When Justin Welby announced his intention to resign as Archbishop of Canterbury, and again when he stepped down on 6th January, a number of assessments of his time in office were published. I want to offer my own here, not in order to undertake any kind of character assassination, but to try and make some sense of the last 11 years, from an institutional and a personal point of view, and to highlight the challenges now facing the Church of England.
Overall, I have found Justin a puzzling person to work with, and I think his legacy to the Church of England is quite paradoxical, and we are now confronted with some deep and seemingly intractable problems as a result.
When Justin’s appointment was announced, I might have been surprised had I known as much then as I know now about how appointments processes work, but I was certainly encouraged. A friend published this comment on Facebook, and I think it was representative of how many people felt at the time:
In March 2013, while training for ordination in Nottingham, I went along to a local church, to listen to an invited speaker. This clergyman spoke about his faith in Jesus Christ. I was struck by how he did not gloss over the death of his child, and his own struggles with depression. A few days later, the speaker, Justin Welby, was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. I am thankful that his words made space for leaders to speak about mental health challenges…
I remember two events early on in his time in office where I too felt deeply encouraged, and excited for the future of the Church of England. The first was watching his enthronement service on March 21st, 2013, when he struck the door of Canterbury Cathedral, and was greeted first of all by a child.
Child: we greet you in the Name of Christ who are you and why do you request entrance?
Justin: I am Justin, a servant of Jesus Christ, and I come as one seeking the grace of God to travel with you in his service together.
Child: Why have you been sent to us?
Justin: I am sent as Archbishop to serve you to proclaim the love of Christ and with you to worship and love him with heart and soul soul mind and strength.
Child: How do you come among us and with what confidence?
Justin: I come knowing nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified and in weakness and fear and in much trembling.
Child: Let us then humble ourselves before God and together seek his mercy.
Despite all the pomp of the ceremony (and that dreadful mitre!) it felt like a new and fresh start, and suggested that this might be quite a different way of being archbishop. (I gather that asking questions of the incoming archbishop was a mediaeval tradition, but here it had a very new twist with the questions being asked by a child.)
The second event was being present at the New Wine leaders conference in Harrogate in March 2016 when Justin came to address us. Revisiting it again nearly a decade on makes for fascinating reading. One distinct impression we had was that Justin saw himself as one of us, and saw a key role for New Wine and similar movements in the renewal of the Church of England.
I can’t tell you what a privilege it is to be here. It’s beyond what I can easily express. The New Wine movement has done so much in our lives and in our family’s lives. God has worked through you in so many amazing ways, and so much in the church.
And he was distinctly upbeat about what was happening in the C of E:
I want to say to you today that I believe from the bottom of my heart that the long years of winter in the church, especially in the Church of England, are changing. The ice is thawing, the spring is coming. There is a new spring in the church.
I say to you secondly: embrace the present. With all the pain, the grace, the weakness and “we’re not what we hope to be”. For the Spirit always meets us in the reality of the present, to lead us into God’s future. There is no despair in the church because we serve the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead.
But it was also striking that he was already talking in terms of his legacy:
At Canterbury Cathedral there’s a chapel at the west end that is especially complicated for me psychologically. It’s complicated because it has a list of all my predecessors, right back to Augustine. If you want to feel inadequate [laughter] then try looking at a list that begins with Augustine…I wonder what thought you give to your legacy, to what you will leave behind—to how you might be remembered; most of all to how we will all be judged.
That’s the hardest thing for me, in the decisions of daily life, in how I live each day, how I pray, love, argue, decide, discipline. It’s very difficult for me to escape—especially difficult to escape that sense of our legacy, of what it could be and what it shouldn’t be.
The there was great emphasis on humility, on transparency, and on honesty and facing up to difficult truths—deeply ironic given the end of his time in office. But we were full of hope, and we felt that Justin gave us reason to be.
He ended by focussing on Jesus: ‘For he is completely true, completely faithful, completely trustworthy. He simply asks us, his servants, to live in a way that witnesses to him in this world.’ And this commitment to witness was a frequent theme. It was about the time he visited New Wine that he launched Thy Kingdom Come as a prayer initiative running from Ascension to Pentecost each year for people to come to faith. In 2018 it posted a wonderful video in which Justin goes back to the room in which he came to faith himself on October 12th, 1975—it is very moving and worth a watch.
In terms of the institution of the Church, things were also encouraging in the first few years. Despite finding a strong consensus that ‘there was no theological objection to the ordination of women’ as far back as 1976, the ordination of women was only enacted in 1993, and debates about women as bishops (raising quite distinct theological and ecclesiological questions) had reached deadlock. As Andrew Atherstone notes:
Lord Williams’s tenure had ended in tears, literally, when hopes for women bishops crashed in the General Synod. Immediately, Archbishop Welby offered a fresh way forward (the Five Guiding Principles), and legislation was promptly agreed. It seemed almost miraculous, after years of wrangling. Here was Welby the great reconciler in action. The Midas touch had struck again. It will go down as one of his greatest achievements.
Alongside that, he quickly introduced the Renewal and Reform programme, facing the question of decline in attendance head on:
…“the biggest reform of the Church since the mid-19th century”, he said — which set out to address the “existential crisis” of numerical decline, and addressed the Church’s structures and funding flows. “We can’t simply go on as we are, if we are to flourish and grow as the Church of England,” he declared. “Our call is not to manage decline.”
It is striking, looking back, at the combination here of concern for evangelism and mission combined with a bold confidence, almost to the point of hubris, that this would solve our problems. It is again worth remembering how most people responded to this, as noted by Madeleine Davies. John Spence, chair of the Archbishops’ Council Finance Committee, set out the rationale:
His speech setting out a vision to “return this Church to numerical and spiritual growth, and to return Christ to his rightful place — at the centre of this country, its conscience, and its culture” secured rapturous applause in the General Synod in 2014.
I was elected to General Synod in 2015, so all these things were in placed when I joined the chamber. Soon after that, in earlier 2016, I was elected to the Archbishops’ Council (from here, ‘AC’), to my surprise; I had not even thought of standing until a friend strongly urged it. Both within Synod, and in meetings of AC—and in personal conversation—I began to encounter a very different Justin Welby. In theory, we should have got on well, having both been educated at public schools (albeit of very different kinds) and studied at Oxbridge—and shared an interest in rowing. But from the beginning, conversations were awkward.
Synod was already engaging in the Shared Conversations which had been recommended by the 2013 Pilling Report. At considerable expense, and taking a good deal of time and energy, they demonstrated two things: that opinions were deeply divided within the C of E on the question of sexuality and marriage; and there was no obvious way to bridge this divide. Looking back, I find it strange that none of us raised the question of why so many in the church appeared not to accept its doctrine, despite (for clergy) our vows to do so. (The roots of this question go back to the 1991 report Issues in Human Sexuality mainly authored by Richard Harries, then bishop of Oxford.)
The Shared Conversations ended with a report from the House of Bishops Marriage and Same-Sex Relationships After the Shared Conversations (GS 2055) at the end of 2016, brought to Synod in February 2017, effectively recognised this. Central to the paper was paragraph 26 proposing ‘no change to ecclesiastical law or to the Church of England’s existing doctrinal position on marriage and sexual relationships’ but with work being done on better guidelines for clergy than in Issues and guidance on pastoral provision. By a narrow margin, this paper was not ‘taken note of’ in Synod, the opposition being mainly liberals who wanted to see change, plus a small group of conservatives who thought even this work was a step too far.
In response to this, Justin made a call for:
a radical new Christian inclusion, founded in Scripture, in reason, in tradition, in theology, and in the Christian faith as the Church of England has received it. But it must be also based on…the freedom and the equality that comes with the radical, Christ-centered inclusion of the Gospel.
Alongside the first Justin I had encountered, here I found a second Justin—someone who believed he was the expert in reconciliation, who could keep everyone happy, and who (alone?) could provide the solution to what others saw as intractable problems.
The following July, I passed him on a pathway on the York university campus (where July Synod is held), and I commented that I thought this statement was a disaster, since no-one was remembering the caveat ‘founded in Scripture…’ He stopped and turned to me, and defended himself: ‘I had to say something’. My simple reply was ‘No, you didn’t’. The possibility of going away, taking time to reflect, and seeking the counsel of others, did not seem to him to be an option to him. In fact, his inability to listen to advice (despite the claims he made about following advice in his fatal Channel 4 interview) seems to have been a feature of his working relationships.
About that time, I had been praying for Justin, and felt God giving me a verse to share with him from Isaiah 11: ‘The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him— the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might…’ He response was immediate: ‘Is that so I can bring in same-sex marriage?’ It was a strangely flippant and surprising comment, and I had no idea how to respond. But with the benefit of hindsight, it now makes sense. From this, and other comments he has made, I feel sure that he changed his mind on same-sex relationships and marriage at least as far back as 2017, and probably much earlier, around the time of his consecration as archbishop. Although he only said so explicitly in his appearance on the podcast The Rest is Politics with Alistair Campbell last November, he actually allowed Campbell to attribute this view to him in his previous discussion in 2017.
About eight years ago, Justin told me with excitement that Richard Hays had informed him (on a trip to the States) that he had changed his view on same-sex marriage—something Hays denied in correspondence, when he also said he would not make any public statement on the matter. It turned out that Justin was right.
I think this means that Justin has been disguising his own views for a very long time. What many have interpreted as statements that sought to balance competing views have actually been Justin seeking to push through change behind the scenes whilst seeking to hide this from those who oppose it, in order to keep then on side until it was too late. A startling example of this occurred in York last July, when Justin made a statement of support for those in the Alliance (who are coordinating those in the Church who continue to uphold the Church’s teaching on marriage) in debate—only then to make a furious personal attack on a leader of the Alliance in the bar that evening, to the shock of those looking on. In stark contrast to the message he gave in 2016 to New Wine leaders, Justin informed me that he was now cutting off relationships with all those who had nurtured his faith in his early years, because of their opposition to his position seeking change in the Church. ‘This indicates the seriousness with which I view this matter.’
It is hard to disconnect his own secretive approach from that of the House of Bishops, who as a body have consistently refused to be open about their own discussions, holding their meetings in camera instead of open to scrutiny, and refusing to publish legal and theological advice whilst claiming that it supports the position of their published statements.
In 2018, he published a book with the ambitious title Reimagining Britain, and out of that set up a series of Archbishops’ Commissions, on race, housing, and the family. In my review of it, I don’t hold back on Justin’s achievements to date:
Justin Welby had already left a significant legacy from the first half of his tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury. The swift resolution to the inherited crisis of finding a workable settlement in relation to women bishops; the instigation of the Renewal and Reform programme; reorienting the Church’s administration and finances towards mission; the re-establishment of evangelism as a priority; the prayer initiative around Thy Kingdom Come; and even the personal success of (just about) ‘putting Wonga out of business’—all these have been significant achievements.
But when it came to the book itself, I was appalled by the weakness of its analysis, the thinness of its critique, and the absence of any real theological thinking. In his survey of British economics, he does not even mention Margaret Thatcher; he offers no assessment of the rise of managerialism in institutions; and he draws on no real Christian or Anglican theological resources. The book included a note of his debt to the thinking and friendship of Paula Vennells, who was head of the Post Office during the Horizon scandal.
When I asked a staff member what he thought was good about the book, he paused, looked up, and replied ‘He wrote it all himself’.
The resistance to theological thinking has left its mark in other ways too. A professor of theology who was invited to the initial preparation for the 2022 Lambeth Conference quickly stepped back: ‘It was clear that Justin had no interest in theology whatsoever.’ And this has also been reflected in his influence in the appointments to the bench of bishops. It was widely rumoured that, in the process of appointing the bishop of London, he used his privilege, as archbishop of adding to the shortlist, to include Paula Vennells, even though her shortcomings at the Post Office were already know—and then to use his influence within the process to prevent either Christopher Cocksworth or Graham Tomlin from being appointed.
As the editorial at Living Church noted:
He sought to form the Church of England’s episcopate after his own image by introducing an invitation-only leadership training program. This meant the bishops shifted as he did — from a cadre dominated by moderate evangelicals with business degrees to the current band increasingly united around identity politics and ready to take the plunge on same-sex marriage. Many gifted clergy and people in the pews were left on the sidelines shaking their heads.
This lack of interest in theology has also extended to a lack of interest in theological education. Some years ago, I set out for him what I believed where the serious issues facing us in theological education; this includes the fact that, with the growth of context-based training, whatever else its merits, it means that clergy are ordained having effectively had almost half their theological learning time cut out. He showed no interest whatsoever, and in the discussions that we have had on AC about theological education, it was clear that Justin knew nothing of the details of how the current system works.
More odd was his lack of interest in the questions of clergy stipends and pensions. When I succeeded in getting unanimous support for a restoration of the clergy pension and stipend levels through Synod (by means of a Private Member’s Motion) he immediately spoke to me on the platform: ‘I have always been concerned about this’. But I knew this wasn’t true, since I had sat through meetings where he had voted through an effective reduction in the stipend which I had opposed. He appeared now to be wanting to take credit for something on which someone else had done the work.
The overall impact in vocations to ordained ministry has been catastrophic. After a significant rise in numbers prior to Covid, there has been a massive drop, and this will have very long-term implications for the Church’s mission and ministry.
This lack of interest in process has been the hallmark of other initiatives. In February 2020, the Synod just before Covid lockdown, in a debate about racism and the Church, Justin unilaterally declared that the Church of England ‘is institutionally racist’. He borrowed this language from the 1999 Macpherson report into the Metropolitan Police, but Justin made the declaration without the same evidence of research. I am sure that he thought that this statement, coming from a white man with a privileged background, would communicate the support needed for those feeling on the margins of the institutional church. But what he failed to realise was the impact on the ground—that he made local clergy and members of congregations immediately feel tarred with the label of ‘racist’ regardless of their own actual attitudes and practice.
This was one of a number of ‘Ratner’ moments for Justin. Every time that he talked about the failure and the shame of the Church, I think he genuinely thought people would see both him and the institution as humble and self-aware. But what many deduced was that this was an institution to avoid—especially if the leader had no confidence in it. The final example was in his Channel 4 interview, where he astonishingly said that he didn’t care about the institution!
Lockdown was in place by the time the report From Lament to Action was published. It was commissioned specifically by the archbishops, thus by-passing the usual process of consultation, and did not even attend to its own terms of reference (something confirmed in later questions to Synod). Rather than gather together previous recommended actions for implementation, it created a kind of shopping list of things wanted by the authors, which Justin appears to have encouraged. These were not based on evidence; many were unrealistic; and the evidence is that many of the actions would actually harm rather than address attitudes to ethnic diversity.
Successive reports from the Archbishops’ Commission on Racial Justice have not been widely read, but have continued to lack proper process in drawing on evidence, have argued that any questioning of their methodology must be racist, and even included racist stereotyping of different theological traditions in the Church.
Another of Justin’s commissions, arising from his book, focussed on the family. But, again, it paid little attention to theology (and in fact omitted a key theological reflection from Elaine Storkey from its published documents), was written by a sociologist, and rather than drawing on Anglican understandings of marriage and family life, said that it affirmed family structures whatever their form, disregarding the evidence of harm done to children in broken and unstable home environments.
This approach to process has also dogged key elements around safeguarding. The report from Alexis Jay was explicitly commissioned to explore the options in relation to independent safeguarding in the Church, both in terms of safeguarding operation and scrutiny of processes. When her report was published, she was at pains to emphasis that this is not what she considered—she only looked at what fully independent operation and scrutiny might look like. The reason for the change was, I think, Justin’s own briefing to her, outside of due process, to move straight to independent operation, since he mistakenly believed that that is what the IICSA report required of us.
Keith Makin took five years to produce his report, when AC has asked for it in nine months. I now think it was a significant failure of ours not to press harder the question as to why the report took so long; I cannot but help feeling that the idea that Justin had no involvement in this delay does not look very plausible. Can you imagine where we would be now if Makin had reported four years ago?
