Last month, Justin Welby was interviewed at the Cambridge Union, and some of his comments once more hit the headlines. When I heard about this, I could not help rolling my eyes. Despite having initially welcomed his appointment, and having then tried hard to work with him well as a member of the Archbishops’ Council, I sadly came to the conclusion that as archbishop he has done immense damage to the Church of England—damage that it is going to take a decade (or in some instances a generation) to undo (see my reasoning here).
When, I wonder, will Justin actually get the message that what we now need from him is dignified silence? As one person on commented on the YouTube video:
I find it extraordinary that some of the brightest minds in the Land are taking counsel from an individual that left the church in disgrace. An individual most certainly part of the problem and not the solution in my opinion. Why does Welby continue to have a public profile when his failure to respond left so much destruction behind?
The particular comments that hit the headlines were, once again, about the questions of marriage and sexuality. Despite them only occupying three-and-a-half minutes (from 34.02 to 36.41), Justin manages to illustrate everything that has gone wrong in this debate—and all the problems with his own leadership.
1. ‘I believed it was proper to have standalone services of blessing in churches for same-sex couples’
The opening problem comes in the first word: ‘I’. Justin speaks as though his opinion carries weight, quite apart from any process of discussion, theological reflection, and due process, and this reflects one of the disasters of his tenure—that he felt he could cut through complexity, and ‘fix’ our problems. He couldn’t.
But the confidence of his belief disguises the complexities and contradictions of his claims. The only way that any ‘blessing’ was agreed by Synod was on the basis that we would be blessing two individuals, and not ‘blessing’ their relationship, since the language of blessing implies divine approval—and the Church’s teaching on marriage, as between one man and one woman, is that sexual intimacy outside of that is sin and should be met pastorally with a call to repentance. All these complexities and questions Justin breezily dismisses.
And the reason that we have not agreed ‘stand alone’ blessings is that, were they to happen, they would be indistinguishable from a celebration of a marriage relationship.
2. ‘The use of the word marriage is much more complicated, there is a very clear biblical definition of marriage which is in the words of, in the mouth of, Jesus, clearly between a man and a woman.’
Why is this issue ‘complicated’ if there is a ‘very clear biblical definition’? To be sure, there are many complexities around the customs and expectations of marriage in different cultures—the ‘administration’ of marriage—and that is why some of those wanting to change our doctrine claim that there is no ‘biblical definition of marriage’. But such a claims rests on a wooden, literalist reading of the texts, which liberals oddly assume is the only way to read, and is the way that ‘traditionalist’ Christians do read. They don’t.
Despite all the different contexts of marriage relationships described in Scripture, there is one consistent feature: it is only ever between men and women. And Scripture consistently gives a reason for this: it reflects God’s creation of humanity as male and female. That is why, in Romans 1, Paul moves so quickly from God’s revelation of himself in creation to deploy the classic Jewish rejection of same-sex relationships in any form. In fact, this was one of the most clear distinctives between Jews and non-Jews in the ancient world—a distinctive which the early Christian movement adopted wholesale.
As (liberal, critical) scholar the late E P Sanders noted:
Homosexual activity was a subject on which there was a severe clash between Greco-Roman and Jewish views. Christianity, which accepted many aspects of Greco-Roman culture, in this case accepted the Jewish view so completely that the ways in which most of the people in the Roman Empire regarded homosexuality were obliterated, though now have been recovered by ancient historians…
Diaspora Jews had made sexual immorality and especially homosexual activity a major distinction between themselves and gentiles, and Paul repeated Diaspora Jewish vice lists. I see no reason to focus on homosexual acts as the one point of Paul’s vice lists [in 1 Cor 6.9] that must be maintained today (Paul: The Apostle’s Life, Letters and Thought p 344).
And gay historian Louis Compton observes:
According to [one] interpretation, Paul’s words were not directed at “bona fide” homosexuals in committed relationships. But such a reading, however well-intentioned, seems strained and unhistorical. Nowhere does Paul or any other Jewish writer of this period imply the least acceptance of same-sex relations under any circumstance. The idea that homosexuals might be redeemed by mutual devotion would have been wholly foreign to Paul or any other Jew or early Christian. Homosexuality and Civilization (Cambridge, 2003), 114.
3. It may take some time before, if ever, before we get to marriage because the church worldwide is deeply split on this not just the Church of England.
No, the church worldwide is not ‘deeply split’ on this issue. The vast majority of Christians worldwide believe marriage is between a man and a woman—including the vast majority of the Anglican Communion, of which Justin was supposed to be leader. In fact, this has been the view of most people through history, since marriage leading to the begetting and raising of children has been the foundation of all cultures. Few have had the luxury of not needing offspring to care for their parents in old age, to inherit, and to pass on the family name. It is a conceit of the modern West that these things are not considered to be of central importance.
Within Christianity, this view is so well established that Darrin Snyder Belousek can say, quite justifiably:
The creational-covenant pattern of marriage…is a consensus doctrine of the church catholic. Until the present generation, all Christians everywhere have believed, and every branch of the Christian tradition has taught, that marriage is man-woman monogamy… Marriage, the whole church has always confessed, is not only a monogamous union but also a man-woman union. (Marriage, Scripture, and the Church, p 52).
4. Everything we see and understand in the huge amount of study we’ve done is that there are social goods in faithful lifelong stable relationships of people of the same sex being together and living in covenant relationships. I didn’t used to think, that my mind’s changed over the last 10 years.
Justin is being doubly disingenuous here. First, you don’t need to do a ‘huge amount of study’ to recognize that stable relationships, whatever their other forms, are better than unstable ones. Secondly, this is not in fact what the study done in the Church of England has focussed on.
But the approach outlined here by Justin appears to be entirely social, pragmatic, and situational. ‘Does this pattern of relationship feel nice’ sits very well in our individualized culture of affectation, where we consider a limited selection of the horizontal dimensions of ethical issues.
(There has been a marked reluctance in this debate, for example, to note the research evidence of much higher levels of inter-partner violence in male gay relationships, or reflect on why that might be, or the related question of the moderating dynamics of opposite-sex partnerships.)
But that is not the way Christian theology should be done, and historically has not been the way the Church of England does its theological thinking. Sadly, it is theological thinking that has been lacking from this whole process.
The key questions to ask about marriage and sexuality are: what does it mean to be bodily, created in God’s image? what does it mean to be sexed, that is, created male and female? and what are our sexed bodies for? These are the questions that I explore in my Grove booklet but they are questions which appear to be completely absent from Justin’s thinking.
What is really odd is that the Church of England itself does have clear answers to these questions, expressed in previous statements from the House of Bishops, and in the current Canons of the Church, which both define where doctrine comes from, and what it says. But Justin demonstrates little knowledge of them, and less commitment to them, despite having vowed to uphold them at each of his three ordinations.
And the final disingenuity is his claim that his thinking has changed ‘over ten years’. When I thought back over my conversations with him, I realized that he had already changed his mind when he started his term of office, and has spent the last ten years working out how to make the Church into his own image.
5. When [gay people] live out that love faithfully and in stability, and faithfully and with stability and caring for others [sic], it is a huge blessing for them and for society and I’ve seen that in so many places, that in the end even I began to realize that I was being thick.
Justin tucks away another incoherence in his closing comments, and then manages to airily wave away 20 centuries of Christian thinking with a simple dismissal.
If all we need is for people to live ‘faithfully and in stability’, why should that only be between two people? Polyamory is the next big question in the secular ethical landscape (see Andrew Bunt’s excellent exploration of this here). And what does ‘stability’ actually mean? Why would it need to be ‘exclusive’ as long as it involves ‘caring for others’?
But the most extraordinary comment he makes in this brief exchange is that his own failure in the past to come to his now enlightened position is that he was ‘being a bit thick’. It is impossible not to infer from this comment that this is now how he views those that do not agree with him. Faithful, orthodox Anglicans, who uphold Jesus’ clear teaching that marriage is between one man and one woman, along with the vast majority of Christians in history and worldwide today, are just ‘a bit thick.’
For Justin, it appears, there is not a clear and consistent historic theological position from which he is, daringly, dissenting. Nor even are there two respectable theological positions in tension with one another. There are enlightened people like himself, and others, like me, who are continuing to be ‘a bit thick’.
And that is why the LLF process in the Church of England, far from creating mutual understanding and greater discernment, has sanctioned open hostility and division. We were supposed to have ‘consultations’ this summer on the different views, and as someone said to me this morning, in this person’s diocese ‘it has revealed vehement irreconcilable division and chaos.’
Is there a way forward for the Church of England, and a way to heal the deep divisions that Justin’s approach has created? Yes—but only one. We need to rediscover what we actually believe, that ‘according to the teaching of our Lord’, marriage is between one man and one woman. And we need to regain confidence that Jesus really is the good shepherd, and that when he teaches this, he knows what he is doing, and that this teaching really is the way to ‘life in all its fulness’ for everyone, regardless of their ‘sexuality’.
(An edited version of this piece was published at Premier Christianity here.)
(In case you think that spending time on questions of sexuality is marginal, unimportant, or a waste of time, then I explore ten reasons why these questions really matter here. If you think the historical understanding of marriage is unclear in Scripture, then see the liberal critical scholars who disagree with you here.)
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Very early on, I could see that Welby had probably changed his mind on same-sex relationships, when he declared that he was “gobsmacked” (silly word) by the quality of care he saw in some same-sex clergy couples. Why should anyone be surprised by that? Did he know nothing about human friendships?
As for calling himself “a bit thick”, this tireseome self-deprecation has long been a schtick of his (e.g. admitting his intellectual average and his lack of theological interest or even ability) and reflects the public school privileged background of the old Establishment who traditionally ran much of Britain: the cream of society (i.e. rich and thick). Does anyone imagine that without money, Eton and an easy ride into Cambridge, anyone would have heard of Justin Welby?
The list of clergy more theologically able and beter communicators would run for pages. But Welby was a political choice to secure the end of accepting same-sex marriage in the C of E, as well as structural changes. The strategy required appointing many liberal suffragans and preventing the appointment of conservative evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics. And this is what happened, ceating the present House of Bishops. It’s called gerrymandering.
Not long before Welby was appointed, The Bishop of Oxford, John Pritchard (a liberal evangelical like Welby but much more able theologically) was touring New Zealand and he told Peter Carrell, Bishop of Christchurch, that Welby was likely going to be the next ABC. Carell hinted at this in his blog Anglicans Down Under.
I agree it looks like a strategy (and may or may not actually be one; generally in political circles one would think it actually was one) – but if it is one, who exactly are the individuals behind it?
For example, David Cameron might want someone who would take the evangelicals with him in ‘getting with the programme’, someone who was sounded out to be deferential (even, it turned out, to Peter Tatchell!) and mea-culpa, in constant public awe of one’s own weakness, someone who had had ‘Imagine’ played on the bells of Liverpool, someone whose links to the establishment would see him not going too far beyond the Overton window in discussions with a Campbell or a Stewart, someone with Iwerne politeness, someone who was a reconciler and diplomat (i.e. a politician) rather than more of a truth or conviction person.
Smyth was as hardline conservative evangelical as they come, a highly educated QC and also public school educated at St Lawrence College
What’s he got to do with the topic?
A lot given you said public school ex pupils were all liberal and thick
Where did I say public school ex pupils were all liberal and thick?
It was James who said this, not Christopher shell.
It was an untrue assertion. They are a group more likely to vote conservative, and also a group more likely than average to gain awards at top universities. But I agree that they are often socially liberal.
Most of the core ministry team at conservative evangelical HTB, including its founder Nicky Gumbel, are ex public school
Or more specifically the developer of the Alpha course we have today was Gumbel
James
Not just money, but a concerted effort by a certain group of men to take over national institutions with their own carefully crafted SWM proteges!
As far as I can see, they don’t appear to have done a very good job of the takeover…
Theyve dominated the CofE for the last decade plus, moved resources out of parish ministry and exacerbated the decline in CofE both numerically and morally.
They also seem to have significant influence over arguably the most popular political party in England and potentially moved the needle enough to cause Brexit and the self destruction of the world’s oldest political party
The five points above express the same kinds of points that also I, and I am sure many others, would immediately wish to make. Each is a glaring oversight that the retiring archbishop could surely not have failed to notice. Couldn’t he?
The five analyses, that is, rather than the 5 points in bold.
Ah, this oft recurring topic.
An uphill struggle.
By now the problem has been aired almost to destruction;
all protagonists firmly entrenched.
We know what the problem is, what solutions
are forthcoming?
This “mountain” can only be
“lifted up and cast into the sea”;
No doubt from whence it came. Mat 17:20 & Mat 21:21
Consider ZECH 4:6 Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.
4:7 Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shouting’s, crying, Grace, grace unto it.
See Barne’s & Henry’s notes on that passage
@https://biblehub.com/commentaries/zechariah/4-9.htm
The weapons of our warfare are mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.
Forward the Overcomers!
First, it was of course Synod as a whole in ALL three houses ie laity, clergy and bishops that approved PLF by majority vote not just the house of bishops on Welby’s say so.
The Church of England is also established church of a nation where same sex marriage is legal. Now evangelicals who really want to be in a Baptist or Pentecostal church where they can reject same sex couples to their hearts content rather than respect the fact they are in the English established church can spin as they wish. The text of the introduction to PLF though is quite clear, ‘The Prayers of Love and Faith are offered as resources in praying with and for a same-sex couple who love one another and who wish to give thanks for and mark that love in faith before God’ ie not a full marriage but prayers of thanks for a same sex couple NOT for them just as individuals.
https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2023-12/prayers-of-love-and-faith.pdf
Of course Jesus also made clear marriage did not apply to a divorced and remarried heterosexual couple, unless spousal adultery had ended their previous marriage. Yet again though hardline evangelicals make little of the likes of George Osborne or even the King being remarried in C of E churches as divorcees whose former spouses were not responsible for the end of their marriages and same sex couples are still not allowed full remarriage in C of E churches like heterosexual divorcees are. Many western churches already perform same sex marriages, including the Methodists, the US Episcopal Church, the SEP, the Church of Scotland, most Lutheran churches and the Quakers. PLF was a compromise between those who wanted full same sex marriage in Synod and those who rejected same sex relationships and was passed by a clear majority of Synod. Evangelicals can refuse to accept they lost the Synod vote if they wish, they have an opt out, they don’t have to perform PLF if they don’t want to, if they still refuse to accept it there is the door and they are quite welcome to leave and become Baptists or Pentecostals or Independents where as I said above they can reject same sex couples to their hearts content, just they would have to give up their C of E owned building and buy a new one.
Finally, talk of domestic violence being above average in gay couples also ignores the fact it is below average in lesbian couples.
I have never seen stats that show lesbian-lesbian couple violence rates as other than above average. Which study have you seen that is against that?
The Office for National Statistics published their most up to date findings yesterday, relating to the calendar year 2023.
These show that ‘opposite sex’ marriages ‘that end in divorce’ (an awful destructive thing unnecessarily normalised when it has within living memory and for centuries thitherto been able to be so rare) last 12.7 years on average. Buying further into the sexual revolution will of course always make things notably worse – so the figures are 7.2 for men, 6.3 for women.
https://mainweb-v.musc.edu/vawprevention/lesbianrx/factsheet.shtml
It is coming through as ‘this site can’t be reached’. What journal was it in, and what did it conclude?
Christopher
(Reported) DV rates follow gender and women have double the rate for men. Gay male relationships report less DV than straight couples and gay female relationships report more.
Incidentally I read results of a survey last week that showed (in the US) same sex couples report significantly higher happiness rates than opposite sex couples
References?
Why do you look at surveys last week rather than meta analyses and the upshot of all relevant studies combined?
Christopher
Because analyses of surveys are further removed from the data and usually just an over ripe opinion.
That is not what a meta-analysis is. A meta-analysis need not be more theoretical and less number-crunching than the piecemeal studies on which it draws. Its main aim is often just to crunch as many numbers as possible (and thus be as representative and comprehensive and accurate as possible), rather than a smaller and potentially less representative sample.
Sorry but that sounds like lying to me. Saying something that the survey doesn’t say because you don’t like what it does say
You use an enormous number of acronyms that make your posts hard for people to comprehend. Do carry on.
So now Peter J is saying the precise opposite to T1. T1 says that domestic violence is worst for man-man, then man-woman, then woman-woman. Peter J says it is worst for woman-woman, then man-woman, then man-man.
Some reasons for the inadequacy and 180-degree contradiction in this:
(1) We need open citation of the research-paper reference[s].
(2) We should not think that one random paper applies to all times and all places. That is why we gather together all the available data.
Not quite.
Gay women have similar rates of DV compared to heterosexuals. Gay men have lower rates.
I just got that from a quick Google, but I can add my personal experience in that everyone I know who has been a victim of DV is heterosexual and I know more gay male couples than heterosexual couples
Why should your quick google weigh more than T1’s? Or anyone else’s? References that are not to journal papers should be ‘banned’.
Christopher
I don’t think it should. All I can write is the results I’ve seen and my personal experience. But that isnt necessarily better than someone else’s experience
I have noted this consistent comment from you in almost every discussion on this topic – the idea that because same-sex marriage is legal in England, the Church of England must therefore reflect or affirm it. That simply isn’t how doctrine works. I’m not sure how it is that you do not understand this.
Church teaching is not determined by the mood of Parliament or the prevailing social consensus. If it were, the church would have endorsed slavery, eugenics, and any number of other cultural norms that were once perfectly legal and widely accepted.
The Church of England’s doctrine of marriage comes from Scripture and the tradition expressed in its formularies, not the current legislation of the UK. To say otherwise is to reduce the church to a department of state morality rather than a witness to revealed truth.
