with references and a gentle cup of tea for tender sensibilitities I can certainly do that too. Or you could just ‘do you’ and back off me. This lady is not for intimidating.
Just call it a form of child sacrifice (to one’s own hedonism) next time.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” – Galatians 5
Just a thought.
Andrew forgot to ask how many C of E bishops are in same-sex relationships.
I know of three, including a woman suffragan bishop who lives with her partner but isn’t in a civil partnership.
The Dean of Canterbury is also in a civil partnership, so Sarah, Rose and David will be quite a team.
Since Canterbury Cathedral is currently relying on doubling up as a disco for the over 50s to bring in the money, I hope they have some good dance routines lined up. The Lambeth Walk, anyone?
As I said, this preoccupation with ‘gay sex’ is otiose and is clearly a conservative obsession.
The world outside the church has been obsessed with it since 1967 and the faithful church is merely reacting.
The alternative is that we do nothing and let them go wherever they want to in a handcart. How is that an option?
Everyone knows the initiative is theirs and that reaction is inevitable from anyone who cares.
The obsession with having gay sex and declaring it God’s will is not one I know held by any conservative Christian (though the adjective is otiose here).
All we want to do is live our lives and run our churches in peace.
Which we could happily do if someone didn’t keep trying to take away the properties we have looked after and paid for for many decades.
We evangelicals pay our own way and some in the Church of England.
We will move on with the National Province and Orthodox Ordinary Oversight and leave the gay Deans to get on with their 80’s discos or whatever it is they do in these historic cathedrals.
Evangelical parishes pay their common fund? Pull the other one.
All the evangelical churches I have been part of, in four dioceses, have been serious net contributors.
I do understand that churches where most folk are retired or pensioners don’t have a lot of spare cash, and these good folk give sacrificially of their time and energy.
“Let us raise our glasses to the Dear Old Queen” – Rev. W.A. Spooner
James
Ive noticed this pattern time and again in different denominations. Conservatives demand stricter teaching or rules around gay sex. They get what they asked for. But then act like they didn’t get it.
More than a decade after same sex marriage became legal in the UK, the CofE still opposes SSM and same sex sex. Theyve taken a middle path on conversion therapy by banning it in theory, but allowing it to continue unofficially. Likewise they stick with the 1990s position of “gay people exist and should be welcome, but they cant have sex” while doing nothing to ensure that harsher teachings are not being taught unofficially. Gay people are still de facto banned from being bishops and banned from many local church leadership positions.
What more do you want?! Everyone who disagrees with any of this to be tarred and feathered?!
The last Dean of Canterbury was in a same sex partner. Charles Moore of the Telegraph called him the greatest Dean of his generation and with good reason
And the present Dean of Canterbury is in a same-sex partnership. As is the Head of the King’s School, which is closely linked to the Cathedral. That’s what Gavin Ashenden, an old boy of King’s reports on his website. Pride Month is said to be a big thing with flags everywhere. Ashenden says most of the kids there are from abroad (which you’d have to be because it costs over £45k pa). I wonder what all these Chinese and Arab parents think about that.
It’s a shame that the theology department of the nearby University of Kent @ Canterbury, which was strong to my knowledge, has colsed.
I don’t think it was ever particularly strong. There was a decent NT lecturer there once, and then there was the Michael Ramsey Professor Robin Gill (an endowed post) who basically produced the same book every three years. Most of the work was farmed out to other departments.
Kent University, like many others, multiplied its management class and got seriously into debt. Now it has closed many departments and many many staff redundant.
Brian Capper certainly was an excellent NT lecturer.
And Gareth Jones head of department.
I don’t think they were at Kent University.
Yes, you’re right, I was confusing it with Canterbury Christ Church University.
Homosexuality is legal in China even with some registration of couples rights and rich Arabs won’t care if the results he gets are good
Homosexuality has always been a prominent sub-current of Arab culture. in James Michener’s sprawling historical novel about Israel, ‘The Source’, one of the characters comments that the British FO aka the Camel Corps of Mandate Palestine favoured the Arabs over the Jews because of this predilection. But admitting this has never been popular. It’s a bit like the gay Anglo-Catholic sub-culture in London. It was something I was only just aware of when I lived in London and knew David Hope a little.
Of course the School doesn’t want it too widely broadcast that their Headteacher is in a same-sex marriage. Rich Chinese and Arabs send their kids there to get them into British universities, but they have other options.
A good effort Ian, but alas, as the comments section now shows there’s maybe just too many people who love the snide factional politicking.
That’s my overwhelming impression as well, Adam. I mostly like what I read in Psephizo, and almost always learn from it – but many of those who chatter/snipe/insult/pontificate here, seem to come at it for entirely other reasons. Why do you do it, folks? (please don’t answer – I probably already know shat you’re going to say: I’m just exercising my own right to comment!)
Why do we do it, folks?
It’s Hobson’s choice, Peter.
Would you like us to hold hands with you and sing kumbaya?
We would like nothing better than to lead our lives quietly in churches with leaders who teach and live the catholic faith revealed in the Scriptures.
I have many more attractive things to do but the spiritual safety of my church and my soul have to come first.
Doubtless that sounds hysterical to you. Battle? What battle?, I hear you say.
But I come from a family of soldiers (including ones killed and wounded in wars) and not one of them wanted to be fighting. It wsx Hobson’s choice for them.