Living Church offered this summary comment on Justin’s attitude to due process:
In the end, [Justin] had little choice — resignation became inevitable. The chorus demanding it was remarkably unified, rising from across the normally fractious Church of England. This wasn’t just because the Smyth case was appalling or because the church needed to prove once and for all that it takes safeguarding seriously. The archbishop simply had no friends left. During a tumultuous 11-year tenure, he had lost his notorious temper too many times, scolding subordinates for failures he overlooked in himself, refusing to let others have their say, ignoring precedent and canons when they got in the way of his agenda.
In a wonderful and moving letter to the Church Times last week, James Dudley-Smith offers a list of qualities we need in the next archbishop. In the middle he includes the perhaps surprising request: ‘Someone who does the hard work of following due process, or changing it by due process.’ The reason for this is that adherence to due process says two things: first, I am not the person with the solutions who can fix things; and, secondly, I value the wisdom and insight of others. It seems that Justin struggled to say either of those.
This is ironic given Justin’s repeated claims that he had little or no power.
The big mistake in this role, which I’d sort of worked out before I came, but it has been amply confirmed, is: don’t waste time looking for levers to pull, because there aren’t any. It’s a process of persuasion, of example, of blessing and withholding blessing for particular things.
Given his clear influence in appointments, his use of Commissions, and other interventions in processes behind the scenes, this sounds distinctly disingenuous. Culturally, the Church of England is deeply deferential, and Justin appeared to be unaware of how hard those both within and outside the Church of England find it to ignore strong suggestions or preferences expressed by an archbishop.
This was especially true at moments when he lost his temper. I was the object of his outbursts on several occasions, both in public meetings and in private—though at other times he could be quite charming. There is no doubt that this was exacerbated by his own struggles with confidence and mental health, and was made worse with the Covid lockdown. But it is very hard to be led as a Church by someone prone to such things, which on more than one occasion reduced women in a meeting to tears. And this was not a surprise. A friend of mine who was an intern when Justin was based in Coventry (2002–2007) asked after a few weeks: ‘Why does Justin hate me?’ ‘Oh don’t worry’, came the reply. ‘He is like that to everyone’.
I have already written here at length, and I have not even considered the disastrous handling of the Covid lockdown, when Justin (I think illegally) issued an order to clergy telling them they could not enter church buildings, and later denied it was expressed as an order, claiming it was merely advice.
Nor have I explored the fate of the Anglican Communion. Justin invested an enormous amount of time in travelling around the Communion, visiting all the provinces in his first year, and making the 2016 Primates Conference the best attended in years. But he failed to follow through on promises of discipline, and in the end at Lambeth 2022 announced unilaterally that there were now two, contradictory, understandings of marriage in the Communion, and that was that.
After a mammoth and costly effort to gather thousands of bishops, he laid on a 12-day leadership conference, largely refusing to let his fellow bishops argue or to make meaningful decisions, at least not about the issues that really trouble our unity.
His decision to squash the Global South Anglicans’ patient and respectful request for a referendum on the Lambeth Conference’s Resolution 1.10 — the only significant Communion-wide doctrinal text to emerge from the Global South — was a travesty. It alienated many leaders who were ready to be his friends, and who may never respond to another Archbishop of Canterbury’s invitation. As one Indigenous bishop said informally during the conference, “It was just like at the boarding schools. They say, ‘Sit down, shut up, and we’ll tell you what to do.’”
There could hardly be a starker contrast with all the things Justin said in his enthronement service and to the New Wine audience.
This article has been a piece in two halves, and the two halves seem to correspond to the paradox of the two Justins we have had as archbishop. On the one hand, there is a sense in which evangelism, mission, and church growth are now officially on the agenda of the Church and embedded in many of the things we do like never before, and that must be credited to one of the Justins.
Yet, on the most challenging issues, particularly around sexuality and race, we are not only more divided, we are deeply embedded in an impossible situation—and this must be credited to the other Justin. His approach of working behind the scenes, not following due process, offering what he thought was needed to both sides, has created deeper division by making everyone think they were going to get what they wanted in a quite unrealistic way. As Andrew Atherstone notes:
In a tragic symmetry, his appointment was welcomed enthusiastically by every part of the Church, and his resignation was energetically demanded by every part of the Church.
Amongst all the comments that have been made in the last couple of months, two, from quite opposing viewpoints, struck me. Conservative evangelical Gerald Bray commented on Facebook:
I think the scandal that finally brought Justin down was just the tip of an iceberg that had been getting closer to the ship for a long time. He strikes me as one of those people who cannot deal with bad news, not just about this, but about most things. Look at the way he has watched the Anglican Communion disintegrate before his eyes, and yet denied it. Look at the way he has presided over a precipitous decline in church attendance in England, but denied that too. He just does not know how else to react. Probably, when he was told about John Smyth’s abuse, he could not face it and tried to sweep it under the carpet as if it had never happened, and for 10 years or so, he got away with it.
And liberal Martyn Percy said in The Times:
I think the one feature needed in the selection process this time will be new: realism. The Church of England does not need another rallying call for revival. The people’s hopes in the pews rest on an authentic and honest candidate who does not deny reality.
My main emotion in reading back over this piece is sadness—sadness for the lost sense of hope and optimism that we had eleven years ago, sadness that so much went unrealised, sadness that we are now in an even more challenging situation, and sadness that Justin’s promising tenure should have ended the way it did.
Where do we go from here? As the person apocryphally replied to someone in London asking for directions: ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here’.
Buy me a Coffee
A shocking but accurate portrayal of Welby by Ian. It seems Welby was ready to compromise almost from day one, in the name of reconciliation, of course. The steady drumbeat of compromise has left the Church of England in ruins with evangelicals looking for a parallel province. No replacement can change or stop the Church’s direction. Lame duck Cottrell will change nothing. If the Iranian bishop wins she will still press for full inclusion of homosexuals to the priesthood. I can’t help but think the CofE is now a lost cause. I don’t think GAFCON or GSAF will come to the CofEs rescue.
It is entirely inevitable. If you try to compromise with the secular/world/sexual-revolution system, which is in fact your greatest enemy, it will, in disrespect, make short work of chewing you up and spitting you out (highly unpleasant language, but only equally unpleasant to the things that were compromised upon and the desecration of beauty and holiness that that involves).
Acts 12.22-3 public plaudits and swift termination
Rev 18.17 short shrift
and ironically Rom 1.21 with 1.24-6 being ‘given up’ so that which was wrongly honoured in God’s place could be seen for what it really is in reality and effect.
Thanks David, but I don’t think you are right.
We cannot continue in this direction, and there are plenty who recognise it. The C of E is changing on the ground in the right direction.
I hope and pray you are right Ian. But with a new progressive Archbishop and 42 bishops willing to go along with whoever the new leader is, I don’t see it happening. The CofE is following the TEC playbook, and we know how that ended. Welby was enthralled with Michael Curry. In the end TEC voted for gay marriage and all opposition was quashed. Witness what happened to the bishop of Albany. ACNA was born and the rest, as they, is history. I’d like to be proven wrong.
No, it is not following TEC, because
a. our doctrine of marriage remains in canon law, and
b. we have retained the BCP and formularies as our doctrine.
Anyone who tries to change these will fail.
But hasnt this mess shown that church authorities can essentially ignore whatever ‘laws’ the coe has? In the end it is about actual practice and behaviour, not written words.
Yes but what happened in TEC as she consistently flouted canon law and church teaching was something called LOCAL OPTION. That became enshrined though it was never passed by the HOB or HOD. The bishops turned a blind eye to the steady encroachment of pansexuality in the church. This was led by the late Louis Crew an influential gay layman, now deceased. Once the steamroller starts Ian it won’t be stopped despite what is enshrined in canon law.
Thanks David, but you are missing the point here. TEC had no anchor point that could be appealed to, which the bishops could not broach. We do.
We have just had an announcement that the LLF process will not make any more progress *this year*—and I think that is precisely because they have struck up against the rock of the doctrine of the C of E as established.
Unlikely as the Church of England has far more conservative evangelicals than TEC ever did. In the US most white conservative Protestant evangelicals are Baptists and most black conservative evangelicals are Pentecostal
>>[O]ur doctrine of marriage remains in canon law, and … we have retained the BCP and formularies as our doctrine.<<
For now – and therein lies the central issue for the Church of England.
Latitudinarianism is part of Anglican 'tradition, a strand of its DNA. promoting the idea that the church should be broad-based and that strict adherence to doctrine and ritual practices is not necessary. Canon law and BCP formularies can and have changed in the past; why not in the future? In our parents generations it was artificial contraception, divorce and remarriage; for ours generation it's been the dismantling of the (so called) heteronormative-patriarchy; tomorrow? … who knows … universalism? … annihilationism? transmigration of souls? … a God/ess who evolves and changes His/Her mind?
The outcome of the compromise of 2013-24 was inevitable, but the C of E’s demise is not at all. It could easily return to its roots, and stop thinking that all views are of worth by virtue of (!) being views.
Yes, I think it could.
A small observation. Referring to a person as ‘the Iranian bishop’ sounds disrespectful and she is also English. You might at least use her name.
My thoughts.
How apt this article is at the start of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. What a challenge in front of us all!
He was not being truthful from the start, when he said at the door of Canterbury Cathedral, “I come knowing nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified and in weakness and fear and in much trembling.” He was a good friend to the world and its importation into the church.
thanks, a helpful, sobering appraisal
Pace Gerald Bray, it is not a matter of not being able to deal with bad news. it is a matter of the question one is asked being about the future. Where it comes to the future, there only ever is one position – have hope, have faith, have strategy. Now, suppose that he had spoken of a bleak future. Not only would that have been presumptuous, it would also possibly have been inaccurate, needlessly negative, and disastrous for the CofE, that even its own leader should be seen not to have high hopes for it. The Ratner/JATRobinson effect.
Justin Welby has been used as a punchball or whipping boy of late – someone recently and painfully bereaved of family members, and who was in a job the critics themselves on the sidelines agreed to be impossible.
It has often been said that the top job requires holiness and brains, and these are two areas where none of us has limitless capacity. Mercy is in order.
Should he have lost the job? Of course – after not only the interview with A Campbell and R Stewart but all that came before it and led up to it, including different messages to different audiences and placation of P Tatchell.
The Makin Report 100% of the time gave the spin/emphasis that the activist-victims wanted (and it was embarrassing to keep them waiting, so they basically got everything they asked for). It has been much maligned in the Church Times letters and by Andrew Brown ibid. For example, ‘Did Welby know?’ – the question is ‘Know what?’ – but that is rarely asked. George Conger is highly inaccurate on this point, saying on the basis of John Hudghton’s article that JW knew all about Smyth’s beatings in 1978(!) – when they had scarcely begun. John Hudghton’s article is not rated by the survivor-activists, and all it shows was that someone who was liable to be self-willed in 1981-2 was liable to be self-willed on some other matter in 1978. Which is only to be expected.
The cover-up dogma has been there from the first. Anyone who first heard things framed that way has never questioned it. But David Fletcher gave evidence to the public domain for the Coltart Report in the 1990s, and John Thorn had written of Smyth at Winchester in 1989, again in the public domain. Henry Olonga’s book was in the public domain. A Graystone and others began by putting actually far too much in the public domain, which has the effect of mixed messaging.
What one repeatedly gets (see above) is the nuanced reality being dishonestly simplistically dogmatised. J Welby apparently having to be word perfect and fact perfect and analysis perfect off the cuff is one example. Another is the nuanced matter of which denomination J Smyth ‘was’. Evangelicals are rarely one denomination nor denominationally minded.
The largely appalling beatings were consensual (but we need in addition to take account of long-term grooming) and accordingly could be refused, as sometimes they were. They were not ‘consensual’ which is a different thing, a technical legality involving the shedding of blood. Some, without regard for truth speak, for the UK, only of boys and not of (largely) young men.
Makin quite wrongly argues that as some or quite a few knew a certain amount early on, a random person like J Welby (who was neither senior nor of the born 1960-2 generation) would on the balance of probabilities also have known a certain amount. This is just so easily refuted, because those who did know are no more real than those who did not, and the latter are ignored. People far closer to the realities than JW have said they knew little or (often) nothing, and even the actual victims regularly knew little about any details of other victims!
It is also frequently said – There were parents who wanted to go to the police. I believe there was one such parent. There were more than one who did not. That outweighs the former. Not legally, however – but in terms of compassion, rehabilitation, and avoiding the huge tabloid curse which never gets mentioned. There are no known victims who wanted to at the time. But they all had 30-35 years to do so, had they indeed wanted, and did not. That universality says much. Moreover, it is far from straightforward. In doing so, one could be going against the will of those who had suffered much and wanted to get on with their lives positively. As indeed many did. And how can you check every person’s wishes out?
You believe wrong then. And are still a safeguarding risk, I see.
What a disgustingly untrue slur and insult – and vague and gnomic to boot. It is incumbent on you either to withdraw it or to substantiate it.
People (or those with conscience) analyse as truthfully as they can, and it is ill-informed jumpers on bandwagons that generate a lot of the half truths. The more analysis people have done, the quicker you (having done far less) are to think that less is more.
Correction: two separate inaccurate insults – one regarding the past and one regarding the present.
I observed your behaviour on a previous thread which, I said, would have resulted in a cease and desist letter from the registrar of you were in the diocese on which I live.
Your apologias for Smyth etc al and your victim blaming continues on social media. That constitutes a risk to vulnerable people.
Well said Penelope
Penelope, if you avoid quoting chapter and verse one time, the decent thing is to note the omission and do so the second time. You are making brief generalisations and expecting people to believe them. All you need to do is substantiate or withdraw what you say. I have now said that twice on this thread alone.
Anyone else can also try to substantiate if they are able; being unable is not a good look.
If Penelope comments are, as you claim, “vague and gnomic to boot” how did decipher them?
Touche
All people need to do is read Christopher’s comments here, on previous threads where Smyth/safeguarding has been discussed, and look at his feed on X.
He is a consistent apologist for Iwerne and for those who knew about Smyth’s abuse and shunted him off to Africa; an apologist for Church hierarchs; a critic of Graystone, Newman and the media generally; a minimiser of the abuse suffered and (as here) a victim blamer.
He doesn’t appear to understand consent, authority, abuse, or trauma. This is, sadly, all too common in the Church, and has been the attitude of those in power and their enablers.
I’m afraid there is very little gatekeeping in church. All anybody has to do is show up, say the required words about the faith and they are in. It’s transactional – so it is no surprise that those who have no clue what love looks like can gain a foothold.
And then there are the ravenous wolves in leadership positions – of which Smyth was a leading example.
Joe, I understood every word. The comments were short. And they were non specific in a context where specificity is all. Hence ‘vague and gnomic to boot’ was precisely accurate.
Having been asked to be specific at least twice, Penelope has failed once again to deliver. In my 17.1 (2.02, 2.17) posts above, I make about 25 claims. All that is required is to point out any one of these 25 that is incorrect, and say the reason why. Finding just one should not be too difficult – but for Penelope it has been testing so far. She responds to my ever-specific points by vaguenesses, in other words not addressing precisely any precise point. Why so shy?
Yet again we get the meaningless phrase ‘apologist for Iwerne’. (a) If Iwerne exists for 90 years there will be many good things and many bad things it will have done. Penelope seems to think there cannot possibly have been even one good thing in so long a time period. No-one will agree on that, and those who do will not know much about their subject matter so can safely be disregarded. The Iwerne I speak of is the one that punished JS, among other things, and since I am against JS I must be for Iwerne in that particular respect. Presumably PCD is against Iwerne dogmatically in every single respect, so is therefore against Iwerne in teh fact that it decided JS should be punished. No punishment would have been better, perhaps? (b) ‘Victim blamer’ is another meaningless phrase. The idea is that victims are infallible in every matter, when there are thousands of matters. All of them. They aren’t? Well, then, I can correct or nuance them when they are not. I doubt they all mutually agree on everything anyway.
So – what are you waiting for? You have 25 claims to shoot down, and you need only one. It is open season.
Christopher
I have no intention of rebutting 25 claims, partly because that would be extremely tedious but more because I am sure it would try Ian’s patience. And, for anyone willing to read your disinformation and spin, it’s hardly necessary. So, I will limit myself to one: it is untrue to claim that only one set of parents wanted to go to the police.
However, it is not only your claims I am questioning, but, much more significantly, your repeated spins when discussing abuse – particularly that associated with Smyth and Iwerne. Why, for example, make the claim that the beatings were consensual and that the boys were young men? Have you not heard of coercive control? Do you think beating men is more acceptable than beating boys?