I’m glad you’re not part of the Iranian underground church – by this logic, you’d be obliged to abandon the gospel altogether just because it’s illegal there.
I’ll come back to the rest of it later, but I thought this was astounding:
“Is there a way forward for the Church of England, and a way to heal the deep divisions that Justin’s approach has created? Yes—but only one. We need to rediscover what we actually believe, that ‘according to the teaching of our Lord’, marriage is between one man and one woman. And we need to regain confidence that Jesus really is the good shepherd, and that when he teaches this, he knows what he is doing, and that this teaching really is the way to ‘life in all its fulness’ for everyone, regardless of their ‘sexuality’.”
The only way to heal the deep divisions is for everyone to shut up and just agree with you? That is an extraordinarily unserious and self-serving position. Revisions to Issues in Human Sexuality? Apparently not. Do we need to change our approach to singleness and celibacy in the Church? Doesn’t merit a mention. I’ve been re-reading Ed Shaw’s short intro book ‘Purposeful Sexuality’ where he characterises this sort of answer as unsatisfying and inadequate, and setting people up for a fall.
And what, by the way, is the intention of talking about sexuality as ‘sexuality’?
‘Just agree with you’? What has that got to do with it? It is ‘just agree with Jesus and with 99% [the better informed and more joined-up-thinking 99%] of the church that there ever has been’. (And also, see the obvious: that chalk and cheese cannot mix and that the attempt to make them do so creates a damaging diversion, not to mention an accommodation/regression to the worldly standards that becoming a Christian was always meant significantly to improve upon.)
Christopher
This is part of the problem. Evangelicals are reading a totally different Bible than everyone else.
No Jesus didn’t condemn gay people or say gay people can never marry
Your knowledge of Jesus’s society and of ancient Judaism seems low, and also overlaid by the only society you know well – your own.
Check out, for example, the summary of Sanders in Ian’s piece.
Besides which, while it is extraordinarily dishonest of you to employ the argument from silence, banned by all philosophers, it is especially so when the thing that Jesus was silent about was not even a concept on the table.
Christopher
But the problem is that evangelicals aren’t saying that homosexuality or same sex marriage were unknown in the Roman Empire. They are claiming Jesus condemned both, which actually its not recorded if he did.
Who are ‘evangelicals’? They are all the same as each other, with no individuality?
Yes, Jesus was in line with Jewish sexual ethics of his day, and where he differed from them it was to tighten them (Mark 10; Matt 5). Had he been in favour of, or even indifferent to, any sexual practices previously classified as sinful, this would (Luke 7) have caused the father and mother of a scandal. But he wasn’t. And since there was never any evidence that he was, are you guilty of wishful thinking – i.e. bias and lack of honesty – here?
Well many evangelicals claim Jesus condemned same sex marriage.
Why would he, he wasn’t asked about it unlike divorce which was being debated at the time amongst Jews. But there was no debate around same sex sexual relations . But that point has been made many times and you just keep ignoring it.
Peter, evangelicals read the Bible with the vast majority of liberal, critical scholars.
It is very possible that Paul knew of views which claimed some people had what we would call a homosexual orientation, though we cannot know for sure and certainly should not read our modern theories back into his world. If he did, it is more likely that, like other Jews, he would have rejected them out of hand….He would have stood more strongly under the influence of Jewish creation tradition which declares human beings male and female, to which may well even be alluding in 1.26-27, and so seen same-sex sexual acts by people (all of whom he deemed heterosexual in our terms) as flouting divine order (William Loader, The New Testament on Sexuality pp 323–4).
Professor Gagnon and I are in substantial agreement that the biblical texts that deal specifically with homosexual practice condemn it unconditionally. However, on the question of what the church might or should make of this we diverge sharply (Dan O Via, Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views p 93).
Where the Bible mentions homosexual behavior at all, it clearly condemns it. I freely grant that. The issue is precisely whether that Biblical judgment is correct (Walter Wink, “Homosexuality and the Bible”).
This is an issue of biblical authority. Despite much well-intentioned theological fancy footwork to the contrary, it is difficult to see the Bible as expressing anything else but disapproval of homosexual activity. (Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided, 1490-1700, p 705).
Homosexual activity was a subject on which there was a severe clash between Greco-Roman and Jewish views. Christianity, which accepted many aspects of Greco-Roman culture, in this case accepted the Jewish view so completely that the ways in which most of the people in the Roman Empire regarded homosexuality were obliterated, though now have been recovered by ancient historians…
Diaspora Jews had made sexual immorality and especially homosexual activity a major distinction between themselves and gentiles, and Paul repeated Diaspora Jewish vice lists. I see no reason to focus on homosexual acts as the one point of Paul’s vice lists [in 1 Cor 6.9] that must be maintained today.
As we read the conclusion of the chapter, I should remind readers of Paul’s own view of homosexual activities in Romans 1, where both males and females who have homosexual intercourse are condemned: ‘those who practice such things’ (the long list of vices, but the emphasis is on idolatry and homosexual conduct) ‘deserve to die’ (1.31). This passage does not depend on the term ‘soft’, but is completely in agreement with Philo and other Diaspora Jews. (E P Sanders Paul: The Apostle’s Life, Letters and Thought pp 344, 373).
The task demands intellectual honesty. I have little patience with efforts to make Scripture say something other than what it says, through appeals to linguistic or cultural subtleties. The exegetical situation is straightforward: we know what the text says. But what are we to do with what the text says? I think it important to state clearly that we do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture, and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good (Luke Timothy Johnson).
According to [one] interpretation, Paul’s words were not directed at “bona fide” homosexuals in committed relationships. But such a reading, however well-intentioned, seems strained and unhistorical. Nowhere does Paul or any other Jewish writer of this period imply the least acceptance of same-sex relations under any circumstance. The idea that homosexuals might be redeemed by mutual devotion would have been wholly foreign to Paul or any other Jew or early Christian. Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization (Cambridge, 2003), 114.
Who on earth are you reading the Bible with?
“Who on earth are you reading the Bible with?”
I try to read it prayerfully with God.
Adam, I hope you read it with all the saints, living and dead. Scripture is a gift to the whole people of God, to be read together.
Ian
I most usually read the Bible on my own.
It doesn’t ban same sex marriage. Thats an evangelical invention and no amount of semantic gymnastics can make it match with your cultural beliefs on this matter
Great. It doesn’t ban fracking either. Though one sometimes wishes it would ban the scarcely honest practice of ignoring points that had already been made so many times.
“I hope you read it with all the saints, living and dead”
I do what I can. St John Chrysostom has been fairly important in persuading me how wrong you guys are in your application of Romans 1…
But I largely agree with what Chrysostom says.
Paul’s train of thought in Romans 1 is always well worth our refining our analysis on. His thought is quite dense and assumes things.
Paul emphasises that many *knowingly* make the conscious logical error (1.20-1; an error as widespread as idolatry itself) of exalting the physical creation in all its magnificence above the very creator to which it owes its entire existence and even possibility of existence (1.23,25). He is right to be emphatic about this: these same twin brute facts of existence and intricacy/magnificence are what make ancient and modern philosophers’ Cosmological and Design arguments so strong, and indeed the basis for any possible subsequent thought.
But the point is this: it follows from the Existence and Magnificence/Intricacy that the acceptable degree of non-negotiable awe (1.20-1) and gratitude (1.21) is huge in proportion to the hugeness of the Existence and Magnificence/Intricacy themselves. Now, the peak of creation is humanity as designed by God, male and female; and the peak of design (objectively AND subjectively) is the human reproduction that brings humanity about. If no awe nor gratitude is shown even towards *these* masterpieces – if even *they* are taken for granted, undervalued, trivialised, or returned to sender, as though they were of no account or as though we could have done better ourselves (with what materials?) – then that response combines the chief biblical sins of pride, blasphemy and idolatry (1.21-3).
And this is why Paul’s topic is consistently male/female (also in 1 Cor 6.9, with its incontestable foundation in Leviticus) and never our contemporary lenses of age and exploitation, whose extreme intrinsic relevance does not extend to this very specific exegetical context. It is unlikely that he would not have known about longer-term adult male same-sex sexual relationships (being a minority does not make these rare – let alone in societies without many Judaeo-Christian parameters); but even unlikelier that he would have essentially divided same-sex sexual relationships into age-based categories at all; and unlikeliest of all that such hypothetical categories would have included any of which he did not disapprove.
Christopher
Two problems with Romans 1.
Firstly the passage is explicitly about people who are heterosexual or at least in heterosexual marriages.
Secondly Paul goes on to claim that the Christians are no better than the people in Romans 1. Far from condemning the people in Romans 1, Paul’s letter opens up salvation to *all who believe*, not all heterosexuals
No.
On your first point, Paul had no concept of ‘heterosexual’ so you are wrong.
He deduced what was natural and unnatural from seeing biology. In which he is (albeit effortlessly) further advanced than those who somehow, against the science, think people are ‘born gay’ or whatever the saying is.
On your second point, everyone already knew that. He says that those in Romans 1 are wrong. He then goes on to say that those in Romans 2 are wrong. So are those in Romans 1 right or are they wrong?
On these absolutely central points of lack of awe and lack of gratitude (Romans 1.20-1), both of course are, as mentioned, the same thing as trivialisation of something magnificent.
Related to this, it is my belief that there is a disproportionate overlap between buying into LGBT (personally or as an ‘ally’) and the personnel involved in dirty tricks campaigns. Whether it is the BBC, Channel 4, or the criticism of mainstream Christianity on liberal websites, or in expose books, a common factor is the combination of being relentlessly positive to, and promoting, LGBT values while opposing hitherto-normal Christianity.
On these absolutely central points of lack of awe and lack of gratitude (Romans 1.20-1), both of course are, as mentioned, the same thing as trivialisation of something magnificent – the wide variety of human relationships.
Related to this, it is my belief that there is a disproportionate overlap between buying into neo fundamentalism (personally or as an ‘ally’) and the personnel involved in dirty tricks campaigns. Whether it is the Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Spectator or the criticism of what Christianity is really all about on conservative websites, or in expose books, a common factor is the combination of being relentlessly positive to, and promoting neo fundamentalist values while opposing the real gift that Christianity has to offer our broken world.
All diversity is good.
It is good if people fight as well as hug. If they all hugged, where would be the diversity?
It is good that people get 6 and 1 as well as 10 out of 10 in their maths test. Variety is the spice of life.
It is good that people be unfaithful as well as faithful. Just imagine the lack of diversity if (horror..) they were all faithful.
?
Christopher
If Paul had no concept of heterosexual then how could he possibly condemn people who were not heterosexual?!!
Christopher
I did very well at maths at school, but I still need medical doctors, plumbers and perhaps even theologians, most of whom had different areas of excellence than me.
Adam, this is not about ‘my way’ or ‘my idea’.
This is the doctrine of the Church. This is what clergy, at every level, agree and commit to believing and teaching.
On what basis can we move forward as a Church when clergy pick and choose whether they actually do believe the doctrine of the C of E ‘according to the teaching of Our Lord’?
By all means, let’s explore whether there are good grounds to think about whether our doctrine should change.
But we can only do that from the starting point of where we are, rather than these decades of dishonest attempts to ‘change facts on the ground’ and then try and make doctrine fit.
Ermmm it is your idea that simply restating “marriage is between one man and one woman” is the only way to heal the divisions in the Church. That is what you said, no?
Nothing on singleness, no reassessment of Issues, no engagement with the problems raised by Shaw, and that’s before we even begin to consider what you might need to do to rebuild trust with those of us who disagree with you. For what it’s worth I don’t think referring to sexuality as ‘sexuality’ is a great start.
As for exploring whether there are good grounds to change doctrine, are you serious? Your plan is to assert to doctrine can’t change. Your oft-repeated argument here is that none of the clergy ought to be allowed to consider changing doctrine. So who exactly is going to be doing the exploring and on what basis? Is it meant to be like previous changes such as allowing contraception, re-marrying divorcees, ordination of women, etc. and you want to find a way to pretend it’s not a change in doctrine? Right now it doesn’t sound very sincere.
I have written often on singleness, and that has also part of the Church teaching in the past.
I am happy to ditch Issues, and make clear the obligations of Canon C26. But these are not the things which will ‘unite the Church.’ One thing that will is all clergy actually believing what they vow. Do you think they should not?
I am open to changing doctrine if there are good grounds for change. After about 80 years of debating it, I don’t think any good grounds have arisen—but that is also the view of the House of Bishops, which is why they have avoided having a B2 debate on this, and instead attempted fudge.
If we are to change doctrine, we either need to find a wide consensus that Scripture contradicts the historic position—and given that most liberals think this is *not* the case, how likely is that?
Otherwise, we will have to detach the C of E from scripture—but why should we?
I am sincere—but I am also being honest. We could do with a bit more of that.
DItching ‘Issues’ has become a mantra, and one suspects that many of those who call for it have not read it.
In terms of people being accountable for their sexual behaviour, it is an immediate backward step to make them not accountable.
In terms of a two tier system of moral expectations, it is a step forward to go against Issues. Unless of course the two tiers are high expectations and higher (cf. Pastorals’ requirements for leaders) rather than higher and lower.
The well known school Michaela is just one of many examples of high expectations being healthy and self fulfilling; low expectations are an insult to people’s worth and potential and prove an unnecessary temptation.
Also people speak of Issues (rather as they speak of The Life of Brian) in such a way that it could be imagined that it is either uniformly good or uniformly bad. Nether of which is at all likely, nor indeed true.
This is often your answer Ian – that somewhere else there are some writings on singleness so we don’t need to talk about it. I profoundly disagree. If folks like Ed Shaw and Preston Sprinkle are right that this is something the Church is currently very bad at, then surely it needs to be in the discussion. We’ve had 10 years of Shared Conversations, LLF, and PLF, and the only attempt to get singleness on the agenda has been from the Bishops. To make matters worse, this attempt has been completely ignored by their critics. I have yet to see anyone even make reference to it in Synod, let alone start making proposals or amendments. Add to that the hatchet job done on covenanted friendships (again without a word of discussion in Synod) and it’s all looking very insincere.
I don’t think it’s accurate to infer that we’ve had 80 years of discussion and nothing’s changed. The idea from the 1950s that homosexuality was something men corrupted other men and boys with, and the key text to understand this was the story of Sodom and Gomorrah has almost entirely disappeared. We went through a period where Leviticus was the central text, now it’s Matthew 19 and Romans 1. Through that time we’ve gone from thinking gay men just need to find a nice girl or go back to their wives, to debating whether sexual orientation was sinful (and mostly saying not), we’ve gone from saying homosexuality should be criminalised to saying it’s an illness to cure to saying it’s something God will take away (with a little therapeutic help) to saying it’s a cross to bear to saying it’s something to be open about and live with integrity. The current broad position that tends to be articulated most openly from the ‘conservative’ end of this discussion: that there are people who have a homosexual orientation that did not choose, that orientation is not sinful but homosexual acts are, and therefore you cannot have a gay relationship (and the Church has a problem with homophobia it needs to repent of), is at best a 40 year experiment we’ve been trying to make work.
A big part of that 40 year experiment has been to try and work around the implications – i.e. you didn’t choose it, but maybe you can change it, or if not you perhaps God will. The Church has been extremely unwilling to say it’s commanding lifelong celibacy. Sam Allberry and David Bennett are still to this day trying to tell people that celibacy isn’t so terrible and the Church needs to recognise that. Even on this blog, when pushed we get a retreat into suggesting that sexuality isn’t a big deal, and gay men and women should consider getting into straight marriages. Our current stage of the debate has arrived in the Church (at least in the West) because of the collapse of the ex-gay movement, which despite what I would see as an incompatibility with Issues, was sufficiently rife in the evangelical end of the CofE that even my youth group in a suburban church in the Midlands was treated to visits in late 90s and early 2000s. Looking across the Atlantic you can see the straws in the wind of people attempting to rebuild it (see Rosaria Butterfield, Christopher Yuan, Marco Casanova etc.), so when people start talking about ‘sexuality’ rather than sexuality it will set off alarm bells.
So what can we do? Unity by disagreeing well, and attempting to jump straight into the marriage debate have not served us well, and don’t actually prepare the Church for the reality of what might be coming. I suggest we start by systematically revising Issues and seeing how much we agree and where the difficult splits really begin. Do we agree that there is sexual orientation? Do we think it is chosen or changeable? Do we think celibacy can be imposed rule or does it have to be a choice? And so on. We might not get to a full agreement, but given there are loud voices on all sides who want to revise it (e.g. both Robert Thompson and Charlie Skrine) settling some of this I think will help build trust back into the Church if nothing else.
Your idea that there is a ‘we’ makes what you say void, Adam. Different people have done different things. There is no ‘we’. Not remotely. What made you think there was?
Oh Christopher, Ian and I are both brothers in Christ, and furthermore both members of a denomination where this is an active debate, hence “we”.
I would note that Ian has also been happily referring to “we” in his posts. Are his views also now deemed to be void?
Adam, yes we are, and I have very much appreciated your careful engagement and insights here.
Adam thank you very much for your positive contribution and suggestions above and Ian thank you for your response.
Adam, the ‘we’ you spoke of was not the discussion members of this blog, so why are you now saying that it was? It was not they/we that had 80 years of discussion. It was not they/we that ought now to review Issues In Human Sexuality.
This is the ‘we’ that assumes that people in general are on the same page and all at the same point intellectually and in terms of their idea of what the issues are. A society moving the same way (its uninformed members and its informed) in unison. To repeat: it’s obvious that nothing could be further from the truth. (One main point is that some will have seen the fundamental flaws from the start and will therefore have had nothing to do with the process. Not that anyone listens to them.)