Who “politicked”, nay, agitated year after year after year for change?
Who did an end run around the church’s doctrine?
Who introduced incoherent novelties, “blessing” sin?
Who affirmed her support for abortion?
Sarah Mullally could believe and teach the orthodox faith if she wanted to. But she doesn’t. Why doesn’t she?
Does she have Hobson’s choice?
I note that the Archbishop’s theological alma mater is an offspring of the ‘Southwark Ordination Course’.
She was fortunate enough to study at Heythrop too, I believe.
Bishop Sarah’s Heythrop degree was an MA in Pastoral Theology. From memory, the Jesuits were perfectly capable of dishing it out at Heythrop, but for the genuine Jesuit Marine Corps boot-camp experience, the MA degrees you’d have chosen were Biblical Studies, or Christian Theology (possibly converting the latter to an MTh via the thesis option). Not the Master’s in Spirituality or Pastoral Theology.
It is wrong that the wretched Southwark Ordination Course should have had a foundational hand in forming a leader’s thought. South Bank Religion is the very last thing needed. Plum jobs are given to those consumed by worldly patterns (Generous Faith, Canterbury Press; & see their recent Created For ‘Love’). This also means the comparative crushing of those who have had a deep and rich grounding in their training in divinity. NHS in excelsis.
The leader should be in the front row of peace marches (as Rowan Williams was) and/or a powerful voice as a preacher (as Coggan and particularly Temple were). They should be the people leading the abortion protests. The evangelists. Not one person doing all of these necessarily, but there should be no leapfrogging of those who do by those who don’t. The best thing about Abp is her voice on assisted suicide which hopefully can mean a coordinated Christian movement.
The Southwark Ordination Course was a very high watermark of ordination training and theological thinking. It started in 1963 and was radical for its training model, and not its theology. My old friend and colleague Eric James wrote this about it in 1986 – excuse the non inclusive language. So read every one of the 8 points he mentions. We still haven’t cottoned on to the clarity of vision
Canon Eric James, writing in 1986, gives […] details concerning the vision for the founding of the Course, and also an even more cutting criticism:
“The goals of S.O.C. – in no order of priority – were to do something about:
(1) The crisis in ordained manpower which loomed ahead.
(2) The financial crisis which was likely to make it impossible for at least some dioceses to have all the paid full-time ordained manpower they might want.
(3) The class-structure of the ordained ministry – which undoubtedly played a considerable part in the failure of the
Mission of the Church of England to the whole of society.
(4) The unscriptural separation between ordained and lay ministry.
(5) The serious ignoring of women’s ministry.
(6) The divisions of the Church manifested in the training of clergy of the C of E. by themselves.
(7) A model of “recruitment” for ordained ministry which tended to wait for individuals to perceive their vocation rather than the other New Testament model of the local church taking thought as to how it should raise up local ministry.
(8) The failure to make use of secular work experience and the context of work and home as the raw material of theological
thinking.
Eric James, 1986
Its study/rigour component accordingly becomes weaker than average.
That is even before we factor in not putting too much burden on professionally-experienced marrieds in their 30s and 40s, who had probably not studied for 15 years.
And even THAT is before we factor in the minds that produced the course, who were saying things quite distant from what had been said in all other parts of Christian history.
South Bank Religion could, for example. easily be opposed to evangelism itself (Reid wrote against Stacey on this).
It is little known that Eric James was instrumental in the John Smyth scandal. HM John Thorn was at his wits’ end at how few people attended J’s Lenten Addresses one year. He knew the warmth and energy of evangelicalism as represented by John Woolmer, and invited Keith de Berry to do exactly what EJ could not. The 1974 mission brought a surge in conversions and Christian Forum attendance (later increased to 100 out of 600 pupils under PK).
There is an interesting comment on the appointment, by The Most Rev. Dr. Stephen Samuel Kaziimba Mugalu, Archbishop of Church of Uganda, on Happy Jack’s blog site.
Do you have a link, Geoff?
It is independently obvious to many leaders that ‘unbiblical [and also plain wrong, harmful and incoherent] positions on sexuality’ is the central issue. In context, how can the Southwark Ordination Course and Southwark Diocese, of all things, in all their bankruptcy and cultural limitation and moral tonedeafness, possibly impose on worldwide Christianity which has so many great thinkers and holy Christians?
It is here, James:
https://dodothedude.blogspot.com/?m=1
It is contained in the comments, to the article,”Three Paths Through the Wilderness:Reflections on Responses to the Cultural Crisis, dated Sept 21.
Scroll down to the comments to comment dated 6 October @ 19:45)
Other comments on the appointment are there as well, including a reference to Anglican Unscripted.
Thanks, I will read this.
The thought that many or all of the top 5 bishoprics will in practice be filled by evangelicals I partly can see the logic of.
I am not sure I can see the logic of it for London.
Nor for Canterbury. The UK Anglicans’ present trajectory will not allow anybody very evangelical to go to Canterbury. Bp Graham Usher may go there.
A lot of evangelicals-lite have been appointed to bishoprics recently to pacify evangelicals in the same way that Tony Blair pacified right wingers.
More full-blooded evangelicals are often kept firmly in their place as suffragans. The Cleese – Barker – Corbett sketch springs to mind.
