On Wednesday at about a quarter to five, the House of Bishops released a very significant statement, following their meeting the previous week in which they spent six and a half hours discussing the next (and final?) steps in the LLF process. The timing was odd; my understanding was that they were planning to release the statement on Thursday, but a newspaper had had sight of the documents from the Faith and Order Commission (FAOC, chaired by Dr Robert Innes, the bishop in Europe) and so their statement was released early.
There is much to note in the statement itself; there will be more to say when the FAOC documents and legal advice which informed their discussion are published. It is worth reflecting on why they are now (at last) so radically changing direction. But it will also be important to ask why we have got here after the launch of LLF in 2017, and the Shared Conversations prior to that.
In a nutshell: this looks to me very much like the end of the process. It is a momentous statement.
The Statement
In the opening section, the statement comments:
The PLF are a set of prayers, readings and liturgical material which, for the first time, enable same-sex couples to come to church for public prayers of dedication, thanksgiving and asking for God’s blessing as part of a regular church service.
The phrase I have emphasised illustrates the petard on which the House hoisted themselves in this phase of the LLF process. Rather than authorising the PLF prayers, in October 2023 a very divided House decided to commend them. This makes the claim that the prayers do not do anything which is not already permitted in our liturgy, but makes a specific provision for it. A group of 11 bishops publicly dissented from this:
We welcome the fact that the House recognised the need for General Synod to exercise its legitimate responsibilities in relation to liturgy and doctrine under Canon B2. However, the decision to commend the suite of prayers for use in public services bypasses those procedures and does not permit the General Synod to consider the full significance of the prayers. Nor can Synod determine whether the bishops have fulfilled their intention (supported in February) that the final form of the prayers should not be “indicative of a departure from the doctrine of the Church of England”. Indeed, legal and theological advice the House has received suggest clearly to us that the decisions of the House may fall short of this commitment.
And the nub of the issue of process is that the House refused to release that ‘legal and theological advice’, despite repeated calls to do so. This has led to a serious corrosion of trust in the House of Bishops.
The next stage in the process involved considering three issues:
- Could the Prayers of Love and Faith now be used on their own, in a ‘bespoke’ (previously called a ‘standalone’) service?
- Could clergy now enter a same-sex (sexually active) civil marriage, rather than merely a civil partnership which was pledged to be celibate?
- And what provision would be made for those who could not in conscience accept these developments as consonant with Anglican doctrine?
The statement addresses these three questions, and does so immediately and concisely before expanding:
While final decisions will be made by the House in December, the bishops agreed in principle that both bespoke service and clergy same-sex marriage would need formal synodical and legislative processes to be completed before they could be permitted.As a result, they also concluded there is currently no need for a new code of practice setting out special arrangements such as Delegated Episcopal Ministry.
Stand alone services of blessing
Taking these in turn, the most significant is that the bishops have now agreed that Canon B2 is the only possible route for any further development of the Prayers. This is the canon that regulates the normal approval of new liturgy, and it contains two key phrases:
any form of service or amendment thereof approved by the General Synod under this paragraph shall be such as in the opinion of the General Synod is neither contrary to, nor indicative of any departure from, the doctrine of the Church of England in any essential matter…
and
Any approval, amendment, continuance or discontinuance of any form of service under paragraph 1 above shall not have effect unless the form of service or the amendment, continuance or discontinuance thereof is finally approved by the General Synod with a majority in each House thereof of not less than two-thirds of those present and voting.
Since it requires a two-thirds majority in all three Houses in Synod, and we have never, any time in the last ten years, had that kind of balance, (and likely will not on the future) it effectively means a dead end. This threshold is designed to ensure that controversial subjects have a clear majority consensus, something that the debates around same-sex marriage have never had.
What is encouraging is that, finally, the House of Bishops is doing the honest thing which seeks consensus and maintains unity. In June 2023, Andrew Goddard published three articles (here, here, and here, with a summary here) on the question, and concluded:
The way in which these prayers are introduced into the church will say a lot about the church we want to be. Are we committed to respecting good, long-established and inclusive processes for approving liturgy and deciding contentious matters in Synod? Are we embodying the Pastoral Principles such as ‘paying attention to power’ and enabling people to speak rather than silencing them? Are we providing the best legal protection for parish clergy? If we are, then the only defendable route has to be canon B2.
But here is the crazy thing: we have known the legal position on this since 2017. (A friend online, in response to the statement, said ‘I am relieved—but it feels as though I have just been told that the sky is blue after all.) The paper issued by the House of Bishops in 2017, GS 2055 (which you can read here) included an Annex of legal advice, and this set out the difficulties in affirming people in a same-sex relationship.
Canon B 30 summarises the doctrine of the Church of England in relation to marriage. The effect of Canon B 5.3, in the light of the doctrine described in Canon B 30, is that it would not be lawful for a minister to use a form of service which either explicitly or implicitly treated or recognised the civil marriage of two persons of the same sex as equivalent to holy matrimony. (emphasis original)
It also set out a possible way forward, which included the bishops needing to:
explain that it would be lawful for the clergy to use a form of service which celebrated the relationship between two persons of the same sex provided that the form of service did not explicitly or implicitly treat or recognise their relationship as equivalent to holy matrimony. (emphasis original)
Further legal advice made it clear what this would mean: anyone conducting such a service would need to preface it with an explanation of what marriage was in Anglican understanding, that this relationship was not marriage, and that any sexual relationship outside male-female marriage was regarded by the Church as sinful, and therefore should be met with a call to repentance. This would hardly make for a useable service.
Interestingly, in a previous paper to Synod from the Episcopal Reference Group, part of FAOC, it was noted that, in thinking about standalone services, the question of context was as important as content in determining whether or not this would be indicative of a departure from doctrine.
In coming to a judgment on whether the PLF are contrary to or indicative of a departure from the doctrine of the Church of England, the ERG is of the view that both text and context are relevant and belong together. The ERG recognises that the PLF in themselves (considered in the light of the Nine Theses), do not characterise the relationship of any given couple as marriage and do not, therefore, impinge directly upon the doctrine of marriage. Nonetheless, the contexts in which the PLF might be used could impinge upon this doctrine. This contextual risk is likely to be higher in a bespoke (i.e., standalone) service than in any use of the PLF within existing services.
That is, the service might use all the right language, and avoid all language which hinted at the relationship in question being a quasi-marriage—but if the context in which the blessing happened looked to those involved like a marriage, then this itself would be indicative of a departure, and therefore not permitted. (If it looks like a wedding duck, and quacks like a wedding duck, it is a wedding duck, even if the words ‘wedding’ and ‘duck’ are never used.) This is pertinent, since I noted in my open letter to Stephen Cottrell in July:
In York Minster a few months ago, Canon Tim Goode presided over an act of blessing a same-sex couple, in which the service appeared to be a special occasion, it involved the exchange of rings over which Tim prayed a pray of blessing (in secret, except for posting a picture on Facebook), and afterwards there was a celebration described as a reception. All this is outside the guidelines, and will have been experienced by those attending as a quasi-marriage celebration.
Tim has been in touch to clarify that the rings were blessed previously, not in the service, and that the reception followed the civil registration of the marriage. But using the PLF in this special way in such close proximity to the civil ceremony, and the two together being followed by a reception, raise precisely the kind of ‘context’ questions that the ERG paper is surely referring to.
If the FAOC papers that informed the bishops last week explores further this kind of thinking, then it could even put the continued use of the existing commended PLF prayers in question, precisely because of the reasons set out by the 11 dissenting bishops. So this might not just be a dead end in the discussion—it could even lead to a rethinking of decisions made so far.
Clergy entering Same-sex (civil) marriage
On this question, the HoB statement makes two comments, and it is important to note the difference. In its conclusion, it states:
Clergy same sex marriage – the legal advice to the House of Bishops explains that legislation would be needed to change the current position. The legislation would need to include a Measure (made by Synod and Parliament) as well as an amending Canon, both of which would require simple majorities in the three houses of Synod at final approval. (emphasis original)
This has worried some people, and perhaps will encourage others, that there is still hope for some move in a more inclusive direction. However, the earlier comment makes this much less definite:
Reflect further on the legal and theological advice and explore what formal legislative process – such as an amending canon and measure – would be required before clergy could be permitted to be in a same sex civil marriage. Until then the current guidelines would remain in place. (emphasis mine)
It is far from clear that any changes of canon through a measure would actually deliver this. From a legal point of view, once more the 2017 GS 2055 Annex comments explicitly in paragraph 12:
It is prima facie a breach of Canon C 26, read in the light of Canon B 30 (Of holy matrimony) (see above), for a clerk in Holy Orders to enter into a marriage with a person of the same sex. That is on the basis that by doing so, he or she is fashioning his life in a way that is inconsistent with the doctrine of Christ as expounded by Canon B 30 and making him or herself a bad example to the flock of Christ.
And this is not only legal, but common sense. And the idea that any of this could be changed by means of a simply majority is hotly contested. Professor Mark Hill, in his book, Ecclesiastical Law, states at para 2.26 that “A Canon which concerns worship or doctrine may not be submitted for Royal Assent unless it has received final approval in Synod with a majority in each house of not less than two-thirds of those present and voting”, citing the 1974 Measure and Brown v Runcie. Other authorities have said something similar.
Father and son Richard and Christopher Hays, in their book The Widening of God’s Mercy, argue in effect that the nature of God’s mercy in Scripture contradicts the consistent biblical teaching on marriage, and that we need to attend to the ‘mercy’ theme over against the teaching on marriage. They would thus argue for a kind of ‘pastoral accommodation’ which would allow clergy to enter same-sex marriage, despite it being contrary to the doctrine of the Church. But this goes against any kind of common sense understanding; the arguments of Hays and Hays are not convincing, not least because they have to claim that they understand the biblical notion of God’s mercy better than all the writers and teaching in Scripture including Jesus; and in the C of E we would surely look much more to the understanding of pastoral accommodation set out by Oliver O’Donovan. O’Donovan expounds this idea of ‘pastoral accommodation’ as a pastoral strategy in Christian ethics where the Church temporarily makes allowances for human weakness or immaturity, while still upholding the full moral ideal of the Christian life. The goal is that those who are thus accommodated should, in time, return to the unchanged teaching of Jesus—which would not work by allowing clergy to live in a way in obvious contradiction to the teaching of the Church which they promise both to teach and model.
If I have read the statement aright on these two issues, then for me, the lack of pastoral provision for those unhappy with the ‘direction of travel’ falls away, since the direction of travel appears to have reversed.
How did we get here
There are two other rather important comments in the statement which could easily be missed. First, there is a new commitment to openness and transparency:
The bishops reviewed advice both from the Church of England’s Legal Office and the Faith and Order Commission (all of which will be published in due course)…Although there remains a wide range of views within the House on questions of sexuality and relationships, there was strong consensus on the need for unity, transparency and proper process alongside pastoral care.
This is precisely what has been missing in the past, as the House has used Standing order 14 to meet in camera instead of in public as a House of the General Synod. This is a welcome commitment—but it immediately raises the question ‘How far will this go?’ Will we now see the previous legal and theological advice? Will we see full minutes from this meeting, including the voting, so we can see how much of a consensus there was?
And will we be told how we got into this mess in the first place? Whose idea was it that the details of discussion should be kept secret? Why did some bishops feel the need to dissent publicly? What was happening in the House all this time? Someone said to me yesterday that their bishop commented to the effect that ‘Actually, most of us want to go down this route [of openness, following legal and theological advice] a long time ago!’ So what prevented it?
The other fascinating comment in the statement relates to appointments:
They also agreed they would provide pastoral reassurance through: …A commitment that diocesan decisions around allocating resources, placement of ordinands and curates, or appointments, should not be affected by views held on LLF matters;
This must mean that no appointment, at any level, can be limited to those who will use or will encourage the use of the Prayers of Love and Faith—including episcopal appointments. That is, no diocesan process can now exclude any candidates who refuse to use them, and recommend that they are not used, and do not think this is a ‘thing indifferent’. And of course, all bishops should routinely be expected to believe, uphold, and teach the doctrine of the Church as it currently is.
We might, perhaps, reflect on why we have reached such a changed position now, after ten or more years of agonising, expensive, and divisive debate. (One liberal person commented to me yesterday on X ‘I thought the process might at least allow us to understand each other better—but it has just made us more divided.’) And it is truly bizarre that only now is the theological and legal work really being taken seriously. Tim Wyatt, in his discussion of the route to change, and the role of Martyn Snow when he was lead bishop, puts it rather well:
Ever since [Martyn] took on the PLF job halfway through the process, he has shown an admirable willingness to try and think things through properly rather than be governed by fear of a liberal backlash. Yes, it’s of course absurd that only now are we bothering to check in with our theological advisors on FAOC to see if our plans might contradict our doctrine—clearly this should have been done long, long before the bishops brought anything to synod back in 2023.
So why is this being taken seriously now, when it wasn’t before? There have been a multiplicity of factors: there is no doubt that discussion in the House of Bishops has been a good deal easier since Justin resigned/retired; and the absence of an archbishop who has been pushing the agenda for change must be important; the growing confidence of ‘orthodox’ bishops, including the 11 who dissented, and Andrew Watson’s courageous theological statement will have had an impact; and the careful campaigning of ‘orthodox’ groups like the Alliance and CEEC will also have made a difference and given ‘orthodox’ bishops confidence. Perhaps the most significant thing is that key liberal bishops, who have been pushing hard on this, have retired or will soon retire—Martin Seeley (Eds and Ips), John Inge (Worcester), Viv Faull (Bristol), and soon Steven Croft (Oxford).
Where do we go from here?
Many will be left with frustration and disappointment. As Christopher Landau commented on X:
Today’s surprising decisions from the House of Bishops on LLF underline how very, very poor this process has been for several years. The legal advice, concerning both ‘bespoke services’ and clergy in same-sex marriages, could and should have been articulated clearly years ago. Much pastoral and missional damage within the CofE and beyond could have been avoided—instead we seem to have enshrined uncertainty and disunity. And meanwhile LGBT Christians will rightly ask what happened to the ‘radical new Christian inclusion’ that was once promised.
So there is much damage to be repaired still—not least the sense of trust in the House of Bishops.
But perhaps, at last, we can now focus on things other than our internal dispute about marriage and sexuality. We can rest within that ‘consensus of the church‘:
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.’ (Belousek, Marriage, Scripture, and the Church p 52).
We can ensure we welcome all, and in particular walk with those who find the teaching of Jesus here challenging, but confident that he is our good shepherd whose teaching is life giving.
Buy me a Coffee
“All you peoples, clap your hands;
shout to God with joyful cries.
For the Lord, the Most High, is to be feared,
the great king over all the earth.” — Psalm 47:2-3
*love this*
Oh yes Mat – obviously the psalmist was writing exactly about this current situation.
Does your sarcasm really add anything?
Of course he/she wasn’t, but by that implicit standard, none of the Psalms should ever be used to make reference to current experience, and I know that you think that’s as ridiculous as I do. 😉
I found in this Psalm an encapsulation of my feelings, and assumed that others might feel similarly.
I think the use of psalms in this way is fraught with danger actually. How do you think Palestinians feel about some of the sentiments the psalmists express?
So you never recite them then?
I was being careful.
I chose Psalm 47 deliberately, partly because it is difficult to link a particular context that could be considered problematic in the way you describe (and indeed, are right to warn about), and partly because it links the joy of the believer to the (often lacking) fear of God.
You may disagree with how I feel, and critique me for being wrong, but to complain about my use of the Psalms in this way is very odd.
“So you never recite them then?“
Daily. But I never use them as proof texts or shove them in others faces when I happen to feel a certain as it isn’t a very sensitive thing to do.
Well, neither was Mat.
If only the bishops had acted out of fear of God, rather than desire to end a divisive and deceitful process which they themselves started! They need to read James 3:1 and tremble.
For 3000 years scripture has been taken by believers to reflect the mind of God with fidelity. Scripture is clear about this matter; it does not take thousands of words and thousands of hours to discern. No more than a single sheet of paper is needed, and even that is longer than the response Jesus gave in some theological disputes of his day.
Bishops who have promoted LLF take a large salary from the resources of the faithful – past and present – to spread heresy. They are parasites on the body of Christ, hypocrites who are letting themselves be used by the enemy. Let the faithful not shrink to use the strength of scriptural language to describe them. Deployed elsewhere, their salaries could have done great good in Christ’s cause.
The outside world is well aware that a liberal-dominated church doesn’t believe in anything. People understand that, instead of leading the world uphill, it is following the world downhill, lagging behind a little. Those looking for something different know they will not find it in liberal churches. Liberal Christianity fails to recruit significantly from non-Christians; it is parasitic on genuine Christianity and it is a cancer in the church. For that reason it will die. The only question is how much else it will take with it.
We now need to end the deceit of tacking any kind of blessing on to regular services, and ensure that ordinands and lecturers in theological colleges actually believe what the Bible says, and seek to live by it.
Honour to men like Vaughan Roberts and Sam Allberry. They understand Matthew 16:24 better than most of us.
No it won’t, if you want a conservative evangelical church you can already be Baptist, Pentecostal or Free Presbyterian. If you want a conservative Catholic church you can be Roman Catholic or Orthodox. If you want a liberal evangelical church you can be Methodist or Church of Scotland.
The Church of England and wider Anglican denomination is the only real option for liberal Catholics in the western world and plenty are still in it. They are willing to share it with conservative evangelicals but certainly will not let them take it over. Given the large assets and income and investments they have why should they anyway?
It’s even simpler, Simon. If you don’t agree with what the Bible says, don’t go to church.
Where in the Bible did Jesus oppose women priests and bishops? Where in the Bible did Jesus reject same sex couples in faithful unions?
As Jesus is God, and God is also Father and Holy Spirit, in plenty of places.
Simon, where did he reject the killing of Ukrainians, or the grooming gangs?
Christopher
Exodus 20.13
Luke 17.2
Those are general laws not specific to the case.
Just as other general biblical laws cover sexual immorality in general.
Where did Jesus say he was against photoshopping that included copyright infringement? Or against pyramid schemes?
Simon, it is so odd you continue to ask these basic questions. Jesus, like every other first century Jew we know of, affirmed marriage as between one man and one woman, because God had created humanity male and female for that purpose. Do you really not know that?
So as I said Jesus did not reject same sex couples in faithful unions, he just affirmed holy matrimony as between one woman and man for life. So LLF is entirely in accordance with that
There is only one thing more worthless and desperate and biased than an ‘argument’ from silence.
That is an ‘argument’ that it is significant that someone never mentioned something which was not even a thing in their culture and no-one else mentioned – or even conceptualised – either.
Those who call ancients to account for not having 21st century concepts (!) prove their own conceptual poverty – they know very little apart from their own culture and time.
And worse than all these is to think such a silence significant when what was said on closely related topics is diametrically opposed to what they would have liked.
Christopher
Not long ago you were criticising the first readers of Exodus for not having 21st century mindsets!
The first readers of Exodus long postdated the first hearers of the decalogue, and it was the latter that were relevant. However, in terms of science we know better. In terms of common sense, I am far less sure. In terms of knowing their own mindsets, they know better than us. So it is a complex, not simple, picture.
Simon ‘So as I said Jesus did not reject same sex couples in faithful unions, he just affirmed holy matrimony as between one woman and man for life.’
To affirm holy matrimony as between one man and one woman is to reject the possibility of same-sex sexual relations. That is what Jesus does.
Christopher
Again, your insistence the the original hearers of the Decalogue (how many centuries do you believe Deuteronomy predates Exodus) appears to be a red herring. Unless you believe that they had the superior scientific knowledge which you claim we now have?
[Then you misunderstand my point, which was that neither Deut nor Exo was centrally relevant but only a third text: the stone tablets. In fact, a fourth: the *original* stone tablets, not their replacements. And who knows for how much time such basic central laws were in place before even *those* appeared?
That makes the following a red herring: The dating of the documents is not at all dependent on what I think but rather on what those who have studied it most think. (Would that I were one of them.) Deut predates Exo, they say, by 100+ years. Doubtless, in addition, either or both may be composite texts. But if we are to say that Deut 5 precedes the Exo 20 Sinai account, that view is complicated by the fact that Deut 5 seems to refer *back* to such an account or narrative as something that is already taken for granted and known.]
To affirm holy matrimony as between one man and one woman is to reject the possibility of same-sex sexual relations. That is what Jesus does.
No it is not, Jesus never once even mentions same sex relationships. He was anti promiscuity in his words but that applies to heterosexuals as well
Er, Jesus doesn’t mention incest either. So are you claiming that he approves of that, or of anything else that he does not explicitly mention?
All first century Jews rejected same-sex sexual relations. That was one of THE four ethnical markers that set them apart from pagans. Paul is the same—but in a mixed context he needs to make that explicit.
For every Jew, ‘sexual immorality’ refers to all the prohibited relations in Leviticus.
Besides, Jesus explicitly says that marriage between one man and one woman arises from God’s creation of humanity as male and female. How can that not exclude same-sex relations?
Christopher
OK. But even if you believe that there were ‘original stone tablets’ do you think that their reception of the killing proscription would have aligned with the ethics of the 21st century Christian in the Global North.
I still don’t quite see how the reception of these tablets is more important than the reception of the Deuteronomy and Exodus texts? These latter are what formed the proto Jewish communities.
Incest is illegal under UK law so not relevant to its established church. Jews may have been anti same sex relationships but Christ created a new Christian church and never mentioned them, as long as they were faithful unions no reason to suppose he opposed them
Spot on ……agree with all of the above (black and white the the whole idea of blesssing same sex relationships is ‘heresy’. All Bishops who went along with it , quite frankly should be SACKED!
I see a new Donatist era on the horizon.
Just a call for taking personal responsibility for our spiritual mess and for repentance over what has been inflicted upon the sheep. A call for personal purity and holiness in our walk following Christ. Nothing heretical…just a rejection of deception and luke-warmness and a decision to stand up for the truth of the gospel…that kinda thing.
Or alternatively,
“For no one is cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.” – Lamentations 3
A great verse. The LLF process, and Shared Conversations before that, have indeed inflicted much grief. It now looks as though God is having compassion on this small part of his church.