Just so we’re clear about it Christopher: when Ian says ‘we’ (e.g. “If we are to change doctrine…”) there is no problem, and it doesn’t even require comment. But if I say ‘we’ (e.g. “We went through a period…”), even in the same discussion as Ian, that is grounds to regard my views as void. You see the absurdity?
All those ‘we’s are clearly different:
Ian’s is the panAnglican ‘we’. It subscribes to Anglican groupthink whereas I think Anglican groupthink is as bad as other kinds of groupthink. However, it makes sense, insofar as an institution can have a belief or position. (And have a conveniently anonymous Church House spokesperson articulate it from time to time, on behalf of several million none of whom s/he has checked notes with.) It particularly makes sense if we are speaking about a doctrine which is stated in some statement of faith.
‘We went through a period’ makes perfect sense if it refers to historical events.
‘We went through a period [when people in general thought XYZ]’ makes no sense and is not true, since people always have different levels of understanding and also different positions, however much some bossy people try to be more ‘official’ than others.
‘We ought now to review Issues’ means that other people than ourselves need to do that on behalf of the denomination as a whole.
‘We have had 80 years of discussion’ means that only an institution or a society can possibly be in view.
Here, as often, the fallacy is that institutions and societies are uniform both in what they think and in their level of understanding. They are not remotely uniform in either. This is the ‘In the 1970s we ALL dyed our hair’ fallacy.
Ian
There is no doctrine though. Its sort of gay people shouldn’t get married, but actually even the ABC didn’t believe that, although he said he did, but lying is also something that church leaders can be flexible about
The only way to end the fighting within the Church of England is to use internal church selection and discipline to heave out those who deny the clear scriptural position on the issue. There is no point in having good doctrine if it is not enforced.
If people want more discipline enforced we can go for that I suppose. I’m unconvinced that this issue is the litmus test however (a bit like I’ve never been able to understand people who thought Gene Robinson was worth splitting the Church over, but John Shelby Spong was no big deal). Questions like infant baptism, real presence in the Eucharist, etc. would seem much more important to me.
C of E selection will want ordinands who respect the will of Synod. That could include removing those who fail to respect PLF or womens’ ordination from ministry if you want to start playing that game
Plus removing those who AJ Bell says reject infant Baptism, as they should really be Baptist or Pentecostal ministers and removing those who believe in Transubstantiation, as they should really be Roman Catholics
Your argument, T1, is that because the CoE is unscriptural over one subject, it is fine for it to be unscriptural over another.
I say, rather, that you have to start the return to scripture somewhere.
It is the ‘two wrongs make a right’ dodge.
Simon knows very well that they don’t (so he is being dishonest here) and he also knows very well how often it has been pointed out that that is what his position amounts to -just has not addressed or acknowledged this point when it has been made (doubly dishonest, then?).
Synod decides C of E doctrine, if you don’t like what the majority of Synod decide don’t be in the C of E
APOLOGIES
PREVIOUS POST INADVERTENTLY POSTED.
It is meant for previous thread. A K.
Can I add to Ian’s suggestion for a way forward three proposals. One, that the members of the Alliance reduce their list of demands for a separate province, episcopacy, selection processes, ordination training and curate training. There are already theological colleges and regional courses and IME 2 programmes that clearly adhere to the current teaching of the church and likewise training incumbents. Second, that they refrain from using language such as ‘we have no alternative/choice,’ because they clearly do. That kind of language can easily sound, unintentionally no doubt, like they’re trying to present themselves as victims of others’ power. Thirdly, refrain from deliberately building alliances with other parts of the Anglican Communion and beyond that are actively and publicly seeking to undermine the bishops of the Church of England. That would enable others who disagree with them and/or their approach to engage with them more wholeheartedly and take their concerns more seriously than at present some do. The present tragic situation is not 100% the result of one group’s mistakes/disobedience/sinfulness. These would, together, go a long way towards rebuilding trust from their side and would complement Ian’s suggestion.
But isnt the fundamental problem that a seemingly large proportion of leaders and laity in the CoE view same sex sexual relationships as ‘good’ and indeed blessed by God, whilst another large proportion view such relationships as ‘bad/sinful’ and needing repentance by those calling themselves Christians, and condemned by God?
How can such positions be reconciled or indeed both parties remain in the same collection of believers?
Well, the differences are clear enough and aren’t going to go away any time soon. (That’s the case on a range of issues in the Church of England.) So if I have to recognise those I disagree with as my brothers and sisters I need to work out ways to remain in communion with them, and that requires rebuilding trust and some give and take on all sides, hence the suggestions to complement Ian’s. No one’s being asked to give up their deeply held views, but to act with imagination and restraint. Living with difference may not be sinful and we seem to manage it in other areas, but it will be painful.
except there is no ‘complementary’ view to Ian’s.
I didn’t say there was a complementary view, only that my practical suggestions would complement Ian’s and give a better possibility of renewing the trust that has been so badly broken by showing the willingness of one group to back away from their previous approach.
‘The present tragic situation is not 100% the result of one group’: Yes it is, which is why it never occurred in any of the times and places that that revisionist group did not exist.
‘Tragic’? As the saying goes, if anyone thinks THAT is tragedy they need to get out more. The C of E is powered to some degree by a small-scale handwringing spirit and a diminution of large-scale statesmanship.
Flaw in your argument – You treat it as a given that it can never be allowable ‘actively and publicly [to] seek to undermine the bishops of the Church of England’. It is not a truth of logic that that can never be allowable. So how do you arrive that the conclusion that it is unallowable? It entirely depends what the said bishops have been doing, doesn’t it?
But I didn’t say it was a truth of logic or that it was never allowable and I wasn’t making an argument, only suggesting that adopting a different approach would help to rebuild trust and would complement Ian’s proposal so that everyone recognises their part. It won’t get rid of the differences but to recognise that blaming others for 100% of the faults isn’t either realistic or helpful. It’s about a change in mindset and imagination not about proving an argument with certainty. But, of course, group formation, solidarity and identity is a powerful thing which is hard to break free from.
100%? If the revisionist party, as in 99% of church history and locations, were not present, where would the supposed problems be? They would be removed at a stroke.
‘Not proving an argument with certainty’. This is certainly a flawed argument. The premiss is that all arguments on all topics are in the final analysis uncertain. In the real world of course, such generalisation is a low level of analysis. To think that all arguments on all topics would be able to be generalised about. It entirely depends on what the arguments and topics are. In the real world things range from utterly certain to utterly uncertain, whereas you are asserting without evidence that the former never exists and yet somehow the latter is common.
As for people doing things and holding positions to keep in with their peers – an incestuous and circular process – I have seen a lot of that, but within human behaviour there are plenty who do no such thing, and indeed plenty whose conscience would not begin to allow to them to do such a thing.
It really angers me to hear him say that he believes its right for the cofe to support same sex marriage, because he did not say this or support it as ABC.
For years we had a church being led by someone who was fundamentally dishonest about an issue thats really damaging and has been historically a killer to a small number of his own church members. How different would the eviction I experienced from my own church have been if he had been honest a decade ago? And I got off relatively minor with a few mental scars and loss of my church…many children have killed themselves because church leaders say homosexuality is a grave sin. In other countries in the communion, people re murdered over this. How dare he treat people’s lives so flippantly?!
On this I agree with you. How can we have an ABC who is so basically dishonest?
I think the answer, and possibly part of why you found Welby so difficult, is in minute 53 of the video when he is asked about reconciliation.
It’s pretty clear that bringing about reconciliation is a key part of Archbishop Welby’s view of himself (as he says, he does a 3 day course on this). He goes on to say that reconciliation isn’t about agreement, but about learning to disagree well. Sound familiar to anyone? And disagreeing well means disagreeing without violence, which Welby says isn’t just physical violence, but emotional and intellectual violence as well.
His view on how you get reconciliation is to start with factfinding and avoiding manipulation of victims (don’t require surrender or concessions). You need to meet people’s needs, and give time for everyone to draw breath. In the video Welby gets into a long train of thought about immigration and diversity in the UK. It’s very clear that he is firmly in the pro-immigration camp, delighted that the UK might be the most diverse country in the world according to the UN, and wants everyone celebrating that. But he does not see himself as being on one side. He’s a reconciliator. So he’s careful to say that he knows we can’t have open borders and understands there are pressures on resources. But that doesn’t actually make him neutral.
It might be possible to stand above the factions in a foreign civil war and be a go-between who can work for their reconciliation. But a lot of the time, where you are in the conflict yourself, pretending you’re above it all isn’t going to work. And it that pretence is how you see yourself it will probably drive people mad. Archbishop Welby looks at the relations between the nations of western Europe as a great reconciliation. But it doesn’t match his idea of reconciliation: we haven’t learnt to disagree well with Germany, rather the entire German political/cultural outlook has changed, and to a lesser extent so has ours.
To take it into the LLF/PLF debate, the basic problem has I think been the idea that this is a reconciliation problem where we just have to learn to disagree well. This is why the bishops produce theological papers about church unity not human sexuality, and it drives the rest of us round the bend. It’s not an exercise in building a coherent theology we all agree with, because it’s content to let the disagreement stand. It’s why the Archbishop will tend to try to step above his own views in order to play the reconciliator. And that in turn will make it difficult for others who see him as a partisan player with an agenda, whilst he won’t see that in himself.
I agree entirely. I don’t think Justin knows the *first thing* about reconciliation, and yet he believes he is a world authority. Therein lies the problem.
AJ
His idea of reconciliation is to tell both parties he agrees with them and hope they don’t discuss what he said with one another. Doesn’t work in the internet age
‘Many children’: studies?
And did they kill themselves during the previous 99% of Christian (and 100% of Jewish) history where such behaviour was just as frowned on if not more so? Evidence?
The way forward.
1. Hold bishops to the same standards as the standards you hold people who teach Sunday School, play in the band or make coffee on a Sunday morning.
2. Put more effort into choosing moral people for ordination who actually believe.
3. Sack people who lie, cheat or sexually assault people. Stop covering up for them.
The remaining people will be a lot easier to deal with even if you disagree on theology.
so you agree only those who believe same sex sexual relations are sinful and marriage is only between a man and woman should be ordained in the CoE?
Given his previous comment clearly the opposite
Except Peter was asking for honesty amongst clergy.
All clergy vow that they believe and will teach the doctrine of the Church ‘according to the teaching of our Lord’ that marriage is between one man and one woman.
So if clergy are honest, then that is what they need to believe and do.
And that was my point…
They won’t be teaching faithful same sex relationships are sinful now PLF has been passed. Anymore than most of them no longer teach womens’ ordination is sinful and divorce is also always wrong after Synod changed course in those areas as well
Simon/T1, if you believe that, then you belief that the PLF are indicative of a change of doctrine, in which case (by Synod’s own process) they are illegal.
No, PLF was approved by majority vote of all 3 houses of Synod. It has the full support of Parliament and I am sure the King as head of our established church (the King having many close gay friends like Stephen Fry).
On no definition is it illegal, indeed many C of E churches across England are already holding services with prayers of love and faith in them for same sex couples married in English law
It happens, so therefore it is not illegal. Right. Theft, arson and assault ”happened” on the London street last night. Which is worse – the siding with criminality or the unintelligence?
Theft, arson and assault are illegal under English law so opposed by the established English church. Same sex marriage is legal in English law so inevitably same sex couples will have recognition of their relationships in the established English church
It is not a truth of reason that the church of God will be in line with every single one of the millions of laws of a given country, however ungodly those laws may be (and there is no ceiling or limit to their potential ungodliness). In fact, it sounds rather unlikely.
Second, it is not a truth of reason that a country has an established or national church. Many don’t, and those that do don’t need to. Whereas you talk as though that setup fell from the sky.
Third, those countries that do have an established or national church are places where the church and nation are not in line in all their supposed values or norms. That is, in fact, the case right now. It would be very surprising if things were different.
Fourth, what is the point of the church if it just follows the laws of its surrounding culture? Explain the point.
Wrong, it is very much a truth of reason the established church will be in line with most of the laws of the nation it is established church of. Indeed if you do not agree you should not be in the established church at all.
The C of E was set up precisely to be the established church, much like many of the Lutheran churches too were created to be established churches at the Reformation. Being established is one of the key points of it. The Lutheran Church of Denmark is still Danish established church and already performs full same sex marriage in its churches.
Established churches have a key role in national events, coronations, Remembrance services for veterans, thanksgiving services after military victories like VE Day, royal weddings, life events such as baptisms, weddings and funerals for Parishioners. Not just Christianity
So the changeable law of England at a certain date is more important than Christ?
It would be good to have a yes/no answer on this one, and suspicious to avoid it.
In its time the Church of England has supported burning witches and Roman Catholics at the stake and capital punishment, fining nonconformists and excluding them from public office, homosexuality being illegal and an all male priesthood. It approved divorce under certain circumstances precisely as Henry VIII created it to allow him to divorce Katherine of Aragon and remarry Anne Boleyn when the Pope and Vatican would not.
Now the C of E engages with other denomination leaders, opposes capital punishment, supports prayers for same sex couples as the nation has legalised same sex marriage and as women have pursued their own careers now has women priests and bishops. So yes, the Church of England has evolved with the changeable law in England
How does that make it right that it do so; and secondly why are you treating a national church as a given?
The C of E was created to be the national church headed by the King, with Catholic but Reformed doctrine. That is the whole point of it
Which answers neither of the two parts of my question, though repeats your favourite mantra.
Yes exactly Ian. Honesty!
“it is very much a truth of reason the established church will be in line with most of the laws of the nation it is established church of.”
Why most and not all of the laws of the nation? What is the determining criterion for deciding if the church should be in line with a particular law? If Parliament passed a law outlawing helping asylum seekers, should the church meekly accept that law and start to discipline clergy who offer support to asylum seekers? Or if Parliament passed a law stating the superiority of the White race, should clergy be required to teach White supremacy from the pulpits?
The Church of England in the past endorsed slavery when it was legal in England and its colonies certainly. Who knows if say a future Reform government made it illegal to help asylum seekers it could pass legislation requiring the C of E as established church to comply with that too
So you think the Church was right to endorse slavery…??!
No and indeed a few church figures like Wilberforce opposed it when it was legal but inevitably an established church will largely support the laws of the nation it is established church it is in. If you want to be in a church that can always puts biblical purity first (or your interpretation of biblical purity), don’t be in an established church, simple as that
You are talking nonsense, Simon. I don’t think the church EVER opposed the law of the land, to speak of, till Roy Jenkins was Home Secretary in the latter 1960s. It didn’t need to – the law was for all that very lengthy time Christian enough. There have been only a few years since, so that is the main picture.
It is only when the laws become unchristian that one has to oppose them. One is not exactly going to go along with them insuch circumstances, is one?
Yes, so Christopher Shell by that remark you presumably long for the days when English law burnt Roman Catholics at the stake, homosexuality was illegal, only men could be priests, abortion was illegal etc and the C of E was one you could feel part of?
Since the 1960s though particularly England has become more liberal socially in its laws and as established church the C of E will reflect that
You would think that with contraception there would be less need for abortion not more. But in fact the graphs of the two run in parallel. If people are set on behaving like spoilt babies, they will do so if there is no social tabu against it.
All that which you presume is a stereotype. Which is why I did not say any of it. But of course any kind of human-killing (unless in self defence) should be illegal. Do you disagree?
PC1
I think there needs to be clear standards. It should not be this game of applying different standards depending on how important you are or whether you are prepared to lie about it in public
Peter, I find it hard to disagree with you on this.
I don’t think that Justin was ‘thick’ but I think he struggled with emotional intelligence. And that is a characteristic of those boys who attended public schools at that time. Emotions were not to be trusted in such environments. And that is very evident in comments from that quarter on this blog. And it is evident in many comments on not just same sex relationships but sexuality more generally. And of course that lack of emotional intelligence was supremely evident at Iwerne, which is why it became such a toxic environment.
I think you are right about Justin, which is what made him so hard to work with.
the question for the C of E is how, then, he got through the discernment processes.
Oh I think when he got through the selection process there was not so much understanding of emotional intelligence and it was also a lot easier to get through for people of his background. If you had been to the right school and had a DDO or bishop who was from that sector then it was a couple of comfy chats, a selection conference and that was it.
But I do think what some evangelicals are failing to grasp is that the movement towards acceptance of same sex relationships in society more generally has been a huge shift in the last 35 years. Huge. And that is going to impact on the church worldwide. It will much slower in some areas of the world of course. But it won’t ever go away.
They not only grasp it but frequently comment on it. But how is it relevant? A trend exists, so the trend must be right…? It is only the 10001st time this most basic of points has been made.
This binary idea that all things are either right or wrong is a great example of a lack of emotional intelligence.
Of course a trend is not necessarily right. This point has also been made thousands of times. Your response entirely misses the point, just as Justin missed the point for the first years of his term in office.
Where to start?
1. The point was not that ‘all’ (or even any) things are either right or wrong, but that the existence of a trend does not make the trend right. These 2 points are not even close to one another.
2. Whether or not all things are either right or wrong is an issue that would be addressed by empirical investigation, linguistic investigation, logic etc. The application of emotional intelligence will not make the assertion of a real binary one whit more or less likely to be true. Emotional intelligence’s relevance is in other areas. (Of course, it is a hard thing both to define and to measure objectively – and most people claim a lot for themselves and less for others… – but that does not mean we should not try.)
3. Emotional intelligence is treated as an elixir or panacea – even, would you believe, on factual matters. The reasons for that are far from clear, unless it is a kind of snobbery.