As I said you criticise those who have sought to expose this abuse. Here you claim that Graystone has put too much into the public domain? What do you mean by too much? Do you believe some abuse should be shrouded in secrecy? Or disguised in e dead language so that hoi polloi can’t understand it?
This is what I mean by spin and bias and apologias for abuse and the institutions which enabled it.
Lastly, I do deprecate the ethos of Iwerne. I would be interested to know in what way you think it punished Smyth. It certainly enabled him to continue abusing boys and young men. Absent Smyth, I believe Iwerne was a pernicious institution, grooming elite young men and boys and indoctrinating them in simplistic theology and bible study to become leaders formed in that peculiar mould. They were this meant to infiltrate the Church. And, sadly some did. They were to eschew the company of girls and young women, yet warned of the dangers of masturbation. And all this in an atmosphere of homoerotic muscular Christianity. I am sure many were traumatised by its cruelties, its contradictions, its snobbery, its sexism and homophobia, and its simplistic teaching. It was riddled with English classism and a very long way from the Kingdom of God.
Penelope
You were right when you said “still a safeguarding risk”. If the church is worth anything, it should exclude those who would scatter/harm the flock.
Hi Penelope
I will number and deal with your points one by one, whereby we can see how many fail to be inaccurate and/or evasive.
(1) ‘I have no intention of rebutting 25 claims’
-The trouble with that, of course, is that that does not let you off the hook in your implied claims about 24 of them? Silence (i.e. not lifting a finger) is an adequate defence of each of your defamatory allegations? If you think it is ok to make allegations and then neither withdraw them nor substantiate them, no-one will agree.
However, as you gave a long reply, you will have covered some main points, so let’s proceed.
(2) ‘Anyone willing to read your disinformation and spin’; ‘your repeated spins’
-!! The entire point is to test whether it IS disinformation and spin. You try to prejudge that central issue without examination. That attempt was noticed, and an honest person would not have made it.
(3) ‘It is untrue to claim that only one set of parents wanted to go to the police.’
My reading is not 100% but I thought only one parent was mentioned. Not all parents were even asked nor spoken to at all. Their sons were all adults without exception. I doubt that any in 1982 were not at least 20 – perhaps 19 in a couple of cases? One could only go by the fact that the majority of those who expressed an opinion at all wanted to leave matters there for their sons’ sakes; had more been asked, then doubtless there would have been some on both sides. Any implication that a majority wanted to go to police is certainly without a shred of evidence, but what evidence there is points the other way. But none of that matters. Anyone who wanted to could do so. Every single parent and offspring put their money where their mouth was by not doing so. And for 30 years too. In those circumstances to say that probably most wanted to is proven false. It was the Savile case that changed the atmosphere.
(4) ‘The claim that the beatings were consensual’
What ‘claim’? I mentioned that they were, because they were. Many things are banned. Are facts now banned? See (5).
(5) You omit the crucial point that I clarified ‘consensual’ by saying that the fact that some could and did refuse proves the point. This too is covered by Graystone re spring holidays 1981.
(6) As though that were not enough, you omit my careful differentiation of ‘consensual’ (a legal nicety, and a necessary one, which like many legal niceties uses words in a completely different sense from the lay sense) from consensual.
(7) And there is even a third thing that I said which you omit in one and the same context: ‘but we need in addition to take account of long-term grooming’. You say ‘Have you not heard of coercive control?’ It is hard to quantify and measure – but this point shows that I have not only heard of it, but also covered that base in what I have already said.
-So we see a pattern that you read about half of what I say and select the bits which without the other half could build up an incriminating picture.
(8) ‘Smyth and Iwerne’
…do not go together like a horse and carriage. Quite the opposite. They are enemies of one another. The latter banished the former and the former set himself up in competition with, and criticised, the latter. The latter publicly informed against the former for Coltart. And so on.
(9) [I apparently claim that] ‘The boys were young men’
-This is the least honest of your claims. How could I possibly say that boys were young men? Every UK victim beaten with the exception of the person Graystone calls *Stephen was beaten as a young man. Of the remainder, a handful, in 1978 only, began being beaten when under 18, typically from around the time of their 17th birthdays.
Boys are boys. Young men are young men. There is very little difference, but legally there is the difference that one lot is under 18 and the other is over 18. I never claim that these 2 lots are the same or overlap, nor would anything be gained by saying something so obviously untrue. But of course those who were boys are the same individuals as those who became young men.
(10) I ‘criticise those who sought to expose this abuse’? I most certainly do, and often. But your point is irrelevant, since among the reasons that I do so is not that they ‘sought to expose this abuse’! After all, *that was a good thing to do. Most people do some good things and some bad things. Your (extraordinary) point amounts to: Victims and victim supporters are not being treated as infallible in all things, and that failure to treat them as infallible in all things is a scandal. Belief in infallibility is fundamentalism.
(11) ‘Too much in the public domain’
Again, absolutely.
(12) ‘Do you believe some abuse should be shrouded in secrecy? Or disguised in…language so that the hoi polloi can’t understand it?’
-I don’t even get as far as believing in the hoi polloi. And secondly, the too much in the public domain has nothing to do with horrible details. They are sometimes necessary for accuracy, though not when victims prefer otherwise.
(13) ‘This is what I mean by spin and bias’
-No, everyone means the same thing by these words. Why are you treating them as new words?
One main reason you see spin and bias is because (see above) you have not understood what I am saying.
(14) ‘Apologias for abuse’
-Your misunderstanding of (12) leaves one scratching one’s head. There are people in this conversation who think that abuse (abuse!) is a good (good!) thing?
That is Penelope’s extraordinary claim. It is unsurprising she cannot back it up, but horrible not to withdraw it.
(15) ‘The ethos of Iwerne’
-By which you mean the same one or two things, which you have heard second hand, each time. It had a multi faceted ethos.
(16) ‘It enabled him to continue’
No, it put him under authority, and secondly removed him from all those he was harming, whom he had taken in the main cases 4-6 years to get to the point where they now were. The person who extricated him from that was himself, not anyone at Iwerne, who were the very ones who put him under it.
(17) ‘They were to eschew the company of girls and young women’
-What, even their sisters? Did they ever meet their wives before they married them? How long for? Crazy claims: a sure sign of being second hand and cliches and stereotypes.
(18) ‘Warned of the dangers’
No – in 1982 Christmas conference, the answer given to this point was very different (not scripturally condemned; Matt 5.28-29 applies).
(19) ‘Homoerotic muscular’
Since only a small minority of people have homosexual desires, whereas the outdoor life (as opposed to what?) is something worldwide in a rounded education, this is an oxymoron, and outdoes (18) in the nonsensical stakes.
It is right that people fulfil their physical and mental and spiritual potentials, or be encouraged to do so. What possible alternative can you have in mind? The entire job of teachers is to produce good products, and they rightly (if they are good teachers) take pride in the said products. It is similar to being a parent.
On points (19), note that by (18) I meant (17).
On points (4)-(7), there are four further points, but these will not apply to all involved.
(20) The Ruston Report shows that people had been willing, and for the purpose that they be accountable and improved in their spiritual life.
(21) Some, whatever the imperfections of the operator, maintained that. Hence they wished to remain with JS even after early 1982, through till the summer. They always maintained not only what their motivation had been but that it had been a good motivation.
(22) Ruston’s 1989 sermon just before retirement takes for granted that the victims had sought purity (a good thing to seek, of course), and had been actively seeking the process in some cases, and for that reason. He disparages this attitude in them.
(23) Makin: sometimes the willingness extended to ‘excitement’.
Christopher
I don’t fail to be inaccurate!!
I observe that you are an apologist for the Iwerne ethos and for the abuse which Smyth and others perpetrated. As I have said, readers are free to look at your social media and draw their own conclusions about your views on safeguarding.
I am not going to debate everyone of your points, partly because many of them are conflated and confused, and also because this discussion is off topic and we have to respect Ian, who, in any case, gives you far more latitude than I.
So, a few particularly egregious examples:
You reiterate that Graystone put too much information in the public domain. You do not explain what too much was and why it is too much.
You reiterate that the victims were young men (not minors) and that the beatings were consensual (which is questionable). You do not explain the point of these two assertions. Furthermore, you say that you have heard of coercive control. You clearly have no understanding of how it operates in contexts of abuse and trauma.
You claim that Iwerne punished Smyth, but, once again fail to point out how, and offer no evidence for your view that Iwerne’s ethos was benign.
Your citing Ruston’s sermon demonstrates that, like him, you are all too willing to victim blame. That was one of the most hideous revelations of the Makin Review.
Lastly, it’s hoi polloi, not the hoi polloi. Recollect your Greek.
In English it is ‘the hoi polloi’ and not ‘hoi polloi’. This is true first by usage, and second by the fact that when they are the object we do not in English say tous pollous. And so on. The English manifestation of ‘hoi polloi’ is indeclinable.
You don’t fail to be inaccurate? Three negatives make a negative.
‘Apologist for the Iwerne ethos’ – you regress as though point (15), which you ignore, had not advanced the discussion. Zero progress from the stereotyped original presentation.
If A Graystone was too free with information, and I oppose that, I will hardly expatiate – that would be a 180 degree turn.
Why is it worthy of mention that i say young men are young men, or that consent was (for 5-6 reasons stated and never discussed or addressed by you) consent? Would it be worthy of mention, or indeed outrage, if I said a spade was a spade?
RUston victim blaming? Yes- because you have fallen into the trap of classifying certain people as victims/survivors *and *nothing *else. That is all that can be said about them. Apparently. They are 2 dimensional? And always right. About everything.
TO quote (almost) Lloyd Bentsen – Mark Ruston knew these men over years. He spoke with these men on this matter. PCD, you’re no Mark Ruston.
You replace his experienced reality with a goodies-baddies puppet show pieced together from Chinese whispers..
Christopher
If you want your speech and writing to be tautological, so be it.
Your response is merely a repetition of your ideological stance on Iwerne and Smyth. And on Ruston whose egregious victim blaming is laid bare in Makin; it is not ‘Chinese whispers’ – his sermon is cited!
I will not comment further on this topic here.
‘If you want your speech and writing to be tautological, so be it.’
-Three errors here:
(1) You give priority to what people ‘want’. No – priority is given to what is good and what has integrity, least of all to selfish desires.
(2) I make loads of separate points. You are saying that every single one of them is tautological?
(3) So be it ? No – anything that is actually tautological should be challenged. Not to do so is not to care about truth. The che sera sera spirit.
‘Iwerne and Smyth’
This is the 3rd or 4th time you have tried to make this unholy alliance.
(It is the alliance that is inappropriate/unholy, not the former component.)
I gave three reasons above why, far from being bedfellows, they were actively opposed to each other: deporting; competing; informing against in court. You addressed none of these, showing an inability to digest further points and refine an earlier position.
This is the kind of thing that ‘I will not comment further’ skips. Was the deportation real and enforced? Was there competition? Was there informing against? Yes or no.
‘Chinese whispers’ indeed about many aspects of Iwerne – necessarily so since you have not attended but have imbibed largely the tabloid-friendly material only, leaving a mass unimbibed. Not about Mark Ruston’s sermon. The contrast spoken of is between him (who lived Iwerne and had Iwerne men as his regular company, so knew what he was talking about) and you (who never has). The classic eyewitness/noneyewitness contrast.
We note that you pick and choose which points you respond to and (as though that were not enough) reserve the right to terminate a debate unilaterally (Why? Future time is limitless.). Whereas I am always happy to respond to all points raised.
“activist-victims”
There it is. Zero empathy. Zero knowledge of how hard it is for traumatised individuals to speak up and be heard.
And the ‘activist victims’ got everything they demanded. Apparently. Clearly Shell hasn’t spoken to the survivors of this and other abuse at the hands of CoE leaders.
Scarcely. They got the spin/emphases that they wanted in this one report, rather than necessarily in any others, but have not had for example the financial recompense.
You claimed they had everything they wanted. And, really, with your disgusting comment on spin you are digging a deeper hole for yourself.
The victims received partial justice from Makin. They still need redress from the Church.
Exactly. They got everything they wanted in the content of the Review. It is of the Review that we speak.
They didn’t get a new Mercedes, because that was not what was being spoken about. That does not mean that you, I or they cannot include ‘a new Mercedes’ among the content of ‘what we want’.
And as for the word ‘spin’, my word was ‘spin/emphases’. This means that my accurate use of ‘spin’ was nuanced by being combined with another word. Which you missed.
For spin, think of football and a 50-50 ball. It is anyone’s guess which way it will go. When things are 50-50 they should be left that way. But when people acknowledge that on their own evidence things are only as much as 50-50 even IF JW is assumed to be dishonest – an extraordinary assumption – and still go with his guilt over his innocence, then that is liable to be viewed within the context of a report that, on other occasions already, makes all the conclusions the victims and their advocates would have wished. Much of KM’s itme was spent talking with victims. It is natural that he had an immense amount of work to do. It is natural that they wanted the Review done as soon as possible. It is natural that he felt guilty and embarrassed about any delay. It is natural that they would badger and show dissatisfaction while the Review remained unfinished. All of the above is on public record in statements. So that provides a ready context for conclusions go go the way of the victim-activists’ wishes and narrative on every possible occasion.
Both of the two CofE newspapers have been highly critical of the less strong aspects of the Review. It is amazing how many believe in its infallibility. Infallibility is an incredibly high bar – why don’t people realise that?
Acticist-victims designates a particular demographic. There are victims who are not activists. Do you prefer (a) that I describe accurately or (b) that I describe inaccurately? [Or (c) to split haitrs because you are so desperate to score points over those who raise inconvenient truths that disturb the received and official view?]
I understand that you have to clapback. The grandiose false self can never be wrong. It is faultless and must be defended at all costs. All errors are external.
Er, Joe, you omitted the main point – like: People are not going to believe you if you just say there are errors and do not name them. Your failure to name them will be seen as suspicious. What are you waiting for?
I wonder how much of Justin Welby’s views were influenced by the personal relationships he formed with various people rather than from any proper theological considerations.
Massively. I suspect I have an idea who as well.
He was inordinately influenced by Jayne Ozanne, who left the C of E in any case.
He was also deeply concerned to win the approval of The Guardian and the liberal establishment.
But why…?? I think the answers are closer to home…
We often pursue all kinds of subtle speculation about people’s behaviour and never consider the most basic facts about human life and relationships – those that stare us in the face. And certain people stare us in the face a lot more regularly than anyone else…
I am trying to decode your comment…
That’s great Ian, because I am trying to decode yours!
I recall reading somewhere that Welby once remarked that he had met a number of gay couples for whom he found their relationships to be of ‘stunning quality’. I believe also that his own daughter was influential in introducing them to him.
I don’t see the value of this point. How on earth can a minuscule sample speak for the generality of those who are similar: similar in just one thing among many?
If it was largely due to family and friends, then I have sympathy. It is difficult to speak against the behaviours of those you love, as you know and they know that your words condemn them. And noone wants to be seen as the condemner of others, especially within the family.
Chris
Yes. That was one of the most cack handed things that Welby said. Gay relationships are OK if they are stunning!
Silly man.
That is a misrepresentation of what he said. Chris accurately represented it. You say you agree with Chris here, but then recast what he says.
If people misrepresent that is not good, but if they regularly misrepresent in the same direction, there is avoidable bias involved.
Christopher
Are you suggesting that when Welby said he had seen gay relationships of ‘stunning quality’ he was not supporting them? If so, that’s a strange take on his observation.
Penelope, your powers of logic are more than sufficient to work out that there are other possible scenarii not ruled out by what I said.
Aren’t they?
This is the latest in the long line of occasions when PCD has said ‘So it follows, Christopher, that you believe X’. Almost never do I actually believe X, and almost always X is something dreadful which would be incriminating. So we can see a tendency in PCD’s responses. Such a tendency cannot proceed from an honest source, since it would not happen by chance that dishonest motives were perpetually being supposedly honestly ‘discovered’ where none in fact existed. What we have is an instance of being desperate to incriminate by fair means or foul, truth be blowed.
Influenced by Jayne? Yeah, right.