As for conservative evangelicals, they have odds very disproportionately stacked against them and very disproportionately huge flocks, who are disallowed proportional pastoral care. They know their place.
Durham is a slightly distinctive case, as the preference is for a leading scholar, but it is not as though it is usually possible for leading scholars to have devoted time to being bishops. There are PhDs aplenty. One could appoint a non-bishop scholar straight to Durham, as was the case with Tom Wright.
If the Durham-nominated evangelical turned down the post, will it be once bitten twice shy?
One of the worst sermons I heard, even as a new 47 year old convert was by a Bishop, (a Southwick liberal export) on Easterday, replete with skeptical, unbelief, with liberation theology undertones.
The very idea that Southwick training should be centred on secular idea of ‘tranferable skills’ from home/career to ordination rather than any conversion, belief sets out not only the departure lounge, but the direction of travel, as each train leaves leaves the station.
‘liberation theology undertones’ are dreadful arn’t they Geoff.
In the context of Easter Day they are redolent of skeptical unbelief of liberal theology that knows not the Good News of Jesus, of Good Friday and Resurrection Day. It was sub-Christian for the respectable civics and notables.
Southwick sounds a bit like the ******* of Eastwick, but it would be tasteless to go there.
It’s Southwark, Geoff.
If you cannot bring yourself to utter the word, I know how you feel.
Of course it is Christopher. Thanks. The Bishop in question was what was quaintly known as male.
The present incumbent, is zealously liberal, fervent in support of ssm/b.
Liberal theology is a different religion (Machen).
It is a dedicated follower of cultural, social fashion with an embedded and absolute hermeneutics of relativism, subjectivism, postmodernism, pluralism and syncretism.
When I have read that the next Archbishop of Canterbury was Pro Choice I was deeply saddened. Here we have the leader of the Anglican flock endorsing women that she is supportive of them if they want to kill their own children. Lord have mercy.
Tim, it is worse than that.
1. It is generally assumed that killing another human is aboujt the worst deed. This is for two reasons: (a) the amount that is thereby lost; (b) the mp;resumptuousness, because the killer always keeps for themselves the life that they think it is their place to deprive others of.
2. However, in this case the advocate is a professing Christian, and would not have been allowed even Mothers’ Union membership within my lifetime.
3. Some might say it is worse in the case of a woman, because only a woman knows what it is to give birth to and feed a child, attach that strongly.
4. But it would have to be worse in the case of a midwife, because a midwife is the one par excellence who knows the struggle to bring a baby safely and healthily into this world, and cannot remotely therefore endorse whatever despatches that same baby cruelly and awelessly out of the world. People obviously become midwives (and mothers) because they love babies and would not want to harm them in any way. But death is not just harm, it is the harm that encapsulates all other possible harms that might befall an individual.
There is no significant support in the England of which she now leads its established church for banning abortion again, rather than just keeping the 24 week limit for terminations. She has though said she personallybleams to a pro life position while keeping abortion legal and she has opposed euthanasia of course
So morals and ethics are merely a personal, subjective, choice are they? And crime is an act against the State, not merely personal and subjective.
I knew a former retired midwife, a Christian, who was bereft, grieving that she taken part in the abortion procedure, she horrifically gruesomely skimmed over.
It is little wonder that videos of abortion are seen as offensive, as they are gut wrenching. Civilized is it?
And back street abortions like those when abortion was banned here? Abortion remains illegal after 24 weeks of pregnancy anyway in the UK, a time limit most people in the England of which the C of E is established church agree with
No, so called abortion is always illegal and criminal apart from in exceptional circumstances, of which by far the most common (effect in mental health) is bogus.
What on earth does it matter what people agree with? What matters is what is right and wrong . Could you explain this point, as it looks not to be thought through. People just agree with the norms of their own culture. That means they so called agree with completely different things every time the law changes.
Back street abortions? Unsafe and unsupervised? That is exactly what our culture has gone back to for the last 5 years, with unqualified women taking pills by themselves in their homes. So you agree with back street abortions, right, Simon? Proper people are revolted by them. As well as by the fakely sanitised ones.
So instead of back street abortions there are state sponsored, so called sanitized, surgical, gruesome killing. At 24 weeks how well formed is the human and how is it killed. Do you actually know what takes place? How it is done? Done with free will choice by all in the system?
It would be interesting to know how Mullaly distinguished between autonomous free will choice for abortion and against euthanasia, and comparative weight of factors? Human life untethered, unencumbered autonomy – a fierce tyranny.
Or is all human life intrinsically sacred?
Or disposable according to cost/ value benefit analysis?
Christopher
Further up the thread you claimed that post birth abortion had been legalised. Now you are claiming that abortion is always illegal. Which is it?
I didn’t. It is always illegal with exceptions. The scenario you mentioned is according to UK law one of the exceptions.
Not a ‘claim’ in sight – just facts.
Christopher
You did. You claimed that post birth abortion had been legalised. I know this is becoming a very long thread but surely you can remember a claim from a couple of days ago!
I have now referred to definitional ambiguities about 4 times. That is where we had reached, so you can pick up that thread.
Christopher
Still wriggling I see.
The inability to engage trumps even the nastiness.
Christopher
It’s your inability to engage that I’m concerned about. I have asked 2 simple questions:
1) when was post birth abortion decriminalised?
2) did the original readers of Exodus believe that the prohibition on killing included abortion?