Not quite how I see it.
https://www.psephizo.com/sexuality-2/what-sort-of-story-is-living-in-love-and-faith/comment-page-1/#comment-451878 records
• That although legal advice was prepared in September relating to the use of Canon B2 and Canon B5A (signaling this was when these routes became the “favourites” in terms of canonical processes) it was not shared with the College in September, the House in October, or Synod in November. This was despite all three of these meetings taking crucial votes on this important issue and Synod being told that nothing was being hidden. This advice perhaps included some of the stark risk assessment now published about these routes which indicates how weak the legal basis is for using B5A.
• Standalone services
The question of standalone services, a category that arose at some point last summer, remains one of the most contentious areas and where the answers now provided are particularly concerning.
It is now clear from the answer to questions 52-54 above, that a document entitled Prayers of Love and Faith: Authorisation for Experimental Use and Approval by the General Synod was prepared by the Legal Office in September 2023. It is stated elsewhere, in an answer which does not explicitly mention this document, that “The House of Bishops received a number of assessments of the issues involved in authorization or commendation of materials through different routes through 2023” (Q64, p.28) so the preparation of a paper specifically on this only in September would suggest that it was only at this point that serious attention was given to use of Canon B2 and, with that, the possibility of the use of Canon B5A for standalone services. This would fit with the update given to General Synod in July.
That same answer—to a question about whether “any of the assessment of routes for PLF standalone services summarised in the table on pp. 12-13 of GS 2346 (a) drawn up or (b) shared with the House of Bishops prior to the Synod debate in November”—continues to state that the House of Bishops “were not provided with an assessment of canonical routes specifically relating to standalone services until papers were circulated for their meeting in December. This is summarised in GS 2346”. This makes an interesting connection with the earlier answer about the September document which states that after being prepared in September it was “shared with members of the staff team and lead bishop September 2023 and circulated to the House of Bishops in December 2023”.
The lead Bishop is now the Archbishop of Canterbury. She is now reversing some of her own misbehaviour. Is it time for her to resign?
Well, that is an interesting question. As I noted previously, she both appears to value due process, but also was part of blocking this openness and transparency previously. The question is: under pressure from whom?
Does WYSIWYG apply? Not a good look, based on evidence detailed by Andrew Goddard.
Does trust come into consideration.
In a word, NO
You’re calling for the Abp of Canterbury to resign before she’s even enthroned? Talk about feeding the crocodile, nothing’s ever enough.
Well, I am not. But the House is now clearly reversed on the direction that Sarah herself has steered us in behind the scenes. So that in itself is very interesting.
The world can jolly well do what they like (and they will) on their way to hell in a hand cart.
Allowing the Church of England to Affirm, Condone, Assist, Support, Celebrate, Bless, Parody, Inflict, Imitate, those things that God forbids and rejects is a grave Sin which it needs to decide if it’s going to allow The world, The Flesh and The Devil to infect itself (The church) with.
Pandering to the spirit of the Age the way the church already has done has turned it Apostate. Has made it a den of Sin. Wrangling over going further into the pit has taken up a lot of time and energy and focus. But it is already decieving and leading many astray in their sins. it is already calling what God considers wicked as though it were good. Unless the tables are completely overturned and the Sinful ways are driven out and no longer treated as holy ways, of the temple will remain polluted and God will continue to be insulted. It is time to repent and be clear and make things right. Or just let the Apostate Church fall completely into Satan’s grip and be done with it. God can never be pleased at tidying up around the edges of Sin whilst leaving the Sins intact. Not only must Sin be exposed and rejected but the very appearance of what could be mistaken or construed as hidden sin must be rejected too. You have allowed the Evil One to shipwreck the C of E. It is full of wolves and goats and they need to be got rid off, along with their evil infiltrations. Who will stand up for Christ and start turning those tables over?
The Church of England IS partly a church of the world. It was established by the English King for starters in rejection of Papal authority as he wanted to divorce his first wife and remarry. It is a church which not only offers services but weddings, funerals and baptisms for any of its parishioners who want them. It is a church whose diocesan bishops and Archbishops serve in the House of Lords, which offers many Church of England primary schools and a few secondary schools too and a church whose Supreme Governor is King Charles III. It is also church of a nation where same sex marriage is legal.
If you don’t want to be in a church with any connection to the world and which rejects the values of the world, especially the western world, then find another denomination that is not Anglican and another church which is not C of E
Simon, with this new declaration perhaps it is time for you to leave the Church of England.
The question is what brought you into it in the first place when it held a 2000-year doctrine which you rejected.
Nope, I stand for the Church of England as established church and will never leave it. Reject that and its role as Catholic but Reformed church then it is you who should perhaps consider leaving it for another denomination
I have no loyalty to the Anglican system but simply go to the best congregation reasonably near me, which happens to be Church of England. Shenanigans like LLF have done a great deal to shake the vicar’s loyalty but only strengthened his faith in Jesus Christ, and for so long as he is not required to conduct wedding ceremonies between persons of the same sex then he will carry on taking a salary to preach the gospel. Which he does very effectively.
You avoided my question. Why did you join a denomination that held a 2000-year doctrine which you rejected?
Last time I checked the Church of England was 500 years old, only the Roman Catholic church is a Christian denomination that is 2000 years old
It’s more like 1500, but the Tudor settlements are around 500.
“I stand for the Church of England as established church and will never leave it.”
Would you leave it if it were disestablished?
Amen amen, come Lord Jesus
The whole debate has been an open wound since Jeffrey John was forced to stand down from his nomination as Bishop of Reading. Had that appointment gone ahead, we would not be in this mess and would still have a broad Church of England. The statement from the HofB has done nothing to heal the wound and has in fact made it rather worse.
I hope the statement will be given the same contempt that the Bishops take note paper of 2017 was given. But if it stands, then the broad Church of England that has been a feature of national life for the last century is now effectively over, and has become a small evangelical sect that the majority in the current CofE have not voted for.
The statement yesterday by GAFCON also presents a significant problem for conservatives in the CofE. Which Anglican Communion will those conservatives want to belong to, and how will that belonging then be expressed if they choose not to stick with the Anglican Communion as currently constituted?
We are now in a mess and the only people who will be happy with it are the minority – conservative evangelicals.
No, it started long before Jeffrey John.
You think that due process (which protects against abuse of power), theology, and legal advice should be ‘treated with contempt’?
You think that having clergy who actually uphold their ordination vows, and life by the teaching of Jesus, turns us into a ‘small evangelical sect’?
GAFCON doesn’t create any problems for this evangelical. I am a happy member abiding by Canon B30, and the other doctrine of the Church. I hope all my fellow clergy feel the same.
And I think you will find that the bishops voted for all these things by a large majority, which rather falsifies your claim!
Andrew,
I am a conservative. I lament the situation we are now in.
The huge waste of time and money. The destruction of trust in the bishops. The broken promises to people of all convictions.
No decent minded person can take pleasure in the distress now faced by progressives.
I am relieved LLF is over. That is all.
Nope. LLF remains very much in place and prayers for same sex couple parishioners who want them within services will continue to take place in every church whose PCC has approved them, which includes ours
Quite. This is a point which unseemly rejoicing over shafting our queer brethren has seemed to miss.
Indeed and be assured we certainly won’t be backing down on it
Our queer brethren? Who exactly are they, Penelope? Those of our brethren who aren’t quite right in the head?
The language ‘our queer…’ is stratospheres away from the New Testament, and from general politeness too, and yet the supposition is that it is agreed language.
Whence this supposition?
Really, Christopher, in what way?
Perhaps you should read the NT scholar Halvor Moxnes. I think I have suggested this before, but you seem unwilling to read scholars you don’t confirm your own ideologies.
Halvor Moxnes says that this use of ‘queer’ is something that it can be taken that everyone agrees on???
Try reading him Christopher instead of making trite assumptions.
That is the dodgy claim I highlighted. If he does claim that, he is obviously wrong by a substantial margin. Whereas, if he does not claim that, he is irrelevant to the discussion.
Penelope CD, it is an empty rhetorical trick to drop into the conversation the name of a theologian whose views accord with yours, fail to summarise those views, and simultaneously imply that anybody who doesn’t read him is unqualified for discussion. Until or unless you summarise Moxnes’s views (as anybody who genuinely understands them could), it is perfectly reasonable to ignore what you say in this subthread.
Stephen Potter demonstrates how to use the mere name of a scholar ‘tellingly’ in his Lifemanship/Oneupmanship books.
Anthony
Christopher doesn’t understand how language works nor recognise scholarship which doesn’t accord with his own ideologies. I have paid him the compliment of reading WATTTC (grim in my view). Not only reading but buying. He could try reading something which stretched his understanding. Even if he hates it.
Anthony, why on earth should we listen to someone asserting fictions about others that they could not possibly know the truth-level of anyway, and then to boot supplying no evidence?
And Moxnes is a NT scholar not a theologian.
“Anthony, why on earth should we listen to someone asserting fictions about others that they could not possibly know the truth-level of anyway, and then to boot supplying no evidence?”
Exactly why there is little point in any debate with you Christopher.
‘Shafting our queer brethren’ is perhaps an unfortunate choice of metaphor…!
Ian
It was deliberate 🙂
No faster way to empty a church, I would think.
Happily if my vicar is replaced by someone who holds these views then I am free to quietly leave. No amount of falsely so-c alled hate speech legislation can do anything about that.
Destruction of trust in the Bishops?
I can’t help noticing that those who complain most about this seem to always be the people who never liked the Bishops in the first place. It’s all a bit disingenuous.
Nor do I understand why the Bishops get singled out when the behaviour of groups like CEEC has been so appalling throughout (but then we’re not supposed to talk about that…).
Yes, some of those who are most vociferously opposed are basically Baptist or Free Church Presbyterians anyway who reject Bishops anyway rather than members of a Catholic but Reformed church
And now GAFCON has flounced prematurely. It would be hilarious if it didn’t harm our queer siblings.
Hardly. A 54-page reports came to Synod two years ago on the corrosion of trust, especially in and amongst the bishops. Written by a bishop. And certainly not about one small sector of the C of E.
As I say, we’re not allowed to talk about it.
There’s a lot more that we are not allowed to talk about thanks to iniquitous so-called hate speech laws. As Islam rises, persons of your sexuality who supported those laws will come to regret them.
Peter, why are you belatedly surprised at the huge waste of time and money? That was intrinsically obvious from the start (and often commented on in utter lament).
Thank you for your sensitivity Peter. You have always been very careful about that.
Hardly, the Church of England now has women priests, women bishops and now even a woman Archbishop, plus prayers for same sex couple parishioners who want them within services. 100 years ago that would have been unbelievable for the Church of England, just holy matrimony remains for heterosexual couples for life which conservative evangelicals in the C of E would require as would the few remaining conservative traditionalist Anglo Catholics left in the C of E (though many of those already left to become Roman Catholic or Orthodox once women priests and bishops came in)
According to Clifford Hill, The Reshaping of Britain, the Jeffrey John thing could have gone either way (R Williams had actually not even been consulted about the appointment of this suffragan; this was another interregnum example of ‘When the cat’s away…’, of which yesterday’s statement is another example), and that it went the way it did was, at the end of his term of office, attributed by Abp to him (CH). In part or in whole, I don’t know.
Actually, I’m not sure that conservative evangelicals are happy with things as they are now. LLF seems to have been a very long and very expensive way of alienating just about everybody.
So the House of Bishops confirm that prayers for same sex couples will continue in Church of England churches that wish to do them, so PLF stands. The Synod clear majority vote in all 3 houses for prayers for same sex couples thus stands absolutely.
Now canon B2 may now be required for bespoke services to be approved by Synod but services for same sex couples within services still do not require B2. The simple majority for them stands and C of E churches across the country whose PCC have approved them will continue to hold prayers within services for same sex couple parishioners who want them. That may not be marriage in church but for same sex couple Anglicans in England it remains a big step forward.
Significantly too it has been affirmed by the bishops that just a simple majority of Synod is needed for C of E clergy to be in same sex marriages authorised as legal under UK law
Nope. You need to read the FAOC reports when they come out.
Errr which bit do you think it wrong there?
The vote in Synod was too close to call. Questions have already been raised about them, not least by 12 dissenting bishops. And there is every chance that, as I point out above, the full reports, which have never properly been considered or published, will raise fresh questions about whether they should ever have been commended.
Of course they should have been commended, the C of E is established church, has parishioners who are same sex couples and prayers within services were voted for by all 3 houses of Synod. Now conservative evangelicals have ensured no same sex marriage in churches and not even bespoke services of blessing without 2/3 majority of Synod.
If however they then tried to overreach that and get even prayers for same sex couples in services reversed where PCCs accepted them, that would be taken as a declaration of war on them by liberal Catholics who would respond equally vehemently at Synod and refuse to equally give conservative evangelicals an inch and start pressing for bespoke services again and even same sex marriages. Hence Archbishop Mullally will make clear the prayers of love and faith remain as commended, even if bespoke services or same sex marriages in churches of the C of E will not happen without a 2/3 majority of Synod agreeing
Simon ‘Now conservative evangelicals have ensured no same sex marriage in churches and not even bespoke services of blessing without 2/3 majority of Synod.’
You appear to still be out of touch with reality! It is not ‘conservative evangelicals’ (whoever they are) who have done this; it was the House of Bishops, and as I understand it, by very clear majorities in each vote.
Are you claiming that there has been a takeover of the House? If so, it is news to me.
No, what has happened is the House, without Justin Welby, are now taking seriously theology, legal obligations, and due process.
Do you think these are bad things which should be set aside…?
The same respect for these things might well raise questions about the PLF, since it is clear that the legal advice did not support their ‘commendation’.
If the House of Bishops alone decided and there were no other houses in Synod they would almost certainly vote 2/3 for bespoke services for same sex couples. It is only conservative evangelicals having more than 2/3 of the vote in the houses of clergy and laity means bishops have had to park plans for bespoke services for same sex couples for now as they do not have the votes in all 3 houses for them.
There is no way though the House of Bishops will go back on PLF within services, nor will Mullally allow any review of it. To do so would be see open revolt from liberal Catholics in Synod and rightly so and would also likely see an intervention from the Starmer government, perhaps even to impose same sex marriage on the C of E as established church whether it likes it or not via legislation passed through Parliament using the Labour government and signed into law by the King as its supreme governor. Starmer will accept a PLF compromise from the established church, he won’t accept or allow a conservative evangelical takeover of it
‘If the House of Bishops alone decided and there were no other houses in Synod they would almost certainly vote 2/3 for bespoke services for same sex couples.’
The statement this week shows that is clearly not the case.
Sorry, conservative evangelicals having more than 1/3 of the vote
39 Bishops still rock solid in favour of PLF is more than 2/3 and more than enough for bespoke services. As I also said in the unlikely event conservative evangelicals got a majority in Synod and tried to reverse even PLF I would expect the Starmer government to legislate in Parliament with its Labour majority to impose same sex marriage on the Church of England as established church with stand alone services whether Synod liked it or not and get the King as its Supreme Governor to approve it. Starmer wants the C of E to be a liberal established church, he certainly does not want it taken over by populist conservative evangelicals, many sympathetic to Farage and Reform
No.
The minority who block the will of the majority (Standalone services for gay couples were passed by Synod) on a legal technicality, and seek to impose the minority position on everyone else, are delusional if they think this is the end of the sexuality debate in the Church of England.
Defying democratic will (and repelling most decent English people in the process) is merely ignoring the reality of gay and lesbian people who won’t go away.
Please show more respect. The refusal to let people follow their consciences on these issues is what is causing disunity. If you don’t want to bless gay couples, just don’t. I can respect that conscience. But it’s wrong to impose a minority view against the will of Synod, and that will simply perpetuate the running sore and debate.
This is of course not over at all. Most bishops would favour standalone blessing services if they weren’t held legally hostage by the minority who want to dominate the consciences of everyone else.
Meanwhile, huge numbers of English people are disgusted when they are told that straight people have a right to be married in their parish churches, but gay couples (their friends, their daughters, their workmates, their neighbours) cannot. It brings the heart of the gospel into disrepute.
The heart of the gospel is LOVE.
May God bless you, and let us pray for unity in the Church, and priestly obedience to Archbishop Sarah as she, along with most other bishops, press for greater inclusion for LGBT people. This week they may recognise that Synod is still held hostage by the two-thirds issue, and the minority’s power to dominate the majority, but most bishops seek far more grace and affirmation for gay and lesbian couples.
So no, you may want the sexuality debate to be over, but be realistic – that’s really not going to happen. LGBT people are courageous, decent, valued members of their communities. We are everywhere in the Church. We live our caring, loving lives. And it’s joyful, and God blesses us.
When did Synod ‘pass standalone services’? Never that I remember.
Those who believe in the doctrine of the Church ‘according to the teaching of our Lord’ are not a minority.
Jesus taught that marriage is between one man and one woman, because of God’s creation of humanity ‘male and female’ (see Matt 19). Are you claiming that the teaching of Jesus is unloving?
Is obedience to Jesus unloving?
And does God bless churches that reject the teaching of Jesus on this? Every single one of them is in rapid collapse. Why do you think that might be? Is it a sign of God’s blessing?
Synod voted by simple majority for prayers for same sex couples, just not by the now required 2/3 majority. The C of E is also established church of the nation with over £8 billion in assets and large investment and rental income. It does not need rapidly growing congregations who give large collections and donations in the sense that Baptist, Pentecostal or independent evangelical churches do (as in secular terms they are in effect small or medium sized business not the national state faith and church of the nation like the Church of England).
PLF still reserves holy matrimony to heterosexual couples ideally for life anyway and conservative evangelical churches can also opt out of it if they wish
‘It does not need rapidly growing congregations’. No, in your vision of the Church, as long as it has money, it does not need congregations. How odd!
Apologies – I was conflating standalone services with those where the blessing is part of a service – for which there was indeed synod majority approval.
On a majority believing that Jesus restricted marriage to straight people only: I think surveys have indicated that a majority of Anglicans in England don’t believe that Jesus would say or do that if He was living today.
You need to look at the context of the passage where, in passing, Jesus talks about marriage. He’s talking about fidelity, not gay marriage at all. Whether your marriage is gay or straight, the key thing is fidelity.
Clearly he was only commenting in the context of straight marriage because in the cultural setting and lives of his listeners only straight marriage existed in the Jewish religion at that time. And his reference to union is lovely.
But Jesus doesn’t say gay sex and marriage in 2025 will be bad. He doesn’t mention it. He doesn’t mention the benefits of computers either. But it doesn’t make them wrong.
We can’t just take snippets as universals on their own. That’s what fundamentalists do. We have to read the whole gospel in the context of the primary imperative to open to God’s LOVE, and we have to exercise God-given conscience and be open to what the Holy Spirit tells us today.
Jesus does not prohibit gay marriage or gay blessings. He certainly DOES endorse care, fidelity, love, sacrifice, kindness, which is exactly what you can find in a gay relationship.
Jesus teaches that sex should occur in the context of covenant and marriage and fidelity. That can happen in a gay marriage too.
Just because the mythical story of Adam and Eve is a lovely illustration doesn’t preclude that the idea that gay union cannot (in fidelity and marriage) be lovely too. But it wasn’t relevant to the listeners at the time of Matthew 19.
Most Anglicans in England today believe the same blessing and loveliness can be extended to gay or lesbian couples in faithful givenness to each other. They see the fruit of their relationships in their families, at work, in churches, and socially. They are ‘getting’ the Christian gospel with the greatest imperative of LOVE and loving kindness. They are not nit-picking single texts out of context to justify discrimination.
Would Jesus today include gay people in marriages as examples of fidelity? Yes, I believe so – and so did a majority of Synod when they voted for the Prayers of Love and Faith. It’s simple compassion. God can see the loveliness of gay people’s lives and devotion.
So no, I don’t think the teaching of Jesus to the listeners at the time was unloving. Of course not. God IS Love. But today, many – probably most – Anglicans in England would believe that Jesus would have extended that affirmation to gay and lesbian people, in a society where the listeners actually knew that gay marriage existed.
The key thing is fidelity.
That was what Jesus was addressing.
God continues to bless devoted people in almost all traditions, because God is loving. I think it is dangerous to insinuate ‘God only blesses my kind of people’. There are many prospering ‘inclusive’ churches, though nationally the public has grown increasingly alienated from Christianity.
Why are so many people alienated from our faith? Partly it is the knock-on effect of science over recent centuries. But it is also because of people being put off. Look at Ireland: the shocking accounts of abuse in the Church has put off large numbers of people. And in England, safeguarding issues also put people off. But people are also put off (and disgusted) by discrimination against THEIR gay and lesbian daughters and sons and uncles and friends, THEIR gay and lesbian neighbours, THEIR gay and lesbian work colleagues.
It could be counter-argued to your suggestion that (some) people are attracted to the socially conservative message you like to promote, that for every 5 people you manage to attract to church, 95 others are repelled by the same message, dismayed for the disrespect it shows to their friends and loved ones, that like a black family being refused service at a restaurant and being told to go down the road to a takeaway… gay couples are refused marriage (or even services of blessing) in the Church, and told to go and do their ‘sins’ elsewhere.
That exclusion is a terrible gospel message. It sets aside the imperative to LOVE in favour of exclusion and vilification of decent people’s lives.
So does God bless your church where you are a member? I really really hope so. In fact I am sure of it. But God also blesses people in inclusive churches too. And to repeat: most Anglicans in England, and in the Synod, want gay people to be blessed.
The debate on sexuality in the Church of England will never end, until people accept ‘unity in diversity’ and individual freedom to follow conscience, or until ‘The Alliance’ chooses to leave the Church of England.
Gay and lesbian couples are a fundamental part of the Church of England today, and widely wanted, and their relationships are widely affirmed and accepted. To repeat, gay fidelity is a blessing, a grace from God, and a gift – to each other, to God, to their churches, and wider community.
When so many millions of people ‘get’ that and accept it, and see the love, is it an arrogance in the Church to think ‘we always know better’ than those sinners? Or at least – since most Anglicans in England actually DO see and value the love, is it not more unifying if we say: ‘The Church of England membership holds differing views, ao let’s love one another, live and let live, allow individual conscience on this – since in truth a majority of Anglicans in the UK now believe gay sex is wrong in faithful relationships. So let you, or any individual priest, opt out of gay blessings. And let the large number, who believe gay blessings are good, go ahead and do it.’
That way we don’t dominate each other. We love one another. The Church has never agreed on everything. Yet one thing we MUST agree on is to open to the compassionate Love of God. God wants to bless us, even if we hold differing views, if we are willing to follow the way of the cross, and die to self, and open to the flow of love to our neighbour, and love God as well, not as holy puritans, because none of us are pure, but in spiritual poverty yet day by day trying to show kindness, welcome, and recognising Christ in each person we meet.