Penny, hello again. How do you read Justin’s change of mind on marriage? What do you think influenced him?
Welby was told when he was going to Rome to meet Pope Francis that he could bring one other person with him. Guess who he chose.
Ian
I don’t believe he has changed his mind on marriage. He has an equivocal, pragmatic support for same-sex blessings. It’s either Synod debates and the arguments of those who support blessings or it’s the work of the Holy Spirit.
Well, he clearly has changed his mind because that is not what he used to think!
I don’t think it is suggested that it has value generally – only to that individuals own moral framework.
Ian
Yes, he has changed his mind on blessing ‘stunning relationships’, but not, I think, on marriage. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Richard Hays’ “about face” on the issue of same-sex marriage was tragic. His “Moral Vision of the New Testament” is still, in my view, one of the best contemporary writings on Christian ethics. I have long wondered how Christians should account for a pastor / theologian’s great achievements for the Kingdom of God, and their eventual spiritual / moral failings as a Christian. It’s disheartening to learn that Richard Hays’ collapse on Biblical sexuality informed Welby in his refusal to affirm Scriptural truth. It’s a great reminder of Paul’s statement,
“… but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified…” (1 Cor. 9:27, NRSVUE)
As Pentecostals, we are stilling awaiting the appointment of Dr. Ian Paul as Archbishop of Canterbury!
Thank you for your optimism…or something!
I second that.
Sadly, it’s not a new thing…
“Gideon made an ephod of it and put it in his town, in Ophrah; and all Israel prostituted themselves to it there”
Christians need to stay alert, particularly where “celebrity status ” rears its ugly head.
Indeed. Nothing new under the sun, in that sense.
Yes just look at Russell Brand. He’s already saying we need to understand Scripture in a ‘new way’…
Is he? Where?
Bear Grylls helped baptise Russell Brand I believe in the Thames
Yep, back in May. Brand is already baptising people in rivers himself (though no-one’s told him you probably ought to be wearing more than your underwear when doing this).
1 Kings 12: 11 comes to mind.
“Now, whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.’” [NRSV]
Let us hope and pray that Welby’s successor is not more of the same, or worse. 😉
The verse I shared a year ago with Synod was Isaiah 3.6:
A man will seize one of his brothers
in his father’s house, and say,
“You have a cloak, you be our leader;
take charge of this heap of ruins!”
What ever we know of those who colluded or are deserving of justice and judgementis is of little importance.
Vengence is mine says the Lord,Iwill repay.
the ecclesia may suffer but the “body”is kept by the power of God
“He the Messiah will “crush the head”
1 Cor 15:25 For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.
Paul encourages us withRom 16:20 And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen. SHALOM.
Where was/is God in all of this?
A theological assessment os6 invited.
Do we start with. Mat’s scripture citation.
Or is God’s knowledge and providence limited?
Where do we start from, if not from here?
Back – to the future?
I am continuing to wrestle with that question…
I would cut Welby some slack on what he knew or didn’t know as a young man in the 1980s.
After all, Rico Tice has had his PTO suspended – and he was only a student then!
The issue is really his inaction after 2013 or so, when he was ABC and in a position to do something – and he didn’t. The same for staff around him.
This article correctly points out Welby’s lack of interest (I would say lack of competence’) in theology – which is utterly inexcusable in a man who is supposed the Chief Teacher of the Church of England. Managerialism is no substitute for the primary requirement of the job, to understand the Scriptures and to apply them faithfully to and for the Church.
What the article could have pointed out – and George Conger and Gavin Ashenden have discussed this in painful detail in ‘Anglican Ink’ and ‘Mere Catholicism’ – is Welby’s obsession with political commentary on British life today in a way that would be indistinguishable from anything copywritten by a Guardian journalist.
No transcendence, no theological insight, no theological anthropology, no theological perspective on geopolitics or Islam or Europe, not even any attempt at balance – just a bunch of rather secular leftwing talking points that a Polly Toynbee could have come up with.
What is the point in being a Christian? Justin Welby never seemed to be able to tell Britain why.
yes, I could have made the article even longer!
But your last statement isn’t true. If you click on the link to the video he does talk about the life-changing nature of conversion.
What he did not do is integrate that into his discussion of political issues.
I am happy to be corrected in this. But I had always thought the purpose of a national church was to call the nation to faith in Christ. Did Welby ever do this?
Or have Anglican leaders lost faith in the Gospel and become shy and fearful before Islam and indigenous indifference?
I would prefer religious leaders to resile a bit from political commentary because 1. they should aspire to be leaders of all, not just those who share their politics; 2. religious faith doesn’t confer authority on political judgments; 3. sincere believers are found on both sides of issues; 4. political issues are rarely clear and simple.
James, how can you call a nation to Christ? You can only call individuals.
Israel was called to Yahweh. Some responded, others didn’t.
A nation is made up of individuals.
But it was Yahweh himself who called Israel, having taken the initiative by cutting a covenant with Israel’s ancestor Abraham.
What can Welby do to promote the gospel that any other prominent British Christian cannot?
Cf the call to the nation in WW2
Both Temple and Coggan, the two best recent archbishops, instituted calls to the nation.
The Temple one (for he was soon taken from us) took flesh posthumously in Christopher Chavasse’s post-war tract Towards the Conversion of England. It was little acted on, making later decades of evangelism pertinent and necessary. His St Aldate’s successor Michael Green’s outstanding Evangelism Through The Local Church energised the 1990s decade, and Alpha was a great fruit of the decade. The John Wimber 1990 Excel Arena debacle was a damaging false start, and the Toronto Blessing made clear the worryingly low standards of discernment.
Coggan’s call came immediately he came into office. It attracted what those without their eye on the ball would have called a staggeringly large postbag. The Festival of Light was recent and morality at rock bottom. The liberal bishops and liberal ecumenical representatives, then in their 1970s-80s ascendancy, neutralised and muddied his evangelistic strategy (without producing anything alternative themselves – so whose side were they on?), which was (together with the revival of preaching) what his archiepiscopate was all about. This affected him – and several of those involved – profoundly in negative ways. It is written up by Clifford Hill, The Reshaping of Britain.
Yes, Gentlemen, but any prominent Christian can call the nation to prayer and be widely heard, or advocate and lead evangelistic drives. You do not have to be an Archbishop or even CoE.
You certainly don’t. That’s right.
Everyone who realises the urgency viscerally will do so automatically.
Those 2 archbishops were the two archbishops that clearly did. Others do too.
“Christian hope means certain expectation of something not yet seen. Christ rose from the dead and offers life to all, abundant life now and life with God in eternity.”
Archbishop Welby’s sermon at the Queen’s funeral.
Thanks. That was another wonderful moment.
I just want to say a few things about bishops’ mitres and titles. I don’t want to make a huge thing of this, and apologies that I have to use a lot of words to paint the bigger picture.
To get the titles out of the way first, because it’s shorter: Ian has raised the question of why we should address a bishop as “Bishop so-and-so”, not least because he doesn’t expect to be addressed as “Presbyter Ian”. (Though of course there are may places in the C of E where he’d be “Father Ian”, and my own parish priest – another Ian – refers to himself as “Reverend Ian”, and with reference to Matthew 23, if you’re going to stand on that it really might just as well be “Father”!) But seriously, “Bishop so-and-so” represents a considerable de-formalising in recent years. A century ago all C of E bishops expected to be – and were – addressed by those other than their intimates as “my lord”!
Now, what about those mitres? It is a matter of indifference to me whether a bishop wears a mitre or doesn’t, and in a vacuum I wouldn’t take issue with Ian or with James Dudley-Smith; but a vacuum isn’t what we’ve got. The wearing of mitres by bishops (except in very low church churches) has become part of the C of E’s DNA, and if the next +Cantuar doesn’t wear a mitre for his/her enthronement, he/she will be taken to be making a party political point that tells most of the church “you’re wrong”. I think this would do more damage than any good that might come of it; and a concerted agreement by the bishops of the C of E not to wear mitres any more isn’t going to happen any time soon (and bishops like +Cicestr and +Blackburn would ignore it anyway). And a couple of other vignettes that might fill out the background:
– When David Sheppard became a bishop in 1969 he was about to visit and preach at a high church for the first time, and was uncomfortable about wearing a mitre for the service. Unsure of what to do, he rang up the vicar and explained his position to him. “Father,” the vicar replied, “I want you to come; I want you to speak to my people; and I want them to remember what you say to them. If you don’t wear a mitre, all they will remember is that you didn’t wear a mitre.”
– When Maurice Wood became Bishop of Norwich in 1971, he insisted on wearing convocation robes instead of cope and mitre for his enthronement. I was told that when the time came for the sermon, he stood up and began “Here I stand before you in all humility…..” whereupon one of the TV cameramen from Anglia TV, which was covering the service, said to his assistant “yeah, with all those medals on him!”
I do not think these things are worth making an issue of. (But interested in any comments that anyone might make!)
‘he/she will be taken to be making a party political point that tells most of the church “you’re wrong”‘
No, they will be making a practical point, that these things are innovations. And a theological point: I don’t need to be crowned because I am not your king.
The fact that the C of E collapses into conformity on such a minor point is rather shocking. No wonder we cannot tackle the bigger issues of safeguarding!
If people only remember whether someone wears a mitre or not, rather than remembering what they said about Jesus—well, such a church has no spiritual life and will die.
Haberdashery advice for C of E bishops:
1. Scrap the mitres – they were abolished at the Reformation because they were a symbol of Papal appointment.
2. Stop talking about ‘enthronement’ – bishops have teaching chairs (which thry never teach from, btw), not reigning thrones.
3. Scrap the imperial purple and wear clerical black, as the Catholics do (and as Welby did also, I think).
4. Stop all the colour coding and power dressing – that is so opposed to the Gospel.
Re your last paragraph: in context, it ain’t necessarily so. The gut feeling would have been “if he doesn’t wear a mitre that means he doesn’t respect us”, and in a church largely made up of people less analytical and articulate than you and I are, that matters. (I’ve seen something similar in a church congregation.)
Steve, for Bishops who believe in the rapture then mitres make them more aerodynamic.
Also useful for Flying Bishops.
As in, he mitre been a better archbishop without that thing on his head?
But could he cope with the other stuff that is surplice to requirement? The Church of England has a lot invested in these things.
Somebody stole it.
Miss Marple can find it. I’ll collar now.
Not so many years ago Justin Welby publicly wondered out loud whether he was up to the job and should resign. I commented elsewhere in all compassion that if he thought this then it might be better to go. Instead he doubled down on his efforts to impose SSM on the Church of England, to its continuing detriment.
My mother had a saying:
“Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive.”
A danger that need to gusrd against is that we are inclined to believe that which is untrue if it fits the occasion or our purposes. Being disinterested in or dismissive of theological truths/realities and understandings sounds like a recipe for disaster, and maybe the root of all this sad trouble for the C of E.
There are many people starting to push back against the absurd ideologies in our culture, some not even Christians or church people, seeing the significance of Christianity in British history and culture.
Thank you Ian Paul for your courage and the asdiduous way you seek truth + your trust in our Sovereign God who is always working even in the stangest of times.
Your mother borrowed it from Sir Walter Scott!
Thank you.
I am not competent to comment on any of the above. But am I right in remembering that a scandal about his parentage broke near the beginning of his tenure as Archbishop? I thought at the time that he dealt with this with great courage and grace.
Thanks very much for this Ian. Your piece articulates very well my understanding of Justin Welby’s tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury. He made a promising start. I was naïvely encouraged by his address at New Wine, which I attended. As a former vicar in a thriving and growing parish, with many young people, now happily ex-Anglican, I think Justin Welby’s time at Lambeth Palace was as disastrous as it possibly could have been, marked as it was by his personal slide into apostasy. Globally, the Anglican communion is now irrevocably divided, and I expect that those churches in the global south will continue to grow and flourish, while those going the direction of the USA, Scotland and England will continue their greasy slide towards complete collapse.
Thanks John. Why do you think you were ‘naively’ encouraged? Were we wrong to take this at face value?
Welby is personally a decent man but as the article states also made many mistakes. His time as Archbishop saw power too concentrated at the centre and with the Bishops and did not take Parishes with him enough. Too much money was spent on church plants in my view and schemes like reparations for slavery which no Anglican alive was responsible for too rather than supporting our traditional Parishes. PLF, although supported by a majority of Synod, could also have had greater consultation before being proposed. While he also improved safeguarding in the Church it was also clearly not improved enough, hence the reason for his resignation.
He did though have one big win, Synod’s 2/3 majority vote for women bishops. I therefore hope that is now followed by the next Archbishop being a woman to recognise that, something which would also go some way to restore confidence on safeguarding issues, given none of those involved in sex abuse cases in the media have been women and they are seen to take the issue more seriously. Bishop Gulli of Chelmsford would be my choice, she is also someone who believes in Parish based ministry which is badly needed from the next Archbishop and is more on the Catholic wing of the C of E than Welby was. The Archbishop of York should also step down once a new Archbishop of Canterbury is in place and I would replace him with Bishop Snow of Leicester, a competent Evangelical
Of course you want these two. They will both complete the gayification of the C of E.
Orthodox believers are voting with their feet.
Peterborough Cathedral is talking about closing.
The Prince of Wales is openly negative about Christianity.
Welby’s terrible legacy.
Her late Majesty saw through Welby, and tried to insist that he give no eulogy at her funeral; then, when that proved impossible, demanded that the service be so short that he had no time to say anything other than a very brief summary of her life.
Given the C of E still does not perform same sex marriages unlike say the Church of Scotland, the Methodists and the Quakers and most Lutheran churches I don’t think you have too much to complain about. I haven’t yet see a mass surge of English Anglicans becoming Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Baptists or Pentecostals either.
Peterborough cathedral is facing rising heating costs and employment costs which may mean it has to charge visitors (as most cathedrals now do anyway) or partially close some parts of the building in the week. Nothing whatsoever to do with PLF
https://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/news/people/watch-peterborough-cathedral-in-crisis-dean-issues-heartfelt-plea-to-prevent-devastating-partial-closure-of-the-citys-cathedral-4941832
The Prince of Wales has never said anything against Christianity I have seen and was happily attending the Sandringham church Christmas service with his family. He just will be head of state of a nation where 54% of the population are no longer Christians on the last census and has to recognise that.
He is a full blown syncratist, his Christmas day speech made that clear. His vows on the other hand are to uphold the true protestant religion, quite why that changes based on census I do not know.
The King is head of state of a nation where 6% are Muslim, some are Jewish, some are Hindu or Sikh and 37% have no religion at all. He has to recognise them as well as the 46% who are still Christian in the UK. As long as he does not make the Pope of Rome head of the Church of England again but keeps himself as its Supreme Governor he is maintaining it as the true Protestant religion in England
Thomas and Simon/T1
“…the true protestant religion….”
If it’s going to be a Protestant religion it will be a religion of biblical authority – unfortunately both the establishment principle (or any similar ‘Christian country’ idea) , and the idea of a local king as ex officio ‘supreme governor’ of his kingdom’s church are unbiblical so by definition un-Protestant….
The Church of England is of course not a purely Protestant church anyway but a church that is both Catholic and Reformed. The Church of England is distinctively Protestant in the sense it was created to be headed by the King rather than the Pope but has never been a purely evangelical Protestant church based solely on the Bible like you and your nonconformist churches. It is led by Bishops of apostolic succession for starters like the Roman Catholics, Orthodox and Lutheran churches but unlike you and your fellow Baptists
Simon, ‘The Church of England is of course not a purely Protestant church anyway but a church that is both Catholic and Reformed.’ I think you are mistaken here.
You seem to think that ‘catholic’ and ‘reformed’ are two different things, and that they are added or mixed together in the C of E. That is not the case in terms of the formal position of the Church.
The C of E is a reformed part of the church catholic. As the articles say, it has continued with the three orders of ministry since these are historic and not obviously contrary to scripture. But every doctrine of the church catholic must be reformed in the light of scripture.
That is why, at the coronation, the king vowed to uphold the ‘Protestant Reformed faith of the Church’.