You have answered neither. All you have provided are reams of waffle and obfuscation. I suspect this is because you have made claims for which you have no evidence. You could remove my suspicion immediately by answering these 2 simple questions.
Penny it is indeed Christopher’s inability to answer those two questions that has bothered me. I have almost come to the conclusion that this inability is some kind of wider problem.
One of the characteristics of good scholarship, as you yourself know well Penny, is the ability and willingness to be critical of one’s own work and assumptions and test them rigorously. And a willingness to modify them in the light of critical questions. And also to be aware of biases that are likely to draw us to the wrong conclusions. On this thread in particular Christopher has not been able to demonstrate these basic abilities. It is very troubling. One asks a direct question, and all that returns is verbose waffle.
Andrew
I have two concerns:
1) Christopher directly contradicts himself. On October 5th he claimed that post birth abortion had been legalised; yesterday he claimed that abortion is still illegal. So which is it?
2) Christopher seems unable to answer a critical question without considering his own ethical reactions to the subject being discussed, or what other people may have thought. That is not the approach of the scholar.
Read through my many answers above already given , with their emphasis on ambiguity of definition, and you will see the answer reiterated.
Most people read carefully and understand the first time. The division that PCD inhabits is that of those even incapable of understanding the 4th or 5th time.
I think the latest iteration of the answer on Exodus came out in a different part of the thread. It was saying that the issue is not the original readers of Exodus but the original hearers of the decalogue. And that lack of science may or may not have drawn them down an ill-informed road (my OT knowledge is not sufficient to say), but we are scarcely going to put the real or imagined thought/scientific failings of early readers in a category that makes that consideration *more* important than whether actual humans are being butchered. To repeat (and when do I do anything apart from repeat?): priorities.
Christopher
Time and again, you claim, as a NT scholar that we cannot understand NT texts without knowledge of the contexts in which they are written and the authors’ original intentions.
Are you suggesting that the same is mot true of HB texts? That we impose upon them a ‘modern’ understanding of science and ethics which rides roughshod over their original context?
Knowledge of context is crucial for understanding what the writer meant.
This time, we are not even talking primarily about what the writer meant, since on this occasion that pales into insignificance in the face of another question: whether what they meant was accurately founded or not. Millions of human lives rested on the outcome, after all, supposing that what you said were accurate.
Christopher
I was asking *only* what the original writers meant and the original readers understood. As I have pointed out many times. I was not asking for your, or anyone else’s, ethical reflections. I have made that perfectly clear. So, I don’t know who the “we” is.
The question again quite simply is: did the original readers of Exodus 20.13 take its proscription to include abortion? Yes or no will suffice. No need to shift the ground, move the goalposts, and throw in a few red herrings.
OK readers, count with me.
(a) How many times so far have I said (a) that I am not an OT scholar (and therefore there are far better people to ask and commentaries to consult)?
(b) How many times have I said that the date of Exodus is clearly different from the date of the now-broken tablets, and that it is the latter that is relevant here not the former?
(c) How many times have I said that the attempt to make ‘abortion’ not be a kind of murder is a far bigger priority issue intrinsically than what the first readers’ understanding was?
(d) How many times have I said that the first readers lacked our level of science?
(e) How many times has PCD ignored these points?
Christopher
Attentive readers will observe how many times I have asked a simple question and you have provided evasive and obfuscatory answers.
They will also see how many times I have reiterated that my question wasn’t about ethics, but you keep introducing this as a red herring. They will also notice how many times i have asked how the original readers of Exodus interpreted the proscription (note, not the original receivers of the Commandments which, according to your claim was much earlier. That was not my question).
Readers will notice all the waffle and guff you have written to avoid answering one simple question.
They will also note that you won’t answer my one simple question on abortion either.
Then if they find anything inadequate in my oft-iterated answers, which cover all the bases I can see, then they can complain to me for themselves, and I will address them directly.
Christopher
They cover all the bases you see but not the questions you were actually asked.
But if I am unequipped to answer that particular question (given that I have said about 4-6 times I am no OT-ite),
and if secondly I have shown why the question is irrelevant (because you focus on the time of the writing of Exodus rather than the time of the writing of the tablets) – this too repeated 4-6 times
and also trivial (because you are treating semantics as more important than human lives) – this too repeated 4-6 times,
[none of these 3 points ever faced head on by you at the remotest length]
then anyone will naturally be puzzled as they try to work out what on earth are you expecting me to do next?
And (as an afterthought) will not people see how you never once seem to engage with me without making it a very protracted interrogation.
Moreover, each protracted interrogation is about a small verbal point. Words only do their best to correspond to reality – they will always fail because reality is infinitely complex.
If someone never fails to do that, they are obviously targeting that contributor.
Christopher
Despite not being a HB scholar you presume
a) that the Decalogue existed independently and at some great period of time before Exodus was written and redacted in the form we have it today
b) that I ‘should’ have asked what the first hearers of the Decalogue thought of that proscription rather than the readers of Exodus.
Wrong.
1. It’s not deniable that the Decalogue existed appreciably earlier than Exodus, because it’s already in Deut which dates back to Josiah’s reform at the latest, its laws to earlier and its foundational laws to earlier still.
2. The 2 tablets were one of the 2 most ancient artefacts they had – presumably from the times of Solomon’s temple or the earlier tabernacle, which contained them.