Typo: instead of “since in truth a majority of Anglicans in the UK now believe gay sex is wrong in faithful relationships”…
I meant to type “is NOT wrong”.
I have had my say. I avoid most social media these days. I will say no more.
It’s more important in my little life to pray.
I sincerely believe it is possible in good faith to hold either of the views in this contended debate. Both views are conscientiously believed by some. That’s why we should make loving one another the priority.
God bless you all. We must pray with all our hearts, both for the Church, and for the terrible suffering in the world today.
People’s ”beliefs” always adjust to social norms they inhabit, the more so when the media are pressing them on them. There is a fear of being in a minority. Beliefs proper are based on research, least of all on conformity, which can be, and often is, based on no research at all.
Jesus (and Christianity as a whole) doesn’t mention fidelity any more or less than the (also intuitively clear) gender make-up of families, whence families come.
Saying one is the main thing and the other does not figure at all therefore comes nowhere near the data. And can be explained by the writer’s society and individual preferences.
Susannah, I was actually wondering when someone would get back to the heart of the argument – thank you for your contribution. If, as we believe, God dwells in perfect relationship – and in some wonderful and undeserved way, we too are invited to participate in it (Paul writes, for example, that we are God’s adopted children) – then the one thing that brings life to any relationship is love. John writes, “God is love.” I’m unconvinced that it is the exact nature of the genitals that matters to God, so much as the quality of the relationship – “These three remain,” writes Paul, “Faith, and hope and love – but the greatest of these is love.” If we go back to the fundamentals of Scripture and the nature of God, I suspect the answer is clearer than if we get stuck on the largely contextual details of the time in which they were written – the times of temple prostitutes (who were often young men) and remember that scripture was written to the early Christian Churches – but for us. I see a lot of quoting Canon Law (in which I claim no great proficiency) but I do know that I am preaching on the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector shortly – and I know what happens when people get themselves tied up in knots over the finer details and attempt to “prove” one way or another that they are “more righteous” than their fellow human being – whose “sin” is far more obvious to everyone! I am, by the way, a theologian – and a Chaplain. I am not ordained, nor do I feel any call to the ordained ministry – even though my doctorate is in theology and ministry.
Thank you Lesley, for what suddenly feels like a much-needed still calm voice, rooted it seems to me in prayer. These words shudder with power:
“If, as we believe, God dwells in perfect relationship – and in some wonderful and undeserved way, we too are invited to participate in it (Paul writes, for example, that we are God’s adopted children) – then the one thing that brings life to any relationship is love. John writes, “God is love.” I’m unconvinced that it is the exact nature of the genitals that matters to God, so much as the quality of the relationship – “These three remain,” writes Paul, “Faith, and hope and love – but the greatest of these is love.” If we go back to the fundamentals of Scripture and the nature of God…”
…if we go back to the fundamentals we find we cannot get past the imperative to love, because we have no holiness without the presence of God. What God seeks more than our own merits is… a death to self, and to follow the way of the cross and to open to the presence and flow of the living God… who IS pure LOVE.
What God demonstrates in the community of the holy Trinity is relationship of shared and compassionate love, and in Christ God reveals that nature and opens the way – invites us – to share in that consciousness, by the way of the cross, in our own relationships: sacrifice, givenness, devotion of ourselves, care, protection, compassion: those are the things that define godly relationships, and define faithful marriage as well. Not the genitals, but the presence of Love (who as you note, IS God into whom we are called).
We grow in union with God through Christ, not through our purity, but through opening up to God’s compassionate Love.
If we expose ourselves in our nakedness and utter spiritual poverty to God in prayer, God may by grace draw us deeper into relationship in Christ. We will face the need to forgive and to be forgiven. We will fail almost each day, through reluctance to give ourselves and become living devotions.
But in the end, what is imperative is that we open to that love, and find Christ in the brokenness of other people, and of ourselves.
And beyond that, in the secret garden of prayer, in the silence, the stillness, the recollection of ourselves in and before God… we may find ourselves opened to a vast expanse of Love, and its shared consciousness and purity and compassion.
None of that is our rigid rectitude. All of it is God. And so God sees us – with such purity and compassion – in our poverty and pleads with us to surrender and open to Love, which is to open to God.
We need to treat people with proper reverence, care, welcome and delight, compassion and kindness: for then we are entering into relationship with God. We are made in the image of God, the heart of whose being was love not gender. We were made to just get on and open to that Love.
The Love of God is a flowing stream. If we let it, it will flow through us to others… in prayer, in action… will flow to reach out in mercy to the pitiful needs of the world. ‘Streams of living water’ will flow out from deep within, from the source who is God. That is not us, it is God. But it can bring blessing to our relationships, our covenanted love, our husbands, our wives. Undergirding it all… as Jesus said in that passage Ian earlier quoted… what the passage was actually about… fidelity. The fidelity of God. And the call to fidelity ourselves, in whatever relationships we have that do good to others and compassionately serve them.
The heart of the matter is not a competition to see who is most holy, most doctrinally correct, most ‘better than those others’… the heart of the matter and the heart of the gospel is to offer our lives, and take the path of costly love each day, and open to let God bless people through us.
And we should object to God blessing a couple who tenderly love each other?
Then we maybe have lost the plot – because it is not for us to judge, it is for us to love. It’s *always* for us to love. But we’d rather build towers of dogma around us, and anything to sidestep the challenge of love, yet it’s the greatest commandment, in the context of which the whole Bible needs to be read, and contextualised.
If two adult people intimately love each other, and are devoted to one another, and sacrifice for each other… there you find God. Because God is that love. God is there. Who are we to police that? Haven’t we got enough shortfalls of love of our own? We need to open ourselves more widely to the mind and the compassion of Christ, which ever streams in the great flow of Love reaching out into the suffering world.
We need to accept with compassion and humility the particular fragility, complexity, and incompleteness of one another – and pray for God’s grace, mercy and love…. and the flourishing of one another. Why should we repudiate that flourishing if it is between two men?
Like you, I did not feel called to ordination. I knew that from God, which was a great relief. It wasn’t my call. Yet years later, I still walk with God, dressed in rags if I’m honest. Vocation journeys can be full of unexpected surprises. We are called to be baptised and buried in God’s Love, even though we are all SO fallible. But God has been faithful. The unfailing faithfulness and compassionate tenderness of God. Here we both are. We have to be obedient to the Will of God. The call of God is continuous, abiding, and progressive. The Holy Spirit never ceases to call us into deeper union. Your post today was for me a meeting with peace and the presence of God. You have been (for me) a stillness in the storm of our contentions.
Of course, that was mostly God.
But thank you.
“On a majority believing that Jesus restricted marriage to straight people only: I think surveys have indicated that a majority of Anglicans in England don’t believe that Jesus would say or do that if He was living today.”
If anyone doesn’t think Jesus is living today, his or her opinion is irrelevant to the Church of Christ.
Jayne Ozanne (where is she now, btw?) was always quoting stats about the opinions of people who never went to church as if they were determinative of religious truth.
Jayne Ozanne has left the CoE, is living in the Channel Islands, and is an elected representative there. It is probably a much healthier and saner place to be.
‘Jesus does not prohibit gay marriage or gay blessings. He certainly DOES endorse care, fidelity, love, sacrifice, kindness, which is exactly what you can find in a gay relationship.
Jesus teaches that sex should occur in the context of covenant and marriage and fidelity. That can happen in a gay marriage too.’
You seem to be putting words into Jesus’ mouth, not something I would dare to do.
It seems obvious that the only reason we know what Jesus thought about divorce and therefore marriage is due to the debate at the time within Jewish circles. He was specifically asked about it and he gave his answer.
There does not seem to be any debate at all within Jewish circles at the time regarding same-sex sexual relations. There is no question they were not approved of. Jesus was not asked about it, hence no comment from him, as it was simply not debated.
As Christians we therefore have to go by both OT and NT teaching on the subject. As Ian has pointed out, even many ‘progressive’ scholars agree the attitude of Scripture towards such relations is always negative. There doesnt seem to me to be any reason why we should now conclude that God suddenly approves.
And I speak as a gay man.
‘I think surveys have indicated that a majority of Anglicans in England don’t believe that Jesus would say or do that if He was living today.’
No, that is not true. That was a piece of Ozanne propaganda.
‘He’s talking about fidelity, not gay marriage at all. Whether your marriage is gay or straight, the key thing is fidelity.’ I don’t think you will find any decent commentator who agrees with your imaginary reading here. The debate is about divorce in Deuteronomy, but Jesus goes out of his way to go back first to Gen 2, and then to Gen 1. In the context of Jewish rejection of gentile sexual ethics, which accepted same-sex sex in some forms, Jesus comes decisively down on the side of Jewish reading, based on the creation narrative. Every critical liberal scholar will tell you that.
‘But Jesus doesn’t say gay sex and marriage in 2025 will be bad. He doesn’t mention it. He doesn’t mention the benefits of computers either. But it doesn’t make them wrong.’ Jesus rejected all forms of same-sex sex in his day, and Paul followed faithfully in his footsteps. They did not have computers in the first century, but they did have sexed bodies just as we do. Nothing has changed there.
The story of Adam and Eve was told in a world where same-sex sex was known; and it, and its reception all through the whole canon of scripture, offer a counter-cultural rejection of SSS.
‘The church has never agreed on everything’ but it has agreed all through its history, in all times and cultures, in all branches, all traditions, agreed that marriage is a creation covenant between one man and one woman.
For you to demand that this must be a ‘thing indifferent’, something on which we must agree to disagree, is for you to dominate and impose your view on me.
But the human conscience is fallen.
When did we ‘fall’, Anthony. Where? How?
I’ll grant you that Romans 5 is tricky, but it answers your question.
When it happened is hard to determine, but that it has is clear enough. Unless one is a Pelagian and thinks we are all born perfect, in which case it has generally happened by age 2 or 3. I myself was fairly sure I hadn’t sinned until I was about 20, but my family assured me I started much earlier.
thanks that made me chuckle.
For ‘on a legal technicality’ read ‘following due process’. Or would you prefer GS to decree that ALL decisions relating to LLF (including changing canons, ,etc.) will only need a simple majority simply because 51% voted in favour of a trial introduction of PLFs on a very limited basis .
The requirement for 2/3 majorities for certain types of changes to be made is not merely a ‘legal technicality.’ Setting things up this way would have been a considered decison to make sure that significant changes which would be hard to row back from could not be made until there is a goodly majority (rather than just a bare majority) in support. I’d add that it is also a way of allowing the convictions of belivers in the past to have some some kind of contribution in the way votes are counted
Looking forward to a discussion, surely related, of Gafcon leaving Canterbury- or rather claiming that they aren’t leaving Anglican Communion, they ARE the Anglican Communion.
That might be forthcoming!
Haven’t they already? Premature ejaculation perhaps?
It’s all about sex, isn’t it?
Gravitational trajectory.
It’s a pun Christopher.
Nothing to do with my response. My response merely pointed out that your discourse, puns included, gravitated to sexual content in the same way as that of secularists does.
Christopher
You see sex everywhere as I observed in one of our last little conversations!
Only within the discourse of secularists which they originated and others like me merely push back on. As oft mentioned, but not digested.
Christopher:
Yes, it is true that secularists are quite heavily sexualised in their thinking and self-expression. Conservative Christians think sexualised jokes fall under Scripture’s prohibition of profane and indecent talk among Christians, and so tend to avoid such talk. Secularists, on the other hand, are quickly and easily drawn to sexualised language and insults.
The secularist does tend to see life through a sexual lens, because he or she usually thinks there should be no restriction on consensual self-expression. Secularists are usually happy (sometimes keen) to see the State restrict people’s freedom of speech, movement, purchase and other activities if the State deems it ‘in the higher good’, but sexual self-expression is somehow deemed sacrosanct. This is revelatory of the value system of atheists. Read those opinion pieces on the BBC website by young writers who opine that the greatest tragedy in life is not to be sexually active as one’s drive demands.
It’s also interesting that secularists – certainly the radical left variety – is also drawn to political protests that involve taking off their clothes in public. This does give an interesting insight into their psychology.
James
I’m not a secularist, so I wouldn’t know how preoccupied with sex they are. I have observed that conservative Christians in general, and Christopher in particular, are obsessed with gay male sex. He used to have fellow travellers here, such as S and Jock, but they have largely disappeared.
Penny’s deliberate and conscious, if conscienceless (and therefore disingenuous) blurring of ‘obsession with X ‘ with ‘obsession with criticising and warning about X’s significant harms’ (which is, of course, virtually the opposite) is such a typical move among her ‘brigade’ that it simultaneously demonstrates how unscrupulous, how lacking in independent thought, and how malicious.
Gosh, I have a brigade Christopher?
I’m impressed!
You can have an ilk if you prefer.
Welby’s ‘Ginger Group’ (GAFCON) is the majority of what we shall now call the Global Anglican Communion. ACNA is thriving now that orthodox Anglicans do not have to wear the baggage of the Revisionists every day. Ordinands are educated in the Word. Church discipline is upheld…. Whatever happens in the CoE (and the other declining groups in Wales, Scotland, Canada, and the US) will continue to become a sideline to the story of Anglicanism in the world. My eye is more on whether current events will soon shape the compromised Anglican Churches in South Africa, Australia, or New Zealand.
I am not sure there is cause for great celebration. As Will Jones commented in The Daily Sceptic when The Times broke the news,
‘Clergy are already allowed to enter a civil partnership, provided they are ‘celibate’ (well, that’s what they tell their bishop). And same-sex blessings as part of ordinary services are already allowed, having been (controversially) brought in in 2023, so provision has been made there as well. You may wonder why something can be done in a Sunday service that can’t be done in a standalone service. The reason, according to the church’s lawyers, is because a standalone service will look too much like an actual wedding, when – and this is the fudge Welby used to get his blessings through – the blessings are technically limited to blessing the ‘couple’ and not their ‘relationship’ in all its aspects. This is the device that (supposedly) allows the bishops to get round the church’s longstanding prohibition on gay sex. (Even more technically, the approved prayers do not involve the priest blessing the couple but invite God to bless the couple himself, should he so choose; yes, this is the level of fudgery they went to to get these ‘blessings’ past the lawyers and through Synod.)
‘The upshot is that the Church of England will continue, for the time being at least, officially to hold to traditional biblical teaching on marriage – while liberals will continue quietly to flout it and make use of the ‘blessings’ fudge they got in under Welby.’
So the unholy sophistry will continue. There will still be blessings of homosexual relationships and clergy can still be in homosexual civil partnerships. Even if clergy contract homosexual marriages, the most they can fear from the C of E is a ‘rebuke’ (in practice even that is unlikely, and will certainly not be administered by a bishop who is pro-LLF).
Can we at least have ‘great celebration’ about the clarity from the House of Bishops?
That seems to me at least to be the central victory here; you are absolutely right that there is still plenty of room in practice for fudgery, and people will continue to flout rules and ‘creatively explore’ the grey areas of pastoral accommodation too, but the road ahead is at least clear, and the path specified, if narrow.
They’re not flouting the rules. Approval for prayers for SS couples in a service passed in Synod. They will continue.
Well, given that the prayers were explicitly not for a couple *as a couple*, then your comments falls at the first hurdle.
‘A selection of readings and prayers for same-sex couples who wish to mark and give thanks for their love in faith before God was formally commended for use by the Church of England’s bishops in December 2023.’
https://www.churchofengland.org/life-events/your-church-wedding/just-engaged/prayers-asking-gods-blessing-same-sex-couples
If we are affirming their sexual relationship, then this is novel, it cannot be ‘commended’, and it is ‘indicative of a departure from the doctrine of the Church’.
In that case, the 11 dissenting were right, and the prayers are likely to be revoked.
I think that ship has sailed!
No, Penny, the ship has not sailed. It is certainly possible that, when all the documents are published, synod might find that it was misled by previous statements from the House.
It would be good to have an analysis of those Synod questions (and absolutely tons of questions were naturally raised because of the incoherence of the proposals) that were blanked by the respondent.
E.g., I felt sorry for Sam Margrave when officialdom would not give an answer on how children are affected by the Pride marches and by the teaching of gender ideology (and one could of course argue that adults are at least as badly affected themselves).
Inability to answer at all is clearly worse than a poor answer. It is an automatic defeat, yet is not counted as such. And that brings us to what makes it even worse: namely, effortless, entitled, ‘superiority’.
Christopher
Sam Margrave’s ‘question’ wasn’t appropriate or relevant to the discussion at the time. Synod protocol had to veto his rant.
I very much doubt it. Oh I know the usual pressure groups will try their usual tactics. But it us worth remembering that Prayers of Dedication After A Civil Marriage are ‘merely’ commended, did not require a two-thirds majority, and have certainly been used to bless sin.
Nope, Synod voted by majority in ALL 3 houses for the prayers for Same Sex couples. Conservative evangelicals do not have the votes to reverse them given the bishops have confirmed simple majority was enough to approve the prayers within services
I respectfully disagree.
The prayers, which I accept are legitimate, were designed and authorised to be used in a way that makes clear they are not matrimony, nor a service in their own right. The simply reality is that they continue to be used by some as if they are comparable, and talked about this way too by many in the church. Anecdotally, it is also what they are perceived to be by other denominations.
It is quite unhelpful that the section covering them falls under the section titled “weddings” on the CofE website, but oh well.
That in itself shows the problem.
“Can we at least have ‘great celebration’ about the clarity from the House of Bishops?”
You are being serious here? Celebration that even after a so called apology to gay people the bishops have thrown them under the bus again? After years of giving hope for some change they have now just slammed the door?
Mat I’m not sure where you have been for the last few years.
They haven’t, prayers for same sex couples can still be performed within C of E churches
“You are being serious here?”
I was.
“Celebration that even after a so called apology to gay people the bishops have thrown them under the bus again? After years of giving hope for some change they have now just slammed the door?”
I am not celebrating the crushing of hope, I’m not a sadist, and I do understand that this is painful for people. I am celebrating that God’s clear instruction has been recognised (again) with the assertion that the church’s current teaching on the integrity of marriage is right and good, that a standard for doctrinal integrity has been upheld, and that transparency seems to be back on the table.
I do not think PLF as a reality has ended, and have not argued for that. But I do think the process which led to it, and which for some was looking like continuing, just as LLF followed shared conversations, is now at an end.
Spot on. I celebrate with you.
Why don’t they see that this turning a blind eye to sin is precisely what makes them double minded and ineffective/impotent as a movement?
Yet they are devoting their lives to it.
How can any good spring from such a crumbled foundation?
I am trying to think a tad hopefully and reading between the lines – always an iffy thing to do. But, I am wondering if this about face – which I welcome – might not be both a response to the Global South AND display some influence of the new ABC elect, who has shown incredible skill in managing differences and theological diversity in the DIocese of London – my old Diocese back in the later 70s.
Praying for miracles is never without purpose. I am wondering if this new transparency and willingness to follow canonical process as well as the formal doctrine of the Church, might not be a sign of new leadership attitudes. IMHO, most welcome.
No, I think it has come about for the reasons I mention. Given Sarah was leading the Next Steps group, it appear to have gone against her direction—though she has said she has never argued for SSM.
In the next few months, much of what improperly went on behind closed doors, and much legal advice kept confidential, will emerge. I expect it will amply confirm that the aim was always to ram though SSM no matter what. We may thank God that this effort has been seen off. But let us not pretend that restoration of a 2000-year status quo is a great victory.
Yes, I think it will.
The legal advice, paid for by the Church, should never have been kept secret. A private individual involved in a dispute who pays for legal advice has a right to privacy in what he or she has contracted, but legal advice paid for by the Church is the property of all church members.
It is imperative that this information is released to all the Church. Members of General Synod should be insisting on it, Bishops should be making it known.
The entitled and historicist arrogance of the more destructive party has manifested in:
-simply assuming what will be the trajectory and final outcome;
-misusing the extremely broad word ‘change’ to mean this and only this.
Helen King recently speaking online on the day of new Abp’s appointment said she wanted the whole thing to come to an end as it was eating everything else up, and everything else was coming to be defined only in reference to it.
But we had already said it was a black hole that by its nature eats up everything else.
And the only way it could come to an end was by a walkover. A walkover when Synod is 50-50 divided? You should not even get a walkover when it is 75-25.
Which is what I mean by identifying entitlement and arrogance. Cf. Obergefell unilateralism. There are many other examples.
The whole thing is presenting undiluted secularism excitedly as ‘a new thing that God is doing’.
Not only are they well aware that everyone in the Church was wearisomely familiar with secularism already (and not at all excited by it), but secularism does not even pretend not to be strongly opposed to Christianity and angling for its territory in the public space.
What secularism has done for infinitely precious families it will do in other arenas as it pursues its destructive trajectory.
Meanwhile God is indeed doing a new thing, whether through the jolt of Charlie Kirk’s murder that set off a chain reaction similar to the unjust killing of Jesus (3000 baptisms when Peter points this out in Ac 2), that of Stephen (leading to persecution, dispersal, evangelism and spread of the movement; and most of all the conversion of the guilt-ridden Paul and all that came from that). And in Catholic arena another influx of young men through promotion of the wholesome lives of the young deceased Carlos Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati. The ever-positive outlook of the Alliance and Alpha course also touches the young. People’s lives will be irrevocably messed up unless Christians care enough to seek them out when they are still young. The whole story of recent times has been a weak church that did not care and got seduced by Lethe and comfort.
So PTL for a new day.
Admirable piece, Ian. Just one very small point, if I may: you refer to “the absence of an archbishop who has been pushing the agenda for change”, but I was certainly under the impression that +Stephen Ebor was pushing for it at least as hard as (and probably harder than) +Justin ever did, especially after +Justin’s resignation when he found himself as the one archbishop in post. Am I mistaken? By all means tell me so if I am!
I think Stephen is both less confident and less bullish than Justin ever was.
Public school, Oxbridge – yes, a very expensive education can’t give somebody brains he doesn’t have but boy, it can certainly give some people enormous confidence and self-belief. I saw this working for a stint in a private school: pupils with fairly average intellectual ability had that confident ease that only lots of money and the old school tie can give.
Welby was of course Eton too before Oxbridge, the top choice of the aristocratic and wealthy elite of the public schools for their sons. Mullally, comprehensive and South Bank University educated has a rather more humble educational background by contrast
Television cameras once captured an exchange between Justin Welby and Jane Ozanne.