Simon/T1
It was of the nature of the Protestant Reformation that it didn’t manage to reform everything completely straightaway. The various ‘established or similar’ churches that arose in the early Reformation should have been only a ‘phase’ towards accepting a more Biblical way of relating Church and state; unfortunately the state churches were too useful to despots like Henry VIII and so continued. So the CofE is (a) only partly Reformed, and (b) precisely because it is national, not ‘catholic/universal’.
Understandable that it seems plausible that “God must want… ” established churches, and that such churches are convenient to worldly rulers; BUT it is the Bible that tells us how God wants it done, and the Bible does not teach establishment or the ‘Christianisation’ of worldly nations, it positively teaches a different way. Thus the established churches are disobedient to God and can have no legitimate authority.
It was attitudes like that from nonconformists like you which led to nonconformists being banned from freedom of worship until 1689 and from holding public office until 1727 and being fined for non attendance at C of E services until the 19th century for undermining the English established church.
You may now be able to worship freely in England but that does not give you any more right to undermine our established church than you had centuries ago
He did indeed and the Church of England is certainly not a Roman Catholic church but of course it was the King himself who made the oath to uphold the ‘Protestant Reformed faith of the Church’ as he is its Supreme Governor and it is the established church, not a nonconformist Protestant church
It was attitudes like that from nonconformists like you which led to nonconformists being banned from freedom of worship until 1689 and from holding public office until 1727
That is factually incorrect. Elizabeth I’s main concern was to keep Catholicism out, and so she outlawed all congregations outside the Church of England – whether radical protestant (the early Puritans) or Catholic. That same settlement continued until the Civil War, which was fuelled partly by resentment of Charles I’s arbitrary taxes by the landed gentry (Charles having called no parliaments throughout the 1630s), and partly by Puritan resentment of Archbishop Laud’s mandatory High Church services. The Puritans wanted no more than protestant freedom of worship. They got more than that and they found themselves running England – not very well – through the 1650s. After the Restoration the laws were wound back to the 1630s, but there were too many nonconformists for the law against them to be enforced effectively (although John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress while in prison for unlicensed preaching), and when heirless and openly Catholic James II’s queen unexpectedly gave birth to a son the English were not wiling to tolerate an open-ended Cathoic dynasty and enacted the Glorious Revolution and tolerance of nonconformism. But grudglingly, as you notice, because the CoE was a worldly organisation that never relinquished worldly power voluntarily.
Simon/T1
“The Church of England is distinctively Protestant in the sense it was created to be headed by the King rather than the Pope”.
On the contrary actually – as far as Henry VIII was concerned the CofE was founded to be a ‘Catholic but not Papal’ church. Henry remained basically opposed to Protestantism, it was his successors who went in the Reformation direction.
It is the heart of Protestantism to follow the teaching of the Bible; to truly fulfil the vow to uphold a Protestant religion Charles would have to give up his place in the church and disestablish the church in the state so it can follow the biblical teaching on state/church relations. As I’ve said, the ‘established’ churches in England and elsewhere were acceptable as a phase in reforming the church to its original biblical position after the major mis-step in the 4th Century CE; but ideally by now church and state should have moved beyond that.
Under Oliver Cromwell of course it was high Anglicans who found themselves oppressed, with Bishops abolished, the House of Lords scrapped, the King executed and the Book of Common Prayer no longer allowed to be used. At the Restoration therefore after nonconformist Protestantism had taken over Christianity in England during the Protectorate of Cromwell and repressed high Anglicans, high Anglicans with whom King Charles II had sympathy restricted nonconformism again
Yet more ignorance of history, T1. Apart from that little twerp Archbishop Laud – who was wont to enter services while the choir was singing the line “Open ye gates and let the king of glory in” and who relished the cutting off of the ears of Puritans protesting peaceably in favour of freedom of worship – no Church of England bishop was persecuted under Cromwell. They were entirely free to meet and worship using whatever protestant liturgy they preferred. They were, however, sacked, i.e. deprived of their livings and buildings, but, as they came from wealthy families, they suffered little financial hardship. As for not being able to meet in the finest buildings in the land, may I remind you how the apostolic church met? A service is not a theatre performance or a concert, is it?
Charles I was executed because he broke his word, after surrendering to Scottish allies of Parliament in 1646. He took an action for which he had accused five prominent members of Parliament of treason several years earlier: he fomented a Scottish invasion of England. In clandestine negotiations while he was incarcerated on the Isle of Wight, the Scots agreed to intervene to restore him to power in England in return for a period of presbyterianism in the English church. This pact raises the question: If Charles was prepared to give up bishops to regain his position as king, why had he not done so in his negotiations with Cromwell? Evidently he wished to regain power on the back of military victory rather than defeat, so that – church polity aside – he could impose himself again. The next summer, in 1648, the Covenanters invaded England from Scotland on his behalf, but lost to Parliament’s New Model Army.
Charles not only considered himself unaccountable to anybody in England despite Magna Carta, but not bound by his own word. Who then but England’s Parliament might hold him to it? And how else than by raising an army of the people – which was possible because England, being the main part of an island, had no standing army to enforce the sovereign’s will?
Charles could not be trusted not to seek military allies outside England – even Catholic ones – who might reimpose his absolutist rule upon it. His Coronation Oath held him accountable to God and the people of England, yet he had brought an invasion into it and broken his word to maintain his own unaccountability. By his duplicity and intransigence, Charles made his death inevitable.
Do let me know what further history I can help you with.
Less ignorance of history, than not following your anti Laudian uber Puritan interpretation of history. Archbishop Laud was a great high Anglican Archbishop and servant to King Charles the Martyr, certainly far better than the ultra Puritans who replaced him even if a little excessive in his high Anglicanism. Church of England Bishops weren’t even allowed to hold office under Cromwell’s regime and as you state had their property stolen so to state they weren’t persecuted is ludicrous, given you cannot have high Anglican services without Bishops or at least the BCP which Cromwell also banned. A proper high Anglican service of course includes choral music and ceremony.
Charles originally fought against the Presbyterians as much as Cromwell’s Roundheads initially, however given his need to defeat Cromwell and his imprisonment he had no choice but to negotiate with Irish Roman Catholics and continental Catholics via his Roman Catholic Queen and Scottish Presbyterians to try and secure his throne.
Charles 1 was King by divine right as much as his descendant King Charles III is. We may now have a more constitutional monarchy working with the elected Parliament but that does not take away from the King’s divine sovereignty anymore than it did in the 17th century.
Simon/T1
In case you hadn’t realised there are two kinds of ‘nonconformist’. One kind are reluctant nonconformists who in effect want to be the established church themselves; it was that kind of nonconformist who briefly displaced Anglicanism in the 17th C. And in effect they were as wrong as the Anglicans, because they too were coercive and totalitarian – and unbiblical…..
The other kind of nonconformists follow the Bible in not believing the church should be established, but that it should be independent of the state as a ‘peaceable counterculture’. Baptists, and particularly Anabaptists like myself, are of that second kind.
You believe in divine right of kings, do you T1? It is nothing other than might is right with a pious veneer of bad theology that forgets God often allows bad things to happen in this era.
Do you consider that divine right gave Charles I the freedom before God to break his Coronation Oath and his pledged word following his surrender in 1646/7? Please include a clear Yes or No in any answer. We’d hate to think you were ducking the question…
If divine right holds then when did the royal line in England become illegitimate in God’s eyes? When Cnut overthrew Edmund Ironside in 1015/16? Or when William the Conqueror overthrew Harold in 1066? Or when Henry IV overthrew Richard II? Or Edward IV overthrew Henry VI? Or Henry VII overthrew Richard III? Do tell, preferably with reasons that apply only to the usurpation you consider valid but which don’t apply to any other.
Simon/T1
Although the Bible certainly teaches that human rulers are divinely appointed, that is a concept very different from Charles I’s and your own idea of ‘divine right of kings’. Bear in mind that the Bible said that not of a Christian king but of all kings including the Roman emperor – almost certainly at that time the infamous Nero! And the kings or other rulers the Bible refers to are in the category of rulers who may not be godly, but more a “We must obey God rather than men” situation. I explored the actual reality in this blog piece
https://stevesfreechurchblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/but-seriously-5-the-divine-right-or-wrong-of-kings/
Oliver Cromwell did not believe the church should be established, did not believe in Bishops and did not think the King should be the church’s Supreme Governor. There was little real different between him and the other kind of nonconformists you talk about including yours, it was really ultra radical groups like the levellers and diggers Cromwell ultimately came into conflict with
No, it is the recognition that God has anointed ever English and UK King and still does, as was made clear at the coronation when Archbishop Welby anointed King Charles III our new King by grace of god. Cromwell and the roundheads had removed the King anointed by God’s will. He had every right to use all means at his disposal to get it back.
All King’s as above are appointed by divine right and of those you mention all had aristocratic and largely royal blood somewhere along the line, even if not always the direct heir of the previous monarch
Duck for dinner, T1?
Simon/T1
Romans 13 does indeed tell us that for Christians all kings and other ‘powers that be’ as the old translation put it are appointed by God – but that is a long way from a concept that there is a ‘divine right’ by which the king can claim to do whatever he wants.
Remember that this text applies to rulers like Nero, Hitler and Stalin – they too are the appointment for the time being in God’s providence. The point of the Romans text is to tell Christians to accept that and not seek to overthrow even a Nero or Hitler by rebellion. Instead they are to ‘be subject’ – but precisely because this is potentially subjection to very bad rulers. Christian subjection is not to be simple ‘obedience’ to whatever the bad ruler says. On the contrary, as Peter says in Acts 5; 29, we may find ourselves having to ‘obey God rather than man’ and so disobey the earthly ruler. In such a case ‘subjection’ is expressed intead in a willingness to face martyrdom, to be punished fot disobedience.
Because of the different kind of church/state relationship the NT actually teaches, an earthly king who tries to ‘establish’ the Church in his realm is in fact disobeying God, and should be disobeyed by Christians, though peaceably without violent rebellion. And an earthly king who suggests his realm is a ‘new Israel’ over which he should be ‘anointed King’ is at any rate getting dangerously close to constituting himself an ‘anti-Messiah’, a fake Christ, a rival to Jesus ….
Anglicanism only emerged as the King of England at the time wanted a church headed by him as established church in England NOT the Pope but still with Bishops of apostolic succession. That is the WHOLE point of it. Indeed as the monarch is literally anointed by God at their coronation by definition they are beyond reproach in the eyes of God. If you refuse to believe that you should not be in the C of E anyway. You are completely unable as a nonconformist to understand what Anglicanism means, I am not and never will be a Baptist nonconformist such as you are as I believe in core C of E principles, you don’t but it is none of your business interfering in the doctrines of we who do!!!
Simon/T1
“Indeed as the monarch is literally anointed by God at their coronation by definition they are beyond reproach in the eyes of God”.
Er, NO, the monarch is anointed by men who claim they are doing it in the name of God. And in reality there is just about zero sound theology behind this practice. The anointing goes back to the kings of Israel, fiirst Saul, then David, then David’s descendants (which the kings of England are not as far as I know). The actual monarchy ceased during the late OT era, though of course there were descendants of David who could have been king. Thing is that God promised that a descendant of David would eventually arise; and in due course this prophecy/promise was fulfilled in Jesus, which is why we refer to Him as the ‘Messiah’ in Hebrew or the ‘Christ’ in Greek – both titles meaning the anointed one, and as I understand it Jesus as Messiah was indeed directly anointed by God with the Holy Spirit.
Because Jesus is risen and immortal, he is the anointed King of God’s people for ever; and to put it bluntly there is no ‘vacancy’ for another in that job, and he is the anointed King of the whole Church, not of any manifestation of the church in a local nation. The Church itself is in NT terms “God’s holy nation”, while for now those who are not believers are ‘the world’ out of which people are called into the Church.
Being anointed in a human ceremony and told they are somehow ‘beyond reproach’ in God’s eyes may flatter an earthly monarch – but it is a pretence with no biblical foundation, human self-aggrandisement and not from God at all.
Indeed as the monarch is literally anointed by God at their coronation by definition they are beyond reproach in the eyes of God.
This is priceless, T1. Do carry on, please!
Er, YES, the core foundation stone of the Church of England is its head is the King anointed by God at the coronation and whose very activities take place by divine right. If you don’t believe that you really can’t be a true member and believer in the Church of England. Symbolically that flows right from the ancient Kings of Israel. Yes the C of E also believes Jesus is Messiah but so does any old Christian denomination, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Pentecostal, Methodist, Lutheran, even you Baptists too. Only the Church of England also believes the King of England and the UK is anointed by divine right.
Now you may believe that has no biblical foundation but then you aren’t even C of E at all are you!
Simon/T1
The reason I don’t believe divine right etc has a biblical foundation is very simple – IT DOESN’T!! Major Anglican scholar the late JI (Jim) Packer had this to say
“….one finds that the main theological issues that have divided Protestants who hold to sola Scriptura have been these;….(4) how the churches should be related to the state – the issue in debates about establishment throughout the world since the seventeenth century; (5) whether churchmen’s children may properly be baptised in infancy or not – the issue between Baptist and all other Protestant churches; …..[i]
What are we to say to these … matters of debate? First, that whatever divisions they may have occasioned in the past it is very arguable that, being in reality secondary questions, they need not and ideally would not have this (divisive) effect. Second, that it is also very arguable that in each of these cases unexamined assumptions brought to the task of exegesis, rather than any obscurities arising from it, were really at the root of the cleavage. The trouble was that presuppositions were read into Scripture rather than read out of it, as follows; ….(4,5) The fourth and fifth debates reflected the presupposition that Scripture must legislate on the issues in question, even though no biblical author addresses himself to either …. ”
In other words one of Anglicanism’s greatest recent scholars concluded that the Bible doesn’t even ‘address itself’ to establishment! He was kind of wrong about that, mind – as I’ve pointed out, the Bible positively doesn’t teach establishment but actually also positively teaches a different way of doing things deeply incompatible with established churches and rulers with ‘divine right’. And although I keep asking you, you don’t yourself provide the necessary biblical proof….
As for ” the King anointed by God at the coronation and whose very activities take place by divine right” – it doesn’t require much knowledge of English history to see that as frankly asbsurd, with England’s kings all too often doing things that couldn’t possibly be by divine right. Indeed Henry VIII was one of the least divine of those kings!!
T1, may I suggest you apply for the vacancy at Canterbury?
I would certainly put Parish Ministry first and show devotion to my King and God but Reverend Marcus Walker to be honest would do that better than me
And when God and king clash, which would you serve? Please don’t say that they cannot clash because God has anointed the king. History is full of such clashes.
By definition they can never clash in the C of E as the King is anointed by God by divine right, if you do not believe that you are not a true member of the Church of England
What is your take on the Glorious Revolution, T1? And what if a monarch declares Islam the religion of state?
William III became the new King by Divine Right in 1688 as confirmed by his coronation in 1688 with Mary.
If a monarch declared Islam the religion of the state the Church of England would cease to exist anyway, not that that is very likely given neither the King, his heir not 94% of his population are Muslim
James II was crowned king of England on 23rd April 1685. When did he II cease to be legitimate king of England and why?
Also, what is the status of a monarch between his father’s death and his coronation?
He ceased to be King when God decided his daughter and her husband should be the monarchs of England by divine right instead. As soon as a monarch becomes King they take the throne, the coronation simply affirms the divine favour upon their rule
Simon/T1
“…By definition they (God and king) can never clash in the C of E as the King is anointed by God by divine right, ….”
Given the various contradictory positions taken by English kings over the centuries, if there has never been a clash we have a ludicrously inconsistent God – just consider the significant differences of Henry VIII, his son Edward VI, and his daughter Elizabeth. Your position is untenable and sorry but comical.
As for ‘apostolic succession’ I note that it was a Pope, according to you the best example of that alleged succession, who persecuted Galileo, subjecting him to house arrest and threatening torture by the Inquisition, for the horrendous ‘crime’ of getting astronomy right. An apostolic succession that could allow that is not so much ‘worthless’ as of decidedly negative worth.
In contrast by the way, Calvin also doubted Copernicus at a time when it was hard to prove, but as you can find in his commentary on Genesis he was working with far better scientific ideas which of course totally trumped the Pope’s “I know better because I’m in the apostolic succession” malarkey. And following Calvin’s principles is why Protestants accepted the astronomical truth centuries before the Popes finally admitted it.