If, for example, breeding cows and calves are one third of the total cow/calf population, the application of emotional intelligence will obviously not change that proportion one whit. It is not some ethereal Duckworth Lewis method whereby 86.5% changes to 71.9% (doubtless, the change is always in the proponent’s preferred direction; and to compound that, they are perhaps the self-appointed arbiter). No-one ever thought it was – so why cannot it be applied only in its own area, and with proper definition and verifiability/falsifiability?
Where to start Christopher?
Not much point until you grasp the way emotional intelligence works.
And as you clearly have an almost identical background to Justin Welby then it is not surprising that you find it so obviously difficult.
We are talking about matters that are linked to the emotional intelligence of human beings across the world and the matters are not binary. And your lack of understanding of that basic point makes it impossible to address your three points.
No doubt you will come back with another list and another long post that still is unable to grasp what is going on.
But how does any of that relate to what we are talking about?
My point was that whatever the topic is, you bring back the topic to emotional intelligence.
Whereas, wherever you see debates conducted, showing superior evidence or reasoning is how debates work.
Making emotional intelligence a red herring (a diversionary tactic) when it comes to points of fact. No fact or stat gets changed by factoring in EI. But facts and stats are generally what debates are about.
To repeat: EI is important (the world is full of 1000s of important things) and would be even more significant if it were easier to define or objectively measure it.
Whenever you are mentioning it, you say nothing about the debate topic. But everyone else is trying to advance the debate.
Christopher, once again you seem unable to follow the debate.
I made a contribution to the debate earlier today to which Ian responded, in broad agreement.
That is the point I am addressing here.
If you wish to address some other point, then please respond in the appropriate place.
We know that you don’t understand what EI is, but that means you can’t contribute in any meaningful way.
For the 3rd time (?), EI is like anything else important in its own place. You (unsurprisingly) focused on it re Justin Welby, and provided food for thought. (Together with managing to sneak in a snide remark about ‘comments from that quarter on this blog’). When people are focused on evidence and accuracy (as they generally are in a debate) then EI is rarely relevant. (Like thousands of things, it is always important, but quite often also irrelevant in a specific context.) My point was that you later at 11.03 said EI (which you treat as a panacea or elixir in all kinds of unrelated situations, when it could only be those things even in its own context were it sufficiently well defined and measurable) was a yardstick of something that it is not in fact a yardstick of, nor indeed relevant to. I addressed that point; at the time I did not address your initial comment on Justin Welby, but have now addressed that one as well. As to understanding, I write densely to avoid even greater length, but in clear English.
Christopher, as several on here have pointed out many times before, you are by no means simply evidence based and find it impossible to be impartial.
Your accuracy is limited by your biases, of which you are seemingly always unaware. In other words, you show a partial approach to truth. And again, others have commented on this. EI will always be relevant when addressing accuracy and evidence and to say that it isn’t simply demonstrates that you don’t follow what EI is about. There are some good scholarly articles around, which I am sure you can find.
You don’t begin to address my point made at 0840.
And you don’t write densely. You write verbosely. There is a huge difference.
So whenever we make a logical or statistical conclusion on the basis of evidence, we then have to pass that conclusion through the EI furnace rather like a Duckworth-Lewis calculation?
If that is the case (and I should not imagine that people would think for one moment that it is), why are you the only debater anywhere proposing such a strange procedure?
Your standard comment on biases is a bald unevidenced assertion.
However, the discussion of the topic of bias has many times progressed far beyond that. Under ‘Canterbury Tales: What Happens Next’ (Psephizo 16.5.25) the 6th comment gives 9 points on bias or prejudice which you at that time (after some years) had given no evidence of considering.
Here we are 6-7 weeks later and the number of those 9 points that you have even digested, let alone answered, is so far as I can see zero. They remain there awaiting answers….
Simply because they remain verbose, biased nonsense that demonstrate your lack of ability to follow a basic argument.
You know what the 9 points I made were. Even a bear of little brain would understand at least one or two of them. So at least the ones you reached understanding on you can address, then.
The nine most difficult words of all in the 9 points are respectively-
unsupported
intrinsic
high
phrase
variation
compensate
congenial
former
inconsistent/objective.
Even Winnie the Pooh would not do too badly with that lot.
Awww Christopher I love Winnie the Pooh, and I love you too, though in a different way.
Now if you read a scholarly article or two about EQ you will understand that self awareness is one of the matters that is involved. Now, it was this lack of self awareness that I think let Justin down, and it is a characteristic demonstrated elsewhere…..
I fully understand every word of Winnie the Pooh and of your 9 verbose points in the article you refer to. They didn’t need individual responses. One response covered them all and I made it there. But do let me repeat it here as it seems obvious that you are struggling to find it. And then I will cease with this pointless exchange. What I said was:
“
“Everyone has prejudices’ has been dealt with many times before”
Yes, I recall you trying to maintain that you didn’t have any because you were a ‘scholar’. As I recall, you simply demonstrated over and over again your lack of self awareness, and cast ever more doubts on your claim to be independent.
Everyone has prejudices and biases. It is important to be aware of them.
We are also aware of your role as chief apologist for Iwerne.
“
Have a super weekend.
Lol. Your understanding was so low that you thought I was referring to understanding the text of Winnie the Pooh when in fact I was saying ‘Surely you cannot be a bear of such little brain as that.’.
The fact that you refer to none of the specifics of any of my 9 points shows everyone you have not digested them. And secondly that you are the sort of person who says that you have when you have not. (This combination of total effortless and supercilious superiority and the reality of total failure to digest or address the question I always characterise by reference to Molesworth answering a maths question ‘Larfably easy.’.)
The so-called ‘summary’ was nothing of the sort, given that it made no connection with anything said; it was just a vast sweeping generalisation that you had already made out loud long ago at the time *before* you encountered any of the 9 points. Which was now some years ago.
“you thought I was referring to understanding the text of Winnie the Pooh”
If you really think that, then your ability to read and understand what is being said is called into question even more than I thought it was before. Gosh.
Er – what then is remotely the relevance of your saying ‘I fully understand every word of Winnie The Pooh.’?
Many responses, no substance, no specifics.
Goodness. Obviously you don’t quite understand what Winnie the Pooh is about…
(It’s not like it’s about only one topic.)
This is a classic tactic. Start talking about the sideline in order to hide inability to move past first base (i.e. reiteration of initial unevidenced simple assertion) to even show understanding -or even awareness- of even one of nine points that have advanced the discussion.
Quite incorrect.
Winnie the Pooh is directly related to issues about emotional intelligence.
That’s exactly where you are wrong. For it has many themes, and that is one of them; you implied there was a single theme.
Great transition from the topic at hand.
Nowhere do I imply it has one theme. I am glad you know that emotional intelligence is one of them. That is the topic at hand and I introduced it in relation to Justin Welby yesterday.
No it isn’t. For there is more than one topic at hand, and you are going for the record consecutive avoidances of the topic of bias which you alo introduced, comfortingly repeating your initial simple unevidenced mantra on the topic from many years ago.
No. You introduced that aspect at 4.34pm yesterday, claiming, as usual, that you are evidence based and accurate. I responded, and then made it clear that was not related to the topic at hand.
Thanks. I’m done with your verbose holier than thou rambling.
Evidence and accuracy is NOT relevant to a debate topic?
It is only relevant and fundamental for ALL debate topics.
First mention of bias: 4.55 by you. Unless you think that all striving for accuracy (i.e. every particle of every debate) references the topic of bias (or its avoidance) by implication.
Indeed, same sex marriage is now legal in every western European nation except Italy (which still has same sex civil unions) and in Estonia and Slovenia. Same sex marriage is also legal in the USA, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Thailand and even one African nation, South Africa. China and India and Poland allow unregistered cohabitations or legal guardianship for same sex couples.
Indeed the nations most resistant to acknowledging same sex couples are now Muslim majority not Christian heritage
so you see no difference between the world and the church, that the two should go hand in hand?
If you want to reject the world, don’t be in an established church. There are plenty of Baptist or Pentecostal churches you could join which are harder line than Anglican churches in rejecting modern culture
If you don’t want to reject the world, don’t follow Jesus.
Jesus said ‘If the world hates you, know that is hated me first’.
Depends how you interpret his preaching, as far as I can see Jesus never hated faithful gay and lesbian couples as much as some evangelicals do. For whom hatred of LGBT relationships is the most important part of their ‘Christianity’
Yes. You’ve been through every single instance where He encountered ‘faithful gay and lesbian couples’, and in none of these could you find any antipathy at all to the idea.
I would date the significant changes in society back to the 1960s at least. The language used in these discussions within the church since then has been utterly transformed since then, including among conservative evangelicals. Hardly anyone now quotes Leviticus 20: 13 even within church debates. I see no reason why that trajectory will not continue so that in another 30 or 40 years I suspect that we will be in a very different place and the debate will have moved on again. Whether attitudes in parts of the world will change is less clear; the cultural pressures (not least from Islam) are immense and the church is heavily influenced by them. The other significant change has been the splintering of the evangelical consensus since the first edition of John Stott’s, Issues Facing Christians Today.
You are charting trends like a sociologist. That is not only not the dimension most relevant to Christians, but one of those least relevant. Of what relevance are trends?
Secondly, you expect a given trend to proceed in a straight line, rather than in a pendulum. Where is your evidence that straight lines are most common?
In some respects a more liberal Christianity offers a western counter to a very socially conservative Islam that is sceptical of women in the workplace and LGBT rights and that trend is likely to continue in most western and developed nations. Only the most hardline of evangelicals tend to reject any recognition of same sex couples at all, even the late Pope Francis said Roman Catholic priests could bless same sex couples in certain circumstances
No way. What you say applies
(a) to 0.00001% of church history only (what about the 99.9999%?),
(b) only to a limited part of the world,
(c) namely the part where the church is weaker,
(d) is entirely to be explained by people conforming to their surrounding culture, which they tend often to do anyway, however silly that culture is.
I would date the significant changes in society back to the 1960s at least. The language used in these discussions within the church since then has been utterly transformed, including among conservative evangelicals. Hardly anyone now quotes Leviticus 20: 13 even within church debates. The tone of the debate (always massively important) is quite different today as all of us have been influenced by the wider culture, even when we claim to reject such influences. I see no reason why that trajectory will not continue so that in another 30 or 40 years I suspect that we will be in a very different place and the debate will have moved on again. Whether attitudes in other parts of the world will change is less clear; the cultural pressures (not least from Islam) are immense and the church is heavily influenced by them. The other significant change has been the splintering of the evangelical consensus since the first edition of John Stott’s very influential Issues Facing Christians Today in 1984.
Leviticus 20.13 LXX actually underlies (!) the Pauline use of the word ‘arsenokoites’ in 1 Cor 6.9 and 1 Tim 1.10, so it is not really true that it is not quoted today. The late Professor David Wright of Edinburgh identified this many years ago (in an article in Vigilia Christianae) and modern commentaries recognise this.
If you are saying that the liberal Church of England is really Marcionite and (unlike Jesus) rejects the authority of the Old Testament, this has been the case since the 19th century and probably earlier. ‘Broad Churchmanship’, influenced by German Protestantism, has always been a bit Kantian and antisemitic.
James, you miss the point I’m making. 50 or 60 years ago the verses in Leviticus were often used in the debate but now are rarely used in that way. So if they lie behind the passage in 1 Cor isn’t relevant to my point; the biblical text is used differently now. And it is simply the case that the way these issues are discussed even among evangelicals has changed and the range of evangelical opinions has diversified during my lifetime. It’s an observation. Whether that will happen in other areas of the world is anybody’s guess. Engaging in debate about the meaning of the OT isn’t Marcionite or liberal, it’s what the OT does within itself.
Tim, if your point were made among biblical scholars, they would just laugh.
You are saying that there is a fashion. Well, we already knew that, but so what if there is a fashion? What could be less relevant than a fashion? Fashions are only dependent on culture anyway, so of what worth are they?
Fashion is always just about the least important possible consideration.
David Wright’s finding about the foundations of Paul’s thought here are just what a biblical scholar would view as excellent evidence – the sort of evidence that would be at the top of the tree when it comes to interpretation.
The gulf between proper evidence-based people and fashion-based interpretation is far wider than you seem to realise. If anyone thought fashion was relevant they would not even have a seat at the scholarly table at all.
There is of course a biblical precedent in Acts 17.21 – the Athenians were obsessed with what was new. Rather than what there was evidence for. Our culture does the same with its emphasis on ‘news’. It is human nature, but why don’t people more often question it, and what it is actually based on?
Tim writes:
“James, you miss the point I’m making. 50 or 60 years ago the verses in Leviticus were often used in the debate but now are rarely used in that way.”
– No, Tim, you* miss the point I am making about biblical theology, that NT teaching on homosexuality (1 Cor 6.9; 1 Tim 1,10) is in fact intimately and linguistically connected to Leviticus 20.13 – and if you knew the work of Luke T. Johnson or Ed Sanders, you would see that they agree, as does Robert Gagnon in ‘The Bible and Homosexual Practice’ (esp. pp. 315-18) – the whole section Gagnon pp. 303-339 needs careful reading, and concludes: ‘The contexts for 1 Cor 6:9 and 1 Tim 1.10, collectively, indicate that the term arsenokoitai has intertextual connections to the Levitical prohibition of homosexual intercourse and to the exclusive endorsement of monogamous, heterosexual marriage in Genesis 1-2, in the Decalogue prohibition of adultery, and in the Deuteronomic expulsion texts.’ (p. 339)
“So if they lie behind the passage in 1 Cor isn’t relevant to my point; the biblical text is used differently now.”
– By ‘differently’ you mean ‘wrongly and ignorantly’. That is true. And no model for an evangelical to follow.
“And it is simply the case that the way these issues are discussed even among evangelicals has changed and the range of evangelical opinions has diversified during my lifetime. It’s an observation. Whether that will happen in other areas of the world is anybody’s guess.”
– That many self-described ‘evangelicals’ are biblically ignorant today, and don’t know how the Two Testaments hold together, nor how our Lord looked on the ‘Old Testament’ as the inerrant Word of God is not disputed by me. But biblical truth is not established by polling ignorant people any more than the truths of science or mathematics are established by asking half-educated people.
“Engaging in debate about the meaning of the OT isn’t Marcionite or liberal, it’s what the OT does within itself.”
– Rejecting the OT as Christian Scripture is certainly neo-Marcionite, and that is precisely how liberalism functions, by treating the OT (and a good bit of the NT as well) as well-intentioned but often mistaken human attempts to describe the divine encounter which wiser heads (i.e. modernity) will correct. That’s neo-Marcionitism for you.
Andrew ‘But I do think what some evangelicals are failing to grasp is that the movement towards acceptance of same sex relationships in society more generally has been a huge shift in the last 35 years.’
I am not sure you can be talking to many evangelicals. Every one I have ever met is acutely aware of that.
Ah indeed that is correct Ian. But you need to read the whole paragraph I wrote there.
Is it really a great mystery? He hadn’t spent much time as a bishop (literally just over a year) so had very little baggage and was unscarred by previous Church battles, had some serious managerial experience courtesy of the oil industry, and the evangelicals liked him. He had the right background: Eton, Cambridge, Iwerne, HTB. We’d had a cerebral theologian in the form of Rowan Williams and Welby was the counter to that, and meant to be able to reconcile people. It worked at first, as he got the compromise on women bishops through.
Yes, Glen Scrivener has noted that Justin Welby has held his (current) views on same-sex relationships for at least 7 (or by now, 8) years – https://youtu.be/vwi2M1XifG0?si=1-dD8lk4mBUifydQ.
I remember my DDO back in 1997-8 saying similar things about SSMs being ‘a matter of faithfulness’ when I suggested that the Global South church would oppose gay marriage for the Anglican Church (having just come back from 4 years as a mission partner in Uganda).
He of course went on to be a Diocesan bishop.
Welby’s interaction with Private Eye editor Ian Hislop at a British Museum reception in the week of the announcement of his resignation tells us all we need to know about his level of self- awareness. His self-deprecatory narrative is a cover for an arrogance that is plain for all to see. He should take the example of another former archbishop – David Hope – and retire to a quiet parish somewhere, keep his head down, and let others clear up the mess he has left. I’ll be retiring next year – perhaps he’d consider following me in my lovely eight church benefice in rural North Norfolk.
You are quite wrong there. Ian Hislop’s grasp of the detail is impressive for a journalist but well below the level of those who have made it their business to study it.
Also, most people have begun and continued with stereotyped versions of the realities. But anyone can stereotype.
Andrew Brown studied the detail and was told by Ian Hislop that most did not agree with him. Of course not. not only were they framing their opinions second hand, but also there are very few who have looked at the detail to the level that Andrew Brown has.
That Ian Hislop would then broadcast a private conversation without checking his facts on the background detail is further not to his credit.
Always JW’s main point is that not everything being ‘officially’ said was either accurate or sufficiently apprised of the detail. In that he is right. And being a falsely accused person to some degree, to that degree he would indeed have been (as he said at Cambridge) better advised to press his interrogators harder. They did not know a lot of the detail yet somehow thought themselves in a position to interrogate (journalists get used to that entitled position – how convenient for them).
Laura Kuenssberg’s question ‘Do you forgive John Smyth?’ was perfectly calculated to be heads I win tails you lose. And was preplanned to be the climax. Even though Welby said ‘That is not my place’, that was sometimes missed out of the summaries that were given. That shows you the level of person that these journalists are.
You seem to be doing a good job there, I suggest the best thing for Welby would be to retire to his lovely house in France and be out of ministry full stop. He is 69 after all
Something that no one has yet said, but which really needs to be, is this:
Bodies like the Cambridge Union (and the BBC, et al) still treat Welby with respect, and continue to give preferential space to his voice and allow him speak for the CofE, because it is approaching a year since he resigned and we still feel no closer to a replacement. As long as there remains a vacuum of power (even a perceived one), Welby retains a kind of a passive authority that the media and commentariat will seek out.