She castigated him for his failure to get results out of Synod in line with his infamous “radical new inclusion” promise.
Welby replied; “I don’t have the votes”.
LLF was always a personal project for him. He should never have been given the keys to Lambeth Palace. His legacy is the expulsion of the Church of England from Global Anglican Communion.
In spring 2022 I took the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) 5-session course by Zoom, shared among several Church of England parishes local to me. This gave me better insight into it than reading the large (free online) book. LLF claimed to present multiple points of view of human sexuality impartially, to help people (i.e., the Church of England) find its way. But it never got to grips with the core question – is homosexuality part of God’s design plan or a consequence of the Fall – and the questions one was invited to consider after the presentations did their utmost to make anybody proposing the biblical line look ‘unloving’. There was scant mention of the notion of repentance. LLF did everything it could to muddy the waters by pretending that the Bible is hard to understand on the subject while avoiding examining the actual verses that refer to sexual behaviour; that part of the LLF book, I did read line by line. 2000 years of biblical church tradition were ignored in favour of views that exactly match those of the secular world in this era. LLF’s claim to act as honest broker between two tenable Christian views was always a deceit.
Together with which, there can be nothing more central than issues of correlation of homosexual behaviour with promiscuity, unsafe sexual practices, early life disruption, STIs. Issues of such importance that they should be centre stage. Were they? Often if seemed as though they were scarcely to be found, and LLF was hiding behind its page count. It dictated pluralism (a very unscholarly approach) from the beginning, despite the excellence of some of its material and annexes.
Surely faithful monogamous same sex couples are less likely to get STIs and be promiscuous?
SO if there are ever precisely two scenarii, you are forcing people to accept one of the two scenarii. You know very well that there can be times when both scenarii are very bad and to be rejected, and also other times when both are very good and to be accepted. You confused relatively bad with absolutely bad: that was the false logical step.
Pointing this sensible fact out never deters Christopher from his obsession with gay (male) sex and venereal disease.
When pandemic-causing/accelerating and multiple-epidemic-causing/accelerating things are brushed aside as insignificant, we should never be obsessed with correcting this inaccuracy? We should be mildly diverted, but never warn anyone that disease epidemics have happened and will continue to happen. Says PCD.
Christopher
That is not what I said. But you consistently misrepresent others’ responses to you as a diversionary tactic.
So it IS something of a lethal level of seriousness. And yet you say others should *not* be obsessed with its importance? Square that circle?
Any faithful couple isn’t promiscuous, what do you mean?
PIV sex between healthy partners who are faithful to each other is not a health risk. Anal sex is a health risk regardless of fidelity.
Go to Evangelical Africa, Christopher, your very conservative evangelical co-religionists have the highest HIV infection rate on earth, G-d help them.
And is the per capita rate among men who sleep with men greater or less than among others? And by how much?
I am always curious as to what this kind of comment is meant to argue.
HIV rates are high when there is prostitution and people have sex with multiple partners.
I know of no orthodox Christians who say ‘Sex is between a man and a woman, but it does matter if it is in marriage or not’. The doctrine of the C of E is that marriage is an *exclusive* union between a man and a woman.
Sociologically, male gay relations are notorious non-exclusive. That is why HIV and other STDs are vastly elevated amongst the gay community. In the States, a gay man aged 18 has a 50% chance of being HIV by 50. Figures for heterosexuals are nowhere near that level.
Ian – I think a ‘not’ has fallen out of your third para.
Just a point of information, Ian, because you’ve said this a couple of times:
The statistics are not as you claim. I think you’re drawing on a CDC analysis from about 10 years ago, which said 50% of African-American men who have sex with men will be infected by HIV in their lifetime. That drops to 25% for Hispanic men who have sex with men, and 9% for white men who have sex with men. The infection are worst across the South (Georgia, Florida, Louisiana etc.) rather than the great bastions of gay rights and gay marriage like New York, California, and Massachusetts. So it looks like the communities that have historically had the most conservative attitudes to gay people have had (at least 10 years ago) the worst problem with HIV infection amongst their gay men. It’s hard to say more, or see if the data has changed as the CDC reports are currently inaccessible due to the US government shutdown.
The other aspect we’re reasonably confident about is that rates of promiscuity are falling, and rates of monogamy are rising, quite noticeably. It’s not hard to see that the arrival of civil partnerships and gay marriage might have something to do with that. Maybe St Paul was onto something when he said it was better to marry than burn with passion…
“actual verses that refer to sexual behaviour” – I take it you mean Leviticus? LLF took its cue from contemporary writers from the different schools of thought. One point that’s been clear for a while is that the ground on which the conservatives fight has shifted over time. I don’t see many placing Leviticus centre stage: in the comments on this article, our very own Ian Paul went straight to Matthew 19 as the key text, not Leviticus. 1 Corinthians and Romans are also pretty popular, and perhaps to a lesser extent Genesis 1 and 2. But it’s always been changing. If you go back a hundred years or so, it’s the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis that gets regularly cited.
I’d agree that the Church made a mistake by not building up from the foundational questions, and I suspect we’d have found more agreement if we had, but neither faction thought that was in their interests. I won’t rake over all that again now.
Each of these ‘clobber verses’ is just the islands in the sea of biblical material, poking up between the waves and indicative of the underwater mountain range that is the Bible’s theology of sex and marriage. Or perhaps the tip of the iceberg.
The fact that, at different times people have landed on different of these islands doesn’t have an impact on the shape of the mountain range: marriage is between one man and one woman as a result of God’s intention in creating humanity male and female. That is precisely what Jesus points to in Matt 19, which is why, in the current moment, I find it the best island to start from.
The Church of England has long remarried divorcees (unlike the Roman Catholic church, unless with annulments under very strict criteria, hence Henry VIII broke away from it) and even held blessing services for remarried couples who committed adultery with each other like the King and Queen against the instructions of Christ that divorce was only allowed where your spouse committed adultery not you. George Osborne of course was full remarried in a C of E church too after a divorce to his younger former aide. Yet not much repentance has to be shown there to get such marriages and faithful same sex couples don’t even get that, just prayers within a service
All sorts of things used to be done, and presumably still are, to satisfy the “very strict” criteria for annulments in the RC Church. There used to be a saying in Italy before the State permitted divorce (but there was a concordat that committed it to accept RC annulments): “There is no divorce in Italy, and only Catholics can get it.”
The trick was to prove that you were related to the spouse. Rome had absurdly strict criteria for who could marry whom, but these were invoked only if you wanted a divorce and you could afford it.
Today those criteria run even to suggesting that your spouse was insincere when he or she took the vows.
Even Pavarotti for instance despite being a global superstar was refused a Roman Catholic second marriage in an Italian cathedral and instead had a civil ceremony in a theatre
Boris Johnson managed it!
As Boris’ previous marriages took place in Anglican not Roman Catholic church services they were not valid in the Vatican’s eyes. His first valid Roman Catholic marriage was therefore to Carrie at Westminster Cathedral
Yet Rome does not insist that pagans who marry then become Catholics go through a Catholic ceremony. Almost certainly the excuse was that Johnson was baptised a Catholic yet didn’t contract his first two marriages in a Catholic church. I say ‘almost certainly’ because the Catholic church declined to explain, and that reasoning is what Catholic media theologians cobbled together. I say ‘excuse’ because the real reason was clearly that he was PM. J’Accuse.
Anthony:
Catholic canon lawyers will always find a reason if the divorcee seeking to remarry is politically important enough. Johnson’s ‘Catholic’ wedding make a mockery of the whole idea of discipline.
That good Mass-going Catholic Joe Biden also married a divorcee whose husband is still very much alive. They were apparently married by a Jesuit priest but not in a Catholic church. I don’t know what status that gives him as a Catholic but it has never stopped Joe receiving communion (nor has Joe’s advocacy of abortion).
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/42684/biden-communion-denial-was-required-by-diocesan-policy
Joe Biden absolutely was refused communion, more than once, and for precisely the reasons you say he wasn’t; namely his stance on Abortion.
James,
It was the granting of a divorce – sorry, annulment – to his sister that was the last straw for Henry VIII as it became obvious that the Vatican would sit on his petition indefinitely. (It never actually said No, contrary to popular belief.) The Vatican had granted an even more flagrantly political divorce to Louis XII of France in 1498. But Henry’s wife was a close relative of the Holy Roman Emperor.
Months before resigning as British Prime Minister in June 2007, Tony Blair broke a Cabinet deadlock by insisting that Catholic adoption agencies be forced to place children with gay couples, knowing that these agencies would close as a matter of conscience. Yet by the end of that year (after resigning) he had been received into the Roman Catholic church, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi stating that “The choice of joining the Catholic church made by such an authoritative personality can only arouse joy and respect.” Blair’s criticism of the Vatican’s stances in a 2009 interview in the gay magazine Attitude shows that his views did not change. He was given the VIP don’t-ask-don’t-tell fast track. Rome is welcome to him. Now he might be Viceroy of Gaza.
You are extremely focused on same sex relationships, Simon, and you shoehorn the subject into nearly every post. Why is this topic so important to you?
Exactly. Which is why George Osborne etc should no way have been indulged in this way as though what he had done did not matter or mattered less than a very great deal.
Anthony:
That is a pretty good summary. I read through most of the looooong book that accompanied the LLF ‘listening process’ and it was as you say, an extended exercise in evasion.
Never once did it seriously seek to come to grips with the historic orthodox understanding of homosexuality and the biblical texts relating to marriage, sexuality and male-female complementarity.
It was an attempt to load the dice toward a pre-determined outcome.
Fundamentally dishonest, in other words.
Abp also treated Peter Tatchell as one whose agenda here he was keen to implement (of course, Stonewall were at least once invited as experts, despite their lack of ability to debate, on principle) for the production of a C of E policy document ‘Valuing All God’s Children’.
Outside Lambeth Palace, the message was like Edmund’s to the White Witch. Namely: Please, your excellency, I’ve done the best I could to keep my promise to you – I’ve brought things as far as I can.
Peter Tatchell was a leading light in the 1971 anti Christian protests by the Gay Liberation Front (and others) and has never renounced these, which are now celebrated as a milestone in human rights. He was quoted in part 1-of-2 of the following, of which 2-of-2 (the link) speaks of the sacrilegious sexual parody of the Lord’s Supper they conducted in Hyde Park that day 25.9.71:
pasttense.co.uk/2019/09/25/today-in-london-religious-history-1971-protests-against-the-reactionary-christian-festival-of-light-continue/
They weren’t anti Christian. They were anti right wing Christian trumpery. Many devout Christians agreed with him.
Yes. They agreed with the sacrilegious eucharistic sexual parody too (which PT has never renounced, and which is seen as part of an historic liberation narrative) – right?
Having comprehension problems again?
To agree with ‘him’ in that 1971 context includes to have agreed with the sacrilege and blasphemy. And with the following:
The GLF, of which he was a leading light, called the Westminster Central Hall disruption ‘Operation Rupert’, showing that the Oz portrayal of Rupert was as close to representing their values, and as dear to their hearts, as anything could be.
Gay parodies of the Lord’s Supper seems to be a thing in that sub-culture.
I didn’t know about Tatchell’s Hyde Park blasphemy.
I wonder if it was the inspiration of the gay parody of the Last Supper at the Paris Olympics. Very stunning and brave that was, attacking a religion through a gay performer.
There are actually a couple of places where homosexuals are put to death in public. One is Afghanistan, the other is Gaza.
But for some reason the secularists don’t protest about this. Well, I know why they don’t in Paris. Even ardent secularists don’t want to be gunned down or stabbed.
Tatchell to be fair to him did protest against all that and has campaigned against homophobia worldwide and indeed was arrested for confronting Mugabe about LGBT rights in Zimbabwe
We know, and approve. How is that relevant?
I don’t know whether PT was directly involved in that, but he very likely was, and his organisation was. The entire way the three Sept 1971 confrontations were framed (and compare the GLF manifesto) was Christianity as the enemy, maximum sexual debauchery as the highest value.
“I have been very instrumental carrying it as far as I could, to get things to where we are today. I don’t have the votes to go further” – Justin Welby, January 2023.
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2023/27-january/news/uk/welby-joins-protesters-outside-lambeth-palace-to-defend-bishops-same-sex-stance
In November 2019 Welby chose to take Jayne Ozanne to Rome with him to meet Pope Francis.
On 3rd November 2023 Welby finally admitted to a group of LGBT Christians, in a meeting chaired by David Porter, that he was “totally and unequivocally committed to the goal of a radical new Christian inclusion that embraced LBTQIA+ people”. Here is a report of it by Rev’d Colin Coward, a veteran advocate of church same-sex marriage:
https://anglican.ink/2023/11/04/the-archbishop-of-canterbury-meets-thirty-four-representatives-of-progressive-organisations/
Yes. I am sure Justin has changed his mind before he started his term of office. And it was his own personal project. With him gone, it was never going to happen.
No his legacy in LLF is a more compassionate church to same sex couples in the established English church who can now at least get some prayers for them within services. Rather than being dictated to by the likes of the Church of Nigeria from a nation where same sex couples can be arrested.
The vast majority of the western Anglican communion, in North America, the UK and Europe, Australia and New Zealand and most likely the Latin American and South African churches will stay linked to the Church of England in the global Anglican communion. Gafcon can have a few African churches and breakaway anti homosexual and anti women clergy churches in their new pretend Anglican communion if they wish, it means little. Especially given the Anglican communion was moving towards rotating its leadership amongst global Anglican Archbishops anyway
Simon,
The Australian Anglican Church is becoming more conservative, to judge by recent episcopal appointments, including Ric Thorpe becoming Archbishop of Melbourne.
The Province of the Southern Cone is firmly evangelical, as in the new Province of Peru.
The Anglicans in Brazil (very, very few in a country with very many Pentecostals) are split in two tiny churches, one liberal, the other evangelical.
The Mexican Episcopal Church is seriously split right now.
All of the OWCAC (Old White Colonial) are in serious demographic decline.
The Australian Wangaratta and Ballarat dioceses bless same sex unions now, the Newcastle diocese has blessing rites for same sex marriages. The Diocese of Brisbane permits blessings for same sex unions. The Diocese of Perth also recognises same sex unions. Same sex marriage is also now legal under Australian civil law.
Same sex marriage is legal too now in Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Argentina and as you say there are liberal Anglicans in Brazil and Mexico.
The attempt to introduce same sex marriage in the Australian Anglican Church failed because the Bishops couldn’t get the votes. The General Synod is moving increasingly in a conservative orthodox direction as a growing proprtion of Australian Anglicans are found in Sydney Archdiocese and Melbourne Archdiocese, while it declines in Queensland and Western Australia. Those are the facts, Simon, as reported by David Ould.
No, those are the ideological prisms in which you view it to suit your ideological anti same sex couple agenda. Most Anglican provinces in Australia now bless same sex unions or recognise them, tough
This is a fact:
https://sydneyanglicans.net/mediareleases/public-statement-on-the-archbishop-of-canterbury-appointment
So no comment from the other 22 dioceses in Australia opposing Bishop Mullally’s appointment as Archbishop then, just Sydney. I would also suggest the Diocese of Sydney reflects too on the fact that 83% of the people of Sydney, the city it represents, voted for same sex marriage in the 2017 same sex marriage referendum in Australia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Marriage_Law_Postal_Survey
It is right for someone who thinks Christianity is the right way to think that votes by non Christians (including purely selfish votes) are just as valuable as votes by Christians, right?
Simon,
Your focus on same sex relationships is remarkable, you shoehorn it into every comment. Why are you so focused on this subject?
Liberal Anglicans spring up, by pure coincidence, in already liberal societies. Can anyone work out why?
As it is the subject of this thread if you noticed on LLF. I don’t mention it much or at all if it is not the subject of the thread
These “prayers” of PLF had their genesis in the heavenly realms
And propagated by such people whom Jude describes in 1:4
They are ungodly persons whose condemnation was predicted long ago, for they distort/ pervert the grace of our God into decadence and immoral freedom [viewing it as an opportunity to do whatever they want], and deny and disown our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
Those prayers were overcome in the heavenlies through overcoming prayers of Faith, POF, all else were but actors in a drama.
Lk.10:19 Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.
The Amplified version Proverbs 21:1 reads, “The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it whichever way He wishes”
Yes this is but a skirmish won, war in the heavenlies becomes more intense,
Hence we must continue to Watch and Pray lest we fall into temptation
Mat 24:43 But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. Ps 91:13 Ps 44:5 Ps 60:12 Ps 108:13.
What might victory look like?
I think when the Gospel sounds out from the church
What Gospel? The Gospel of the Glory of the Blessed [Happy] God with which we have been entrusted.
If one can define the Glory of God then one might understand what an awesome, all powerful, all encompassing, mighty thing the Gospel is!
To those who might wish to parade their pride in the house of God
I would gently suggest that your issue is with God not His Church.
‘King Charles and Pope Leo are to become the first British monarch and pontiff to pray together at a church service since the Reformation in the 16th Century.
This historic moment will be in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, during next week’s state visit by King Charles and Queen Camilla.
Under the chapel’s famous ceiling painted by Michelangelo, the service will bring together clergy and choirs from both the Roman Catholic church and the Church of England, of which the King is supreme governor.
The visit will be seen as an important symbol of reconciliation, in a trip that will also see the first meeting between the King and the new US-born Pope.’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czxkrn7jvexo
Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II met several popes, and it is said that in one conversation His Holiness was banging on about “the church” in relation to their differnces, and she gently interjected, “Your church”.
(Further detail of this story is gratefully received.)
She was nobody’s fool!
Will the Vatican accept their marriage?
Will the King accept, submit to, the moral, ethical, sexual doctrine of the Magisterium?
No and no. However that does not mean the King and Pope cannot have a relationship of mutual respect as effective heads of the Church of England and global Roman Catholic church on earth
Ian, thanks for putting ‘orthodox’ into quotation marks. It’s a small point but it shows a sensitivity that has often been absent in this rancorous saga. The adoption by e.g. The Alliance of the self-designation of orthodox has been very unhelpful, and could even appear rather arrogant. The language we use matters and orthodox could imply that those who differ are heretics and I’m sure, I hope, the leaders of the Alliance would not want to accuse their brothers and sisters, Many of whom are evangelicals, of that, however much they believe them to be mistaken. (Or if they do think that, please can they be up front and say so and not hide behind the word ‘progressive’ as the Alliance Campaign Manual does, which can be found on the Thinking Anglicans site.) It would have been better if the Alliance had referred to themselves as ‘traditionalist’ or ‘conservative’. All those I know who take a different view on this issue to the Alliance are equally able to say the creeds with a good conscience so they’re not heretics, even if we may think they’re wrong on this issue. A clear, simple acknowledgement by the Alliance that their terminology has been poorly chosen and that they will amend it would be welcome to indicate a genuine desire to build bridges and work together in the mission of the church. Leaving it unchanged will help to perpetuate the divisions that we had hoped to begin to heal.
Are you relativist on what is orthodox? I don’t think much of the term either, as it puts normality in the place that should belong to proven correctness. However, to be relativist is to fall at the first hurdle, as all know that philosophy to be self refuting.
The creeds are not stand alone: they are based on scripture on the doctrine of God and admits the doctrine of scripture, scripture which not only speaks the grammar of the indicatives, but also the imperatives which are consequent on the indicatives:
the doctrine of humanity, sin, redemption, following through with Christian orthopraxy.
Although of course the creeds pre-date any agreement on the canon of Scripture…
And your point is what? Dismissal of what? Creeds and or scripture and or doctrine, selectively so? Following the cultural chronological snobbery that Lewis so tellingly pinned to the progressive mast.
The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds.. CS Lewis
They ante-date any *council* declaring what is scripture.
If I may add, the point of my comment was to suggest that the Alliance reconsiders the terminology it uses so as to make more possible the kind of healing and working together for the Kingdom that I think we all want. There’s no point in refusing to work with everyone we disagree with. So to refer to themselves as orthodox and their opponents as not really isn’t helpful or, indeed, accurate. A bit of graciousness and generosity to others wouldn’t go amiss rather than the continual need to prove our side is wholly right and the other lot are in error.
‘There’s no point in refusing to work with anyone we disagree with.’
This is an impossible position. It would involve actually being *forced* to work, for example, hypothetically, with the following, among others:
-those who are lying and opportunistic;
-those who have not done any thought, or whose analysis level has been basic or non-existent.
It is so obvious that if all points of view are on the table – and even treated on a level with each other – then (a) the most absurd points of view conceivable are included in that; (b) those who have researched and analysed for years are to be treated on a level with (a).
Tim, of all the things possible to believe, you surely cannot believe that.
Thanks, Tim. The problem is I don’t consider myself either ‘traditionalist’ or ‘conservative’. I am Anglican.
I believe the doctrine of Christ as the C of E has received it. I believe in upholding my ordination vows.
What is the right term for someone like me?
Conservative evangelical
Thanks, Ian. All these terms have their limitations but I think self-describing our group as the orthodox and labeling others a s progressive is very unhelpful – Anglican will do fine for me as well, but might perhaps prefer simply Church of England, as it gives plenty of room for variety of interpretation on all sorts of issues and is historically a word whose meaning has developed over time. I agree about ordiantion vows; upholding them is on the same level of seriousness as marriage vows: made for life in public before the church and God. They include a clear commitment to only use forms of worship authorised and allowed by canon. But in many churches led by Alliance (and other) clergy I have been to that commitment is clearly not regarded seriously. I hope that the Alliance will now be consistent and call on the bishops to require clergy to fulfil their vows and insist that its supporters keep their ordination vows. Otherwise it could look as though public worship is regarded as less important than marriage and sexuality when clearly it is at the heart of the ordained life and that they are selective when it comes to ordination vows.
Hi Tim—yes, wherever I go I do raise the question about ‘forms of service’; ask my friends!
But we cannot equate regulation on liturgy with sexual ethics in quite the way you are asking. It is about means and ends. What is the goal of liturgical uniformity? Answer: shared doctrine, since for Anglicans [and I am in England, so in England Anglican = Church of England] our doctrine is expressed in our liturgy.
All the evangelical Anglican churches in England I have ever come across are Trinitarian, orthodox, and uphold the teaching of Jesus as the Church has received it on sexual ethics.
By contrast, some liberal churches I have been to use Anglican liturgy, but are universalistic, do not see scripture as authoritative, and reject the teaching of Jesus and the belief of the church catholic on sex and marriage.