Actually God decided that William and Mary should be monarchs in place of James II before the foundation of the universe, T1. It’s not as if He was taken by surprise.
Henry VIII was crowned in June 1509 but fell out with the church in the person of Cardinal Wolsey over his marital desires. Who was right and why?
Anbd what of lands where Christianity is persecuted?
Yes all part of God’s plan, as was God’s plan to make Henry head of the Church of England and break England from Popery in the 16th century.
Pursuing Christianity in a nation where it is illegal is a test of great faith
The early different positions amongst monarchs on the C of E were just moves to it becoming a Catholic but Reformed church. What the early 17th century Pope decided to do with Galileo is of no interest to Church of England members, by that time it had long broken with Rome and had its own separate bishops, just the line still traced back to St Peter
So, T1, if a king declares himself Christian and consequently says that his is now a Christian country, (i) what does he mean by the latter statement and (ii) are all Christians in his kingdom bound to do whatever he declares in relation to Christianity regardless of how contrary it might be to the scriptures?
The King’s and his ministers interpretation of Christianity would certainly be the final say on how to read scripture if you were a member of his church. However the C of E is not the only church in the UK, you are no longer fined if you don’t attend its services and the C of E’s Bishops and Synod now interpret scripture, the King is just its symbolic governor
I don’t like Welby but I don’t think you can blame him for William’s atheism!
William isn’t atheist, just small c Christian who goes only at Christmas and Easter and for weddings and funerals like to be honest most Christians in the UK today, certainly in the C of E
Rather than giving a speech about it, you could be using the same time slot to show them a better way.
I don’t think many evangelicals—or many in his diocese come to that—share your assessment of Snow.
Sadly, I agree…
He isn’t as pro Parish as I would like, too many mergers in Leicester, I would agree with that and would certainly not want him as Archbishop of Canterbury even if I could tolerate him at York
Why would a women bishop be any better at handling safeguarding issues?
Bishop snow and Bishop Gulli as a pair would be two liberals on sexuality. Given the almost 50/50 split of the synod on this, we need balance in our leadership, anything else would exasperate calls for leaving.
Well as far as I can see none of the Bishops at least who have been accused of serious errors in relation to management of sex abusers have been women. Bishop Snow and Gulli are actually in the mainstream of the C of E on sexuality, not hardliners like you who refuse any recognition of same sex couples at all in a nation where same sex marriage has been legal for years but accepting of the majority of Synod vote for PLF in all 3 houses and not trying to push full same sex marriages in C of E churches either.
To be honest though I would certainly shed no tears if some anti PLF evangelicals obsessed with church planting and with no interest in traditional Parish based ministry left the church and became Baptist or Pentecostals
Well they’ve not been in senior leadership very long have they? I can’t see why their sex would make any difference.
The mainstream of the C of E is not by popularity contest, but by obedience to doctrine (teaching), canon law and the historic ordinances: same sex couples in active relationships are sinful, this is the mainstream of christianity. Wishful thinking won’t change it.
Why would I suddenly change my view on the regeneration of the holy spirit in Baptism if I left the C of E?
The Synod’s decisions are what governs the C of E doctrine and the Synod has voted for PLF even while reserving holy matrimony for heterosexual couples in lifelong unions. You wouldn’t change your view but you wouldn’t be trying to impose it on those in the C of E who take a different one if you left the C of E
Or remained as Anglicans? You seem to think everyone is either Church of England or those dreaded ‘Baptists or Pentecostals’. But there’s a growing number of Anglican churches within the Anglican Mission in England (AMiE), and in some places (e.g. Scarborough) they are the largest Anglican congregations.
Quite James: T1 is basically a follower Erastianism: he can’t tolerate the thought of a church not fundamentally controlled, subserviant and dictated to by the state, to the point, as far as I can tell, that if the state decided the CofE was to acknowledge Muhammed as a prophet, he would happily acknowledge its right to do so and begin busily learning arabic.
So Anglicans who are not CofE in his mind are mysteriously not really Anglican.
The Anglican Mission in England is not part of the Church of England anyway, so has no real relevance to who the next Archbishop of Canterbury is
No, I have no problem with evangelicals who are anti same sex couples and have no time for Bishops of apostolic succession, BCP services and traditional Anglican Parishes ie the core elements of Anglicanism and are uninterested in the King as their Supreme Governor, a core element of the Church of England becoming Baptists or Pentecostals. As they basically are Baptists or Pentecostals in all but name not Anglicans anyway
Simon (T1): that is very silly. The majority of Anglicans in the world have little or nothing to do with the Archbishop of Canterbury.
This is not like Roman Catholicism, where all Catholic bishops are appointed (or deposed) by the Pope.
And in England there is a growing number of Anglican churches recognised by world Anglicanism with Anglican orders and worship, just as there are in North America, New Zealand and elsewhere. They are not Baptists or Pentecostalists, they are ordained by Anglican bishops.
I find your Little Englander outlook quite charming in a 19th century way, but you need to get out more, Simon.
Even then the majority of Anglicans in the world have Bishops of apostolic succession and a Book of Common Prayer or a version of it. If some evangelicals don’t even want to follow those core Anglican communion principles they really are better off becoming Baptist, Pentecostal or charismatic independent.
You still don’t get it. The AMIE clergy are episcopally orained and follow Anglican worship. They are Anglican but not Church of England. Why do you find that hard to understand?
You are very Erastian.
“He did though have one big win, Synod’s 2/3 majority vote for women bishops.”
I’m not sure about that. It was a heavily compromised proposal that opened the door to the idea that you might be able to pick and choose which bishop you were under according to your theological taste. And it gave a false hope to Archbishop Welby that he could craft political compromises whenever there was a contentious issue on the agenda.
It’s a shame, another one, that his apparent regular anger outbursts, reducing some to tears, had not been challenged at the time. Such a person just becomes a bully, and is not fit for any leadership within the church, let alone an archbishop.
Well, what I found it was that it was already well known, and no-one had really challenged it.
On the positive side, I would mention first Justin’s clear cut support for the founding of the Churches’ Mutual Credit Union (CMCU) – now essentially 10 years old and a practical, successful ecumenical project across England, Scotland and Wales. The main work to establish CMCU was done in advance of Justin as Archbishop, but with so many other things on the minds of bishops and others, the support was too diffuse to enable all the critical elements to align. Justin’s personal and public support near the beginning of his ministry as Archbishop was the game-changer.
Secondly, I would mention how he handled the emergence of facts about his apparent father and his biological father being different. This showed real dignity and insight about what gives a person worth and identity.
However, the weight of this article does seem to me to be right. Perhaps like many charismatic achievers, Justin’s plus points (eg decisiveness, certainty, ability to make things happen, and – at times – disarming charm and humility) have a flip side. There were, we shouldn’t forget, many successes. However, when there is no one to whisper in the ear “You might be wrong.” (or at least no one who will be listened to), leaders can easily, especially over time and when facing demanding, complex problems, become overbearing and believe their own PR – their humility often evaporates. Such leaders will tend to believe that they and only they have the solution, the character and skills to bring about some form of the New Jerusalem. (As an aside, in World War II, Churchill was supported by several people, perhaps three key players – his wife Clementine, his CIGS Brooke and his chief of staff Ismay – all of whom were willing in different ways to stand up to him, challenging his sometimes outlandish ideas and his sometimes overbearing ways of dealing with people. Churchill, in turn, was big enough essentially to accept these criticisms.)
In some ways, the church only has itself to blame. We seemed to have had enough of one style of leadership and we thought that the opposite would work. I was very struck at how alone Archbishop Justin had become. In the end it seems he had upset everyone and no-one was willing to defend him. The net result is a tragedy for him and us. The tools of technology and trends in society probably tend to push towards a centralizing agenda. Can we steer a middle course between an overly centralizing, hierarchical church and one where every congregation is a law unto itself?
Can we have a church with a doctrine rooted in the historic formularies and which also ministers with grace and truth to and for all? I hope so, but finding the leaders of such a church may be (at least) nearly impossible.
As a summary of the anthropos psykikos, that could hardly be bettered. As for the anthropos pneumatikos, I notice that things became progressively harder in every department for ++Justin the more he tried to push SSM on to the Church of England. Those who understand the meaning and origin of sacred scripture will be in no doubt why.
Thanks Nigel. I was originally intending to include reference to the paternity issue—but the article was long enough already! I do think that was a wonderful moment.’My identity is not found in my genes but in Jesus Christ.’
I should have said, thanks for your article. You say on the Facebook post that this was hard to write. I can believe it. It is always difficult to address failings of others in gracious but truthful ways and to provide a framework which also includes the positives.
Even more is this true when we remember that our criticisms of others also have a context of our own failings and whether we (or anyone!) could have done better. Nevertheless, I think you have made a really helpful contribution to our understanding of the background to why it went so horribly wrong, joining the dots, so to speak.
Enoch Powell commented, “All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.” The same will probably tend to be the case for episcopal and archiepiscopal ministry. For many the failure will be of the damp squib variety, but for some the end will be more sudden and more catastrophic because of their character flaws and because of the prevailing circumstances they are facing.
Yes. I don’t think I have ever been thought of as someone who kept too quiet. But I still wonder whether I could have challenged more effectively and earlier.
Thank you Ian for the article. Well written but heartbreaking.
I recall meeting by a charismatic Bishop from Brompton who early on gave me Justin’s prayer card with a picture of him and his wife. The bishop insisted that Justin was ‘one of us’.
We had such high hopes and now I feel an overwhelming sadness.
I won’t leave because the good Lord has said that I should stand my post until properly relieved. I am not a Baptist or a Pentecostal but I might be considered a charismatic Presbyterian.
FWIW I generally welcome the ‘new styles’ of worship and the influence of the HTB network on the wider church whilst also supporting the save the parish movement as a stand against overreaching episcope (and as a retired country parson I can give countless examples)
“But I know who I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to keep into that day, what has been entrusted to me”
Good for you!
Indeed it was wonderful to read in a national newspaper at that time.
Would that identaraian theme were followed through in every sphere of our lives, individually and collectively, working it out in all sexual, and gender matters which has swamped the church, even in identitarian denominations.
There is only one Christian Oneness: exclusively inclusive, a new- birth – creation in Christ Jesus.
Given that Justin Welby was basically seen as an evangelical at the time of his appointment I find myself wondering how he ended up rather clearly supporting same-sex marriage.
I find myself thinking (and would like to ask him about this) that at some point he must have ‘fallen for’ the concept of gay propaganda that “Being gay is the same kind of thing as being black” – ie, something people simply are and have no choice about. And one has to admit that IF that were true, then clearly opposing ‘gayness’ would be as wrong as racism, and one would have to either declare Christianity untrue for opposing gayness, or re-interpret the faith to accept gayness.
Thing is, as I’ve pointed out a few times here, and as by the way a lot of black people would like to point out, ‘gay’ is very much not about something people ‘just are’; it very much involves things that people DO, ie the sexual acts, and those acts are basically chosen. Insofar as there is any ‘being something’ involved it is not a matter of simple neutral stuff like hair, eye or skin colour, but is about people’s urges and desires to do the acts in question. And urges and desires are not automatically neutral just because people feel them, further moral question is necessary. In effect that category of “doing because urges and desires” applies to just about every human act from the saintly like being a nurse through to the satanic like rape and murder. Ipso facto, just having urges and desires cannot mean they are OK….
And so it is perfectly proper that Christians can maintain that same-sex love is permissible and to be encouraged while upholding the clear biblical position that ‘sex’ (or more accurately a parody of it) is an inappropriate way to express such love. And in a plural society that difference of opinion should be acceptable to the state. What is ultimately less acceptable, and part of the bind Justin found himself in, is that a body holding such an opinion should be formally the state religion, even in the rather attennuated form we now know compared to the totalitarian position that it originally held.
Men have no choice about being sexually attracted to married women, but moral men don’t chat them up.
Two things there – exactly, there is a choice not to chat them up. And when the person feels there is no choice, that the temptation is irresistible, that’s not the same kind of ‘no choice’ as thing like skin colour – rather it is the kind of thing Paul I think referred to as being ‘captive’ to one’s sinfulness. The gay propaganda confuses those different categories.
The constant attempts to conflate the will to adultery with the seeking of faithful monogamous relationships is visible. But more, it shows that the commenters have no understanding of love, exclusivity or probity.
Risible 🙂
Men* have no choice about being sexually attracted to married men. But moral men don’t chat them up.
*This also applies to women.
I will try to answer this one last time since you shoehorn this comparison between ethnicity and sexual orientation in every thread, without relevance to their theme.
In all discussions about Scripture and homosexuality, many evangelicals like you home in on the notion that homosexuality – or the homosexual act is merely that – an act. Scripture forbids it, so that’s it. But every discussion I’ve seen from you and most peeps here all fail to address the current reality, that often people are looking not to just engage in gay sex, but to establish a lasting relationship with someone of their own sex. It’s not that they have homosexual inclinations or temptations rather they have a different sense of identity and different needs. Just like one wouldn’t simply call a heterosexual’s desire or need for a partner of the opposite sex as merely a temptation. It’s about something bigger than that – companionship, identity, love, etc.
This why your comparisons to adultery (or, G-d forbid bestiality, which I have read here too) are always flawed – I’ve never heard someone identify themselves as an adulterer or seeking a fulfilling love relationship with specifically an animal or married woman. Yes, there may be a temporary temptation towards such a situation, but that is not the same as ‘being’ gay, which affects the whole person, all the time. No one is exclusively attracted to married women.
Is your goal to boil down the Gospel to a warning that homosexuality is all about the homosexual act (and forbidden) and nothing to do with the life that gay men and women often seek? That these homosexuals just have inclinations towards sexual relations that they must stop and control, but their desire to love and be loved aren’t real?
Because that is bigotry.
Lorenzo it’s just gut feeling but for what it’s worth ,I feel in my heart that the , fear that is driving Stephen is a shadowy half awake awareness of how fragile temporary and illusory identify is.
BTW
Have you ever read Patrick White’s Twyborn affair?
Lorenzo
You write “I will try to answer this one last time since you shoehorn this comparison between ethnicity and sexual orientation in every thread, without relevance to their theme”.
First off, in this thread I’ve held off discussion of homosexuality till now, though I have engaged in another issue (the CofE’s ‘establishment’) elsewhere on the thread.
Second, the “comparison between ethnicity and sexual orientation” isn’t mine – it is a major component of gay propaganda, an attempt to make out that opposing homosexuality is the same kind of sin/crime as racism. I am opposing it as both legally and morally a bad comparison, a category confusion which effectively allows ‘gays’ to bully and persecute those who disagree with them.
Third, it has become clear in this thread that ++Justin’s acceptance of SSM and, what has flowed from that, has been a major component of his ‘legacy’ – and therefore a major theme on this thread, not some outside thing which I’m “shoehorning in”.
I have repeatedly referred to one obvious biblical text, from 2 Samuel 1 where David talks of his relationship to Jonathan as ‘greater than the love of women’, which in context appears to mean ‘better than sex’. I’ve also referred to the case of ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’. And I’ve generally said that same-sex love is perfectly proper, it is just that in the world as Christianity understands it, sex is designed for males-with-females and is an inappropriate way for love between men or love between women to be expressed. I’ve even discussed that in some cases men might appropriately have a same-sex but non-sexual civil partnership – in other words I very much recognise the point you make about companionship, identity, love etc, and I’m very much saying that the desire between men to love and be loved is real. Again, just that sex (or rather a parody of it) is inappropriate.
You should also note that I am basically an Anabaptist; that means I regard religious belief as voluntary and expect to share ‘society’ with people who disagree with me, and have no intention of enforcing Christian sexual morality on those who are not Christians. (Whereas I note that ‘gay’ people seem pretty determined to force everyone to accept their view, and to criminalise those who won’t agree – so who is the bigot, really?) But yes, among Christians you would be expected to follow Christian standards just as if you join a football team you will be expected to play according to football’s rules.
As I said above, it is a problem if Christian leaders ‘fall for’ this ‘gay is like black’ aspect of gay propaganda and try to rewrite the faith to accommodate it.