When Williams retired, Welby had been installed within 3 months.
Get a move on. 🙂
Mat
Given that the last four ABCs were Welby, Rowan Williams (who believed that the Levitical prohibitions were against men married to women seeking sexual variety with other men and did not apply to committed man-man relationships despite the wording), George Carey (who let Ball off the hook and promoted female ordination) and Robert Runcie (see Canon Gary Bennett’s expensive takedown of him in Crockford’s); and in view of the fact that the current favourite for Canterbury is a woman who believes in SSM, are we not better off without?
I mean, yes. Better silence that further degradation of doctrine.
My point here is simply that it’s a little rich to complain that Justin Welby is being platformed and saying unhelpful things that continue damage the (already extremely fragile) unity of the Church of England while the office is vacant, and while there seems to be a serious lack of urgency about filling it.
The danger of not doing so is that other voices will rise to fill the gap, and they may be worse still.
I agree with the other commentator who said they wish Welby would retire, silently, to a property abroad.
This goes back to the topic of the previous post: is the Anglican pattern of leadership biblical. One interpretation of the disintegration of the established Church over the SSM issue is that it is the consequence of being unfaithful to the biblical pattern for as long as it has been in existence. It is the bishops and archbishops who led it into the present morass, and there is now no way out.
Part and parcel of the biblical pattern of leadership are commands about what to do when leaders are unfaithful, whether in their own conduct or in condoning the unholy conduct of others.
Tim remarks, ‘If I have to recognise those I disagree with as my brothers and sisters I need to work out ways to remain in communion with them.’ The question is whether they are, biblically speaking, brothers and sisters, i.e. whether the Holy Spirit dwells in their hearts and has conformed their minds to the Word of God written.
Says Paul: ‘I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality … —not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.” ‘
It has been said, ‘The only way to end the fighting within the Church of England is to heave out those who deny the clear scriptural position on the issue.’ But the mechanisms for doing that are used only in extremis and will never be invoked so long as those in power are precisely the ones who need to be removed from power. The Church is irredeemably corrupted.
And Steven you seem to be irredeemably self righteous and that too is very clearly unbiblical and corrupt. And it must, according to your own reasoning, negate anything that you have to say.
But it might be that some of those we disagree with are the apparently most biblical ones and use the most biblical language. It would be very presumptuous of any of us to know in every case and with certainty who is sufficiently biblical to be accepted by God.
Those I disagree with are still gifts to me from God whom I need to learn how to relate to and to love, even when that’s difficult. E.g. I’m not a Calvinist but I wouldn’t refuse to receive holy communion from a priest who was a Calvinist, though it is about as fundamental a theological issue as you can get.
The established church is not ‘disintegrating’ over the same sex couple issue, majorities in all 3 houses, bishops, laity and clergy voted for PLF. There may not be the 2/3 Synod majority there was for female ordination and bishops and remarriage of divorcees in C of E churches, hence full same sex marriage services in C of E churches was not approved by Synod. PLF in services however received a clear Synod majority.
Your desire to ostracise all who disagree with you on scriptural interpretation is exactly the reason the likes of you must never be allowed anywhere near influence in a C of E church. You are a Baptist and must stay there.
Nothing to do with scriptural interpretation, just lack of attention to scripture. Don’t tell me you are giving equal weight here to qualified biblical interpreters and the person in the pew? Because you seem to be – and everyone knows that is unjustified. If we let people who have studied more take decisions, there would be no problem.
Bishops and clergy tend to have studied theology the most in the C of E and the houses of Bishops and clergy had an even bigger majority in Synod for PLF than the house of laity
There has rarely been a greater sidelining of Bible scholars from ecclesiastical office. Are you saying that you think the bishops and clergy have more to say on that than actual Bible scholars?
Or are you saying that the main factor is denominational affiliation rather than brains, specialism, and analytical ability?!
Stephen, with respect it’s getting tedious… and a bit rude.
“One interpretation of the disintegration of the established Church over the SSM issue is that it is the consequence of being unfaithful to the biblical pattern for as long as it has been in existence.”
When did the Methodists, Baptist and URC become established? They are in similar quandries.
“The Church is irredeemably corrupted”. Is that what God told you or what you’re advising God?
Im 75 and pretty pretty critical of the CofE …it goes along with being in Christ for 58 years, ordained for 48 years and of the “orthodox evangelical ” dept. I know it well and it wouldn’t bother me if it was dissestablished. But you have a weak understanding of what “established ” means in real or practical terms. It’s about as poor as T1 banging on about the King being “head” of the CofE. It simply doesn’t have the biblical /theological meaning that you think. No body (perhaps apart from T1 ) thinks it’s akin in the slightest to the Lord Jesus Christ as “head”.
Every blessing, but, please, move on from this persistence.
It is, the King is only head on earth and Supreme Governor of the Church of England and that was why it was created so the monarch not the Pope would head our national church. Jesus as symbolic head of the church is the same for every Christian denomination, nothing specifically C of E about it
Error: You are confusing the relative importance of a role with its relative distinctiveness.
“Jesus as symbolic head of the church”
I really didn’t know that your theology was that bad! Doesn’t seem any point in engaging at all…
Blessings… but “over and out”
Symbolic heads are primarily notable for being given visibility for publicity purposes while being denuded of all actual power.
Justin Welby (who I disagreed with on some things and agreed with on others, like every other person) didn’t ‘leave the church is disgrace’ , he was forced out by people, many with
various agendas (often entirely unrelated to safeguarding, in
which they often showed little interest ) and in some cases a particularly unpleasant vendetta against the chap, and have since been simultaneously using the internet to enjoy their triumph over him while clutching their pearls when he dared to put his side of what happened.
Many of these people would be classified as ‘free speech warriors’ . I very much hope they learn over the coming years that Justin Welby has free speech as well, and I look forward to hearing him use it, agreeing with him on some things and disagreeing on others. As we are often told nowadays, hearing people you (call a spade a spade) hate doesn’t hurt you.
I am not sure to whom you are referring Jonathan (and thanks for commenting); but I certainly don’t hate Justin.
I do hate hypocrisy, dishonesty, privilege, power plays, deference, and manipulation.
And I have felt genuinely torn about Justin’s time at Lambeth, since I was so hopeful and excited at the start.
You can read my whole view here: https://www.psephizo.com/life-ministry/what-is-justin-welbys-legacy-to-the-church-of-england/
I would add that, retired or not, archbishops have vowed to teach truth, build up the people of God, and teach the doctrine of Christ as the Church has received it. Freedom of speech does not trump these obligations.
Freedom of speech means the right to question doctrine and whether in fact the matters concerned are actually a question of doctrine or a question of understanding as they were in the case of the ordination of women.
Andrew, how can those who have taken public vows to uphold a doctrine then publicly question it?
Ordaining women did not change our doctrine.
Good lord. How do you think the Reformation happened?
Do you honestly think doctrine can never change? No doctrines whatsoever?
Andrew, the Reformation, as understood by Luther and Calvin, was an attempt to reform the Church back to its roots, which it had abandoned. (I have seen it argued that if the Council of Trent had occurred 50 years earlier, then the Reformation might well not have happened.)
I would be interested in which doctrines, held by the Church in the first centuries of the Christian era, the reformers were questioning or wanting to alter.
Yes David, but those reformers were still questioning doctrines of the church into which many of them had been ordained and whose doctrines they had vowed to uphold.
I have seen it argued that if the Council of Trent had occurred 50 years earlier, then the Reformation might well not have happened.
Except that the Council of Trent was held to try to deal with the abuses documented in the Consilium delectorum cardinalium et aliorum prelatorum de emendanda ecclesia commissioned by Pope Paul III following the critiques of the Reformers.
Paul III received this document in 1537 and so embarrassing was it when leaked that one of its authors, who became Pope Paul IV, placed it on the Index of books that Catholics were forbidden to read! It said little that Savonarola had not been burnt for saying in 1498.
It did if you believe the many conservative Anglo Catholics who crossed the Tiber to Rome once female ordination occurred and those in the likes of Walsingham who still reject it and indeed some very conservative evangelical churches who will only have male bishops too (flying if necessary)
If you look at the New Testament, there is no hatred expressed toward nonbelievers who behave badly toward believers, but there is plenty of vituperation against people who claim to be Christian yet whose actions do damage to the church, in particular through heresy and by spreading it. Welby is in this category. Only the inarticulate would insult him using 4-letter words, but the culture of middle-class England and the excessive bureaucratisation of the Church of England have caused too many committed Christians to be too courteous to him, both in person and in print. St Paul would have written and acted differently toward him, and if others had done so then he might reflected differently and have gone earlier. Good riddance, anyway.
How does that make it right that it do so; and secondly why are you treating a national church as a given?
The C of E was created to be the national established English church headed by the King, with Catholic but Reformed doctrine. That is the whole point of it
“That’s the whole point of it.”! What a succinct, singular creedal statement.
What is a Christian?
What is the point of Christianity?
Any ideas?
Are you still unable to express what the Good News, the Gospel is?
Whatever your religion is, its creedal focus point excludes Jesus and reverberates with Christian unbelief.
Which God do you believe?
Christianity applies to any denomination from Orthodox to Roman Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, indeed Anglican etc. There is nothing uniquely Church of England about being Christian. Having the King as its head and being a Catholic but Reformed Church with services based in origin on the BCP is what makes the C of E unique
And the point of it!
Please answer the questions.
Which god do you believe.
Especially in the light of your comments above and Ian Hobbs response in particular.
I believe in the God of Abraham (which doesn’t even make me distinct from Muslims and Jews let alone other Christians) and Jesus Christ as Messiah, which still doesn’t make me distinct from other Christian denominations.
Having the King as head of my church, being in a Catholic and Reformed church and with services originating from the BCP is what makes me and other fellow C of E Anglicans unique
T1,
Your belief in God is sub-Christian.
Do you lie, not engage, when, in a service it comes to the congregation saying the creed together?
How can you even partake in Holy Communion centering on the new covenant in the cross of the incarnate God the Son.
Or do you just pretend?
Thanks for your response.
As I believe in the loving Christ, not the hating Christ
Simon/T1, Jesus says clearly in Matt 7 that ‘wide is the path to destruction, and many are those who travel it’. Do you think Jesus was being loving in saying that?
To love anything IS to hate its opposite.
T1,
Please elaborate. What is the difference and distinction between a Loving Jesus and a Hating Jesus and where does it come from?
Who is the ‘whole Christ?
And what is his Holy Love, in Triunity?
T1,
Notwithstanding your banging on about the CoE, it seems that you, with your beliefs are not part of it, outside it’s orthodoxy. If you were confined into its membership, it is to be wondered how, where and when? A travesty of the CoE it seems.
The opposite, I accept my King as C of E Supreme Governor, accept I am in a Catholic but Reformed church and and accept the decisions of Synod. Unlike some evangelicals who want to turn the Church of England into a Baptist or Pentecostal church in all but name!
T1/Simon
While you are going on and on about Henry VIII creating the CofE, you seem not to have noticed something else he did of direct relevance to the current sexuality issues
“Henry VIII was the first to criminalise homosexual activity in civil law in the form of the Buggery Act of 1533. Such behaviour had previously been regulated by ecclesiastical, or Christian, courts. The Act defined same-sex sex as ‘the detestable and abominable vice of buggery’, stating those found guilty should be sentenced to death. Members of the clergy, such as priests and monks, could also be executed under the Act, despite their immunity from being executed for murder. This implies that murder was seen as a lesser crime than buggery, but could also suggest that Henry VIII was using civil law to limit the powers of the Catholic Church – the Act of Supremacy that declared him Supreme Head of the Church of England was passed only one year later. Whatever Henry VIII’s motives, the Buggery Act was to remain in law in some form in England and Wales until 1967, indicating the long-lasting impact of his reign on the modern world”.
Yes, as I said the established church evolves with the law of the nation it is in. I suspect many evangelicals on here would have been far happier in the C of E during Henry VIII’s reign than they are now in the C of E of the 21st century in the more liberal reign of Charles III
Geoff, this morning I read this.
https://thewadrproject.com/2025/06/07/reflecting-on-the-work-and-words-of-walter-brueggemann-1933-2025-by-melinda-cousins/
Since you are concerned about whether people believe in the same god you do (or not) I thought you might be interested.
So the established church is always BEHIND the curve and always playing catch up.
Explain why anyone would want to associate with any organisation that was always behind, always following, never leading.
You seem to be uncritically in favour of the ever-changing culture that forces this catch up.
Why then are you in favour of it. It seems to be leading not following. Why do you allow the culture to lead and not allow the church to lead? Inconsistent….
On your definition the opposite, the Church of England was well ahead of the curve when it backed criminalisation of homosexuality given the views of many anti LGBT types like you. An established church will always though never move too far from the culture of the nation it is established church of. Don’t want that, don’t be in an established church
The very idea of an established church is an oxymoron wherever the culture is not a Christian one, since if it is indeed established and in line with the culture, then it can scarcely be a ‘church’ at all (i.e. part of what Jesus set up) unless the nation and culture begins by being a Christian one.
Secondly, no-one can be for or against ‘LGBT’ until it becomes a coherent term. One can be neither for nor against something incoherent.
Third, if you are speaking of ‘anti-LGBT *types*’, you are stereo’typ’ing (i.e. not even trying to think), which removes any obligation to listen.
And you have still not explained why there is any need for an established church to be a thing. One can understand why a nation would want to conform itself to a church, but the idea that a church would want to conform (conform!) itself to a nation is bats.
The Church of England was set up to be English established church, that is its main point. If you disagree with established churches you should not be in anyway
‘The Church of England was set up to be English established church, that is its main point.’
Not true! It was no more or less established than the organisation it succeeded. Its main point is to be part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church in this land, to ‘preach the word and rightly administer the sacraments’.
As established national church, with Parishes in every corner of the land, headed by the King not the Pope
the key phrase here is ‘not the Pope’! But you have missed the heart of the matter: ‘preach the word of God and rightly administer the sacraments’. The vision of the Reformers was of a body with spiritual life, not a mere institution as you seem to want.
‘..preach the word of God and rightly administer the sacraments’. What every church does, nothing uniquely Anglican about that, the King as its head and being a Catholic as well as Reformed church is what makes the C of E unique
No, nothing unique about that—and that is the point. The C of E sees itself (in the formularies) as nothing more or less than the apostolic church in this land. It is not trying to be ‘unique’.
It is, otherwise the King would not head it and nor would it be Catholic and Reformed but Catholic or Reformed
As ever Ian, a really thoughtful and detailed analysis. I was struck in particular by Justin Welby’s remark that he used to be “a bit thick,” and I wondered if there’s an aspect here that borders on a kind of new-colonialism?
Given that the majority world—especially African and Asian Anglicans—continue to hold to the historic teaching on marriage, isn’t there an implication in describing the traditional position as simply unenlightened or lacking understanding? It seems to assume that Western cultural shifts represent moral progress, while those who disagree (many of whom are from non-Western contexts) are simply behind or intellectually deficient.
I wonder if this attitude contributes not just to division but also to a subtle, patronising dismissal of voices from the Global South?
No, PLF is not being forced on African churches in the Anglican communion. However they have to recognise they can’t prevent the English, Scottish, US, Canadian, NZ Anglican churches recognising same sex couples either
I think you may be missing the point I was making.
The problem isn’t simply whether African churches are being formally compelled to adopt PLF themselves. It’s the attitude behind statements like Welby’s – essentially implying that those who hold the historic Christian view are “a bit thick,” even though this is precisely the conviction of most of the global Anglican Communion.
That dynamic – Western leaders framing their own revisions as progress and everyone else as benighted – is exactly what many in the majority world experience as a kind of neo-colonial condescension, whether or not they are legally required to adopt the same practice.
Recognition is not a neutral gesture when it’s paired with dismissiveness toward those who disagree. It inevitably affects mutual trust and fellowship across the Communion.
Jonny, yes it is, and the bishops I debated at the Oxford Union said so outright. ‘The Africans have much to learn from us.’
And they certainly do in some matters, not least in their treatment of women.
And we have much to learn from Africa as well.
This is a classic example of selective moral superiority.
Western culture hardly has an unblemished record in its treatment of women – whether you look at centuries of systemic misogyny, persistent domestic violence, or the commodification and objectification of women in our media and consumer culture. This is something that feminists like Louise Perry are starting to question in Western culture, interrogating the impact of the supposed freedom that the sexual revolution has singularly failed to deliver on.
It’s striking how quickly some assume that Western societies are the enlightened benchmark while the convictions of African churches must be dismissed as simply the product of social failings.
If anything, that sounds very much like a new colonial instinct: “we” have progressed, “they” are behind, and their theological beliefs are less worthy of respect.
Surely a genuinely global church should begin with the humility to recognise that no culture gets everything right – and that honest dialogue requires listening, not condescension.
Careful Jonny, you will be arguing in favour of polygamy.
Of course dialogue is required.
Invoking polygamy as a potential consequence of open dialogue feels less like genuine engagement and more like a classic neo-colonial rhetorical move—where non-Western practices are cast as inherently problematic or threatening, while Western norms remain the unquestioned baseline.
Such framing risks shutting down the very conversation needed in a global Communion, by painting cultural differences as dangerous extremes rather than legitimate perspectives to listen to.
If the Church truly wants unity amid diversity, we need to move beyond these kinds of caricatures and instead foster respectful dialogue that acknowledges the complexity of different contexts.
Ok genuine question as I am not sure what you are saying and need to clarify.