So liturgical conformity is not quite the panacea we might hope it to be.
Ian: quite so. Some evangelical services are too much of a repetitive songfest for me, and I think they would benefit from more creed, more Scripture (!) – especially an OT reading – and even a good Cranmerian collect. But usually there is a good attempt to expound the Scriptures believingly. An example of where this ideal is faithfully upheld is Sydney Anglican Cathedral, which is on the internet every Sunday. By contrast to the looseness in a lot of evangelical services, liberal Anglican services follow the set liturgy like clockwork, while the sermon frequently teaches a very different doctrine, often suffused by the current liberal belief that God is a benign mystery who doesn’t care for or like “our” straitjacket doctrines and “all shall be well” – in other words, the universalism you refer to. Tim gets things backward and forgets that the purpose of form in worship is to express biblical truth and to teach us how to pray, worship and believe in a more biblically authentic way. It is a mesns to an end not an end in itself.
Not quite my point. It’s the serious nature of the vows and the issue of integrity I am referring to not the relative importance of sexual ethics and liturgical forms although conducting worship is about as central to a priest’s vocation as you can get. We seem to tolerate priests taking vows they do not intend to keep, if my experience of visiting parishes over many years is typical. I’m not suggesting it is a panacea – that isn’t the point I’m making nor do disagree with teaching what the Church of England teaches (what a relief!) Why is it controversial to say that clergy should keep their ordination vows including over the liturgy of the church and that this is a serious issue?
It is sophistry to think that ‘standalone’ services are significantly different to ones incorporated in other services. I have played organ for many baptisms but cannot generally remember which were and which were not standalone.
Insofar as they are indeed different, it is the latter that would be worse:
-They would implicate and involve all attendees, whether they liked it or not;
-The numbers present would be much greater;
-It might sometimes be a communion service.
These banner headlines are about this fine distinction, and about a situation that involves the LGB way coming *more* fully, of the two scenarii, into the mainstream (the alternative being less fully).
It’s not a matter of ‘would be worse’. They have been agreed. They are happening. Licitly.
‘Would be worse’ refers to which of two scenarii should be considered worse/better.
Legality is just a matter of headcount of voters within a normalising culture, and obviously changes nothing metaphysically.
May or may not be licit. There is a precondition, a proviso. The Leeds example given was in breach. The reality is that it had no substance no licit change in the relationship. Deception, self or organisational would seem to be at its centre.
Christopher, I also suggested that ‘A bit of graciousness and generosity to others wouldn’t go amiss rather than the continual need to prove our side is wholly right and the other lot are in error’ but that seems to have been ignored and you haven’t commented on that. I presume you would agree with it. I accept I might have worded my other comment more clearly, but even allowing for that, graciousness and generosity would be helpful all round.
It’s nothing to do with wording and all to do with coherent thought. As indeed is the nature of all debate. Civility is the underlying reality you see in the dressing room; the actual debate out on the pitch is rightly rigorous if people care about truth.
Ah well, there we disagree, but graciously I hope! I think that the tone of the debate and the graciousness we display in expressing differences is part of the debate not a separate aspect. Those I’ve known who worked with or knew John Stott were all impressed by his graciousness and generosity towards others even when he disagreed with them and cared deeply about the truth. But I guess we’ll always disagree about this!
Tim, people who lose arguments are always making that point as a diversionary tactic.
The fact that they do not address the debate-point but instead sideline – and, worse, sideline onto something that everyone agreed on anyway and has been rehearsed 1000 times: namely, that we are all friends – is not at all a good sign for how highly they regard truth.
On John Stott you are precisely right. He showed Christian grace and warmth and pursued the truth relentlessly. He knew – as everyone knows – that the two are not alternatives. Since the two are not alternatives, changing the subject from one to the other is irrelevant and will be liable to be viewed as being tactical.
I am still none the wiser as to what you think of the points I made, which means you have dropped them or been unable to answer them – in which case you should concede. John Stott never simply dropped the debate or changed the subject in a diversionary way.
Tim, I think I recall reading once that an American Secretary of State prior to WW2 angrily dismissed code so e State Department code breakers who had cracked the Japanese codes because “Gentlemen don’t read other gentlemen’s letters.” Beware of mistaking style for substance. This is the same error you made above, where you equated looseness in following forms of liturgy with breaking one’s marriage vows. That really is a wrongheaded comparison.
You need also to think what “generosity” actually means because you are seriously misapplying the concept as a Christian virtue. The real meaning of “generosity” is to give away what is *yours* to another in need. This is what Paul commended in the Macedonian Christians in 2 Corinthians. I cannot be “generous” with another person’s property or commission upon me – that is not “generosity” but embezzlement and dereliction of duty.
That is why Paul commands Timothy to “Guard the gospel”, not to be “gracious” and “generous” with those teaching different messages and doctrines. Did Paul fail your style test?
It is nice when a policeman is polite and courteous. But when his duty is to protect your home from burglars, you don’t want him to politely let thieves into your home.
Style must never be confused with substance. Don’t major on minors.
James, I don’t think I was making the point you seem to be reacting to. From the perspective of the person being ordained priest the lifelong vows they make freely before God and the church are as binding as other vows. It is a question about our integrity and honesty. As with all such vows we can all fail to keep them but to take them intending not to do so and thinking that is OK is rather serious. If a couple told me they didn’t intend to keep their marriage vows I would be very alarmed, as I’m sure you would be.
And can I suggest you adopt a slightly less belligerent tone when you want to disagree.
Tim,
If you think failing to recite the Athanasian Creed on one of the appointed Sundays -AS CLERGY HAVE PROMISED- is the same as adultery, then you really need to take reality check. Flexibility is already allowed by Canon B5. Stop comparing apples with rotten oranges, it makes your complaint look insincere.
Allow me to point out that the plural of scenario is scenarios. In Italian it is scenari – but we don’t pronounce the English word in the Italian fashion (shenario).
🙂
I, too, am relieved that the statement from the House of Bishops does indicate that a line has been drawn under the LLF process – at least for the moment. I ask the question, though: is this a thick, double underline or rather a faint series of dots? With a new General Synod being due for formation in 2026. I wonder what efforts both sides of the debate may be making to “stack the deck” in their favour for when the LLF issue – inevitably – raises its head again. The Alliance, CEEC and other conservatives take note! This is a time for building up your fortresses rather than any resting on laurels. The Apostle Paul repeatedly told the church to be watchful against the proliferation – and endurance – of false teaching.
Unless either liberals get 2/3 majority or conservative evangelicals clearly get a simple majority of Synod in the elections next year for the houses of clergy and laity I can’t see any chance of either being able to make any further changes to LLF
Yes indeed, CEEC & local DEFs have been faithfully and carefully reminding members of the importance of engaging with Synodical processes, from Deanery right up to GS (noting that only DS members get to vote for GS members).
I’m pretty certain the balance of orthodox in both the clergy & laity houses will be well above 1/3rd.
I note that David Walker, bishop of Manchester, has sent out a pastoral letter including these words:
“ It has become increasingly clear over the last six months that it would not be possible at the present time to secure the necessary majorities at General Synod to authorise either the use of bespoke services for those in same sex marriages, nor the ordination of persons married to a partner of the same sex, without such a high level of delegation of episcopal ministries as to render, in the view of many bishops, such violence to our ecclesiology as to make it arguable as to what extent we could still be considered a single church”.
So, after all those efforts by CEEC & the Alliance (& others) to persuade the bishops that the proposed next revisionist steps re. PLF S-aSs & clergy in SSMs would lead to at least 2 or more provinces divided by practice & ecclesiology (if not to actual schism) – it looks like they’ve succeeded, the bishops have come to their senses and, in effect, pulled the plug.
Thank the Lord!
Yes, I think that has become very clear. It was important to spell out the consequences of the bishops’ schismatic actions.
The bishops’ schismatic actions?
‘The bishops’ schismatic actions?’ Yes, in pushing contentious things through on wafer-thin majorities; in hiding their processes; in not attending to theology and legal advice; and in refusing to follow due process or any sense of transparency or accountability.
Using your ecclesial power to impose unwarranted change is schismatic.
What about those who kept agitating for schism? No problem there?
… and of course, great credit is due to you Ian, Andrew G and your other contributors on this forum for your unstinting efforts in pointing out the, frankly, blindingly obvious omissions by the bishops over the past 8 years which have now (hopefully) finally been addressed. Thank you very much.
Thank you. It has felt, over the last ten years, like moving a mountain with only shovels to hand. But even with shovels, you can move a mountain with enough hands and enough time.
Yes, all credit to Ian and to Andrew Goddard for standing firm and patiently making the case and insisting on legality when Welby was trying to snowblind everyone. The battle is far from other, and the front will now switch to Gafcon.
A point to ponder.
Abp Welby regularly wished people would stop talking about nothing but LLF and its predecessor schemes – he regretted the way it took ground and time from other things.
If even then, with his reluctance, it still took as much time and ground as it did, then how can anyone dispute its black-hole energy-depleting nature, consuming or diminishing all else in its path? Which was exactly what we said all along; but how many listened?
Thanks for your helpful and clear analysis, Ian. This article is much appreciated.
It always seemed to me that the LLF process put the liturgical cart before the theological horse.
Hence the crumpled mess of horse, cart and injured people we now see before us, strewn across the King’s highway.
An apt metaphor.
LLF, from the outset, was far from a object lesson/project in Mere Christianity.
So far has culture occluded, torrentially drenched and drained the Church of Jesus Christ, as we wander far from Him that we blend seemlessly with the digital image of the age.
Well done Ian Paul and cohorts, in running the race, so far. It is of a far bigger import than a small island’s geographical reach.
I find all this rather smug self congratulation unseemly when holy queer people continue to be excluded from full participation in the rites of the church. Of course the entirely licit blessings will continue and some couples may welcome them. But it is never just and good when people are required to drink from a separate water fountain.
There have been many eras and locations of Christianity.
None has conceptualised things in that way till very recently, and those that have have always been within sexually decadent secularist cultures.
Yet that very particular conceptualisation is now being forced on everyone.
How controlling.
The other alternative is that those so forcing it are aware of precisely one culture and time (and even the least brainy are aware of their own), and it is news to them that any other could ever have existed; but they know that they were certainly inferior if they did.
None conceptualised the abolition of slavery, remarriage after divorce, women’s ordination, or contraception until recently. So what is your point?
Fallacies of category, where we’ve been so many times.
Jeremiah 2: 13 appears apt.
Two sins, foresaken God, who is the spring of living water and have hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can not hold water.
Those are your highest values, are they? Or are they things in your purview?
Contraception is ancient.
Jesus spoke about remarriage after d******, a common Jewish and Muslim practice.
Herodotus admired the Persians for doing without slavery (and, as he enjoyed the distinctives of each people group, he put Scythians and Ethiopians in a similar category here).
My point is a simple one: do not pretend that a minority way of looking at things is majority, still less universal or mandatory. Those who do enforce or assume that are in some cases displaying ignorance and in others control (or both).
My point is a simple one too. Contraception and remarriage after divorce were proscribed by Christianity (not Islam and Judaism which are two more red herrings).
As is that well known Christian, Herodotus.
You said they were not conceptualised.
By whom were they not conceptualised? I was assuming you meant they were not conceptualised by anyone at all.
It can clearly not have been the Christians who did not conceptualise them. How could they proscribe what they had never conceptualised in the first place?
It was your term – the many eras and locations of Christianity none of which conceptualised things …
I merely added other things which Christianities hadn’t conceptualised until recently.
Remarriage after d;;;;;; was conceptualised within Christianity from Day One, Mk 10. Do you mean not its conceptualisation but its reinvention as some kind of wonderful thing?
Going forwards, the sin-loving unholy goats and wolves need to be kept out of positions of power and especially from being the ones who appoint ordinands in their own sin-loving image. They have held open the gates for each other for a long time now- so you end up getting an Archbishop who when a bishop, thinks its ok that its a woman’s own choice if she wants to murder her child or not. Not the sort of woman I would promote beyond the tea rota at church….let alone have leadership over things. I pray she repents and becomes the shephers she promises to be. Today. I remember when I was meeting the diocesan advisor about being ordained, the woman expressed disgust at her local free church encouraging purity and holiness and marriage before sex amongst its congregation. She felt they should have a few sex partners before committing. This was the woman I was supposedly being guided to ordination by? Crazy. Crazy and lost. In a second diocese the priest refused to discern me when I asked to shadow her for up to 20 hours a week- she flipped out and wrote a horrible attacking email. She wasn’t married to the man/ priest she shared her home with. These people wouldn’t know what ‘discernment’ is if it was labelled ‘discernment’ and Jesus himself delivered it. These are the people used by the Enemy with keeping holy followers of Christ out of the game. That needs to change. Start getting rid of the corrupted goats and wolves and start taking back the Church for Christ. Come on, you who have the positions of influence and power. Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the cross. They have infiltrated and you let them. Now fight and take back what does not belong to Satan. Weed out the wronguns!
Surely Ezekiel 34:10 applies …
The abortion time limit in the UK is 24 weeks, all Bishop Mullally has said is she is not as head of the English established church going to oppose that. She has though spoken out against the Euthanasia law proposed going through Parliament
No, she has said more than that, she is for abortion. Totally u conscionable for a Christian. At least Rowan Williams was against abortion, to his credit, Mullally simply echoes the secular NHS. Not a Christian leader at all.
James,
See Sarah Mullally’s smirk knowing that silence, albeit cowardly, won’t get her into trouble at Synod, and her turning on the waterworks over microaggressions experienced by women, in the 80 seconds of this clip from 4.48:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6xVrQkV5U4
Gavin Ashenden chose those clips wisely. Crying is lying.
I was willing to give Sarah Mullally the benefit of the doubt, but I am no longer in doubt.
Good God, he’s a nasty piece of work isn’t he?
I no longer listen to Gavin Ashenden’s Catholic propagandising, but he’s got Sarah Mullally’s number. She speaks for herself in those clips, more clearly than she realises.
No, she said more, including calling herself pro choice of those who want to er terminate their offspring (meaningless and chilling phrase, that ‘pro choice’), and only somewhere along the sliding scale even when it comes to her own stance (or possibly her own pregnancies- the wording is ill thought out despite the topic’s importance, and unclear to me). She also agrees with the new tacked on idea currently being scrutinised by the Lords: that women who er end their babies right up to full term should no longer be regarded as criminals.
It is very Not The Nine O’click News, except what they pilloried 45 years ago, and Yes Minister a bit later, was silly ass trendy clerics. I am sure the trendiness is a great compensation to the young victims and softens the blow.
The Church of England has never been very anti abortion, it laments it but believes the decision should be left to the mother within the time limit set by parliament. Doctors can still be prosecuted for terminations after the time limit of course.
If you want to be in a very anti abortion church you should be Baptist, Pentecostal or Roman Catholic
I don’t think that is the view of the C of E on abortion.
So you just go by what the ‘church’ thinks, and are incapable of thinking for yourself? That is not a promising start. The church only thinks that because it is led by individuals that think that. They are allowed to think independently. Why aren’t you?
You seem to think people should join others who are likeminded in ghettos. That is the best way of ensuring their thinking never develops beyond first base.
Normal sensible people don’t ‘want a church that is strongly anti/abortion’. They are just revolted by the idea of killing little innocent humans, and it never occurred to them that doing such a thing would be regarded as an option. Why would it be?
Don’t be trapped by cliches into set thought patterns. They are self fulfilling. You are better than that.
It is not my place to decide whether individual priests and PCCs make a moral judgment on holding standalone services to pray blessing on the lives of gay and lesbian couples.
Simon Butler has written this for people to reflect on:
https://www.inclusiveevangelicals.com/post/crumbs-of-comfort-standing-together-for-standalone-services
For my own part I shall always be grateful that my own priest was willing (with the backing of their PCC) to conduct what was in effect a wedding service, before God and the congregation, to pray blessing on the marriage of my wife and me. As I am a transsexual woman, anyway in the eyes of some readers here, our marriage was straight anyway. But for all present I assure you it was celebrated as a wedding between two women.
It was such a happy day, being able to promise to love and serve each other, and making those promises before God, before 100 friends, and before all our local friends in the church. We had wedding dresses (well… my wife is quite butch so she wore a tweed jacket), and bridesmaids, and hymns, and the PCC acted as ‘sidespeople’ and welcomers, and we had a reception with food and drink in the church hall after, then a dance until midnight. Technically we had got the legal piece of paper beforehand up in Scotland, but our church service was the religious reality of our covenant with each other – a covenant of love.
And that’s the point: marriage is not all about sex. It is about tender love, companionship, sacrifice, care, protection, laughter, kindness, support, compassion. If you don’t have the sex, you can still have the love.
Our priest ‘got’ that. As they put it to us in preparation: ‘You are part of our church. How can I refuse what I offer any straight couple, to pray blessing on your love and ask God to help you flourish?’
The years have gone by and we have indeed flourished, and are so so happy together, and my faith has deepened too with the support of Christians, and the grace of God, and I flourish too because of my transition, but that is another issue. In the flourishing there is a witness to the goodness of God, and blessing for other people in our lives – because that’s what covenant love does. Gay couples, straight couples, they can bring blessing on friends and community, and it’s all through the grace and the love of God.
I am so proud of my priest that they acted on conscience (and yes they did inform the bishop about it in advance, because not all bishops are opposed to blessings for gay couples) and I’m proud that in this country most people today love and accept gay and lesbian people in relationships together.
Personally I accept that the Church of England is divided down the middle on this issue (probably more people in pews are easy-going about it, but not all, and certainly not some socially conservative ministers who want to ‘police’ everyone on this issue).
I am perfectly happy for some priests to carry out blessings for gay couples, and some priests to say they will not. That’s just a reality of conscience in a church where the members hold differing conscientious views. We are a Church with two views. What I do not accept is the attempt by a possible minority in the Church of England to dominate everyone else.
And no, to Ian’s objection above, I do not regard it as ‘domination’ to say that, because someone like himself regards this as not an ‘indifferent’ issue, others who just seek blessing in committed gay relationships should be denied the blessings that a straight couple would be offered.
A black couple went into a restaurant and asked for a meal. The owner told them he didn’t serve black people, and told them to leave and find a takeaway somewhere else.
A gay couple went to a Church of England church and asked for their relationship to be blessed (let’s leave marriage out of it). The priest told them he didn’t bless gay relationships, and told them to leave and find somewhere else.
Is the first example discrimination? How did the black couple feel?
And how do you think the gay couple will feel? Because that IS how many gay people feel with regard to the Church of England at the moment. Their precious and costly relationships are being theologically vilified. They are being told to ‘leave the restaurant and go down the road to find a takeaway’. And it’s very sad.
So, no, in a divided church, if you want unity, different church communities may have to act on conscience. That won’t be my call, but clearly some priests and ministers are now considering that. And I strongly believe we should respect the differing views and live and let live. We should have mercy. And generosity. And compassion.
In the end, God does not receive us because we are ‘pure’. God receives us because of compassion and love. We should pray for one another… and pray for the flourishing that comes from relationships of love. And stop ‘policing’ each other. Rather, we might say ‘Well I don’t agree with their view, but I still pray blessing on them.’
Otherwise, alluding to the title of Ian’s article, there will be no end to ‘the Church of England dispute on sexuality’. It will simply go on and on, and people looking on – the English public who largely accept gay relationships – will be appalled.
That will be the product of triumphalism, I fear. As a Church, we should grow up, and instead of thinking God is most concerned about who wins the argument, perhaps we should consider that God may be asking and challenging us with a wholly different question: “Can you love one another, even with, and especially in, your differences?”
Can we find the grace to accept one another, and accommodate differing views that are the reality of the Church of England today?
Well said, the Church of England as established church encompasses the full range of Christianity, from conservative traditional and orthodox Anglo Catholics to liberal Anglo Catholics, to middle of the roaders, to conservative evangelicals and open liberal evangelicals. Synod decided PLF was the solution acceptable to a majority of the above in terms of addressing the same sex couples issue in church services and it should be left at that
‘For my own part I shall always be grateful that my own priest was willing (with the backing of their PCC) to conduct what was in effect a wedding service, before God and the congregation, to pray blessing on the marriage of my wife and me.’
I think what you are grateful for is that your vicar disregarded his ordination vows, disregarded the doctrine of the Church he promised to uphold, disregarded what the overwhelming consensus of (liberal, critical) scholarship agrees is the teaching of Jesus.
I can see how important that was for you personally. But I hope you can see some of the consequences of organising a church in such a way that ‘everyone does what is right in their own eyes’.
When you ask for ‘grace’, what you are actually asking is that we should not be bothered about this kind of anarchic approach to ministry and theology, and that we must, contrary to the teaching of the New Testament and the teaching of the church catholic down history, regard this as something indifferent.
Can you see why people might find that request unreasonable?
Thanks Ian,
Just to be clear, I do believe Obedience is important. For example, in your ordination vows, I assume you promised that you will “reverently obey your Ordinary” (who is Archbishop Sarah) who you may not call your ‘Head’ (you don’t seem to like that term) but “unto whom is committed the charge and government over you” and to whom you promised to “submit yourself”.
It’s not unreasonable to suggest that at some times this part of your vows might conflict with other parts (notably “erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God’s Word”), and indeed there can be a tension between obedience (for your own personal piety) and conscience (when you feel that obedience might result in harm to others).
As I say, at the present time I am glad that it does not fall to me – it is not my call – to make judgment calls on that tension. Those are decisions for a priest/minister to wrestle with. Since my wedding I have developed a greater awareness (in the Religious Life) of the importance and seriousness of Obedience for character formation.
But there remains the harm that may be being done to LGBT people, and the negative witness to the general public. Therefore, in the tension between obedience and conscience, and in the context of a Church of England that clearly holds two views in faith, it remains to be seen how individual priests will navigate and discern what they believe the Holy Spirit is saying to them (either individually or collectively).
I can witness to the blessing felt not only by me but in our local church community when we made our promises in church before God. I know undeserving blessing, and have ongoing call to follow the way of the cross, and open my heart with the help of God’s grace, to the flow of God’s Love – in daily life and prayer.
Perhaps my priest was right to follow their conscience, over their personal piety. Are there not circumstances where you might do the same?
I’m fairly surprised about how Simon has worded things in his article. But I think it highlights the questions: “Does obedience and inaction justify the harm that my personal piety as a priest/minister may do to other people if I keep my vow but crush their spirits? How should I resolve seeming paradoxes and tensions when in conscience one aspect of my vows seems to clash with another aspect?”