I’m not particularly concerned, Lorenzo, whether I match your definition of bigotry, but the gospel is about repudiating all things the bible views as wrong and letting yourself be changed for the better by Jesus Christ in a way you can’t do for yourself.
I have, sadly, known adulterous relationships in which the man aimed to detach the woman from her husband permanently for himself, and succeeded.
I have some sympathy with this position, Lorenzo.
As Eve Tushnet has said, “My best understanding of both Scripture and Church teaching is that same-sex sexual activity is forbidden, while same-sex love is holy.” Incidentally, she rejects simplistic ideas that one is “born gay.” For her, it’s not terribly relevant. “To me the important things are, “How can I serve God and other people within this experience?” Well, it a truism to say “love is holy” – depending on what type of love one is referring to.
However, the problem as I see it, is that if a same sex friendship is based on an “identity” as gay, and an initial sexual attraction/desire, then it’s based on a dangerous foundation, and one can legitimately question if this can be transcended. It then is a temptation to sin. Of course, relationships between married men and women move past sexual desire and expression, they grow deeper – and conjugal love helps this self giving. Is this the case with same sex acts? For example, men-men friendships and woman-woman friendships do exist without sexual desire or any felt need to express such a need. Is this the case with same sex “partnerships”? So when you say gay people want to “establish a lasting relationship with someone of their own sex. It’s not that they have homosexual inclinations or temptations rather they have a different sense of identity and different needs,” you’re actually conflating two different type of friendships and needs – one is brotherly/sisterly; the other is sexual in nature. And, regardless of sexual identity. one can have brotherly/sisterly friendships with members of either sex.
I agree that all of us need relationships in our life that go beyond sexual desire (companionship, identity, love, etc.), but I think my wife would (rightly) take a very dim view of me establishing a close, loving, emotional companionship with a woman I was sexually drawn too!
Stephen round my bit of country any farmer will tell you there has always been a( smallish )percentage of cows and bulls that from the getgo are ‘ gay’:.
Obviously:
Natural selection will select against any beastie that isn’t ‘ keen on sex’ but not give a toss if the odd randy one of the litter has issues re target selection…
Personally being in the arts’ I know quite a few gay couples who have been in loving monogamous, commited relationships for many decades .
Monogamous commited, LOVE is surely what matters no ?
John
just because things can and do happen does not mean they are also simply approved by God – just a quick look at today’s news should tell you that God permits a great many things which are not his ideal will. The Christian understanding is that ‘because sin’ (human and likely also of other beings) the universe is somewhat disordered. The Christian responsibility is to aim to restore God’s will (though by voluntary and non-coercive means, whence my comments earlier in the thread on the ideas of established churches and divine right of kings) and certainly to follow that will ourselves.
According to the Bible, though LOVE, including very strong love between people of the same sex, is important and God’s straightforward will, ‘gay sex’ as an expression of love is inappropriate and constitutes rebellion against God, a rejection of and a disrespect towards his designed purpose for us.
Check out Liza Mundy and McWhirter/Maddison for the actual degree of monogamy in those who style themselves gay and couples.
Indeed, if they are not a family unit, why would good levels of monogamy even be expected? So that brings promiscuity into society, even into children’s awareness, with its destabilising effect.
That is even before we consider what on earth is the connection between coupledom and being self-styled ‘gay’. We can see that families come from two parents (m, f) but what is the special connection of the number 2 with those who are self-styled gay. There is none. So that brings us onto the possibility that by prioritising this irrelevant number 2, they are parodying / being parasitic on a good and preexisting reality, begin unable to create any other good reality themselves. Which model/structure indeed is one main theology of the nature of evil.
Christopher:
Yes, why the insistence on sexual exclusivity in homosexual relationships when there is no question of pregnancy arising? Is it to do with preventing STIs? Is the jealousy of another person a right motive for controlling one’s behaviour?
Why do homosexual relations have to imitate exclusive heterosexual monogamy? No one has ever explained this very satisfactorily.
It does commonly happen, of course, that lesbian couples desire children (because wanting to be a mother is a normal biological desire and drive among women), and then the willing participation of a male becomes necessary. And so children are created with the express purpose of denying them fatherhood. Some interesting ethical quandaries there.
Perhaps because many gay couples have a higher standard of morality than you and seek fidelity and exclusiveness in relationships which don’t involve sexual reproduction.
I too, have managed to stay faithful to my husband despite having no children. It’s amazing what a bit of Christian morality can do!
But that sounds terribly bourgeois! Where do “higher standards of morality” come from and what makes them “higher”? What exactly is morally wrong with consensual “one-night stands”, especially when there is no chance of pregnancy?
After all, the research indicates that most homosexual men in ‘stable partnerships’ don’t have a problem with occasional casual sexual encounters with other men. If the couple concedes this privilege to each other, how could this be “immoral”? What about “open marriages”: why are these of “lower morality”?
On the other hand …..
If morality is defined as the **express will of God** as the Divine Lawgiver and revealed in Holy Scripture, then that will exclude a lot of modern day consensual behaviours – including one night stands, homosexuality and “open marriages”.
Christopher is right: homosexual relations are parasitic on the existing good.
I think you are somewhat misled by statistics. After all, many straight couples are in ‘open’ marriages. You should mix with more Christian couples.
Of course I know there are “swingers”, but not among any of the many Christian couples I know. I see you couldn’t (or wouldn’t) answer my question about what makes a morality “higher” or “lower”. The sources of morality are obvious to me: they are the revealed Word of God and natural law. But these options don’t exist for liberals, who have to fall back on some kind of utilitarianism or Kantian personalism, both a long way short of Christian ethics. That’s why liberalism usually falls into some kind of situation ethics, a notion of ‘love’ and ‘the good’ that is humanistic and immanentist.
Your source of morality appears to be that, if it weren’t for procreation or a particular construction of God’s word, we would all be screwing madly. Forgive me if I don’t subscribe to such a reductive notion of sexual morality.
How sad that you’ve decided to troll us with the half-baked radicalism of the gay liberation movement.
Once again, your misogyny is on full display when we discuss this topic. The reason for not having adulterous affairs is that it’s on God’s naughty list, and as practical considerations you don’t want to pick up an STI, or deal with the embarrassment of an illegitimate child. You even go so far as to question the very idea that the feelings of the existing wife ought to be a consideration. It’s all pretty gross and self-centred, and misses most of what Scripture actually says about marriage. For example:
Genesis 2 – marriage is instituted because it’s not good for man to be alone
Ecclesiastes 4 – two are better than one
Matthew 19 – sexual desire has been with us from the beginning, so don’t fear marriage
Romans 13 – love does no harm to a neighbour, so love if the fulfillment of the law
1 Corinthians 7 – married couples should have sexual relations (and be monogamous). Spouses are equal and have authority over each other’s bodies.
AJB: once again you show your inability to read my comments correctly, and again you repeat an absurd allegation of misogyny. Is there some projection going on there?
It should be obvious to anyone who read me with care that:
1. I was presenting the reductio ad absurdum of modern secular thinking about sex, even when this is buttressed by utilitarianism and Kantian personalism. This is the best that liberalism can come up with, because of its secularist outlook: no heaven (or hell) to follow our earthly lives. Obviously not my belief.
2. My own beliefs are from the Bible and natural law – the very opposite of sexual permissiveness. Where AJB errs is he separates Genesis 2 from Genesis 1 in thinking about marriage. He wants to deny that procreation is central to the meaning of marriage.
3. It is no accident that the vast majority of sexual violence is by men against women. Men are naturally stronger and more aggressive than women, and unless these factors are constrained and controlled by grace (and the law of God and man), women will routinely be harmed by men. No woman who had a choice would want to live in Afghanistan. But those attitudes are increasingly present in the west as well. It isn’t “The Handmaid’s Tale” that should concern girls today, it’s the mosque and the imported male violence, (Of course, the politics of the left make it very difficult to admit this obvious point, which must be shut down at once.)
AJB, you repeatedly show an inability to read me carefully to grasp the point I am making,.
Just as Penny is unable to explain where her current bourgeois beliefs come from, when she has repeatedly said in the past that she is perfectly happy with unmarried people having casual sexual relations and sees nothing sinful in that. It’s obvious to me where her beliefs come from: the “permissive society ” of the 1960s, when the west embraced and openly celebrated sex outside of marriage as something no longer considered sinful except in some laughable backwaters inhabited by fundamentalists.
Once again, James, you entirely misrepresent the only comment I have made on here about one night stands. But I suppose that on this brave new world we will have to get used to post truth statements.
Furthermore, although some of your arguments for marriage and monogamy may come from your reading of natural law they most certainly do not come from scripture, particularly the teachings of the New Testament. Which is equivocal about the goods of marriage (to say the least), although St Paul does regard it as a remedy for lust. There are few, if any, teachings on the goods of procreation in the NT. To find a ‘theology’ of marriage in scripture one has to do a great deal of negotiation with the texts. And, with the advent of Protestantism, this is very much a bourgeois concept 🙂
Penny, it is not just your comment about ‘one night stands’. You have on more than one occasion stated you see nothing wrong with unmarried people having sex without commitment.
You can renounce your previous words if you wish to.
As for the NT teaching on marriage, I have a much more constructive and positive view of what it teaches than you appear to. This is not surprising as I am an Anglican minister.
James
Have I? Some citations would be useful.
I, like many other couples, am unable to ‘create any other good reality’. Your premise that my marriage is parasitic is utterly disgusting.
The thing I called parasitic was two people of the same sex pretending that their twoness was relevant.
So we tick off another scandalised assertion that I said X when what I clearly said was Y. Desperation to find incriminating evidence, as has often been said. The interesting question is: why?
No, Christopher, you said that they were parasitic because they were incapable of creating any other good reality. This applies to lots of couples. And, of course, gay couples do have children, as do strangers guys couples who cannot reproduce sexually. Which is just as well, otherwise we wouldn’t have Jesus.
‘straight gay couples’!
Who is ‘they’ that I said was parasitic? I said (and have often said) a singular thing is parasitic and/or a parody. Namely, that which assumes the trappings of a marriage rather than going it independenly, despite not being one. The desire to take hold of (and thereby sully on a broader scale) that which one cannot have is, as said, one main view of what the structure of evil is.
What is that singular thing which is parasitic / a parody? It is the structure and the will to usurp it.
What is the good they cannot have? Marriage. Children did not enter my mind. It is of course not evil to be unable to bear children, nor does inability to bear them make marriage less than marriage.
Please don’t tell me what was in my mind. You will never know that nearly so well as the possessor of the mind (and in addition seem to think that only bad things can possibly be in my mind, which is certainly an odd idea). No – all you need to do is ask, and its contents, already revealed, will be clarified where necessary.
For example when I said ‘two people of the same sex pretending that their twoness was relevant’ I am speaking about a singular pretence, a singular idea, a singular untrue thought. Hence my use of ‘is’ not ‘are’.
Christopher
Of course gay couples can have that good.
They may marry. And do.
Some of these marriages blessed in Church.
This is a reality. It may not accord with your ideology. That doesn’t make it any less real.
Now something being real makes it good.
There was me thinking that reality contained both good and bad things.
Secondly – things ‘happen’ only after they are legal?
The process of legalising is merely some people walking into a lobby (extraordinary feat) followed by paperwork and stentorian utterances. The same things can happen before and after this.
Christopher
It would really help if you addressed the points rather than creating straw men.
Name the point[s] you think I have inadvertently missed, and I will address it / them.
I wonder though, Christopher, how old their research is? Given that gay marriage is now becoming part and parcel of life in the west, I suspect data in say 20 years time may show a significant shift, to the point of being quite similar to or better than straight relationships. Such statistics will then be meaningless and no foundation for an argument. Time will tell.
‘We can see that families come from two parents (m, f) but what is the special connection of the number 2 with those who are self-styled gay. There is none. So that brings us onto the possibility that by prioritising this irrelevant number 2, they are parodying / being parasitic on a good and preexisting reality, begin unable to create any other good reality themselves.’
I find your tone very harsh. What do your words say to straight couples unable to have or not wanting children? It also completely ignores the reality that gay people for the most part are looking for love and acceptance just like you. You and I agree that the sexual expression of that between 2 men is not appropriate, but I see no grace or mercy in your words. Essentially calling others ‘parasites’ is depressing.
Hi Peter
Typed words don’t have a tone.
Second, people speak factually and precisely for the good motive of keeping as far away as possible from spin and emotion that might bias the facts. Not all of life is about facts – but debates are. If they are not, nothing is, and accordingly facts would be banned. What could be more dangerous than that?
When did I call people parasites? I said that the structure of this practice was parasitic on the structure of the natural family one. This is comparing two structures with one another.
Looking for love and acceptance? This is the bit where more needs to be said. I find this absolutely rife and absolutely fundamental. Why do modern UK young women dress as they do, for example? They have not always done. But close Christian families/communities don’t need to look for love and acceptance because they already have it. If anyone has played along with the ‘different family structures are fine or even equally fine’ thing, they are the ones responsible for the (highly time-specific and culture-specific) dearth of love and acceptance. What is worst about it is that it sells these precious children so, so short, and yet few are failing to go along with it.
Couples who can’t have children? My message is – ‘Change the laws of nature’? Unlikely.
The whole way you speak of ‘gay relationships’ and ‘straight relationships’ (what are they?) within a generation or so of most having church marriages, is (sorry) appalling. The very word ‘relationships’ is highly vague and therefore highly mischievous in this usage, but to play along with a departure from marriage makes one part of the problem, doesn’t it?
Christopher, you actually said: ‘Typed words don’t have a tone.’
What??!!!
Aha, the linguistics-memorial comment.
There may be technical senses of the word ‘tone’, but a tone is something you hear. Even then it can be misinterpreted. How much more is a tone you imagine would/might be there IF you COULD hear it to be classified as imaginary and not to be relied on as any kind of evidence. Different people would imagine different tones anyway.
Good grief Christopher. McWhirter and Mattison? Their dataset is from the 1980s. It’s almost as old as I am. What we actually see, with the caveat that these studies are prone to bias from how you recruit the participants, is over time rates of monogamy are rising. In 2008, Parsons et al were reporting that 60% of US gay couples were monogamous. Hunter College found something similar in 2013. San Francisco’s Gay Therapy Centre upped their estimate to 70% in 2021. Lowen and Spears in 2018 looked at younger gay men (the under 40s) in the US, and found that 85% of them were seeking monogamous relationships.
I should think they are rising. Being outside family/biological-purpose context will mean that they never get high, and it has been standard for Christians not to acknowledge such partnerships as kosher at all. One can see several reasons why. Look at the muddle and normalisation that results, and at those who suffer by proxy merely from inhabiting the same society as such bedrock principles.
You “should think they are rising”, but choose to quote McWhirter and Mattison with their data from the 1980s as the source for “the actual degree of monogamy”? What desperate spin and deceitfulness. This isn’t the first time I’ve poked into the studies you cite and find them extremely wanting as evidence for the points you seek to make.
What are any of the other times, AJ? Give the details and we will see whether that is so.
You are speaking as though I mentioned one study. You will see above that that is wrong. McWhirter/Mattison was the second study of the two I mentioned. The first (more of an opinion piece) argued ‘on your side’. It has however been taken apart by Hanna Rosin. Quite apart from the points she makes, marriage is very much a minority pursuit among those who style themselves gay couples.
I mentioned McWhirter/Mattison because it focused on this sub issue, and because it was being quoted at the time I was published in 2016. Since then I have done little research in this area.
The assumption is that things will change over time. Mostly they don’t unaided. We go by stats and stats alone, and stats show some shift because circumstances have shifted. In general, anything that is outside the family pattern will not have faithfulness demands to the same degree on average as things inside the family pattern, because the bonding is not to the (practically miraculous) child level. It is all relative, but what could be a more important consideration than that?It also lets non family patterns into society. Everyone suffers from the slackening, though not always at the first remove.
Christopher
AJ cited other, more recent studies, but you deride any evidence which doesn’t fit your bias and your view is that gay relationships are outside what you see as biological purpose. Which is very much your world view to which you are very much entitled. You are, however, not entitled to impose your ideologies on others as if they were eternal verities.
PCD, where was it that I ‘deride’ any of the 4 studies cited by AJB?
The way it is couched is highly confusing.
What makes a couple? Self-definition is the only answer.