Are you saying polygamy is a “legitimate perspective to listen to” (your words) but same sex relationships are not? Please be clear in your answer.
I ask for this important clarification precisely because it is countries from the Global South who have very deliberately withdrawn from dialogue and indicated they are not prepared to have dialogue, and not countries from Western Culture.
Scholars do not have ‘dialogue’ with the ignorant, nor police with criminals. To do so would be to say that they have a valid point of view, when all they are doing is trying to get respectability for their essentially self-centred desires and/or those of their peers. And their trick to get a place at the table is to promote and exalt the self-refuting pluralism and relativism that makes this possible: the phone-in culture where everyone’s point of view is worth a hearing (research conclusions on a complete par with selfish desires); and where accuracy is decided [sic] by a show of hands, by pressing on a voting machine, or by walking to a lobby.
Christopher you write nonsense. You are saying all those countries in the Global South are scholars and all those in the West ate ignorant.
And Police absolutely do have dialogue with criminals. It’s called the criminal justice system.
My question to Jonny remains.
Point me to where I said all southerners were scholars and all northerners were ignorant?!
Of course those who merely follow a prevailing culture are ignorant. That is the very definition of ignorance.
And of course those who follow logic, observation, common sense, and evidence are sensible.
Yet another vast generalisation. Of which there are no end from Christopher.
The definition of ignorance is vast generalisation.
You are, therefore, in favour of (or neutral to?) passive submission to a prevailing culture – which others were very proactive, not passive, in setting up?
Or against logic? Against observation? Against common sense? Against evidence?
The errors pile up like Pelion on Ossa.
Self -righteous: the opposite of righteous in Christ, his righteousness.
Liberals and antinomianst are self righteous. The rest are thick intransigents.
Progress and seeing through:
” There are progressions in which the last step is sui generis — incommensurable with the others — and in which to go the whole way is to undo all the labour of your previous journey. To reduce the Tao to a mere natural product is a step of that kind. Up to that point, the kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on ‘explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see.”
C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
Thank you for your clarity in this article Ian – there is such an arrogance in the question which he was asked, as though 21st century western thinking is somehow nearing the pinnacle of human reasoning and behaviour! The answer he gave however, was theologically and philosophically so ‘thin’ – maybe that’s where you end up if you think you’ve started by being ‘thick’.
Thanks—yes, a strange paradox of claiming (ironically?) to be ‘thick’—and then demonstrating it might actually be true!
His ‘a bit thick’ remark reminded me of Richard Dawkins’ characterisation of himself and those who agree with him as ‘the brights’.
This is where liberal ‘we-know-better-than-those-fundamentalists’ Anglicanism ends up: the drunken blasphemy of Bangor Cathedral, sexual assaults, and a choirman who calls himself “Esme”. How did the Church in Wales end up in this sewer?
And why is homosexuality so prevalent in that church?
Can nobody connect the dots?
I meant to include this BBC report: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg34410dx7o
Evangelicals have never engaged in drinking games of course and who were Smyth and Pilavachi, both accused of sexual assaults, if not evangelicals?
A drunken cathedral choir mocking the sufferings of Christ: are you not grieved by this?
A sexually confused male chorister called ‘Esme’ who now claims to be a woman: do you not weep over this?
Anglican clergy sleeping around: does this not disturb you?
Simon, why are you always defending the indefensible?
Why are you so fixated on promoting homosexuality? Do you not see that sexual revisionism lies at the heart of the problem. And the Church in Wales is riddled with homosexuality, two of its five remaining bishops being in same-sex relationships while John is divorced and remarried.
The Church in Wales is not headed by the King, by the way (your own gold standard, for some bizarre reason) – it was headed by the appallingly corrupt Andrew John – who was himself trained at St John’s Nottingham.
Neither Pilavachi nor Smyth was a bishop.
And no, evangelical worship leaders do not indulge in blasphemous drinking “games”. They would be sacked promptly for that.
‘And the Church in Wales is riddled with homosexuality’. It may not be my church but that rather sounds like you want to bring in the ‘Queer Finder General’
Simon, you are repeatedly on record here expressing the desire to see homosexual relations “celebrated” in the Church of England. I have yold you that such relationships are EVERYWHERE in the Chutch in Wales, including among two of the five remaining bishops – and that “church” is deeply dysfunctional and sinful. It is not difficult to see why. If you flout the Word of God, spiritual death quickly follows.
One QUARTER of the bishops in the Church in Wales have resigned early since 2008 following controversies or marital infidelity. Your strong personal desire to see homosexuality officially ensconced in the Church of England can only mean you want the C of E to go down the toilet, like the Church in Wales and the Scottish Episcopal Church.
T1,
Your beliefs, above are outside the CoE and outside RC, neither Reformed nor Catholic.
They are sub Christian of any denomination, a cult of one, perhaps.
C of E churches already hold services with prayers of love and faith for same sex parishioners within them after Synod approved them. Only right given it is established church of a nation where same sex marriage is legal, whatever fanatical anti gT1ays like you think
No my beliefs are what the majority of Synod voted for. It is the likes of you Geoff who should not be in the Church of England as you reject the will of Synod
I suspect James and Geoff will now be hoping for a Reform government after the next general election after Farage’s statement this week that the same sex marriage legislation was ‘wrong.’ Even if he also said he wouldn’t reverse it
https://www.joe.co.uk/politics/nigel-farage-labels-same-sex-marriage-law-wrong-494689
T1,
Whether other churches believe the Triune God of Christianity is not the point. You do not, which puts you outside the CoE and the RC and other Christian denominations.
Your beliefs are unbeliefs in the God of Christianity.
Should also be mentioned that Archbishop John trained in and identifies with the open evangelical wing of the Anglican church
T1,
The beliefs of yours, referred to above, have nothing to do with ssm/b, nor have politics to do with the substance of Christianity.
Not do those beliefs form part of the CoE nor RC .
The god you believe is not the Triune God of Christianity.
They do, otherwise every church would not recognise same sex couples, not ordain women and not remarry divorced couples, as you presumably interpret scripture to forbid but other churches don’t
Simon, Jesus and Paul clear permit the remarriage of divorced people, and Paul talks of women as prophets, teachers, church leaders, and apostles.
No scripture countenances marriage as anything other than a man and a woman. I think it is worth getting our basic facts right first!
Paul on women priests and leadership in church ‘Let the women keep silent in the churches . . . I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man” I Cor. 14:34–35’
Simon/T1, you read the NT with an odd wooden literalism, ripping verses out of context, and proof-texting.
That is not the way either evangelicals or Anglicans do theology. It is odd that you persist in this. Don’t you know anything about theological method?
As opposed to you spinning more than Peter Mandelson did to read the NT as anti gay couples as possible but entirely in accordance with female ordination and remarriage of divorce.
I am not a Roman Catholic but at least they have some consistency in opposing all the above, as opposed to certain LGBT evangelicals who just pick and choose what they are most anti and read the Bible accordingly
If you read scripture with your wooden literalism, then I can see why any other approach might look like wooden literalism. But most Christians realise that this way, and proof-texting by ripping texts out of their context as you do, is neither responsible, nor an Anglican way to read Scripture.
I have set out very clearly why I think Scripture says what it does in specific articles.
There have been women leaders in all ages of the Church; and Cranmer himself proposed a right of remarriage after divorce. But same-sex marriage is historically unprecedented. These three issues are quite distinct.
I am not a Roman Catholic but at least they have some consistency in opposing all the above, as opposed to certain anti LGBT evangelicals who just pick and choose what they are most anti and read the Bible accordingly
You are quite happy to say opposing female ordination and remarriage of divorcees (as the Pope and Vatican does as does the Orthodox church and most Baptist churches for the former too) is ‘ripping texts out of context.’ Yet apparently same sex marriages in church, now done by the Lutherans, Methodists, Quakers, Church of Scotland and Scottish and US Anglican churches is totally in contravention of biblical text. The C of E doesn’t even do same sex marriages in churches even now anyway, only prayers in services for same sex couples and Jesus never said a word against same sex couples in committed unions
“But most Christians realise that this way, and proof-texting by ripping texts out of their context as you do, is neither responsible, nor an Anglican way to read Scripture.”
Seems to depend on the topic Ian.
This fundamentalism that somehow things ‘must’ be the same for the category women as for the category of self-proclaimed gay is based on what? What is the connection?
There is scripture against female priests and leaders in church as there is against same sex acts
Sorry Simon, that is nonsense. The texts on women in leadership are mixed; the texts against SSM are uniform. Even critical liberal scholars concede that.
That’s right, though the class of things that have scriptures against them is very large and very diverse.
Are they? Name me one text supporting women priests and bishops? Of course Jesus did not explicitly oppose then unlike Paul but then he did not explicitly oppose unions of faithful same sex couples either, as PLF are for (note still NOT same sex marriage in churches)
Simon/T1 yes. I have listed them before. I have written a book about them. Lots of other people have.
The key texts are: creation, where male and female are created equal and different without hierarchy; the Exodus and Judges, where women exercise leadership of the nation; Acts, where women teach and plant churches; and Paul, where he argues for women to equally prophecy (a ministry of authority), teaches that the Spirit gives gift to all, regardless of sex, and where he describes women as leaders from whom he has learnt, and esteemed as apostles.
These texts are not hard to find!
Simon, no NT texts support ‘priests’ in the sense you mean. And as for bishops, the word needs unpacking – there is need for and provision for ‘overseers’, as there could not very well not be.
So no texts giving women authority to teach or assume authority over men then which Paul expressly forbids.`Indeed in Corinthians he even says women should be silent in church. Now I have no problem with women priests personally anymore than I do with PLF but there are plenty of texts against it.
Bishops are of course pivotal to the C of E, descended via apostolic succession from St Peter
Yes, texts explicitly giving women authority—through the exercise of prophecy, teaching, church planting, and apostolic ministry. How can these not ‘have authority’?
If that text in 1 Corinthians means what you think it means, then you must think that Paul plainly contradicts himself. You cannot prophesy without speaking!
Texts which you interpret to be such and which are clearly contradicted by Paul’s texts and letters that women should remain silent in churches and nor are they allowed to teach or assume authority over a man
Your preferred people to align yourself with are the tabloids, spicing up stories to the extent of inaccuracy. ‘Sexual assault’ is what neither of these stories were about, and yet we have plenty of details about both.
Yed, Simon errs again. Neither Pilavachi nor Smyth was ever accused of sexual assault.
Pilavachi engaged in stupid wrestling with teenage boys (the kind of things that teenage boys do with each other) and he seems to have been unkind to Matt Redman. But no sexual assault complaints were ever made to the police. Smyth committed assaults like some fanatical schoolmaster in the 1940s but no sexual assault was ever reported.
This in no way defends their conduct, which ranged from foolish to criminal. But it wasn’t evidently sexual (unless play at being psychologists).
‘Victims of John Smyth’s brutal physical and sexual abuse have welcomed a letter from the Church of England’s safeguarding team in which the institution “accepts the harm caused” and offers a meeting with Justin Welby.’https://www.channel4.com/news/smyth-scandal-church-of-england-victims-fight-for-compensation
Weak even by your standards, Simon.
But is there any real doubt that Pilavachi got a sexual thrill from those activities with young males? I dont think it’s appropriate to refer to it as ‘stupid wrestling’. If it wasnt sexual, then why was he doing it in the first place? Why didnt he wrestle with older men? Just a coincidence? I think not.
As the report says, “(5) Mr Pilavachi gave one-on-one massages to young men in private in the 2000s. The men involved would be only partially clothed (sometimes only in their underwear) and would lie on Mr Pilavachi’s bed. These massages were not sought out by the young people, they were not enjoyed, and many young people felt deeply ashamed after them. They were an abuse of power: they involved imposing physical intimacy in circumstances where the young men felt unable to refuse, and whilst views differ, two young men subject to the massages perceived them to be fulfilling a sexual outlet for Mr Pilavachi. Mr Pilavachi says that his behaviour was not sexual in intent – but the very circumstances described above would be widely seen in society as a precursor to sexual intimacy, if not sexually intimate in and of itself.”
Re Smyth, in the report a “Dr Hanson describes that “no single factor is sufficient to determine a sexual motivation to John Smyth’s abuse, however various things when taken together
indicate that this was highly likely to be at play in his beatings of young men and boys”.
Let’s not try to play down what they were doing, nor the reasons behind their actions. It was, at least in part, evidently sexual.
PC1 – At the level of his own personal motivation (and who knows that?), I would have suspected the same, though I am not a psychologist. I think everyone of us acts consciously or unconsciously out of our sexual feelings. For example, it is hard for a heterosexual man not to be attentive to an attractive young woman, and married men in ministry can often come a cropper – as do other married men in the ‘helping professions’. Consider that rash of cases of prominent swimming and gymnastic coaches in the UK and the US who have been accused of molesting their young charges.
But my point was that Pilavachi has never been accused of sexual assault by anyone, and the police clearly said there was no case to answer here. They might (indeed, should) have thought his conduct stupid and liable to lead to abuse, but no crime was committed. The police said so explicitly. Knowing how pro-active the police are today in clerical abuse cases, I think that is telling.
When I did a stint at secondary school teaching, I learned quickly to follow a simple rule: avoid all unnecessary physical contact with students. In the past it was more common for male teachers to be more tactile with teenage boys (even being a bit brutal), but this would only lay one open to a charge of assault or even sexual abuse. I don’t know why Pilavachi didn’t follow this simple rule. Youth work and ‘pioneer ministry’ (look at the ridiculous case of Venessa Pinto in the news) in the Church of England (and elsewhere) has been poorly supervised, with some tragic consequences.
James,
Many men who visit prostitutes ask for the sort of thing that Smyth administered as part of the sexual experience for which they pay. I find it impossible to deny a link, even though the psychological nature of that link is – thankfully – a mystery to me.
The prevailing pattern is that when someone’s own smooth (psychosexual etc) development has been cruelly broken, they desperately seek out others from that precise age through whom they can try to resume that smooth development.
As to Pilavachi / ‘sexual’, this is a misconceived question. There is a significant overlap between being sexual, being positive, and being healthy in the first place.
In truth, we have plenty of data on both.
Among that *plenty* of data, there is neither time a single instance that is clearly ‘sexual assault’.
What we have is people approaching data with stereotyped expectations and ‘finding’ what they are preprogrammed to find.
Yes, that’s what I said. None of Pilavachi’s wrestling and massage behaviour, stupid and reprehensible as it was, reached the level of being criminally actionable (e.g., sexual molestation). If it had, you can be very sure the police would have been on him like a ton of bricks.
Contrast that with the actual behaviour of Chris Brain of the notorious ‘Nine O’Clock Service’. He is now being tried on one charge of rape and 31 of sexual assault on 13 women, on conduct going back to 1981-95. I am not sure of the wisdom of launching an eight week trial on events alleged to have happened 30-44 years ago, but who knows?
However – Mr Pilavachi falls into the Cliff Richard category of someone that secularists and gossip-mongers of all kinds would delight to see fall. (Primarily perhaps because of his place in the spiritual family tree of so many precious youngsters and former youngsters.) Hence the pattern, not exclusive to this case, of: the less actually criminal it is, the more column inches it excites.
James, on 30-44 years ago, there is a concerted effort to spread the message that the church is in an abuse crisis now. In order to do that the two dodges customarily used are (a) to say that the church = the Church of England, and (b) to maximise attention to the last critical-level abuse – which is from fully a generation ago, and make every effort to give the impression that this refers to the present day.
Because if it didn’t refer to the present day, they wouldn’t be able to give that message, and that would never do.
When short of the abuse stories for which they have an insatiable appetite, they have another dodge. Simply lower the bar to hugging someone tightly, make allegations equal fact, pay no attention to investigations already conducted (because you know that the public will always prefer the more sensational ‘version’) – and you will have plenty of new material without making any effort at all.
I disagree. I dont think it is inappropriate to strongly suspect in both cases sexual thrill was very much part of the motivation for their behaviours. And it’s not exactly surprising both men denied such motivation, especially given they were both supposed to be ‘Christian’ leaders. In fact it would deem the behaviours even odder if there really were no sexual feelings involved.
In another comment above you state ‘The prevailing pattern is that when someone’s own smooth (psychosexual etc) development has been cruelly broken, they desperately seek out others from that precise age through whom they can try to resume that smooth development.’
I wasnt exactly sure to what you were referring, but if it was child SA, then although there appears to be some correlation between child SA and becoming a perpetrator as an adult, it is not automatic by any means. Plus there appears to be no such correlation for females abused. ‘Prevailing pattern’ may therefore be too strong a description. Rather male child SA raises the risk of being a perpetrator as an adult male.
On thrill as likely motivation, yes, I always agreed with that.
On CSA, that was not what I referred to, though of course the pattern can often be to bring others down to the level of suffering what they suffered so that even though they can never get rid of their own suffering they can get rid of the differential between themselves and those who have not suffered. If anyone had suffered CSA it would presumably also be common for people to try and keep others away from it. But the obsession with those of the particular age when everything went wrong could be a common factor in both of these scenarii.
Ian – ‘Simon, Jesus and Paul clear permit the remarriage of divorced people, ‘
According to the Gospels (taken together), the only reason Jesus appears to give for a legitimate divorce in God’s eyes is adultery.
Do you agree that that is still the case today for Christians?
Thanks
I don’t think that is true. See my article on ‘Divorce “for any reason”‘
Correct, Jesus is clear only spousal sexual immorality is grounds for divorce. Anyone who opposes PLF but supports divorce beyond those grounds and says they are arguing on scripture is lying
Simon/T1, people are not ‘lying’ when they don’t follow your odd, wooden, proof-texting approach to scripture.
You are quite the fundamentalist!