You may face a similar challenge yourself. I suspect that some members of the Alliance have faced the issue around obedience to the Ordinary. You did yourself when you challenged Justin over safeguarding in a way. That seemed quite insubordinate.
Like you, I don’t want to see disunity in the Church, because it is Christ’s Church, but I would stress that I believe that Uniformity alone is not Unity. We should not be scared to live with difference. Please spare a prayer for me, if you wish, and I do pray for you, Ian. One day it would be good to meet and talk face to face, but I suppose that may not happen, and I’m not really important or relevant enough to make it worthwhile.
I am on retreat, and I probably should not be posting here, but please try to believe that I mean you well. I see so much God-given heart in you, which is what we should expect as children of God, and so much potential for love. Doesn’t mean I agree with all your views. I see good in you. But… you once alleged that I said on a social media post that you were evil… and I think it was unfair that you did not back that up with the post… it hurt… because I do not think you are evil. I won’t let others say that of you either. But if we need forgiveness either way, I pray we can be obedient over that.
May the grace and compassionate love of God be with you. May the grace and compassionate love of God be with the Church. May we all pray for the suffering world, and for the work of reconciliation for which Christ died. May we have grace to follow the way of the cross. In Your Name, O Lord, I trust.
If Paul hadn’t done what was right in his own eyes, the Church today would have been a very different thing.
So you are just another who doesn’t know how to reconcile the words of Jesus and Paul? That’s an older heresy than some. Which of Paul’s letters would you delete from the canon?
Never a need to delete anything from the Canon. Just a need to understand that Paul was addressing a particular situation at a particular time. Paul himself noted that many things has changed. Why would things stop changing after the canon on scripture was fixed?
‘Why would things stop changing after the canon on scripture was fixed?’
Because, as Heb 1.1 says, Jesus was God’s last word to us, and Scripture is the apostolic testimony to it. Or, as Rev 22 says, we can add or take away nothing from it.
Or as the Articles say, Scripture is God’s word written, and we cannot preach against it.
Or, as Canon A5 says, our doctrine is found in Scripture, expressed in the BCP.
Andrew,
When did which verses of Paul cease to apply where?
Ahh I see you are a fundamentalist Ian.
Anthony – slavery, women…but of course evangelicals disagree with each other about his verses on women
Andrew,
Which verse would you like to discuss?
I don’t need to discuss it Anthony. It’s the evangelicals who can’t agree about it who need to discuss it.
St Paul was writing specific things in letters for specific times. If he were writing such letters today I’m sure he be writing quite different things.
Sorry, Andrew, you are discussing it with this evangelical. Name a verse. Feel free to use the writings of evangelicals who take a different view from me in your discussion with me. But saying that someone else disagrees with me butters no bread. I can do that to you without any effort or scholarship too. I might not even agree that your source is evangelical.
I wouldn’t delete any. He’s a hero. But he did play fast and loose with Judaizers and with what the LORD said.
“I might not even agree that your source is evangelical.”
That’s a favourite ploy of some evangelicals and Ian uses it quite often. They can’t be evangelicals unless they agree with me on this matter is not a tactic that butters any bread at all.
When it comes to women in ministry, Ian takes the clear view that Paul’s words in at least two of his letters don’t present any prohibitions. Headship evangelicals, such as are represented by one of our flying bishops in the CofE read Paul quite differently. They can’t both be correct. One is overturning what Paul wrote.
I’ve got zero interest in debating the matter of women in ministry with you or anyone else. As I’ve already said, St Paul was writing specific things in letters for specific times. If he were writing such letters today I’m sure he would be writing quite different things.
I’ll bet you’ve got zero interest in discussing specificPauline verses with me. You’d far rather say that Ian and I disagree about women episkopoi than risk showing your own hand. Your line takes no scholarship, no time, no effort, and consequently has no worth.
You seem to be ignoring my point Anthony. It’s you who won’t debate the actual issue here, not me.
I participated in the substantive debates in General Synod years ago. And have no need to go there ever again. With you or anyone. But that isn’t the issue.
I don’t know what your view is on those verses from Paul and so I don’t know if you agree with him or not. I don’t really care. That debate has been settled. But again that isn’t the issue.
The point is that *evangelicals* disagree. As I have described. Ian does not agree about Paul’s verses with the evangelicals like the Bishop of Ebbsfleet and those who uphold Evangelical Complementarian teaching as part of the Church of England.
They both can’t be correct about Paul. One of them is overriding Paul’s teaching. But of course that’s the point you don’t want to debate.
I am not denying that evangelicals sometimes disagree – although they agree with each other far more than they agree with church liberals – a fact which you don’t mention. When those verses come up between me and another evangelical, I do debate them. So what *exactly* do you claim I am ducking?
This is hard work….
Go back to where you challenged Penny about deleting bits of Paul from the Canon. And my response.
That is what you are ducking.
Evangelicals concede that not everything Paul wrote still applies. On the issue of women in leadership in the Church you have just acknowledged that some Evangelicals are ignoring what Paul wrote. Because the two views are mutually incompatible.
And you are therefore agreeing with me that it is not about, as you suggested, deleting Paul from the Canon, but rather just understanding that Paul wrote for a particular situation at a particular time.
I doubt that evangelicals ‘concede’ anything, because that would mean they had begun by defending ground of what they *wanted* to be true. But to anyone who has any regard for the truth (which is central for evangelicals) then it is obvious – as it ought to be to anyone – that it is totally irrelevant what you ‘want’ to be true: that will not change what actually is true. The 1001st time I have made this point, and the 1000th was just below. A lot of the false steps which I and others complain about are of this precise nature.
The only people who concede are those who begin with a fixed idea of what they would like the truth to be (good luck with that, considering that it could be 1000s of things), rather than merely discovering what it is, or at least being minded to do so.
Interpretation brings in times when Paul gives a first person order rather than claiming dominical authority; when he appeals to the customs of the churches; where he appears to be thinking as he goes along; where other things he writes leaven the first passage; and textual criticism. And all those 5 are just 1 Cor 14 (in the context of the rest of 1 Cor e.g. ch11 on headcoverings – it is a moot point how far the start of ch11 should be used to interpret the other women passage in ch14).
Anyway, which ‘debate has been settled’? A denominational non-comprehensive ‘debate’ including nonexperts is of more moment than the international scholarly debate?
That is a good example of why people don’t take synod seriously.
As you (Andrew) presumably agree with Ian about women episkopoi, let me ask you the question I’d ask him or anyone else of that opinion, regardless of whether they call themselves evangelical or liberal or high-church or any other label: How could a believer in any given time and place tell if he or she is in a congregation to which 1 Tim 3:2a no longer applies, or whether it does still apply?
“The only people who concede are those who begin with a fixed idea of what they would like the truth to be “
Christopher you describe yourself exactly, but you simply have zero self awareness so you can’t see it!
As to the matter that has been settled: the place of women as teachers and leaders in the Church of England is settled. Anyone who thinks it is not are those who have a fixed idea of the way they think things should be and haven’t actually been following the argument.
I don’t very often these days find myself thinking that C S Lewis got things spot on, but in this quite about the word of God I want to applaud loudly.
“The human qualities of the raw materials show through. Naivety, error, contradiction, even (as in the cursing Psalms) wickedness are not removed. The total result is not “the Word of God” in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God; and we (under grace, with attention to tradition and to interpreters wiser than ourselves, and with the use of such intelligence and learning as we may have) receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone and temper and so learning its overall message.”
As you (Andrew) presumably agree with Ian about women episkopoi, let me ask you the question I’d ask him or anyone else of that opinion, regardless of whether they call themselves evangelical or liberal or high-church or any other label: How could a believer in any given time and place tell if he or she is in a congregation to which 1 Tim 3:2a no longer applies, or whether it does still apply?
I’m not really sure i understand your question Anthony. You seem to be asking about congregations but the quote from 1 Tim is about an overseer – and a male one at that? But let me try to answer as far as I can?
Are you translating overseer to mean bishop?
I think the general things must always apply, but that is to do with common sense, not because Paul says it is the case. But the particular part of that verse that means an overseer has to be a man applies to the particular situation Paul was addressing 2000 years ago. He wasn’t writing a letter to us 2000 years later.
Chrch structure isn’t today what it weas thern, but the meaning of episkopos is clear: overseer, someone who takes spiritual responsibility for and leadership of a congregation or congregations. And shall be “a man of one woman” who visibly runs *his* family well.
Canterbury and Rome, repent!
So, as I said earlier, you clearly think that Ian and many other evangelicals are disregarding scripture.
Yes I do. But I can live with the differences, and whether I get on with other Christians is between me and them and is none of your business. Your refusal to give your own exegesis of specific relevant verses is, literally, disgraceful.
I have a degree in theology Anthony. I don’t need to give any exegesis here. There isn’t space and it isn’t relevant.
I’ve noted that the specific verse you mention in 1 Tim is basic common sense and that the particular instruction about being a male overseer was written for a particular time and a particular church. You can disagree with that. It’s fine. Doesn’t bother me in the slightest. The CofE had many debates about the ordination of women and I contributed at local and national level. The matter is settled. You don’t have to belong to the Cof
E if you don’t like the way it was settled. But it isn’t open for debate any more.
I don’t know whether I ‘belong to the CoE’ or not. I currently worship in one of its congregations as being the best near me despite my theological differences with the Anglican system. I refuse the authority of the diocesan bishop and the archbishops and nobody has asked me to pledge it. The vicar doesn’t think much of them either.
If you consider that your degree in theology would make it easier to crush me in an exegetical debate, try it.
The thing is that I’m not interested in ‘crushing’ you or anyone else. Theology is about discussing and discovering perspectives on the eternal, not about winning an argument. We shall never discover everything. And by winning or losing arguments we simply debase the other. That’s about war, and not creative dialogue. Sometimes matters become settled – as they did for the CofE in the matter of women in ministry.
You have an entirely different view of what the bible is. And that makes dialogue between us difficult. I don’t doubt your sincerity in it. I think it’s mistaken. But that doesn’t mean I can’t learn from it.
You dance, Andrew. I suggest discussing theology and you meation your degree in it, with a vague air of condescension and menace; then you deny that you are interested in winning a theological argument.
Winning theological arguments is futile in a private one-on-one, but in a public forum it is important in convincing others and the public aspect of it forces discipline such that it is one way toward truth. Let iron sharpen iron, as Proverbs says. a way to truth. But your mode of rhetoric is to talk about disagreemants among other Christians without ever revealing your own exegetical hand. Fine by me; I need do no more than call the attention of others to it.
You misunderstand again Anthony. The only people I need to prove myself to are official examiners who understand the subject. A blog isn’t the place for that. Especially when there isn’t a great deal of trust.
Let me repeat again that wonderful quote about the nature or scripture. If you agree with that, let’s see how we progress from there.
“The human qualities of the raw materials show through. Naivety, error, contradiction, even (as in the cursing Psalms) wickedness are not removed. The total result is not “the Word of God” in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God; and we (under grace, with attention to tradition and to interpreters wiser than ourselves, and with the use of such intelligence and learning as we may have) receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone and temper and so learning its overall message.”
I affirm that the only parts of scripture that were “faxed directly from heaven” are the written laws of Moses, the words of Jesus Christ, and some words spoken by the prophets. In the rest you can indeed see something of the human personalities of the writers. And even the passages I have mentioned use words whose meaning is determined by usage in the Ancient Near East, where life could be difficult and confusing.
I agree also that scripture is not written in the way that a contract between two shark businessmen, each having something that the other wants, would be written, aiming to be watertight. Consequently the words of the Bible can be twisted. Some examples can be found in this very thread.
I have little interest in whether this summary of how to read scripture and how inerrant it is or is not agrees exactly with the views of CS Lewis. I prefer to get on with exegesis. You prefer to quote conclusions you have reached without showing your working on request.
Anthony this isn’t a blog piece about the leadership of women in the Church. So extended exegesis on that matter is not appropriate.
But you asked me for some exegesis on half a verse from 1 Tim. I offered that and you didn’t really respond except to restate what was already in the verse.
This is a blog piece about the debate concerning same sex relationships. As far as I recall you have stated that those who have sex with a partner of the same sex should be put to death. Now, please correct me if I’m wrong about that. But if I am correct, excuse me for being wary of any debate with you. But as a matter of record I have said that you may contact me if you wish to discuss things further.
The point is public debate, which you are ducking. Re what is appropriate on this thread, that is up to the blog owner, and he has not interceded in our extended subthread nor on others that range even wider.
As for whether homosexual relations beteeen men should be subject to legal penalty, one of the possible answers would be illegal to state publicly under falsely so-called hate speech legislation. I am not as a matter of principle going to specify my answer to such a multiple choice question in those circumstances. Contact me (via Ian, whom I ask not to give my email address to you) if – to use your phrase – you wish to discuss it further. Were I in a position to make the laws, I would introduce the death penalty only for murder, because that is a direct command of God to all mankind in Genesis 9:6.
Anybody who has the task of oversight in the church (an episkopos, 1 Tim 3) should be a ‘man of one woman’ according to v3:2a, and should run *his* own family well. The phrase obviously means a family man faithful to his wife, and he may marry another only if she dies. Anybody who believes that this stipulation applied when Paul wrote it but not today must give reasons why, and those reasons should be sufficiently specific for any congregation to see whether the stipulation applies to it or not. I have found nothing like that in your exegesis. Rome could have been spared a lot of grief if it had kept Paul by letting its ordained priesthood marry.
Anthony you aren’t really following some of the conversation here I don’t think.
If I were ducking public debate I would hardly have been able to get elected to General Synod with all the group work, and endless diocesan and deanery synods etc etc. So much public debate was involved.
I’m not debating with you through a third party. If you aren’t prepared to discuss directly with someone, then that is your choice. No pressure. I have simply made the offer.
As to Paul’s letter to Timothy. That is exactly what it was. Paul was expecting the end to come – the return of Christ – and so clearly wasn’t writing a piece for eternity. He was writing observations for that time. They were instructions for that place and time. And that is obvious from the context. Most of the instructions in that verse are simply common sense. The instruction about being male applied then. I can’t imagine any exegesis that would say otherwise, EXCEPT a general observation that all scripture has to be instructions for all times and all places. And if that’s what you believe, then I understand. I don’t believe that and don’t see how it can be believed from that verse.
You are ducking public debate HERE, is of course what I meant.
You place a lot of weight on Paul expecting the return of Jesus imminently. It is one way of reading some of his lines, to be sure. But he would have been aware of Christ’s great commission that the gospel needed first to be preached to all the world; and the diameter of the earth had been known ever since Eratosthenes centuries earlier.
But again you miss the point. That verse in 1 Tim doesn’t anywhere indicate that it is an instruction about an overseer being male in every place and in every time. It was local. And was written to help a young colleague when establishing church order.
Clearly Paul wasn’t going to say ‘appoint a woman’ in that particular time and place a culture. But nowhere does the verse indicate that it has to apply to the ends of the earth. And in all places. And in all cultures. That just isn’t in the text.
And clearly I’m not ducking public debate on here else I wouldn’t even be writing this.
Thank you for no longer ducking one debate.
You put undue weight on the word ‘clearly’. It wasn’t clear to Christians for 1900 years, and no doubt it is pure coincidence that it is clear to you at a time when the zeitgeist suggests it.
You have still not given a criterion that a congregation in any time and place could apply to itself to see whether Paul’s stipulation applies to it or not. The criteria of the local culture is not a good reply, is it?
Oh the criteria is nothing to do with culture. It’s to do with what is reasonable and appropriate for that congregation.
It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us. It is a local decision.
If it were not reasonable or appropriate, why would God be calling women in to ministry as overseers. Because it is happening not just in our culture but in a variety of different cultures all over the world. Kenya. Japan. Brazil. North India etc….
Vocation to that ministry is being discerned.
And nowhere does the text of Paul say that it can’t be discerned ever. It is simply an instruction for that time.
So a congregation is free to decide whether or not it thinks a stipulation of Paul applies to it, according to what it reckons appropriate; and then invoke the Holy Spirit as cavalierly as modern charismatics might?
Same for Jesus’ words?
Women are not called to leadership roles in the church. Some women wrongly think that they are. When Paul said – with the sanction of the Holy Spirit- that he did not permit women to teach or assume authority over a man (1 Timothy 2:11-14), he argued it from the roles of Adam and Eve, an argument that transcends all cultures and congregations.
The Paul who worked with (and perhaps under) Prisca, Phoebe, and Junia, didn’t write 1 Tim.
The stipulation of Paul applied to a congregation 2000 years ago. The congregation today is doing what is reasonable and appropriate.
To say they decide according to what is appropriate is a deferral. How do they decide what is appropriate?
Deciding which parts of the New Testament apply to you and which don’t is not Christianity. It is humanism.
“How do they decide what is appropriate?”
That point has been covered already. If you don’t think the Church, under the power of God, is able to discern things then I am not sure what you think the Church is there for.
It seems like you want to worship a text rather than what the text is representing. It’s a form of idolatry.
I will let you answer Penny’s points, which are also crucial to this discussion. . I am now away for a few days.
I don’t want to worship a text, Andrew, I want to obey it. Unlike you.
Andrew, do you share Penelope CD’s view – which she states baldly as fact – that the Paul of Acts and of the letters to congregations isn’t the Paul who wrote to Timothy and Titus?
I am aware that the style is different, the problems faced by the churches Paul is concerned about are different, and various people are in totally different places (Timothy, Mark, Luke, Tychicus, Demas). Paul has visited Nicopolis and Crete, which he never reached on any of his missionary journeys in the New Testament. Also, Acts ends with Paul awaiting trial in prison, asnd we know that he was beheaded after a trial.
But the same trial? Paul was expecting to be exonerated (read Phillipians), whereas in his writings to Timothy he was expecting to be executed. Did he simply change his mind, perhaps after learning that his judge was hostile to Christianity? No! Further missionary journeys of Paul are mentioned by early extrabiblical sources including Clement, Jerome, Eusebius and Chrysostom (the same men who tell us he was beheaded). Two of these sources assert that Paul reached Spain, as he had said he hoped to (Romans 15). So he was released after the events recorded in Acts, and made at least one further extended journey. That would explain why people are in different places, and why the churches, being now second generation, faced different pastoral problems from brand-new congregations. As for the difference in style, Paul was writing to a close friend, not writing a declamatory letter to be read out to a congregation.
It was a habit of Greek rhetoric to put words into the mouths of people according to what you wanted them to say. The Hebraic tradition picked up by the early church did nothing of the sort. No author stole Paul’s name to write to Timothy.
it is not abut being gay, it is about sexual behaviour. The two are not the same, and it’s a shame you dont see that.
The LLF process and the Christian legitimisation of homosexual relations is one reflection of the feminisation of the Church, and society at large. Homosexual relations themselves represent a feminisation of the male. For this reason male homosexuals outnumber female homosexuals more than 2:1.
A relevant and very perceptive article is Helen Andrews’ The Great Feminization, published two days ago on the American website Compact.
For those wishing to understand the Woke revolution that has overtaken both society Church it is a must-read.
Well into the argument she writes: ‘No civilization in human history has ever experimented with letting women control so many vital institutions of our society, from political parties to universities to our largest businesses. … We assume that these institutions will continue to function under these completely novel circumstances. But what are our grounds for that assumption?’
I was asking myself at this stage in what way her observations might apply to the Church. Then she wrote:
Ditto journalism, politics, and the competitive world of business. The de-industrialisation of the West and downgrading of manual labour is another aspect of The Great Feminisation.
A healthy Church depends on leaders being willing to stand up for the truth when society is wanting the truth about God and about man to be different from what is revealed in Scripture. It needs to be willing, when vital truths are at stake, to confront and not go down the road of consensus and compromise for the sake of social cohesion.
Feminisation will be the death of western civilisation, given that it has to compete with entities like Russia and China that have not gone down the same road. And it will be the death of the Church, for Islam has also not gone down that road and it will perish anyway if it is not distinguishable from the world.
Read the article. The writing is on the wall. If, like the author, you think the revolution is reversible, there is hope. If you don’t, there is none – except in the Kingdom of God, which, when it comes, will not be ruled on feminist principles.
I have never read such misogynist rubbish in all my life. So Elizabeth I or Elizabeth II or Golda Meir or Catherine the Great or Indira Gandhi were weak and incapable leaders? Nicola Horlick would never have made a successful career in finance? Great journalists like Melanie Phillips or Janet Daley or Polly Toynbee are supposedly incapable of articulate debate. While we should lament men are no longer working in often appalling life shortening conditions down the mines?
So Margaret Thatcher was incapable of standing up to Russia or China, when the former even called her the iron lady? Hillary Clinton was I suppose not tough enough to be US Secretary of State either?
The fact that a few Muslim nations are still relatively misogynist is no reason to follow them either. Who was it who introduced PLF anyway? Welby, a man and he was right to do so as he was right to support female bishops and as Mullally was the right choice to replace him
This Justin Welby?
https://www.anglicannews.org/media/1041864/PA_GF-Enthronement-08f.jpg
That article is really interesting. To it might be added the GMVH, the Greater Male Variation Hypothesis, that in, for example, intelligence, the male average and the female average are equal, but the spread is greater in men. That would mean that, above a certain intelligence, there were many more men than women. Of course they would be counterbalanced by a large number of very unintelligent men, but it is the very intelligent who change the world.
I do not know if the GMVH is true, but it is assiduously avoided in experimental testing, and one online-only journal deleted a published paper arguing for it.
Women are trained from birth to be compliant and agreeable and bury our opinions and needs in place of others demands of us.
We become experts in dying to self long before we get told to by God.
It is only once a woman breaks free of her pathological agreeableness that she becomes a formidable match for men.
Intelligence isnt enough for women, without the shedding of agreeableness.
You are saying it is nurture not nature. How do you know?
Jordan Peterson is always quoting the OCEAN five personality types which says that women generally score high on the Agreeableness category, which is extremely hrlpful in the small war zone which is the fsmily. Unfortunately women also score higher on the N category, perhaps as a kind of recompense.
Jordan Peterson is seriously ill right now, which the mainstream media don’t tell you.
I would imagine many females today would strongly disagree with you.
The very unintelligent men also change the world through the male propensity for violence.
Women are certainly overtaking men at university and medicine and law are now becoming female dominated.