3. And unless Israel was coincidentally independent of the rest of the Near East for centuries, then why would they have had not even these basic laws till a very late date??
3 most ancient artefacts up until Nebuchadnezzar’s/Nebuzaradan’s sacking of the temple – twin decalogue tablets; Aaron’s rod which budded; souvenir manna in jar.
Christopher
Yeah, well you did admit you aren’t a HB scholar!
That being the case, you can list the mistakes I made.
Readers will be suspicious that the number you listed was zero.
Shoot.
[Your comment reminds me of Adrian Plass’s contentless oneupmanship Stephen Potter parody: ‘Let the post-Jungians pick the bones out of that.’….]
Simon – re your last comment, if the woman does it, by for example taking abortion pills very late, then she has done nothing wrong under the law. That is what changed recently.
The doctor though can still be prosecuted
Yes I know that which is why I only referred to the mother.
A human being is created at the moment of conception. They are from that moment, forever an indivual person. If they die during pregnancy or birth or in life they are still and always a spirit with unique individuality. Life is sacred. life is precious. Any follower of Christ must not ever water down this reality. The number of weeks is irrelevant. God knits us together in our mother’s womb. A baby is a baby from conception. Let those headed for eternal damnation play with the legalities of their evil-doings. But let every Christian, every priest, every bishop and For the love of all things holy, let every archbishop stand up for the sacredness and preciousness of all human life from conception to natural death. An archbishop exists to serve God; not to work against him.
Christian lukewarmness (lukewarmth?) has harmed countless thousands. Only this week the King’s Army restored the proper level of Christian manliness and that resulted in a very longstanding Soho bar shutting. Almost everyone loved our children so little that they were happy for them to grow up in such a world surrounded by such things. It is those below your level of passion that achieve no change.
Keep going.
The appointment is the end game of a trend in society and in national church which we could call both feminisation and the downgrading of truth (some would use the word‘doctrine’) in favour of truth-light universal affirmation.
No it is much welcomed by the English people that tend years after 2/3 of Synod voted for women bishops and after male sex scandals in the church, their established church finally haSs a female Archbishop
Non sequitur. Your points do not negate mine, nor did you address the latter.
Christopher’s comment here needs to be called out for exactly what it is – patriarchal, alpha male, sexist mysoginistic nonsense.
The end of patriarchy should be welcomed by all.
And Christopher’s claim to value truth and evidence highly is not matched by the evidence of his comments on this thread.
The comment simply acknowledges that society can move in feminised or masculinised directions at any given time. By the law of averages it will therefore be moving in a feminised direction 50% of the time. Do you disagree? It is a small and self-evident claim to make.
To talk of ‘patriarchy’ is to be a cliched-level thinker not an independent-level thinker.
One of the signs of patriarchy in our culture for the last 17 years is (ahem) that officially legally a child does not need a father. (Never mind the 90% of father-issues prisoners in prisons). They do however need a mother. The pushers of this say they believe in equality. Pause while we laugh into our handkerchieves. They certainly do not believe in giving children a good foundation, only a bad one.
“By the law of averages it will therefore be moving in a feminised direction 50% of the time. Do you disagree?”
Oh really.. you can support that claim with evidence from the previous thousands of years?
When something is vast and incalculable, we appeal to the law of averages, having no more sensible recourse.
Undigested points needing to be repeated: 1 this time.
Once again a lack of basic ability to follow an argument. A lack of basic ability to be self reflective and self critical.
The sensible recourse we have for our calculation here is staring us in the face: thousands of years of patriarchy. A factor that still persists in many cultures. And you suggest that everything now will succumb to the law of average and be 50% of the time moving in a feminised direction? About which you are, I might remind you, complaining anyway?!
Your errors are many, and you seem unaware of any of them.
We cannot affect the past. We can affect the present.
Tell me you don’t simply go with a maximally sexist worldview which makes feminisation = good and masculisation = bad.
If we are to come to the present, then the present is a world where men can be ridiculed as clumsy and baggage and toxic in cartoons left right and centre, but all hell would break out if women were treated thus (which no-one would want to do anyway).
You missed the point about the sexist 2008 law that said children need a mother yet not a father. And the second point about the fatherlessness of convicts. How would you address this piece of sexism, or this piece of harmful illogic?
Healthy families just get on with their lives, dads being dads, mums being mums, aunts, granddads, and many children. They unlike chippy studenty types neither complain about such things nor need to. If patriarchy is such a thing, why does it not figure in their/our lives?
I didn’t miss any points Christopher. I was trying to ensure you didn’t shift the topic again to a matter that wasn’t connected with your claim about feminisation. Your favourite ploy, when it is clear that you have made an error, is to try and shift the ground and then claim you were making a different point.
Your huge error here is to try and ignore history. Of course we can’t change the past. That’s not the point at all. The issue is the way that thousands of years of things being a particular way influences the way things are now. So your point about 50/50 law of averages is just nonsense.
You can’t follow an argument. And so debating with you becomes impossible. Your lack of self awareness and your inability to be self reflective are two more things that make your claim to be a scholar quite ridiculous.
Or as Mark Twain said….
“Never argue with stupid People. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.”
Thanks Christopher. Your stupidity has beaten me again here. There is no point continuing.
Guys, AG has said my claim to be a scholar is quite ridiculous around 20 times.
We heard the first time.