I never said the established church should follow every word of scripture, you did but clearly don’t fully follow what you preach!
It is odd that you think that everyone who believes in following Scripture also must read in your wooden, literalistic, and fundamentalist way.
We don’t!
No you read it in your firmly anti LGBT above all else way, I know!
Essentially the idea is that Matthew must have had better information than Mark on Jesus’s words. This goes against the entire trend of study of the Synoptic Problem. Whereas if we look at it the other way round (as would in any case be the normal procedure of preferring Mark) then we have a simple picture of development. Mark has a question and answer about divorce per se. Matthew (rabbinically) is at a stage where this alone is inadequate to address all central questions. So he has a question and answer about ‘divorce for any reason’.
The bizarre story on the BBC website concerning Church Army officer Venessa Pinto, sub-churchwarden Jay Hulme and the Bishop of Leicester which T1/Simon referred to earlier has taken even more bizarre turns.
Venessa Pinto was given a suspended jail sentence for harassing, stalking and threatening Hulme, with whom she wanted a “romantic relationship”.
Hulme is reported in the BBC as saying, ‘No thanks – I’m gay. And trans.’
So Jay is really a biological woman who presents as a bearded man, who is attracted to … what?
Now it turns out that Venessa Pinto is herself lesbian, a member of Inclusive Church – and was elected to the General Synod and after one year chosen to join the Crown Nominations Committee! Following her criminal conviction, she has of course resigned. But how did she ever get those glowing recommendations from the Church Army? What a mare’s nest the Church of England is.
https://www.inclusive-church.org/civicrm?civiwp=CiviCRM&q=civicrm%2Fmailing%2Fview&reset=1&id=114
I was rather hoping this might warrant a separate article. It’s very strange indeed.
I suspected at the time it was a hit job by the BBC in its July 2025 article against Bishop Martin Snow and I am strengthened in that suspicion by the fact that Venessa Pinto’s criminal conviction in Leicester in MAY 2024 – in other words, an OLD STORY gussied up by the BBC to embarrass Snow and derail his ambitions for ABC (if he has such).
As I understand it:
1. St Nicholas’ Church in Leicester that Hulme is supposedly part of has NO CONGREGATION and NO MINISTER. But it’s where a few Anglican LGBT+ in Leicester hang out, according to Brett Murphy’s ‘Weekly Vlog’ (Murphy used to be a C of E clergyman in Leicester).
2. Jay Hulme is biologically a female, now presenting as a bearded man. Is she taking male hormones? The BBC article says nothing about her female life.
3. The BBC article does not tell us that Venessa Pinto is a lesbian, or why she came to visit this little church in Leicester. But obviously it is because it is part of the ‘Inclusive Church’ Network and Venessa is a Trustee of Inclusive Church. She is very outspoken on LGBT+ advocacy in the C of E. Jay Hulme is also a member of Inclusive Church.
4. The BBC story doesn’t tell us that Venessa Pinto was elected to General Synod ‘as a young black woman’ (from her own promotional video) and that GS appointed her – after one year! – to the Crown Nominations Commission to select future bishops for the C of E!
4. The BBC article doesn’t tell us whether Jay Hulme was presenting as a woman when Venessa hit upon her and asked her for a date. After all, why would an out-lesbian ask a man for a date and a romantic relationship? I suspect Jay’s ‘trans’ stage and beard are recent developments.
The whole, year-old story was evidently written up to harm Martin Snow after Welby resigned.
I had never heard of Jay Hulme before but it turns out that she is a trans-sexual graduate in English who writes poems for kids about ‘queer prophets’ and gave this address at the ‘Transgender Theology Conference’:
https://jayhulme.com/blog/2024/10/22/the-genderweird-vibe-of-god
This whole story looks some bitter battle in the LGBT world.
It looks orchestrated – expect it to ramp up as we approach decision day, just as things like this ramp up as we approach election days. No-one is fooled.
He’s an excellent poet, a lover of churches, and a prominent church member.
The reason they want to harm Martyn Snow is that, according to the false, cynically-calculated and self-produced ‘information’ they have on runners and riders they see him as the candidate who is NOT female and NOT liberal. When we have recovered from that horror [?], we should pause to reflect that one who WAS liberal withdrew in order to join many other liberals in the deliberately fiendishly complex make-up of the CNC, and thus affect its balance.
Venessa Pinto is considered more suitable than the average by virtue of gender and self-proclaimed sexuality. So some groups have much higher proportional representation than others. (Even if it leads to what now appears to be the scraping of barrels.) That’s fair, then.
The thing in the story that stood out and made me agree with you that it’s a ‘hitpiece’ against the Bishop was the suggestion that Martyn had accused Jay of witchcraft, reported flatly and without qualification.
“Bishop Snow accused him of practising witchcraft – both because of the “seance” and the fact Jay happened to have a close friend who was a tarot card reader.”
-BBC News, June 29th
Now, this is an astonishing claim to make, and for all of my misgivings about some of Martyn’s activity in Leicester (primarily minster communities), he has never struck me as someone foolish enough to do this. In truth, bishops are often so mealy-mouthed it’s hard to imagine them accusing anyone of anything. 😉 Indeed, the diocese made a formal statement about it:
“Following the BBC News Online article, we wish to make it very clear that Bishop Martyn did not accuse Jay Hulme of practising “witchcraft”. Indeed, he is deeply disturbed that this accusation has been made.
He did question Mr Hulme with regard to complaints that had been made against him – complaints which included (in Mr Hulme’s words in the BBC interview) reference to conducting a seance in a church (something he later described as a “joke”) and reference to consulting a friend who is a tarot card reader.
The Church of England has never supported such actions and therefore it was entirely appropriate for the bishop to ask about their veracity (given that Mr Hulme is exploring becoming a priest in the Church of England). This is a long way from accusing someone of being a “witch”. “
-Diocese of Leicester, also June 29th
I don’t want to comment on the other things, there’s so much strange going on here that is all hearsay. Whatever Jay wants, and however Jay identifies, I am glad (sincerely) that a stalker and threatener has been held accountable for their actions. Jay’s identity as an LGBT person makes no difference to excuse the actions of Vanessa.
This is all very off topic. 😉
Ian: I refer to the comment at 10.28.
Matt-
That is very interesting. There is nothing in the BBC report which reveals that Jay Hulme was conducting a seance (even a mock one) in St Nicholas’ Church, Leicester. The truth of her behaviour has obviously been heavily edited by the BBC.
Seriously, Ian, I have no doubt that you will remove my comment again. But can you not see that these remarks are a safeguarding concern. You cannot stop this person holding these beliefs but you can prevent them airing them publicly on your blog.
No, Penny, I don’t share your view.
That Ian is a great pity.
And, I think l, a danger.
But that is very much your choice.
If a congregation I am in has a new leader parachuted in whose protected characteristics I disapprove of, I can just leave quietly and find another congregation; and no amount of freedom-denying anti-discrimination legislation can do anything about it.
That is the tale of the Church of England in this century.
Provided you don’t engage in hate speech against people with such protected characteristics in person or online yes, otherwise you could be arrested
I do not recognise the category of falsely so-called ‘hate speech’, and I shall say what I choose to whom I choose while keeping awareness of the law. My point is different, though: I’ll worship where I like and for whatever reason I like, and there is nothing, short of reinstituting the Clarendon Code, that you or anybody else can do about it. And even then I’d go underground.
“protected characteristics”?
One issue here is that “gayness” and some related characteristics may currently be more protected than they deserve
Typically ‘gay’ propaganda presents “being gay” as the same kind of thing as “being black” (or blue-eyed, blonde-haired or similar), that is ‘gay’ is something you ‘just are’, can’t help being, etc. BUT – in practice the ‘sin’ in gayness is not in something people are, but in what they DO – the actual deeds of sex. Because a deed is involved this is a whole different moral category; what people ‘are’ in this case is not a neutral thing like skin or hair colour but an urge or desire to do the act, and far from there being ‘no choice’, people definitely CHOOSE to do sexual acts (well, barring insanity, and gay people certainly don’t want to make that excuse!).
Because gay sex is DONE, CHOSEN, it is properly open to challenges which would definitely be inappropriate towards black skin or similar. It is quite reasonable for Christians (or others for other reasons) to query the propriety of the deeds. In a plural society the deeds may be entitled to the kind of protection offered to people of different religious or philosophical beliefs – but that protection is nowhere near what is granted for ethnic/racial differences.
Part of the reason gays have acquired the foothold they have in the Church is because that ‘gay is like black’ thing is widely believed in the Church and IF – AND ONLY IF – it were true, then of course being anti-gay would be as evil a sin as racism. But because the key aspect of gay is it being something “done because urges and desires” it is a very different category. Those making that category error in the Church are letting their flocks down badly …..
Stephen, I am not sure we should be so understanding of those who keep saying gay is like black. After all, the point has *already* been made to many of them numerous times, and their avoidance of factoring it in makes them classify with the dishonest. Could be better to refuse to engage until they address the point and the evidence for it. IMHO.
Hate speech in public can be prosecuted via the Public Order Act, online via the Malicious Communications Act or Online Safety Act.
If an offence above is aggravated by hostility related to sexual orientation or transgender identity then the court will consider that an aggravating factor leading to a potentially increased sentence now under the Sentencing Act, as much as for racial or religious hostility or hostility to the disabled
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2020/17/section/66
Christopher Shell, T1/Simon
On this issue the key thing will be an eventual legal case which challenges the current ‘model’; and right now I don’t think the various Christian groups working in such cases have caught on to this idea of the different category between “It’s without choice like being black” and “It’s about chosen deeds and the underlying urges/temptations”.
My impression (with some legal background although my autism got in the way of a legal career) is that right now people like the Supreme Court Judges (UK or USA) are kind of dissatisfied with the current position but haven’t quite worked out exactly what they’re unhappy about – and I think it might take two cases rather than just one, a case that puts this new angle out in public and another case which will be influenced by the discussion caused by the first.
So long as ‘the law’ is operating on the “It’s like being black” model there will be problems and the threat of legal prosecution (persecution?) for challenging gay issues.
Sorry Stephen, you’re talking complete twaddle (again).
Protected characteristics are not a philosophical idea to be molded by you. They are legally defined (under the Equality Act). In British law the protected characteristics are race, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marriage, pregnancy, and religion or belief. Some of these are very much not chosen or behavioral (e.g. age), and some most definitely are (e.g. marriage), and some might be a point of debate (e.g. religion). Whether the judges on the UK Supreme Court like or dislike these characteristics is irrelevant. They have no power to overturn the Equality Act. Nor does the Equality Act grant particular rights to people. Rather it protects everyone from unfair discrimination, because it isn’t what you are, but what you are perceived to be. So if I believe you to be French (because race in the EA extends to nationality) and start harrassing you for it, that is racial discrimination, regardless of whether you actually are French or not. At the same time it allows for fair discrimination – e.g. for women’s refuges to be single-sex spaces.
If you want to limit anti-discrimination laws strictly around what you consider to be akin to “being black” (and that may be a more complex and charged discussion than you’re prepared for) then you’ve surely got to strip it away from marriage, pregnancy, and religion, before you get near sexual orientation. But why would we want to do that?
Adam, actually, I think the question about ‘protected characteristic’ has an important point to it.
For something to be protected it must be immutable, otherwise it makes no sense in law. (I do think that that is assumed in the legalities, but I don’t know them well enough to point to it.)
Sexual orientation is not, in fact, immutable, as Matthew Parris himself pointed out in an article a few years ago. He said something like ‘If I had a slightly difference experience, I could well imagine myself not being gay’. Lisa Diamond in the States (a lesbian gay rights campaigner) has been the most clear on this: especially amongst women, same-sex attraction is not a stable characteristic, and so Diamond does not believe that this is a basis on which gay rights ought to be based.
Her argument is one of free will and choice.
Other studies have confirmed this, as I explore here: https://www.psephizo.com/sexuality-2/are-we-born-straight-or-gay/
AJ it is always immediately problematic to use law as a bottom line (since it can scarcely be more fundamental than science or reality, and it clearly is far more mutable and unstable), but more particularly problematic so to use a random law of a random country at a random date. From that kind of presupposition, however sound one’s subsequent reasoning, an argument could never be sound.
“particularly problematic so to use a random law of a random country at a random date. From that kind of presupposition, however sound one’s subsequent reasoning, an argument could never be sound.”
And of course that is *exactly* why it is problematic making an argument for one immutable approach to human sexuality and relationships based on a particular reading of texts thousands of years ago.
Andrew Godsall writes;
“And of course that is *exactly* why it is problematic making an argument for one immutable approach to human sexuality and relationships based on a particular reading of texts thousands of years ago.”
Three problems with AG’s comment:
1. Chronological snobbery. Euclid’s ‘Elements’ and Archimedes’ writings are more than 300 years older than the NT but have lost none of their cogency. There are such things as timeless truths! Mathematics and logic, for example.
2. The words of our Lord Jesus Christ on marriage (Matt. 19-4-6 and elsewhere) are the words of our Creator. This is what the finality of Christ means. Liberals don’t think of Jesus as final but just one stage on the way. Andrew errs here.
3. Church history has been very consistent in interpretation of these texts throughout two millennia. This is what it means to be part of the Church Catholic. Andrew separated himself from the historic voice.
Two things are widespread but unfreflected on among liberals:
-‘belief’ in (or rather assumption of) progress over time.
-ignoring the point about chronological snobbery. To ignore is to lose the argument; in fact it is even better than attempting to answer the point and failing, which would also be to lose the argument, just an honourable loss in that instance.
Christopher you really are priceless in wanting to have winners and losers. This isn’t a game of conkers. Please try to be a little more mature.
Everybody believes in progress over time. They have no choice as it is a fact of life. Not just for liberals – general term that you can’t even define – but everyone. Progress is what happens in life. We get older and we progress. We read more and we progress. Etc etc etc. progress is part of life. To progress in time is to be human.
Chronological snobbery is one of those terms from C S Lewis and others who didn’t mean it in the binary way that you seem to assume. Older is not always better. Newer is not always better. The important thing is to interrogate all ideas from all times, and not just make assumptions. You simply can’t provide any evidence of chronological snobbery going on in this case.
You are wrong because your assumption, so far, that ‘progress’ means one thing. So it is ‘priceless’ to assume it means more than one thing, is it?
The dictionary is therefore priceless.
It means development (morally neutral), but its more precise meaning is improvement. Which was the meaning I was referring to.
Although Chesterton and CS Lewis refer to it, with most people it would be common sense and they would not need to. Why do they refer to it at all, then? Because then and now one finds that a surprising number of people do have as a dogmatic tenet, with Emile Coue (and Frank Spencer), that (to guy and simplify slightly) ‘every day in every way [things are] getting better and better’; but in fact this is an unexamined assumption that they have never directed their minds to. Their thought-system would collapse if they did. Which is more than most can take.
We get older and we progress [in athletic achievement]. We read more and we progress [in Alzheimer’s].
As to there being no winners and losers in debate, what on earth do you think debate is? The fact that the winners and losers are positions and arguments rather than people (and that those who love truth always want the winning position i.e. the bright light of truth to increase) scarcely makes that less true, does it? If you don’t love the progress of truth, then what on earth do you love? Your position must be a very peculiar one indeed.
As usual Christopher you are just making vast general points, and trying to disguise them as being profound by your verbose style.
But as usual as well you provide no evidence but just exhibit your bias.
(We await another 9 point list of verbose generalisation which attempts to prove Christopher is a ‘winner’. )
AJB
The various ‘protected characteristics’ you quote are not all blandly ‘the same kind of thing’; and ipso facto they need/require/deserve different kinds and degrees of protection.
On the basis of my religion I expect to be protected from things like being burned at the stake or stoned to death by those who disagree with me, whether the burners or stone-throwers are the state or private persons. I do not and should not expect that my beliefs will be protected from being challenged and questioned, even mocked.
‘Gay’ and related issues are somewhat ‘sui generis’ but are a great deal more like religiion, and having urges and desires to do something is definitely a whole different ballgame to the simple and neutral business of skin or hair colour or the underlying genes. Merely to have urges and desires to do something does not make it automatically OK to live out or act out the urges and desires. .
By comparing ‘gay’ to ‘being black’, Gays are claiming a right to the highest level of protection and a right to act like a totalitarian religion legally persecuting those who disagree with them. Because that comparison fails, they have been wrongly claiming an inappropriate level of protecction ad it is time for them to admit that and step down from their extreme position.
And in terms of the CofE it is time for those advocating SSM to realise that there is no sin in disagreeing with the LGBT community and that the Church is not obliged to grant them inappropriate protection.
Ian Paul @ 8 July: 8:06 am
I too don’t have sufficient knowledge of the detail of the legislation, but integral is it’s human rights, (teleological underpinning-which is, at law, accepted), and concomitant immutability.
And of course that is *exactly* why it is problematic making an argument for one immutable approach to human sexuality and relationships based on a particular reading of texts thousands of years ago.
Unlike the laws of Britain today, those texts happen to be scripture. By failing to make that distinction in this context, you show pretty clearly that you are not a believer.
Andrew has not read any portion of what I wrote, which said that arguments and perspectives (rather than people) are winners; that happy are the truth loving people who cheer on the truth to victory and care about its victory; and that if he does not care even about the truth what on earth does he care about.
Andrew represents caring about the truth as some immature playground eccentricity. One should be far more ”sophisticated” than that, I guess is what is being said. Right. Sophistication, then, certainly has the decided advantage of involving no brainwork. When James Dyson has his vacuum cleaner formula, presumably it is immature eccentricity that makes him insist that his formula is preferable to the theory that there is a tiny man inside the vacuum cleaner making it all work.
I’ve read every bit of what you wrote Christopher.