But I don’t think 60 years of feminism has really made much difference to the overwhelmingly male character of engineering, physics or maths. Perhaps the biological sciences are different, I don’t know. But Nobel laureates dtill seem to be overwhelmingly male. There is a huge price to be paid for raising your head above the parapets, as Larry Summers and Sir Paul Nurse found out.
At the moment you typically get the Nobel for work done before 1990…
James, I don’t think that stupid men are necessarily more violent than smart ones. Head and heart aren’t the same.
There is one very unintelligent male changing the world now.
Im no fan of Trump but he’s clearly not unintelligent. And he may just have brought some sort of peace to the Middle East.
“the Kingdom of God, which, when it comes…..”
Steven you told us in very clear terms that the end of the world was coming and the Kingdom of God would ensue on a very particular day in September a year or two back. When it didn’t happen you told us that Jesus had spoken to you and explained what was happening.
Perhaps you could share that knowledge with us?
You misreport. And many months ago you asked the same question, which I declined to answer. Matt 7:6.
Thanks Steven. I think we can all take from that what we need to know.
Someone put a note through my door – and the door of all our neighbours – a few weeks ago, stating that the rapture would be happening this last September 15th. Needless to say, that one didn’t happen either.
I’d believe you about this issue if you could give the reference to what you say was claimed.
First claimed here
https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/who-are-the-antichrist-the-man-of-lawlessness-and-the-beast/
Can’t find the reply Steven eventually gave as searching for a needle in a haystack but my memory of it is as above. If Steven wants to correct that he is, of course, welcome to do that.
Andrew,
I too believe that the Kingdom of God will be inaugurated in power one year at Tabernacles, with the bodily return in power to this earth. This is the one OT festival for which all able-bodied Israelite men were to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which has not yet had fulfilment in Christ, and it is the main harvest festival. As a further hint, it is immediately preceded by Trumpets.
What I don’t know is the year. I am of the school that believes it will be possible to know from seven years beforehand, if you know the prophecies. But I accept that some other committed brethren don’t agree about that. I also believe that the Rapture precedes the Second Coming by only a few seconds, but again I accept that some committed believers in Jesus Christ disagree with me about that.
Steven Robinson, in the link you cite, wrote on September 8th 2023, “Perhaps we shall see who is right on 16 September, the day of trumpets.” He was sticking his neck out a bit about the year but he made no firm prophecy, did he? And you are unable to find a further comment by him that you claim is more specific. Until or unless you can, your teasing of him reflects badly on you, not him.
All bonkers.
Steven can correct or provide the link, as I have said.
Duck for lunch, Andrew?
Quackers in your case Anthony.
Would you like to discuss biblical eschatology next?
Thanks Anthony but I’ve discussed that on this blog before and don’t need to do it again. I’m very much with the Inaugurated/Realised Eschatology school. Something else that divides evangelicals.
I won’t be discussing it again, especially as it’s off topic.
And it really isn’t for you to know the times and seasons you know…..
I must apologise to the owner whose rules I am disrespecting, and who should of course delete this message, but certain things need to be said.
Andrew Godsall doesn’t think the miracles actually happened.
Andrew Godsall doesn’t think that the virgin birth was an actual miraculous conception, in contravention of the laws of nature.
And now Andrew Godsall does not think that the Second Coming will happen.
Is there any sense in which Andrew Godsall is a Christian, rather than a Deist? It seems the answer is no.
Andrew Godsall will claim to be a Christian, but this claim rests on the totally unsustainable idea that one can entirely remove the supernatural truths from Christianity and still call the remaining thin gruel of subjective feelings and ethical platitudes ‘Christianity’.
Ontologically, Andrew Godsall is no different to Richard Dawkins; but at least Dawkins has the intellectual honesty to follow his disbelief in the supernatural to its logical conclusion, rather than trying to cling awkwardly on halfway down the slippery slope.
And, I have to say, any denomination which allows Andrew Godsall to continue as accredited clergy while spreading such misinformation forfeits its own right to be called a Christian church.
This is the real problem with the Church of England. All the sexuality stuff is a sideshow, a distraction, a diversionary tactic. The rest problem of the Church of England has been its failure to police its borders and keep out the Andrew Godsalls who think that we should leave belief in supernatural events to credulous medieval peasants, and reinvent the faith for sensible modern men who know that water never turned into wine.
Satan — who Andrew Godsall also no doubt thinks is a mere myth or metaphor — must be laughing his head off at having got the Anglican Church to waste so much time on such a minor matter while he gets on with filling its upper ranks with people who don’t actually believe in what they say.
Is this the end of the debates over sexuality in the Church of England? Maybe. Maybe not. But it hardly matters. Until the ranks of the church, and indeed the pews, are elite purged of the sea-of-faith, conjuring-trick-with-bones generation, the gangrene will continue to spread.
Amputation is required, but the infection may already be fatal.
None of that is actually true and S can’t provide any evidence for their wild claims. This person called S has a very serious problem and enjoys trolling.
Oh, bless you ‘S’. We have so missed your erudite and positive contributions to these debates.
I don’t know the year. I do know the time of year. It’s called rightly divining the word of God.
All you do is grumble that Christians whom you label evangelical are not unanimous in their understanding of scripture. When challenged, on the thread on which you say this, to explain your own position by discussing specific verses, you refuse. Your position requires no expertise and no effort. It will be seen for what it is.
I’m not grumbling at all. I’m just noting it.
Feel free to contact me if you wish to discuss things further.
People have been complaining about the feminisation of the Church for 2000 years.
They have also regularly come put with sexist claptrap like this too.
Well said
No, certainly not for 2000 years. The strongest proponent of the feminisation-of-the-church thesis is Leon Podles, who places this process to around the 13th century, which corresponds to the strong appearance of Marianism in the Western Catholic Church. Prior to that, some forceful masculine models (king, warrior, workman etc) of what it means to be a Christian were regnant in the popular imagination.
The efflorescence of Marianism around 1200 is linked with seeing Mary as the ideal of the Christian: the submissive Bride of Christ who exemplified the ‘feminine’ virtues more than the ‘masculine’ ones. You can see it in the art and language of the time, along with church decorations and vestments.
The feminisation of the Catholic Church was furthered by the large number of homosexual men who became Catholic priests.
Puritanism and Protestantism in general put something of a brake to this tendency, but it gathered steam in the 20th century, and through the ordination of women in Protestant churches, feminization became pervasive in these churches, just as it has in education and social work (two professions that men have deserted in their droves).
Once women were ordained in Anglicanism, it was only a matter of time (and not a long time) before the feminisation of that church would be complete.
That is why most Anglican churchgoers are female. It simply doesn’t appeal to most men.
There are of course more women in England now than men and mothers often feel more comfortable with female priests in their churches with their children as well
Do you have any actual evidence for that last comment re mothers?
The recent cases of child sex abuse amongst some male clergy in the church, no cases of child sex abuse by female clergy though as yet
Since at least Celsus.
There is absolutely nothing loving or gracious about calling Evil as though it were Holiness. Nor allowing parodies in place of God’s Will. Affirming delusion and calling it flourishing. Allowing Satan to treat God with contempt? Not now. Not ever.
Stand up holy warriors and fight.
Call the wicked to repent and be saved.
Protect the flock from the malignant
Reality in terms of what is legally possible regarding LLF innovations has finally been accepted. So far, that seems to be all.
And there’s little reason to assume that, for a significant majority of the bishops, it does other than represent grudging acceptance rather than anything approaching repentance and a new dawn of faithfulness to scripture. The ‘in due course’ releasing of legal advice given to the bishops will be an interesting moment. But, for me, the fact that not one single bishop felt the moral imperative to break ranks and publicly release that advice when it was first given tells me that the bishops needs to examine their collective and individual fitness to hold that office – starting with Sarah Mullaly who publicly led the charge on behalf of that totally indefensible stance. Did every bishop seriously think their duty of openness and honesty to their clergy and lay people was of inferior priority when weighed against presenting a united front on behalf of the Welby regime? What on earth has been going on amongst this group? Where is the integrity?
The damage they have done to the Church of England and the Anglican Communion is very serious indeed and it cannot be treated as a temporary aberration. It raises existential questions not only for a great many Episcopal careers but the very basis on which the Church of England can continue. A formal, sound body of doctrine alone in the hands of an ideologically captured or corrupt group of leaders cannot bear good fruit or bring glory to God. The culture of dishonesty and manipulation of process would be bad enough in any organisation. Lack of concern for doing basic theological thinking in a church reveals a breath-taking disregard for the spiritual wisdom every Christian must believe, teach, and publicly defend.
Perhaps most serious is the damage done to the church’s credibility in terms of presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ to the desperately needy people of England. People’s lives and future freedoms are being radically reshaped before their eyes; there’s even deranged talk across Europe about ‘preparing for war’. The C of E apparently has nothing to say on these things, or on many issues seems likely to be supportive. While it remains possible for individuals still to support a faithful local parish church, the continuation of anything like the leadership we’ve become used to is simply untenable when considering the church’s future: a calm and thankful return to business as usual is unthinkable. If the LLF years have been hard to endure, the future in terms of repentance and rebuilding will be an immense challenge – even if that is what everyone intends to do and is within the will of God.
The Church of England is established church of a nation where same sex marriage is legal. So inevitably it was going to offer some recognition for same sex couples in services. If you really want to reject all recognition of same sex couples there are plenty of Baptist or Pentecostal or Orthodox or free churches that still follow that line.
It should be noted though that even the late Pope Francis said the Roman Catholic church could also allow priests to say prayers for same sex couples and the Church of England has still not gone as far as say the Methodist or Lutheran churches or the Church of Scotland or US and Scottish Anglican churches which do now offer full same sex marriages in their churches, as do the Quakers
Can you provide some biblical evidence that God recognises same-sex couples, please?
Anthony
For precision God clearly does recognise same sex loving relationships – see for obvious example David and Jonathan. The point is that he also tells us at various points in Scripture that a physical sexual relationship is an inappropriate way to express same-sex love, and that effectively telling God you think you know better than Him about this risks at least serious harm to the faithful relationship with God on which salvation depends.
I take ‘couple’ to imply sexual intimacy.
David and Jonathan were not a ‘same sex couple’ in the ordinary understanding of that word – and neither were Ruch and Naomi. Sexualizing friendships simply shows the obsession of our days.
In Christian terms Jesus is God and Jesus never said a word against faithful same sex unions, even if he reserved holy matrimony for heterosexual couples
Why are you obsessed with same sex relationships, Simon? You talk about them in almost every post. Why is it so important to you?
Men buggering each other doesn’t suddenly change from Sin to Holiness just because it’s done regularly by the same people.
God does not change his mind about Sin over time.
The delusion is widespread and strong but it is still Delusion and Sin.
I’m sad that you were decieved so (and righteously angry with the wolves and goats who infiltrated The Church and lied to you)
But you have now been corrected.
So it’s not an excuse any longer not to Repent of your sins and be saved.
Same as the rest of us- REPENT….don’t perish holding to a deception.
Die to Self, Deny the flesh and be born again whilst you still can.
The cost will be high but eternity In Christ is the reward.
As far as I am concerned Jesus, who as a Christian I believe is God, has better things to do with his time than spend it all sending committed same sex couples who might occasionally have sex with each other after lights out rather than just have a book and cup of cocoa to hell and the fiery furnace for all eternity. If you wish to disagree that is up to you
Simon, it is not a case of people ‘wishing to disagree’. It is a case of the clear and consistent teaching of Jesus that marriage is between a man and a woman, which the whole of scripture testifies to.
Fortunately the teaching of Jesus is not formed by any of our personal preferences.
Simon ‘Jesus never said a word against faithful same sex unions’; except he did. He said that marriage was between one man and one woman, because of God’s creation of humanity male and female.
But of course he never said a word against faithful incestuous relationships. So do you think they are ok?
Incest is illegal in UK law, same sex relationships are legal, so for England’s established church only the latter is relevant
Simon, you are avoiding the question. You operate on the principle ‘If Jesus didn’t forbid it, he must think it ok.’
“… Jesus, …has better things to do with his time than spend it all sending committed same sex couples who might occasionally have sex with each other … to hell and the fiery furnace for all eternity. ..”
Interesting that you think you know what Jesus has time for and what things to him would be better to spend time on.
You could not be more wrong.
When Jesus soon returns, he comes not as a New Age…tolerant, do what you think…fluffy friend. He comes back as THE JUDGE of the whole world.
The JUDGE.
And there will be an awful lot of people going to eternal damnation. In fact MOST PEOPLE will be going to Hell.
Those who know God’s commands and his Will simply do not have any excuse at all for not being Obedient to his Father’s Will.
Choosing your own way and your own will is, on that last day, going to be taken as your final choice- your way, not God’s way…and you will be rewarded the wages of your sin…which is Death.
Jesus said that The Way is Narrow and that FEW will find it.
FEW.
If you are one of the FEW that have found it, then it would be pretty imbecilic to actively CHOOSE Death rather than Life, wouldn’t it.
I know it’s tough.
But Sin leads to Death. We need to get this right now!
The price, the cost of following Jesus can truly be horrific.
But if you have met him, where else can you go?
Never into delusion and Sin- that’s all I know.
Choose Life.
Repent and be Saved
As has been said many times before, but you are clearly refusing to listen, there was no need for him to say anything specifically about same sex sexual relationships because it was not debated within Jewish circles, unlike divorce – they were not approved of.
Ian
I dont think it’s that if Jesus didnt mention same sex marriage therefore it’s ok.
I *do* think it’s the case that the only solid argument against allowing gay people to marry is to appeal to a divine commandment or revelation. There’s no worldly argument against it, which is why most western countries have grudgingly allowed it: you cant claim to allow religious freedom and then ban things on religious grounds.
The reality is that the argument from scripture is weaker than a ban on tattoos, remarriage after divorce or women in leadership. A few isolated verses can be taken as banning all male male sex, but then you get into arguments about context
Peter, there are many worldly arguments against same-sex sexual relationships, including greater promiscuity, greater inter-partner violence, and lack of procreation. The latter is the main reason why it has been rejected in most traditional societies.
You can only make the claim that the argument is ‘weaker’ if you base your theology on proof-texting, instead of looking at what Scripture says about why we have sexed bodies, which is what I do in my Grove booklet https://grovebooks.co.uk/product/p-180-what-is-sex-for-a-pastoral-theology-of-our-sexed-bodies/ I hope you have read it.
Jesus, Paul, and the writers of all the ‘boo’ texts believe marriage is between one man and one woman *because* of God’s creation of human as male and female.
And the vast majority of liberal, critical, scholars agree that that is what Scripture says. I hope you have read them too.
You’re not selling it Jeannie.
Well given that attitude Jeannie one could even imagine saying hell might even be preferable to spending all eternity in a heaven populated with those who spend most of their time condemning same sex couples in faithful unions
What has the number of people prepared to buy something got to do with how true that thing is?
Secondly, they will be prepared to buy the things they like, because they like them. So they will not be thinking about truth or accuracy at the time.
1000th time I have made this basic-level point.
Ian
Yeah but in 2025 it’s difficult to keep selling those bankrupt lies about people like me. Im gay, married with two normal kids – one of them an adult now! No domestic violence.
It works in societies where gay people have to keep themselves hidden. It doesn’t work when most people have a close friend or family member who is gay.
Simon
And in this you effectively recognise what I’ve been saying for some time here and elsewhere – that the Church of England has divided loyalties between God and the State of England. It is attempting to serve two masters, which Jesus himself said clearly does not work. And as Jesus’ words about that impy, the Church should stop following two masters, stop having divided loyalties, and should obey only God, not the pressures to conform to the State/World and what the state wants.
You are of course right that this divided loyalty is the result of ‘establishment’ which therefore should be abandoned …..
The Church of England was created to be established church for England, that is its main point. If you disagree with established churches don’t be in the C of E, simple, become a Baptist for example like you are
The disestablishment of the Church of England is coming. What wil you have left to believe in then?
No it isn’t. Starmer warmly praised Mullally recently and kept C of E Bishops in the Lords even as he and his party passed a bill to remove the last hereditary peers from the Lords. Even Farage says he is still a cultural Anglican even if he doesn’t always agree with the left liberal statements of some C of E bishops. Ed Davey is a practising member of the Church of England and the Tories were of course founded to defend Crown and the established Church of England in the 17th century.
If the experience of the US, New Zealand, Canadian, Scottish and Welsh Anglican churches is any guide though be careful what you wish for. Disestablished Anglican churches there are overwhelmingly liberal Catholic, conservative evangelicals there are largely Baptist or Pentecostal or Free Church and conservative Anglo Catholics overwhelmingly Roman Catholic with a few Orthodox. Even the GAFCON Anglican breakaway is largely a product of central African Anglican churches not western Anglicanism
Simon ‘If the experience of the US, New Zealand, Canadian, Scottish and Welsh Anglican churches is any guide though be careful what you wish for.’
I guess the same applies to teaching on sexuality and marriage? Each of them has moved away from the teaching of Jesus on this, and has then collapsed. Be careful what you wish for.
The disestablished Scottish and US Anglican churches even now perform same sex marriages in their churches
GAFCON has had enough of CoE liberals and declared itself the Anglican Communion for all faithful Anglicans.
https://gafcon.org/communique-updates/the-future-has-arrived/
This puts the liberals in Check, because they cannot say “Oh no you’re not – we are”, as (1) no constitutional document says so and (2) they would be accused of ecclesiastical colonialism, which they take to be the unforgiveable sin.
It is their problem.
Who cares? GAFCON is led by the Church of Nigeria effectively, in a nation where same sex couples are arrested. No western or even most Latin American Anglicans or South African Anglicans will touch a GAFCON leaning to policies like that and nor are they opposed to female clergy and bishops either, especially after the sex abuse committed by some male clergy.
In any case the Church of England was founded 300 years before the Anglican Communion was founded and prospered very well all that time. It should focus on serving England again above all, not try and be a Church leading global Anglicanism like Welby wanted. The Archbishop of Canterbury is not supposed to be an Anglican Pope and indeed head of the Anglican Communion will likely rotate amongst Archbishops of each Anglican province anyway
” If you disagree with established churches don’t be in the C of E, simple, become a Baptist”
So God is a Baptist…..
Anthony
GAFCON are not faithful Anglicans. They reject Lambeth 1.10.
I also feel like they’ve already flounced out, yet want to keep coming back to flounce out again.
In any case, why would they be unhappy that priests are banned from blessing gay couples?
Elaborating a bit on the rather blunt “So God is a Baptist” ….
In the NT God both rejects ‘establishment’, for example in Jesus’ statement to Pilate that his kingdom is not of/from this world, and outlines a rather different way to do Church/State relationships in which it is actually the Church, INDEPENDENT OF EARTHLY STATES, which is God’s holy nation on earth in this age.
So God in fact “disagree(s) with established churches”, and I note that therefore you are tellling God ” don’t be in the C of E”! I hope for the sake of the CofE He doesn’t take your advice; but also for the sake of the CofE I hope they will change on this subject and agree with God.
A C of E which is no longer established church would no longer be C of E (though like most western Anglican churches now not established like those in Scotland and the US would likely move towards full same sex marriages in its churches and be liberal Catholic dominated). After all if you are a conservative evangelical why bother being in a church with liberal catholics no longer established when you can be Baptist like you or Pentecostal or free church? If you are conservative catholic why be in a church with liberal catholics and evangelicals when you can be Roman Catholic or Orthodox with fellow conservative catholics? Liberal evangelicals can be Methodist etc.
The fact Jesus says his kingdom is not of this world also has nothing whatsoever to do with the C of E being an established church offering weddings, funerals and baptisms to all parishioners. Otherwise no churches could be in this world, only the next where his kingdom is finally reached
Simon
1) “The fact Jesus says his kingdom is not of this world also has nothing whatsoever to do with the C of E being an established church offering weddings, funerals and baptisms to all parishioners. Otherwise no churches could be in this world, only the next where his kingdom is finally reached”
You completely miss the point – it was Pilate’s job to stop Messiahs ‘establishing’ a worldly style kingdom. Jesus rejecting a ‘kingdom of/from this world’ is not about the kingdom being airy-fairy other-worldly – it’s precisely rejecting established religion and proposing a different kind of Church-State relationship; that is why as a matter of hard-as-nails politics Pilate was willing to declare Jesus innocent.
See
https://stevesfreechurchblog.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/46/
Had Jesus been proposing the later kind of situation in which for example Constantine rebelled to establish a ‘Christian’ state, Pilate would have had to declare Jesus guilty.
There are many other texts making clear that the Church is not meant to be ‘established’ in any state but is itself meant to be “God’s holy nation” in this age, not ruling earthly states but operating within them somewhat like the Jewish Diaspora. ‘Pope’ Peter makes the point clearly in his first epistle.
2) Agreed a disestablished CofE would have to rename itself – it would still be the same group of Christians, just that they would then be agreeing with God as surely the Church is meant to do. It could put behind it a past of persecution and unholy war and actually function as a Church, free of the pressures of entanglement with the state.
Jesus of course tasked St Peter with founding his church on a rock which via apostolic succession flowed to today’s Church of England. As a nonconformist Baptist you of course reject that and established churches, as a Catholic Anglican I of course disagree with you and always will.
As I also told you a non established Anglican Church would be dominated by liberal Catholics as most western Anglican churches are. Soon like the Scottish and US Anglican churches full same sex marriage in the churches of a disestablished Church of England would be inevitable therefore, so making it in your view even more unbiblical than it is now
We follow what Peter teaches in his first epistle, very much not establishment of the Church in England or any other state. By doing ‘establishment’ the CofE disregards Peter, which in turn makes a nonsense of the claim to ‘apostolic succession’ from Peter.
If the CofE goes the ‘same-sex marriage’ route it will die – sad, but the Real Church will continue in various non-established forms.
GAFCON are faithful to Jesus Christ. Sorry if you find faith to something else more important.
If Europe is ready for war it is down to Putin and his invasion of Ukraine and pushing it back, blame Putin
It was the Americans who mounted a coup against a democratically elected pro-Russian politician in Ukraine a decade ago, and it was NATO that foolhardily declared that Ukraine would one day become a member – meaning that US troops and tactical nuclear missiles might be placed on a plain less than 350 miles from Moscow. Russia was saved from Napoleon and Hilter only by the thousand miles they had to go to Moscow. Any Russian leader worth his salt would have done what Putin did; it isn’t about him and it won’t get better when he is gone. After the Iron Curtain collapsed the West ruthlessly asset-stripped Russia in collaboration with its KGB hierarchy who became the oligarchs. A great opportunity to make alliance with Russia against rising China was missed.