So any repetition is intimidating. Please desist.
Repetition doesn’t make things any truer if they are not true.
He has done postgraduate theology. Postgraduate theology is normally for ordination purposes, and that is at a lower level than undergraduate.
Christopher has made a serious and important point, but it is unlikely to be followed through by any serious research.
I have a book from a few years ago whic makes the same point, a feminisation which puts men off church.
Perhaps but then again in the popular culture Christian men are all over the place. Bear Grylls was on This Morning just the other day talking about Jesus. In the US youtubers like Shawn Ryan, a previous Navy Seal and apparently a Christian, is watched by many. You couldnt really get more masculine than those two. I got the impression from Christopher’s comment re feminisation that he did not think a woman being a bishop or archbishop was a good idea or appropriate. If so I think he is wrong – for far too long the Father’s daughters have been kept from taking their appropriate roles, particularly in the church world-wide. If Christopher hasnt read Andrew Bartlett’s Men and Women in Christ then he needs to.
BTW on Shawn Ryan’s show he interviewed a psychic who worked for the CIA. She was talking openly about her work, and then he asked her about religion and specifically the crucifixion. As soon as he mentioned it, she suddenly became very quiet as if she was unable to speak. So obvious the demonic was present.
I am sure that feminisation is big-time at this juncture in our culture. I gave various examples about laws against fathers in total defiance of what children actually need, and about derogatory portrayals of men. However, there is also the failure to call out women for initiating three times as many d******* as men, and the fact that if a woman banishes a man to an outhouse, a cellar or his goods to the garden, that is seen as acceptable where the reverse would leave people aghast.
Etc etc.
But I do not agree that a woman being a Christian leader is ”inappropriate”, and recently said I thought Jill Duff would be a brilliant choice; also Ruth Bushyger really good, Emma Ineson particularly good, and I gather good things are said of Esther Prior. Etc etc.
Are there emphases and qualities and deficits that will come more to the fore in a feminised church? Yes, certainly. God is suddenly portrayed as *primarily* generous and hospitable. Teaching takes a back seat. Although this archbishop very much needs a council of the wise, of scholars, that is not something female-specific – the previous archbishop did too.
As Peter’s assessment is that far off the mark, it follows that his recommendations are too.
‘Bushyager’ typo
Duped by
If wives more often ask for a divorce than men, may that not be because it is more often the husband who behaves unreasonably and selfishly? Just a thought. Ive known of fathers who have purposefully taken their time getting home from work to their wives and kids because they didnt want to spend hours with them. But women can behave badly too.
I agree that fathers have been treated badly by the law, but children are more dependant on mothers, at least in the early stage. But yes the law is too biased towards the mother.
I am glad you agree that women should be filling positions at all levels in the church. I clearly misinterpreted your comment.
But if you dont want to take my recommendation of Bartlett’s book, perhaps you could take Ian’s.
I was on a course a few years ago and the seven gay men on that course all argued that the reason boys become gay is when they don’t detach from their mother and become close with their (often absent) father in their very early teens instead (I vaguely think it is a Freud theory). I was shocked at how strongly they all thought this. So, confusion caused by mothers having to dominate the family in the absence of a strong man. Women are nealy always the ones that stay and do the roles of two people and more (however badly) for the children. It could be said that it is women still not raising boys to be men- but it is their fathers that are still truly failing the whole family, and society and the Church. When weak men fail, strong women clearly cannot fill all the gaps they leave. For the church- Get rid of all the priests from their posts who do not hold to sound doctrine- for they are by their not holding to sound doctrine- goats and wolves. The wicked tie up the holy church with constant debates and whatifery, dragging the church down to the gutter level of the world, the flesh and devil- using lawfare and the world to back them up in their evil ways (you see them all over these threads). Enough Expose them, rebuke them and if they refuse to repent, expel them from post. You would be short of priests? No you wouldn’t- all the ones you let the goats reject from ordination, can step up and the church, with God’s help, can recover in time.
“the seven gay men on that course all argued that the reason boys become gay is when they don’t detach from their mother and become close with their (often absent) father in their very early teens”
Well, this gay man thinks that’s the biggest load of hooey he’s heard in quite some time.
Sorry, I’d forgotten… it’s Freud’s The Oedipus complex …and it’s pre-teen- much younger boys.
If seven gay men all vehemently agree on this then its a pretty convincing argument when you are in the room with them.
I’m tempted to ask what the course was.
If you say they said it, I’ve no reason to disbelieve you. But I would observe that it doesn’t apply to me at all, or to any of the gay men I know (and I know quite a few). It sounds very much like Elizabeth Moberly’s theories from 40 years ago. She was trying to identify a route to curing homosexuality, and if she was on the right track (thinking that it’s a broken relationship with your parent leading to distorted emotional needs) there would be more, indeed any, success in therapeutic ‘cures’ for homosexuality in the last 40 years. That hasn’t happened, and the ministries that experimented with it (such as Exodus International) were spectacular failures.
But it has never been seriously doubted that parents play the most massive role in psychosexual development, for good or ill.
The more that children are estranged or disaffected, the more that will manifest as a reaction.
It is vanishingly unlikely that either Moberly or any other student would take a one size fits all approach.
Why don’t you think that societal normalisation will make simply snapping out of it ever more difficult?