You deal only in binaries. Things are either true or false in your world.
Is it true that Beethoven is a better composer than Brahms? Or is that false?
Is it true that red wine is good for you? Or is it false?
I know that it is true that some of the same sex relationships I have encountered are truly blessed by God.
Ian, we’re off on a serious tangent here, but I’m not sure protected characteristics rely on being immutable. Pregnancy isn’t immutable. Far from it, it’s very, very mutable (inherently so). So too marriage and religion.
Computing is also based on binaries. Asserions that are meaningful are always either true or false. That is another binary. Questions are often to be answered with reference to a spectrum between two poles. The twoness of the poles is a binary.
Which of these sentences 1-3 do you affirm, and which do you deny?
But what you are noticing is that I say that at least some issues are straightforward, and others not. Whereas you do not allow simplicity anywhere, which is a totalitarian, dogmatic and fundamentalist position.
“Whereas you do not allow simplicity anywhere, which is a totalitarian, dogmatic and fundamentalist position.”
Once again you make statements with zero evidence. For someone who is supposedly evidence based you keep doing this Christopher.
I allow simplicity in all kinds of areas. And if you can show, by evidence, that I do not, then please go ahead.
What is abundantly clear is that human sexuality is not a straightforward matter and only a fool would say it was.
But I did go to a debate when I was studying A level music about whether Beethoven was a better composer than Brahms and by a clear show of hands at the end of the debate Brahms won. So surely that must be the end of the matter? I mean you say that debate is there to clarify what is true and what is false. So surely Brahms must truly be the better composer.
I agree that this discussion is futile. The problem is with the iniquitous category of hate speech, not what characteristics should be protected by such laws against peacable critiques.
In law Parliament has made clear that hate speech directed against someone on the grounds of their sexual orientation is a crime. That is statute law, there are no grounds to challenge it as Parliament is supreme and the courts have to follow its laws
T1, I am well aware that Parliament has legislated that ‘hate speech’ is in certain circumstances illegal. That does not mean it is a coherent category or that Parliament is correct to legislate against it, does it?
Matters of taste have not ever been held to be cler cut – by definition. But Andrew seems determined to come across as not bright enough to realise that millions of issues are not matters of gtaste anyway, making the point about taste irrelevant.
And Christopher you seem determined to come across as not bright enough to realise that I was not making a point so much about taste there but about debate – which you claim is the means by which winners and losers are established.
Of course many things are a matter of simple binary true/false. But human sexuality is not one of them. It is far more complicated. As every report about the matter ever written has clearly established.
If you wish to have a better understanding of the complexities of the Global South might I commend a remarkable three part series about Band Aid/live Aid currently on BBC iplayer. Extremely moving and extremely perceptive about the complexities of government, poverty, and the power of debate when it comes to establishing truth. Truth is at least two eyed.
Now you are determined to come across as not bright enough to ‘get’ that if someone’s position is that ‘at least some issues are straightforward’ that means that they already knew that there were many that were not – quite obviously.
That comment doesn’t quite follow the argument Christopher but thanks. Enough said now.
Yet another fruitless exchange. Can’t you guys take this offline somewhere? It really spoils the blog.
I don’t know where Brett Murphy is getting his information on St Nicholas from – being a former member of clergy in a diocese doesn’t qualify you to speak on every church within it, even if you’ve visited it once or twice – I certainly wouldn’t feel qualified to speak on the situation at churches in my former diocese, even if I’d stepped in to preside there one Sunday, let alone from visiting once or hearing rumours – but the St Nicholas church website shows regular services – at least two every week, including a weekly eucharist, and looking at diocesan comms it looks like they had multiple baptisms and confirmations and ‘receptions’ into the Church of England (whatever that entails) this Easter – so I think it’s unfair to say it’s got no congregation, even if it is in between clergy (like many churches are these days).
Aren’t receptions into the Church of England what you do for Roman Catholics, Church of Scotland folk etc. who want to become Anglicans?
I think we need a Venn diagram for that.
PC1
Looking into that – it might help …..
The Christian doctrine of humanity, is conditional upon and conditioned by the doctrine of God and the doctrine of revelation.
Or, we are just(in) being wise in our own eyes. And entering through a false ‘Portal’ at the heart centre of Welbyian pronouncements.
What Welby will be.
Que? Surah! Surah!
The future’s not ours to see,
Inshallah, shallah.
The doctrine of revelation encompasses the doctrine of scripture.
‘It is all revelation or it is nothing’ my friend a retired dentist.
If it is only a human construct, or if it is part of God, and we decide which part according to our world view philosophy, we are our own gods, unbelievers in the God who reveals Himself reliably and humanity in it’s fallen, unbelieving, rebellios state
As for ‘chronoligical snobbery’ here is a link to the CS Lewis Institute:
https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/resources/c-s-lewis-on-chronological-snobbery/
Lewis was opposed to liberal theology and Bultmann and his followers. In short, he was opposedpposition to presuppositional anti-supernatural closed- material world -systematic -views.
It is also clear that T1 knows nothing of the canons of construction employed by the independent Judiciary in interpreting and apply statute which has been much to the fore in recent years, much to the chagrin of legislators.
No judge can overrule what is clearly stated in statute and plenty of judges have convicted and jailed those who have committed homophobic hate crimes
T1,
Your ignorance of the legal system is on display, Welby may use a different word.
On what grounds? In the UK parliament and statute is sovereign and judges must follow statute law
That is convention only, and small-scale circumscribed convention at that.
If you think conventions – which after all change from era to era and from location to location – can be the bottom line and/or are infallible, then you are both fundamentalist and unreflective/not employing thought.
T1, Keep digging the hole you are in. This is basic to the English and Wales legal system and Constitutional and Administrative law. Do you really not understand or are you being deliberately obtuse?
An example outside your one dimensional self interest, would be the courts and parliament at odds in relation to immigration. Canons if construction comes into play in the interpretation of statute law, by the Courts.
And how about the Courts involvement in defining male and female?
But I’m done with this aspect. Maybe a GCSE course would help you to understand.
No it isn’t, if judges interpret statute in a way Parliament dislikes Parliament will just change the statute wording so the judges have no choice to follow what Parliament wants
Clearly you don’t have a clue. In the UK Crown in Parliament and the Statute law it makes is sovereign not judges. Judges can make common law but only where statute law does not already cover the matter.
Any conflict over immigration is because of the Human Rights Act Statute the Blair parliament passed which protects some immigrants from deportation, the HRA of course by the same fashion gives even further protections to gays and lesbians and trans (also now protected by the Equality Act statute).
Yes, T1/Simon is basically right that in the UK
“On what grounds? In the UK parliament and statute is sovereign and judges must follow statute law” Judges do occasionally however get to say that an Act of Parliament is so contradictory to other laws that it should not be accepted; and Parliament doesn’t always accept the judges’ advice in such cases.
Parliament can indeed pass laws which disagree with God – the laws establishing the CofE are a major example. In such cases Christians are supposed to say, with Peter in Acts 5v29 “We must obey God rather than men”.
Because according to the NT God has actually chosen to conquer the world and build his kingdom in a voluntary/non-coercive way rather than by creating ‘Christian states’, it is in fact legitimate for Parliament to pass laws tolerating the beliefs and resulting deeds of people who are not Christian. The laws permitting SSM are a case very much in point. But such laws should ideally tolerate pluralism, and not eg enforce SSM on groups like Christians who have different beliefs and should be entitled to uphold and practice those different beliefs and their resulting different practices.
Christians can and should respect the beliefs of others and the resultant practices like SSM – but they cannot and should not agree with such unChristian practices, they can and should speak against them, and should very much NOT import those practices into the Church. If that brings us into conflict with Parliament it will be because Parliament has unwisely passed a law less plurally tolerant tha it should have been…..
T1 and Stephen L.
You both have no to little inderstanding of the balancing of the Separation of Powers in the Constition including the independent Judiciary with it’s canons of construction interpretation of statute. There is a long and continuing history, where the Courts have to all intents blocked Parliament by their interpretation which then forms a legal precedent at common law. It may result in Parliament having to pass amended legislation.
The question of the laws of land through statute or common law and their relationship to Christianity, is a separate one.
Neither of you would pass law degree exams.
Geoff – There is no Separation of Powers in the UK, we are not the US and have no written constitution for our judges and Supreme Court to uphold.
In the UK Crown in Parliament is sovereign and our judiciary must obey and follow whatever statute laws Parliament has passed which have been signed into law by the monarch. Parliament can amend laws if it agrees with judges it should do so but is not obliged to do so.
I have passed law exams
T1,
There is a separation of powers. The Executive, The Legislature (Commons +HoL) and Independent Judiciary, checks and balances.
Please that you agree that the Courts interpret statutes forming common law. (It is a movement from your earlier pronouncements, above and a contradiction of them. Not sure which law exams you have passed and the validating institute.
No there is fusion of powers more than separation of powers. Parliament makes our statute laws, the Crown approves them and via its government implements and enforces them.
The courts make common law and yes interpret statute but the judiciary cannot contradict statute. Even if it interprets statute in a way Parliament did not intent Parliament will then amend that statute so its original intention is restored to the legislation. UK judges can review acts of the executive to see if they are within its powers, they cannot overrule statute law in the way US judges can overrule US laws passed by the President and Congress if they believe they contradict the written US constitution
T1,
We are talking about the UK uncodified constitution,not the USA constitution, a Constiturion centuries in the making, which you have given no indication of understanding it’s history and development in its own checks and balances, separation of powers and conflicts even up to the present day.
And no parliament can bind a subsequent parliament. Your comments here are simplistic reductionism to support your own purposes, it seems.
The UK has no written constitution like the US, the UK constitution is based on parliamentary sovereignty. No judge in the UK can overrule the will of parliament in statute law which you clearly fail to understand. No parliament can bind a subsequent parliament no but no judge can bind any parliament
T1,
The UK, has a written constitution. It is however not codified. Another basic error. It is good that you are now arguing against yourself! And climbed down from your original pronouncements.
Bye.
Wrong, the UK has no written constitution, thus whatever laws are passed by Parliament and signed by the King are unchallengeable
T1,
Sigh.
Maybe this will get you out of your basic error.
But as you can’t stand to be corrected it is doubted.
https://consoc.org.uk/the-constitution-explained/the-uk-constitution/#Is-the-constitution-of-the-united-kingdom-written-down
Geoff – in absence of a written “Capital-C-Constitution” like that of the USA, T1/Simon is essentially right that Parliament can pretty much enact whatever it wants, and the powers of the UK Supreme Court are very limited compared to the USA equivalent. We do not have a precise ‘Separation of Powers’ as in the USA.
Like other human governments, the UK Parliament can occasionally pass bad laws. From a Christian viewpoint it is a bad law if it commands Christians to do what our God has forbidden. The Christian reaction to that, as per the supposed ‘first pope’ in Acts 5v29, is that we must obey God rather than man. In the UK this issue is somewhat confused by one particular bad law which has ‘established’ the CofE, and T1 seems to be all over the place and rather incoherent on the implications of that situation.
As I understand it, God has given Christians two simple instructions – on the one hand, “Obey God rather than Man”; on the other hand, “Be subject to the state authorities”. The reconciliation of these seemingly contrary requirements is that when we must disobey the state we nevertheless ‘remain subject’ by accepting martyrdom.
In the current disputes on sexuality “Obeying God rather than man” means that the Church should reject SSM for its members. We then need to work out a coherent stance for an appropriate wider approach in a ‘plural’ society in which our beliefs should not be compulsory.
You cannot possibly be treating ‘sexuality’ as one single issue? Or saying that I or anyone is treating it in a binary way? It comprises hundreds of issues, many of which are eminently suitable for being so treated. Like – does emphasis on sex cause denominations to shrink or grow on average and by and large (two options). Like – And has the sexua revolution increased or diminished family stability on average and by and large – again, there are two options. Many such questions are as clear cut as they can be quite apart from being binary.
T1,
Sigh.
Maybe this will get you out of your basic error.
But as you can’t stand to be corrected it is doubted.
https://consoc.org.uk/the-constitution-explained/the-uk-constitution/#Is-the-constitution-of-the-united-kingdom-written-down
Thanks for confirming I was right. Your link says ‘ The UK constitution can be altered relatively easily by the government of the day, meaning it changes more frequently than many other constitutions. It is often said that the UK Parliament is ‘sovereign’. This parliamentary ‘sovereignty’ means that Parliament can make or unmake any law, without being limited by a constitutional text.’
T1/Simon
no matter how ‘sovereign’ the UK Parliament it is NOT sovereign over God and God’s people must obey God rather than man. And therefore Christians (and therefore the CofE) MUST reject homosexuality and same-sex-marriage.
We at least agree on Parliamentary sovereignty then that Geoff is wrong, even if of course I will never agree with you on PLF and the established church
Sigh and sigh.
T1 you have constantly as is your wont consistently failed to read and follow the context.
1 the context of the Constitution of the UK
1.2 Separation of powers, with checks and balances
1.3 the independent judiciary interpreting statute forming legal precedent common law, which may require new legislation.
1.4 The Constitution is written, but it is not codified.
2. The context of this thread where you have failed to distinguish between civil law and criminal law and their remedies of sanctions.
3. The context of Christianity and the doctrines, of God, of Revelation, of scripture, of humanity and relationship between the them and the state, their morals and ethics. Teleological eternal conflict.
1
I have shown you Crown in Parliament is sovereign in the UK and the judiciary cannot overrule a statute passed by Parliament and signed by the King as unconstitutional
T1,
For the record, I am not wrong on matters of thes Constitution, matters on which you are in error. You have not shown me anything I did not know nor argued against.
What you have shown is more of yourself and your manner of discource and argumentation and avoidances that I find to be a travesty of Christianity, of political, of legal, of intellectual advocacy: a cartoon caricature of the CoE creedal beliefs and doctrines.
Welby has assiduously avoided being questioned, not by secular journalists, but evangelicals in public forums who might ask him the question: “Given that the Church of England believes Mosaic Law is divinely given; given its clear and strong condemnation of man lying with man for sexual gratification; and given that human nature without Christ is the same today as then, how can you push for the blessing of same-sex sexual relations?”
Welby was astute in avoiding such scenarios, but a bit thick in lettig himself be used by Satan.
Evangelicals have consistently avoided the question why they remain in the established church of a nation where same sex marriage is legal and whose Synod voted by majority for PLF (which they have an opt out from and is still not Same Sex Marriage in Church) if they are so vehemently anti same sex relationships? Sooner or later the question will be forced, PLF is here to stay, if you refuse to accept that there is the door and off you go to your nearest Baptist, Pentecostal or Independent evangelical church where you can reject same sex couples to your hearts content. However the C of E will be taking your building back.
Jesus of course never rejected same sex couples, he did reject divorce except for spousal adultery which the C of E already performs in its churches.
And of course the Church of England is not subject to the Mosaic Law as it is described by Anton above. No Christians are.
What Mosaic law? Christians refer to the New Testament only here, including the firm levitical roots of 1 Cor 6.9. The proposal is to reject New Testament teaching.
Christopher you really really have trouble following an argument. Did you actually not read Anton’s comment?
They already did that when the C of E allowed women priests in contravention of Paul’s teachings. If your focus is absolute adherence to what Paul not just Jesus says you should have left the C of E long ago as many high church Anglo Catholics in Forward in Faith went Roman Catholic or Orthodox after Synod voted for women priests and bishops
I necer siad tht the church was under Mosaic law. Are you distorting what I said by accident or deliberately?
Evangelicals in the CofE face the major inconsistency that the NT very positively does not teach ‘established (or similar)’ churches and very positively teaches a different way of doing things. Bluntly, if you believe the Bible you should not believe in any form of ‘state-entangled’ church. Because of that state entanglement the CofE faces pressure to conform to the state in various ways – and ipso facto go against God.
Sadly you are probably right that the modern English state will not accept a church which rejects SSM. And the evangelicals will be forced to leave and if what’s left tries to function as a national church it will wither away and we’ll be left with a few impressive museum buildings. Disestablishment will be the only way to prevent that; but not enough of the CofE will realise that, so you’re “DOOMED!!”
Yes, but then the ‘official’ or ‘establishment’ faction that accepts SSM will soon wither and die. Not mourned – but the buildings and heritage would be in danger of being scandalously wasted.
It won’t, polling shows under 50s in England are more pro same sex marriage than over 50s, the same trend amongst Anglicans.
Of course PLF is not same sex marriage anyway, it was a compromise which evangelicals still have an opt out from
The Church of England has £8 billion in assets, is one of the largest landlords in the country and large amounts invested in stocks and shares. It can more than afford to survive even with small congregations and as a liberal Catholic dominated church with a few open evangelicals too like the US Episcopal or SEP church even if conservative evangelicals left. It will also remain the church with national cathedrals and which organises royal weddings, state funerals, leads involvement in coronations and national memorial services etc and has no need to ever disestablish
T1
I have responded to your comments on the constitution above as again you do not read in context drawing out points that suit your predetermined error.
As far as the CoE is concerned it’s future does not depend on its financial assets, ever. You are a poor reader of history and scripture if you believe that.
As for evangelicals, you don’t even have any idea of what the evangel is, and your beliefs are well outside the CoE’s and RC. A cult of one.
Don’t know how you ever got through confirmation classes, if you had them. A travesty of the CoE, of Christian creedal orthodoxy.
The wedge is far from thin, it is thick. Liberal theology is a different religion.
T1/Simon
I think you will be shocked how quickly even £8 billion will disappear with the bills for upkeep of buildings; especially as without the evangelicals there won’t be much attractive message to bring people in.
Stop lying, Troll1. I have regularly answered those questions and so have others.