But that is going to involve a lot of serial monogamy. Which is of course no monogamy at all.
All it means is that whoever they are with at that time, that percentage of people are expecting/hoping to be with them monogamously and are succeeding in that (so long as some loose definitions of monogamy do not come into play). Which is probably true, if obvious.
-Gam- means marriage. But those talked of in studies of ‘couples’ will not all be married by any means. So we are still going backwards. Cultures where marriage is everywhere and is the only widespread norm are in time and space legion in number.
Why do people seek monogamous relationships? Partly because they want someone who understands them fully. But in a culture set up for individualism and self seeking, that becomes less likely.
Sigh. I suppose I should be sad that you forget these encounters Christopher. The example in my mind was the exchange in the comment thread for the article “Seeking a Way Through LLF/PLF: Seeing the Forest Not Just the Trees” in May last year. You attempted to cite a study (Lindley, 2015, ‘Sexual Orientation and Risk of Pregnancy among New York City High School students’) to prove your point that “What is often termed homosexuality is often hypersexuality or precocious sexuality”. Except the study did not prove your point, or even really address it. The sample they looked at was conditioned on those who engage in heterosexual sex in their adolescence. So, in New York 15-20 years ago, of the adolescents having heterosexual sex, those who identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual, appear to have done so in more risky ways. The authors go on to speculate about the connection to being forced into heterosexual sexual encounters as part of what’s going on. I concluded that you could not be trusted to read and report this sort of research accurately.
Turning to the points here. With respect you did only mention one study. As you acknowledge the other ‘source’ was an opinion article.
As for the final point, you’re now trying to shift the goalposts. We’re not talking about random variation around the mean. We’re talking about a distinct upward trend over 20-30 years. You said “I should think they are rising”. When I pointed out that made citing McWhirter and Mattison desperate spin and deceitfulness, you’ve tried to walk that back to merely “things will change over time”. You’ve adopted a dishonest and disappointing approach to this conversation. You may wish to believe that couples who have children are especially faithful, and those who don’t not only aren’t so faithful but aren’t so bothered by it, but I can’t help notice you’ve stopped trying to cite any evidence for this. If you were right about his child level bonding trumping other considerations, wouldn’t we expect divorce amongst families with children to be very rare? Wouldn’t couples who have children out of wedlock be getting married because this child level bond makes them want to be faithful to each other? We don’t seem to be seeing that at all.
To take your points in order:
(1) ‘Sigh’:
This is condescending, and sets up an expectation that I will be speaking in eyebrow-raising ways (or what the supercilious would like to treat as such). Said expectation is set up for the reader before any evidence is cited.
After which it is inevitable that you are talking down to people rather than debating on a level as is necessary.
(2) ‘These encounters’; ‘the example I have in mind’
No – it is the only example, and we will see if it is a valid one. You are giving the reader the impression of gazing across a vast sea of examples.
(3) ‘You attempted to cite a study’
No I didn’t. I succeeded in citing a study.
(4) ‘To prove your point’
!!
Only ideologues (who, it is true, constitute most of the population) try to prove preconceived points, which is clearly a dishonest practice. Scholars and the truthful just see what evidence exists.
(5) Among those who engage in heterosexual sex in adolescence, the homosexual-identifying were more risky in so doing.
There are several points here:
-Had their self-identification been accurate, what are they doing engaging in heterosexual sex? This suggests it is not accurate; and men are seeking women, women men, in the eternal dance.
-Why would there be a difference in riskiness among groups on a large scale? To say – No reason – would not carry conviction. (You mention a speculation of the authors re coercion as one possible reason. Is there evidence for this speculation being accurate?) There undoubtedly is a reason, and if none can be suggested, that suggests one is looking at it from the wrong angle. The Christian perspective (not unreasonable) – that to be seeking the same sex is already disordered (for the vocab – the Catechism has a lot of interconnected thought behind it going back centuries) and therefore likely to go along with more and earlier disorder than the average – provides a ready answer.
So secondly does the fact that the said cohort are muddled (i.e. mixed up / disordered) in having one desire and another practice – or indeed a complex variety of practices and/or desires.
And of course further disordered in doing so before marriage (natural smooth development disrupted/muddled) and thereby loosening/problematising or comparatively trivialising any future marriage bond.
(6) ‘With respect’
Eeurgh!!
I would not mention this apart from its tallying with (1).
(7) ‘You’re now trying to shift the goalposts’
In other words you are saying I am a dishonest person. I would rather die. What an awful thing to say.
(8) You said ‘I should think they are rising’.
Yes I did. And this was reflected in my citing of the opinion piece.
I was relying on the only two sources I remembered off the cuff, which happened in any case to point different ways.
Most people never cite sources pointing different ways – but you ignore that point.
You are talking to someone who published on this in 2016 and has not kept up much.
That however allows a tolerable amount of recent information. I quote what I wrote in 2016, and covering source material up to that date, to which you will need to respond:
‘Summaries of peer-reviewed science on homosexual promiscuity, covering 20 or so studies altogether, are given by Gagnon and Brown ‘A Queer Thing…’. Results generally converge to give the following picture: Around 90% of homsexuals are not in a couple. [Defining what constitutes a couple is of course not an exact science, as mentioned above.] Of those who are, only 10-25% were monogamous in the last year. A given heterosexual couple is about 41 times more likely than a given homosexual couple to be monogamous, and it is hard to find a faithful homosexual pairing over 5 years (this was the point where I drew on Mattison/McWhirter). The picture is worse for lesbian couples who stay together on average 2/3 as long as their male counterparts.
This stark picture isn’t denied (and is sometimes celebrated) by gay activists Kirk and Madsen, Silverstein and White, Altman, and Savage. Clearly intolerance and resulting despair is not the cause of this common inability to form and sustain monogamous sexual relationships, since promiscuity doesn’t decrease in gay-friendly San Francisco, Amsterdan, Sweden or New Zealand, but is more generally and universally exhibited by homosexuals.
So how does this compare with married (heterosexual) couples? Perhaps they too are similarly promiscuous. No. Even in the USA (the country worst hit by the sexual revolution) and as recently as the mid 1990s (as much as 30 years into that revolution) it was reported by 3 separate studies (Greeley, Laumann, Wiederman [- which can be co-googled]) that 80% of married people had never been sexually unfaithful to their present spouse.
Since I wrote that, marriage has slipped – but which cohort was it primarily that encouraged people to see nonmarital pairings on a level with marital? Which is called – Dragging others down to your own level. Which is a kind of ‘equality’ (where equality is treated as an undoubted good…??), just an infernal one: which point matters.
The Gay Liberation Front c1970 in their manifesto made no secret of their desire to destroy marriage. Not all will agree with such adolescence, and I am sure you do not (though adolescents are supposed to be more mature than children, not less).
(9) ‘Citing McWhirter and Mattison [as] desperate spin and deceitfulness’
Or alternatively we don’t need to hold the front page in huge excitement. Unless the headline be ‘Bloke cites most relevant study that immediately occurs to him.’.
(10) I ‘believe that couples that have children are especially faithful’
Why would they be?
-Children bring massively more tension.
-Especially when the unmarried parents are immature and one wants to remain irresponsible and the other is dog tired.
No – what brings faithfulness is marriage, not children.
(11) ‘You’ve stopped trying to cite evidence for this’
-See (10) – why would I cite evidence for something I have never believed nor investigated, not consider likely. Since I have never studied the point, I may be wrong. Marriage is an undoubted binder, children I don’t know and it would be interesting to see evidence here.
(12) ‘Child-level bonding’
Here there is a misunderstanding. You thought I was speaking about psychological bonding between 2 people. No, I was speaking of the message of biology that these two people can together produce a third. That reality is an amazing degree of bonding, biologically. And of course a miracle.
So (10), (11), (12) are all based on a misunderstanding.
I seem to have bowdlerised the incriminating final syllable of the chief city of Holland.
What you’ve done Christopher is indulge in a “Gish Gallop” trying to overload the discussion, so you can then complain that I’m not responding to every distracting point you bring up. It’s a childish debate tactic typically employed by someone who knows their case is weak.
“it is hard to find a faithful homosexual pairing over 5 years”
Complete rubbish. Just in the team in my office I know 3 people who are are in ‘a faithful homosexual pairing over 5 years’. It’s really not hard. You’re obviously not trying.
For the avoidance of doubt Christopher I consider you to be dishonest. You asked for any example of me pointing out that the studies you cite are wanting as evidence for the points you make. I give you chapter and verse on just such an example and you complain that I haven’t given more examples. I point out the problem with citing data from the 1980s as representative of today, if as you claim, you think the trend has been rising. You then obfuscate and pretend you only meant data is always changing, and that you don’t know better research, despite being someone who tries to cite academic studies a lot and comments on this topic endlessly. You claim that faithfulness is about the biological context and because the bonding is to the child level, but when the implications for childless heterosexual couples are pointed out to you, you backtrack and pretend you said something else and it’s everyone else’s problem for not understanding you. When you wanted to show that homosexuality is really hypersexuality, you cited a study that said nothing about that. Your discussion of Lindley here sounds like you haven’t read the study at all: the authors talk about adolescents undergoing forced sexual encounters, and you call this the ‘eternal dance’.
Don’t bother replying. I’m done indulging your nonsense.
Hi AJ
To treat your points one by one:
(1) Gish Gallop.
In your world/presentation, everyone *has to be employing tactics? To be underhand! Is no alternative to universal dishonesty possible? In the real world of 8bn people there are some honest ones included.
(2) It is hard to find a homosexual couple of over 5 years’ standing?
Do *I say that? No: I am not a first-hand statistical researcher at all. I paraphrase and reproduce McWhirter and Mattison as saying that, on the basis of their study: I mention *their conclusions. (So their ‘is’ has now become a ‘was’.) Which is only one of the 20 pre-2016 studies (listed in Gagnon 452-460, Brown 382-86) of the homosexuality/promiscuity overlap subtopic that I referred to in my chapter: nothing from the past 8 years. What do I think on the topic? I don’t think anything other than what the first hand researchers say. You and I would have no right to, of course, not being first hand researchers. You are treating the quoted finding as something which I think independently. If you read what I wrote it was part of a summary of the findings of the 20 papers, which findings overlapped strongly.
(3) You speak of plural ‘studies’ and then gave ‘just such an example’.
My only point was that this was singular not plural, so to speak of plural was an exaggeration.
(4) 1980s as representative?
Representative of what? Of today, presumably. The further we are from any date, the less representative it is of today, but that is obvious. Today is not more important than any other timeslot, but it is more important if our subject matter is today. My point made above was that the broad sweep of the 20 pre-2016 studies coalesced, but the specific finding ‘5 years’ was from Mattison/McWhirter who were well known to focus on the nature of homosexual ‘coupledom’. When we speak of coalescence, there are many different dimensions involved and coalescence in much does not mean coalescence in all.
(5) ‘Obfuscate’
This is another charge of dishonesty. So I repeat: nothing is worse nor more ugly to me, nor to anyone who loves truth – i.e. a lot of people – than dishonesty.
(6) I don’t know better research.
Yes – now I am repeating myself. As I said, having published in 2016, I did not keep up to date with the findings. The later findings may or may not be ‘better research’, but they will at least be more up to date. They will not always cover the same specific points / milieux as earlier studies. They will not always be so large scale, but hopefully sometimes they will be.
(7) ‘Bonding is to the child level’
I am suspecting you still think there is psychological content in my use of the term ‘bonding’. There is 0% psychological content. It is just a 100% biological point that babies are made from male and female physical inputs bonding together as one.
(8) ‘Everyone else’s problem for not understanding you’:
While speaking of 100%, 100% of that assertion was invented without being based on any data, anything I have said.
If original or new points are being made, it is normal not to understand them the first time round, or I find it so. The temptation is to conform them to some point that one IS familiar with. This will usually be a stereotyped point. Just the sort of point, then, that the sort of person determined to be fresh-eyed and precise, and free from groupthink, will hold in contempt.
(9) What you first said about Lindley was that he speculated about the possibility of forced sexual encounters, but in your most recent post you have said he talked about forced sexual encounters as though they were an actuality.
The idea is that so high a percentage of homosexual-identifying participants and simultaneously so low a percentage of heterosexual-identifying participants were subject to forced sexual encounters that this made a significant dent in the statistic.
But why would that particular cohort be likely to be so much more subject to forced sexual encounters than the other?
So we return to the alternative common sense suggested-explanation for this datum that I gave above. Namely: The homosexual cohort, being already estranged from biological base (and this is not a matter of moral responsibility always – frequently it is, for example, the result of the disrupted families provided by the sexual revolution whose effect kicks in extremely early in children’s lives) simply has on average fewer behavioural boundaries, and this manifests in various different ways.
(10) ‘The authors talk about adolescents undergoing forced sexual encounters and you call this the eternal dance.’
!!
What I called the eternal dance was male and female being attracted to one another like north and south magnets. Quite different.
Come on! Do you honestly think that I or anyone else would give a rhapsodic evaluation of a dreadful kind of coercion? Were you truthfully being honest when you said that, or trying to whip up an accusation at any cost?
(11) ‘Don’t bother replying. I’m done indulging your nonsense.’
This assessment collapses together a large number of points I make, which are completely different from one another, into one. So many assertions could not be generalised about jointly without much complexity. Yet what we get here is not complexity but the highest level of simplification.
What happens is that by thus exiting one gets away scot free with any wrong assertions, or unkind ones, or misunderstandings, that there may have been. And the discussion advances no further. Which of course does not serve the cause of truth. Which is what truth loving people want to do.
Ian thank you for a illuminating read : I live in a small town in the Australian bush and despite being a member of Canberra Goulburn synod etc I haven’t followed this story that closely.
After reading your piece I’m wondering if Justin Welby fits the pattern of the managerial, expert in the sense of ” experts live at the cutting edge of , conformity”?
One of the notable aspects of Welby’s appointment as Archbishop was that he was a pretty new Bishop: he’d gone from being Dean of Liverpool straight to being a senior diocesan Bishop (Durham), and within 18 months he was Archbishop. The question for the Church to consider is whether that meant we actually didn’t really know who we were getting, and Welby himself hadn’t really worked out how episcopal leadership ought to be done. Those are considerable downsides, and I’m not sure they outweigh the advantages of being a ‘new’ face, or untainted by previous battles because you weren’t there to take a side.
That ought to weigh on those looking at possible next Archbishops. I predict that there will be a temptation to go for someone ‘new’ and who hasn’t taken a view on recent controversies. That could be a risky approach.
Yes, I agree.
Ecclesiology is not really my thing, but I remember somebody on a recent post suggested a division of duties. In the English Reformation Thomas Cranmer was the theologian for the emerging CofE and Thomas Cromwell was in effect the CEO.
One step would be to separate the post of ‘Chairman’ (?) of the Anglican Communion from the post of Archbishop of Canterbury — I think somebody objected to that — but if the post of ABC was to be offered outside the UK that would be necessary?
Justin Welby has already lost the Anglican Communion. Only those nostalgic for the British Empire seek to retain this colonial vassalage.
Welby is likely to be the last Archbishop of Canterbury to head the Anglican Communion anyway. Under proposals likely to pass the role will instead rotate amongst Anglican Archbishops from across the globe, much as Prince William has said he would be happy for his father to be the last UK monarch to head the Commonwealth and when he is King the role should rotate amongst Commonwealth heads of state.
‘The Archbishop of Canterbury will no longer be the de facto head and sole “face” of the world’s 85 million Anglicans under official proposals for a “post-colonial” shake-up.
For the first time since the formation of the Anglican Communion in 1867, as a fellowship of Anglican churches across 165 countries worldwide, its most senior figure would not automatically be the Archbishop of Canterbury, under plans deemed likely to pass, published in a report commissioned by global church leaders.
Instead, the role would be a rotating one, with Anglican archbishops and “primates” from around the globe elected to convene and preside over the communion’s most important body, the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC).’
‘https://www.thetimes.com/article/994eecdd-4cad-4d94-aba3-05c5d60ba6f2
Does the Anglican Communion want a Chairman?
Things are now complicated by the global communion component of the selection panel not only because that implies some sort of global leadership, but also because it presumably must only draw from those who are definitely in communion with Canterbury.