And why assume that therapy that correctly diagnoses the root cause will have a good track record of working? The earlier in someone’s life the relevant factors are present, the harder it will be to jettison them later without doing violence to a sense of identity.
Jeannie, in today’s sick west, a lot of the fathers are not to blame given that the only reason they are absent is that the mother has kicked them out. It is most often the mothers who are destructive here,leaving a legacy of hell. Feminism teaches that the sexes are at war.
The specific age of doing violence to their precious families, wherever the tabu on such behaviour has disastrously been lifted, peaks at perimenopause, so may not unexpectedly be linked to irrationality and rage, a pattern of peaks and troughs which is more foreign to men.
However the violation of premarital sex, which is a selling short of one’s huge worth as well as an adulteration of identity, comes home to roost in those unlucky individuals who are duped of the societies that think little of such central factors.
Andrew and Christopher – I find your to-and-fros becoming increasingly nasty and personal. And therefore inappropriate for two Christian men.
We know what Jesus said about our tongues.
Peter, that is not the case at all. Andrew says untrue and malicious and unwarranted things. If you don’t believe me, scroll back. I just correct them. If he did not say them, I would not need to. The alternative would be for me to stay silent as though they were true.
It might be best if neither of you responded to each other, then it would simply cease.
Do you think that has not occurred to me? That leaves libel hanging in the air which gets magnified upon my absence.
You are quite wrong that we are equivalent. For one thing, I tell the truth whereas he like PJ and PCD sometimes tries to make out I was saying the opposite of what I was, E.g. that David and the Beloved Disciple are examples of homosexuality. Topic wise, he quickly gravitates to the lowest common denominator.
Secondly my posts have content whereas his are often trying to disintegrate what others have written, by the own-goal means of generalisation.
Third, there is no variation. He will always make general assertions that my content is unscholarly, when that could be established only by someone who was themselves a scholar, and by detailed analysis which is the opposite of what he gives.
Fourth, he targets what I write, and with others circles like hyenas, with endless repetition of initial points and no digestion of the answers already given to them.
Don’t believe me, scroll back over a period and see if this is not right. Can you honestly not see that we are to be very differently characterised as contributors? There is so much more to it than surface things like disagreeing. I am enlivened when I encounter dishonesty on such a level, and fight it at a spiritual level because it will do him no good.
He certainly wants to nip me in the bud because it would be damaging to the conventions to which he has become accustomed were my contributions considered penetrating. Hence the incessant targeting.
So, do tell us, which is the truth:
Is post birth abortion legal or is all abortion illegal?
Because you have claimed both. And they can’t both be true.
Readers, another counting game is on our hands.
(1) Count how many times I have said that what the law allows is different from what it says.
And nowhere is this more the case than with ‘abortion’.
(2) Count how many times I have said that if a woman is uncriminal till full term, that brings us into the murky territory where it is impossible to distinguish between pre and post birth.
This is because
-birth is a process taking an appreciable time;
-a limb may poke out and then return
-the mother may lie
(3) Count how many times I have said pre is not morally better than post anyway – making the whole thing irrelevant.
(4) Count how many times I have questioned why their word count shows that they value semantics more, even far more, than actual human lives.
(5) Count how many times I have noted that some correspondents are circling me like hyenas ready to pick up on the slightest verbal ambiguity (do they fear my influence? I didn’t know I had any), in a world that obviously by definition can never cease to be full of verbal ambiguities because reality is so precise and words can only get as close as they are able to the precision of reality, no closer.
Readers:
did Christopher claim in a comment on October 5th that post birth abortion had been decriminalised?
Yes, I did, and in precisely the sense already repeatedly stated.
No, you did not.
On October 5th you claimed that post birth abortion had been decriminalised.
On subsequent posts you suggested that the liminality of the birth process may enable women to kill their babies at full term. Firstly, that is an allegation. Secondly, something maybe happening doesn’t make it legal.
If something ‘maybe’ happening doesn’t make it legal,
something ‘definitely’ happening makes it even less legal,
and something ‘definitely often’ happening even less still.
Well over 90% of ”abortions” are thoroughly illegal even in our godless society (of course, ”abortion” itself is illegal, with exceptions), since they presuppose having baby A gives less good mental health than killing baby A, whereas the reverse is (unsurprisingly) standardly the case.
In this arena of all arenas, you never said a truer word. The law has for 57 years permitted, without challenge or question, what even it (in its godlessness) still officially condemns.
Saying something is clearly a possibility, over a large population, is not an allegation, no. An allegation would be ‘X has happened’, rather than ‘X has been enabled to be a very live possibility that is highly likely already to have happened more than once.’.
So, why on October 5th did you claim that post birth abortion had been decriminalised?
If you want a 7th (?) identical answer, I will give it, but I will not give an 8th, because you are less ready to read than to question. The mother will not be prosecuted up till term. Term will *necessarily* include instances where baby would in any case have started being born at a point directly after that point when the pills are taken. Birth is a process rather than a point in time. If someone is that disturbed they are that much more likely to be economical with the truth and that much less likely to care. Etc etc.. The liminalities, as you note, are endless. It is most unlikely that you think ‘end of pregnancy’ can be clearly defined without them. Do you?
Christopher
Ah, whataboutery.
The issue of the feminisation of The Church seems to me to be highly complex and I’m not sure however long I mull it and ramble on I could begin to untangle all the strands. Perhaps picking at the strands might at least begin the process. I was a Feminist in the eighties. Of course I was, because Feminism only wanted for women to be taken seriously, to be able to afford to pay to live, and not be treated as second class people; reliant on men. The world increasingly mocked and dismissed Masculinity and men were objects of scorn and disgust. Their incompetance constantly highlighted and their incontinence of temper and leadership skills- women were disappointed and now were freely swapping notes and the bubble of men’s self-importance and authority burst. Women were able and capable and not going to be oppressed and possessed any longer. So women ended up alone, struggling with children and having to find yet another man to survive and keep a roof over their heads. Because now two salaries were needed to pay the mortgage and women couldn’t pay it alone. In the church in the 80’s women campaigned for ordination and it felt like men in the church really hated women. It also felt that most of the men in the church were very feminine and secretly gay, and that they hated women and didn’t want them in their boys club. It also felt like gays and women were invariably lumped together in all conversations….like gay rights and women’s rights were joined and equivalent. It was a cynical and clever campaign move and half the population found itself inexoriably linked with a minority Sin issue that God forbade…making the Churches acceptance of holy women in ministry an even higher mountain to climb for those called. I’m beginning to ramble. Feminism in the world has been a disaster for women and children. The family has been destroyed by it. The church seems to me to be full of unholy women who do not hold to sound doctrine and who were groomed to be lgbtq allies- and who are. Holiness is not important to many …it cannot be…it never gets mentioned. Masculinity and muscular Christianity seems AWOL. Ok, thinking aloud ramble over for now.
There is no such thing as muscular Christianity. And please dont refer to gay people as ‘the gays’. Even if some gay people describe themselves as if their sexuality is all-important, to you as a Christian it is not and so you shouldnt refer to others as if their sexuality defines them. Many are simply looking for the love they should have received as children but were deprived.
It wasn’t a Christian course. It was a distance hons top up degree in Acting at a Home counties university. That’s interesting. I did mull afterwards whether men spending loads of bonding time doing mannish activities with their ol’ dads might be therapeutic. It probably would be healing over any sense of neglect in childhood….which you earlier intimated gay men are at times trying to resolve. ‘ Many are simply looking for the love they should have received as children but were deprived.’ I do feel men should be spending time doing physically outdoorsy male wholesome activities with other men. It is healthy for them. Maybe men who find themselves drawn to other men sexually need more of this to help help any deficits from childhood. Anyway- off topic now. Sorry.
Looking for the love we should have received as children but were deprived? What are you talking about Peter?
Indeed, very many are looking to heal their love deficit from their fathers when young, which is why today’s sexist and man hating culture which downgrades and ridicules fathers and classifies everything as patriarchy is causing so much harm to children.
There is such a thing as muscular Christianity. Men’s Saba in corporeal sano, a well balanced health in all things. What could be better than that? Your theory is surely not that Eric Liddell, Michael Jones, Michelle (name? Lionesses goal scorer), Steph Cook or Bear Grylls are NOT examples of muscular Christianity?
‘Mens sana’, curse autocorrect which even wanted to introduce Dana.
Mens sana in corpore sano. Away with ‘sans’ and ‘Dani’. Autocorrect’s cluelessness here mirrors society’s amnesia about this excellent principle.
Michelle Agyemang
Muscular Christianity has its own problems. Just look at the appalling John Smyth scandal.
The faffing over feminisation/masculinisation of the Church seems to overlook that a serious problem is what our contemporary views of ‘traditional’ masculine and feminine traits are, and how those match up with what Scripture tells us are meant to our marks of behaviour, i.e. the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5). Rightly or wrongly we easily associate a lot of those with what we think of as traditional feminine qualities. The masculine spin is not impossible (patience, faithfulness and self-control can be seen in that light) but it’s more work to make the link, and some qualities which we’d automatically name as masculine (e.g. strength and protection) are actually missing…
Indeed. And just think how protective mothers can be!
Is not Jesus, the exemplar? Fully man; fully God.
A man’s man and a woman’s man.
Not a man’s woman; not a woman’s woman.
What challenges face Sarah Mullally as the new archbishop?
The biggest challenge she faces is within herself.
Is she willing to follow God Almighty, through new life through faith in Christ Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit in obedience to God, no matter what man says or does, no matter the level of rejection and disapproval and fury she causes, or is her need to please man going to nullify her as a soldier for Christ, and mean she serves Mammon/ Satan instead?
She has announced that she intends to be a Shepherd of The Church.
So she is responding to God’s call to her. But when out of the hills alone with the sheep, buffeted by the winds and rain and storms, will she shelter in God? Or abandon the sheep and go in to a tempting hovel or palace to stay warm and dry?
Will she truly become the shepherd she wants to be?
There will be a high price to pay if she does.
Being a mouthpiece for God means she says what he thinks, without twisting his words to pacify the spirit of the age.
Be ready, Sarah, to lay down your child-sacrificing-do-what-you-like approach to babies lives. Stand up for the sanctity of life. Do not promote and enable and reward what God hates.
Are you prepared to be hated and despised, rejected, humiliated and railed against?
If you truly intend shepherding the sheep of God, then will you, when it comes to it, ay down your own life for them or will you round them up and drive them off a cliff?
Didn’t shepherds of the time, lead the sheep, and the sheep followed? Jesus spoke of shepherd types.