The Cuban missile crisis was no different. As for Ukraine, the advice is the same as to any small country next to a big one: keep your distance but get on well with it. That’s realpolitik. Ignore it at peril of starting World War 3. Poland deserved to join NATO after 1990: their people had led the anti-communist movement behind the Iron Curtain, they were defensible being adjacent to Germany, and they are historically Catholic. None of that applies to Ukraine.
Why should Ukraine not have been a member of NATO if it wished to join? Had it done so Putin may not have invaded. Putin is the most dangerous European leader since Hitler and Stalin and anyone appeasing him is foolhardy. It was not the West responsible for the decisions of Yeltsin, though the average Russian was richer by 2000 than they were in 1980 under communism.
We must continue to support Ukraine to ultimately free themselves from Putin, even if it means largely holding current lines until the US elects a Democrat President again who is more willing to take on Putin or his successor than Trump is
Putin talking for perhaps an hour on the history of Russia and Ukraine to Tucker Carlson was a lesson in brilliance and stability. He had no notes and spoke of places and dates with the level of knowledge that puts university professors in England to shame. I’ve no idea of Putin’s ambition to do anything other than protect Russia, but I did watch a couple of documentaries on Ukraine before the war which clearly demonstrated how corrupt the place is and how badly they treated their own. Real actual Nazis and corruption in Ukraine still and the West up to no good with them, and a comic actor put in charge. I thought the Cold War was well over, yet here we are with Putin being vilified and communist marxist dictatorship China being cosied up to. All very dodgy. Putin’s fab interview with Tucker- https://youtu.be/fOCWBhuDdDo
I am willing to risk getting nuked to defend Poland and the Baltics under the NATO doctrine, but not Ukraine. I wish its people well but I don’t regard as any more my business than wars between African nations. Unhappily it was made my business by rash fools who promised NATO membership to a nation neighboring Russia and who even engineered a coup there against a democratically elected pro-Russian leader. Now we are pouring billions that could go to the NHS into a black hole that extends a murderous war.
Longterm, Ukraine needs to be like Belarus – independent but Moscow-friendly. (Belarus refused a Russian request to send its troops into Ukraine with Russian ones – its independence is not meaningless.) Too bad that Western meddling has delayed this pan-Slavic rapprochement by a generation at least. And, as I said, this is not about Putin. It is about geopolitics and a good analogy – which you conspicuously ignored – was with the US response to Russian plans to put ICBMs in Cuba in 1962.. You have no concept of realpolitik.
Or is this really to do with the contrasting attitudes to LGBT of Putin and Zelensky?
Well of course Putin knows all about the history, Putin wants to rebuild the USSR and become a new Tsar like head of a greater Russian led Empire in Eastern Europe again. That doesn’t mean we trust him an inch. Zelensky by contrast is a free market liberal not a nationalist like Putin and don’t believe all the Russia propoganda about Nazi Ukranians which was just Putin’s excuse to invade. As for Marxist China, it was Putin cosying up to Xi at a recent parade in Beijing, no western leaders were there. It is Trump who has imposed tariffs on Chinese imports not Putin and western leaders making statements in favour of Taiwan and MI5 warning about Chinese security threats they have to tackle
Cuba was a Castro led Communist satellite of Russia in the 1960s, Ukraine is a free and liberal nation under Zelensky which has just been invaded by Putin’s Russia. A completely different scenario
I believe Putin wants to be Tsar of all the Russias but has no wish to retake Eastern Euope as Stalin did by leaving troops ther after WW2 ended. You believe he has Stalin’s idea. But I am entertaining hypotheses whereas you pretend to knowledge of his thoughts. Also, Russia simply does not have the resources today that it did during the Cold War. It can’t even win a small war in part of Ukraine, let alone a major pan-European war.
Of course Putin was cozying up to Xi. The West wanted nothing to do with him and China is the other superpower; what do you expect? I was talking about the 1990s, as I made perfectly clear but as you evidently misunderstood.
If you feel that strongly, off you go to Ukraine to fight for them. Or at least make donations to their fighting fund.
The only reason Putin didn’t capture Kyiv in 2022 was the missiles and weapons, anti tank launchers etc that Boris and Biden had provided Zelensky
Russia circa 1980 would have brushed those aside. But in any case you are a strong believer in self government. So am I – I don’t want my taxes going to Ukraine. They are already high enough.
If Ukraine fell to Putin the whole of Europe would be at risk of invasion, that is why we must continue to support Zelensky
Again you pretend to knowledge of which you cannot know. This isn’t the Cold War era when Russia could call on eastern European troops to invade the West. The NATO doctrine ensures peace, except when it is extended to Moscow’s doorstep when it ensures war.
Anthony
I am quite a strong believer in self government. It should be up to the Ukrainian people which alliances they join. If they choose to join NATO then it’s not justification for invasion by Russia – especially as they haven’t actually joined NATO or the EU.
Involvement with NATO is plainly not the reason Putin invaded. He’s just BS-ing. Unfortunately his voice is being amplified by our politicians who want to make Putin the good guy because he hates the same people they do.
You might be a strong believer in self-government, but you are in trouble if your powerful neighbour does not want you flirting wth another superpower. And calling its leader a nasty man makes no difference.
That’s called realpolitik. It isn’t rocket science. You have to deal with the world as it is, not as you would like it to be.
But Russia isnt a superpower. They are more powerful than Ukraine, but they have a weak economy and a brittle form of government.
I wrote, of Ukraine: “you are in trouble if your powerful neighbour does not want you flirting with another superpower.”
The superpower I was referring to was the USA, as explained in further posts above.
Above, you were going on about the terrible Russian threat to Europe. Now you say it isn’t a superpower and it has a weak economy and a brittle form of government. You are contradicting yourself.
On that we can agree. There are worrying signs that Putin is wishing to make a grab for the Baltic states while the stars are lined up, i.e. while one of his best friends is in the White House and the emollient Mark Rutte is telling him Russia is free to fly its fighter jets over NATO airspace so long as its intentions are peaceful.
Did you get that ‘story’ from Facebook? That is not what Rutte said…
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/natos-rutte-members-can-target-russian-aircraft-entering-nato-space-when-2025-09-25/
No, from a video recording his actual words from no more than a week ago – from one of Denis Davydov’s videos if you want to search for it. When Putin pushes a little more, Rutte backs off a little more.
Susannah, thank you for sharing your intimate thoughts,
You have engendered quite a thread.
However, what you describe as Christianity is merely Humanism.
Humanism merely disregards God’s revelation of His
intimate thoughts.
I fear that your Influencers {perhaps the priest you mention}
have beguiled you into perverting the grace of God.
May our faithful God grant you ears to hear the gospel of His Glory.
As Jesus said “take heed to what you hear” Luke 8:18
The faithful Priest Ezra when rebuilding the shattered[the second]temple called on the people to
“put away their strange wives” Ezra 10:10 -14
On the wider issues I think that some evangelicals
have some strange hopes, one of which is that a new intake to the Synod
will maintain their voting numbers; what a devastation King David brought upon himself and his people when h e asked “how many troops have I got”? 2 Sam 24:10.
It was a denial of the Sovereignty of God. Shalom.
Alan,
Susannah, was a regular lengthy commentator here a few years ago when LLF and LGBT ssm/b in the CoE was at fever pitch. It invariably centered on self, subjective experience and if recalled correctly implied she had the ear of some Bishops and an inside track on their thinking but at one stage said she would no longer be making any comments here.
Subjectively speaking, Truth exists outside of me, is absolute, with an integral correspondence to reality, to ‘is’. Jesus is the Truth, known by and through the Spirit of Truth. Objective, absolute, eternal reality, that is outside of me. And subjectively only known as absolute, only by reason of the absolute truth and existence of our Triune God’s being and His revelation of Himself, and of who and what we are.
Alan
“put away their strange wives”
Do you think this is a commandment aimed at everyone or just (elite) men?
Rachel Dolezal is an American woman who was head of an NAACP chapter and who identifies as a Black woman, although she was born to White parents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Dolezal
She was fiercely condemned and sacked from her post when her White parentage was discovered and she was rejected by many, but she insists she is “transracial”.
Is she right? Is it possible to change races by strong emotional identification and behaviour modification?
If you say ‘no’ and hold that racial identity is immutable, what do you say to one of our correspondents?
This person was born and raised a male, married and fathered a family; but not identifies as a ‘transsexual woman’.
Is this correct? Is it actually possible to change one’s sex?
Or should we not speak of men who strongly desire to be women and who therefore dress and act as they think women do? But in reality they are not women but acting out a desire.
The work of Christ includes facing up to the truth. Pretending to be what we are not is not part of being a Christian. Churches should not collude with falsehood.
“now identifies”
James
It’s not possible to change your race or your gender. Trans people are not people who want to change their gender any more than gay people are straight people who want to be attracted to the same sex. This is partly why conversion therapy is controversial – it doesn’t actually work.
Some trans people and some non binary people seek to change aspects of their body to make them feel more comfortable with it – it’s not so different from cis women having breast enhancements or lip filler.
Peter, do you really think that the difference between a man and a woman is akin to the difference between the thickness of lips or breast size? For ever, until now for some, male and female, man and woman, have been defined by their physical nature, i.e. the body. In particular, biological sex is the defining feature. The difference in chromosomes is visible under the right circumstance under an optical microscope.
Why does this need to change?
The word ‘gender’ was purloined from grammar (and, interestingly, there are languages in which a word’s gender has no correlation with biological sex). The way the word is applied to man/woman seems to be entirely a social construct. As far as I know it has no objective definition. There was talk a few years ago by some of 64 or even 72 ‘genders’, each with its preferred pronouns.
Recently I needed to renew my passport and I did so online. The questions asked my gender. However, the passport itself records my ‘sex’. I know the latter. How can I find out my ‘gender’?
David Wilson: that is correct. Peter Jermey has greatly misrepresented what “transsexuals” are claiming. They are actually claiming they have converted into the other sex. In other words, conversion therapy doesn’t work if it’s a homosexual wanting to have heterosexual desires but it DOES work if it’s a homosexual person wanting to change sex! This is absurd but it does show that the whole business isn’t biological and physical (like skin colour or sex) but is psychological and learned in nature. Interestingly, there is new data from America emerging now suggesting that the Transgender Moment has passed and Gen Z is turning away from this docial contagion. Let us hope so.
David
I’m not saying people can or should change their sex. James was.
I am saying that people who are trans or non binary may choose to have surgery to make themselves more comfortable with their bodies – plenty of cisgender people do this too.
If you don’t know what gender you are then you could well be non binary.
Peter Jermey:
Of course it is not possible to change your race or your sex (not gender, which is not a biological category). But “trans people” do indeed claim that they have changed sex – which is ridiculous because our XY or Xx chromosomes extend to iur cell if our bodies. People with gender dysphoria want to be trested as members of the opposite sex. But this is biologically, genetically and historically untrue. It is not just about “feeling more comfortable ” with their bodies, it’s about being accepted as a member of the sex they don’t belong to. It’s a profound mismatch of body and thinking.
You think conversion therapy doesn’t work. I do not make categorical statements like that because I know at least three men who have experienced same sex attraction but are maried to women and are fathers now and SSA doesn’t have a strong influence in their lives now. Sexual feelings are not the same throughout life, our feelings (our emotions and thought-worlds) are more plastic than many activists want to admit. It isn’t easy, but I have seen it happen.
But a man who desperately desires to be a woman and who dreses and acts as one isn’t a woman, even if he has undergone external surgery. He is a man with gender dysphoria, a mismatch between biology and psychology. They claim “conversion therapy” does work!
Do you see the irony?
This gender business is more complex than many realise. I would I think agree that quite a bit of it is adolescent confusion, or adolescent-plus-autistic confusion (and with autism myself I can see the possibility of that though I’m not affected that particular way). But there are also various conditions in which the chromosomes may not be ‘straightforward’, and others where the endocrine system is acting in funny ways.
I won’t go into massive detail but you might look up ‘androgen insensitivity’ in which a genetic male has a glandular deficiency such that the body does not respond to testosterone and they develop apparently as women (though unable to conceive children); they may go their whole life unaware of this. It is thought/rumoured that Wallis Simpson the Duchess of Windsor may have had this syndrome ….
Or there is the case of the Latin American ‘guevedoces’ (though it occasionally turns up elsewhere); here a missing enzyme has a similar effect that a genetic male develops as female till puberty when a different mechanism does trigger the male hormones and they become boys.
A matter of concern to me is that it looks as if a significant number of trans cases can be described thus;
that the person affected has a chromosomally male or female body, but also (to use as neutral a term as possible) ‘atypical’ hormonal activity which has hormones of the opposite gender sloshing around their system and making them uncomfortable in their body gender. And the question then arises of do we regard this feeling as an ‘identity’ which ‘must’ be affirmed at the expense of life-long hormonal treatments and drastic destructive surgery which still cannot produce a real ‘sex change’. Or should we interpret it that they are of their chromosomal gender with an endocrine defect which skews their self-perception and threatens the reality of their body…? And note that because of that self-perception the person affected is emotionally biased towards the change/transition, and the treatment to affirm the basic body will not be as simple as a dose of the ‘other’ hormone. And note also that because of the way this issue has developed the science is chaotic and things are done by slogans rather than science….
I don’t question what you say, or that people should be treated compassionately. What, though, is the proportion of the population like this?
Anthony
‘People presenting as transgender’ is a small proportion of the population – but still quite a few thousand altogether in a population of millions. Right now the figure is perhaps exaggerated because it has become the wrong kind of trendy among adolescents, and I suspect that but for that trendiness and the pressure groups on the subject many of the cases really only need counselling, not just of the possibly trans person but also of people around them who may be bullying.
But varying hormone abnormalities are more common than you would think; and as I said with a currently overwhelmed NHS and youngsters going to ‘unregulated providers’ the necessary science is not getting done ….
Stephen Langton:
Congenital disorders of physical sex development (DSDs) such as you have described are entirely different phenomena from “transgender”. There will, of course, be a few people who fall into both categories, but such rare conditions are no more common among people with the “trans” delusion than they are in the general population.
William Fisher
I would not put a sharp line between transgender and the hormonal abnormalities; I suspect that hormonal imbalances are playing a role in many cases of ‘presenting as trans’ where a person is being pressured because they are not outright macho men or ‘girly’ women. But I’m also making the point that good science is needed and in the present situation that’s not happening as it should.
The particular person I have in mind is kind of suffering a ‘delusion’ – but it is the result of glandular issues he has no control over and it will be very ‘counter-intuitive’ for him to see it as a delusion. And my reading suggests that such cases are comparatively common – but hard to detect and sort out.
James
There’s a famous drag performer who is also trans called Jynx Monsoon. She recently discovered that her mother was born with one internal testicle.
Are we really saying that Jynx has to pretend to be 100% male, despite having a family history of intersex.
A year ago, she didn’t know this about her mother. Does it make a moral difference that she didn’t know?
Does biology really matter or is it a political thing?
Peter Jermey:
The sex in which people were born cannot be changed, so if Jinkx Monsoon was born male, then he is still male, even if he pretends to be female. That his mother had a DSD (congenital disorder of physical sex development) makes no difference whatever to that biological fact, and since she gave birth to him and his two brothers, that is proof that she herself was female.
Peter Jermey:
“Gender”, properly speaking a grammatical term, has been frequently, albeit incorrectly, used as a synonym for “sex”. It has also been given a number of other meanings, sometimes sliding around from one meaning to another in the course of an argument to suit the exigencies of the disputant. But whether an adult human is a man or a woman is determined entirely by his or her SEX, male or female.
Therefore, if someone who was born male claims to be a woman, or if someone who was born female claims to be a man, they are claiming a change of sex, which is biologically impossible. If the “gender” claimed by “trans” people is something separate their sex – which is a claim often made by people who peddle TQ+ ideology – then why do those have their bodies chemically and/or surgically mutilated, purportedly to align them with their “GENDER”, do so in such a way as to make them into imitations, convincing or otherwise, of bodies of the other SEX?
I don’t know whether the Oxford English Dictionary recognises ‘gender’ as a synonym for ‘biological sex’. Does it actually call such a usage incorrect?
My second point is that ‘sex’ is so ambiguous that I have always been relieved to have a word like ‘gender’ which was less so and which I could use instead. Until recently….
Sex is not ambiguous. It means being male or female. OK, it has also been widely used as a colloquial abbreviation for sexual congress, but I have never yet come across any situation where the sense in which it is being used is not clear from the context – despite corny jokes about filling in the space for “sex” on application forms etc. with “Yes, please.”
Gender is a grammatical classification, but the Oxford English Dictionary now acknowledges its use also as a synonym for sex. However, the term has been appropriated and used to mean so many different things that it has now become, for practical purposes, virtually meaningless.
William
If you’re just going to ignore what I said then what’s in it for me to answer your questions?
Peter Jermey:
I’m not ignoring what you said. I am taking issue with it, and asking how you can reconcile it – if at all – with biological reality.
A taste of your own medicine?
See also Eatock v Bolt (2011) in Australia which I regard as a miscarriage of justice.
I think this highlights that the senior leadership of the Church of England is comprised of mostly corrupt dishonest people, which massively undermines the ministry of hardworking local priests who actually believe that it’s a sin to lie.
First more than a decade of discussion about what to do about same sex marriage and then a dishonest compromise – you can’t get married, but you can get a blessing. Sounds reasonable until you realize that priests have been free to bless gay individuals and couples since before David Cameron was knee high to a grasshopper.
Not content with offering the status quo as compromise, that was now all a sham and they’re rescinding even that. I hate to say I told you so, but…
This move may help some anti gay Christians to remain in the CofE, but it’s going to profoundly harm the faith of gay Christians who believed that their bishop was telling them the truth.
‘This move may help some anti gay Christians to remain in the CofE, but it’s going to profoundly harm the faith of gay Christians who believed that their bishop was telling them the truth.’
which is precisely why you shouldnt put your faith in a bishop, many of whom dont seem to understand the Bible and God.
Peter
I completely agree, but it is nevertheless damaging to an individual’s faith when Christian leadership turn out to be frauds or, at least, not living the faith they teach.
They aren’t, they are still offering non liturgical prayers for same sex couples within services via PLF, nearly identical to what the Roman Catholic church now offers. While reserving holy matrimony for one man and one woman, ideally for life. Bespoke services or even same sex marriage could still be offered ultimately too in the Church of England but the bishops have confirmed that would require a 2/3 majority of Synod to approve that. Just as 2/3 of Synod approved female clergy and bishops and 2/3 of Synod approved the remarriage of divorcees under certain circumstances in C of E churches
What, no longer putting faith in successors to the Apostles? Are they heretics?
What does a human blessing do, effect?
What are the words used, if not they do not form part of an unwritten, informal liturgy. Is it the relationship being blessed, or the individuals, as individuals, so as to not give the impression of celebration of the relationship, holding out that it is akin to marriage service.
Abandonment of Apostolic succession, is either apostasy or it is a one of (in) convenience.
Putting faith in some female clergy after too many male sex scandals in the church was much needed, Jesus after all used Mary Magdalene to spread his word.
Prayers for same sex couples in their unions and rightfully so in the 21st century and welcomed by most English people for their established church
Simon, why are you so focused on the issue of same-sex couples? Why is it so personally important to you? You shoehorn this into practically every comment you make?
James
Perhaps because it’s the subject of Ian’s blog?!
Well, this thread just proves that there is no end to the dispute on sexuality. It will continue here and elsewhere. And God will keep on blessing Their queer children. And no earthly power or authority can prevent that. D.G.
What form does that blessing take? Do you believe that a same-sex-attracted Christian who reckons it is fine to act on his or her attractions is given the Holy Spirit?
Anthony
It’s impossible to not let your orientation influence your behavior. It’s very much a part of you. Now, not every gay person is having sex, just as not every straight person is having sex, but this continual attitude that gay people are somehow default sinners and straight people are default innocent is unbiblical balderdash!
Well, Peter, that certainly is not the reformed protestant position: we are all sinners. Repentance is a requisite to responsive loving God as our first love, salvation and sanctification by grace of Jesus in Trinity. Conversion, changed ultimate desires and direction, identity, significance, acceptance, status, adoption, righteousness, in a new life in union with Christ. The rest is idolatry.
I ask a question in a subthread you were not part of and you feel the need to respond without even replying! It’s not too late…
There is never an end to discussions that involve incoherence. In any debate, progress equals identifying and removing incoherence. And if any stance is founded simply in nothing better than what people want or would like, then incoherence or the lack of it will never have been those people’s priority (their priority is, instead, the goal they want to achieve) – with that firewall removed, no wonder incoherence is an immediate risk. Then combine that with a culture that allows all stances a place at the table with no quality control or even quality differentiation, and you get the present scenario.
God will bless everyone who repents and believes the Gospel and seeks to obey the word of Christ, even when “entering into life” comes at serious cost. That is the point about the metaphor about the hand or foot. No earthly power wil prevent this.
Human beings will continue to “bless” (i.e. express their approval) of whatever their contemporary social sub-group happens to approve of (e.g. corn laws, phonics, lynchings, puberty blockers, antisemitism – the list is endless because the Overton window keeps going up and down). Many will continue to confuse their approval of regnant political culture with God’s approval. And so the second commandment will continue to be broken as men and women fadhion an image of God in terms of their own transient culture.
James
Your comment is very interesting to me, since it seems under current western Christianity, your average straight white male from a “sound” background basically doesn’t have to make any sacrifices to be fully accepted as a Christian. Indeed a number of household names have just declared themselves to be Christian and it was immediately accepted that they were. There’s nothing to repent from because they were already living the life of a middle class western conservative.
Gays on the other hand are expected to give up any hope of a relationship or family, have no close friends and still not be accepted, as the comments on this page show.
Do get out of your victim mentality. If you actually follow Christ then prepare to suffer rejection for your faith. Comparing yourself with anyone else never ends well. This is about you, alone and your response to Jesus Christ who is calling you to be born again and follow him along the narrow road carrying your own cross of self-denial.
It’s foolish to start a p*ssing party here on suffering and who has had it worse following Christ (apart from the fact I’m pretty sure I would win!) It’s no good resenting others (straight people) for having it easier…in fact if you allow Christ to fill you then you will be happy for them…and glad that everyone is ok.
It is good to count the cost…and the cost can indeed be very high- even unto death…but leaving God out of the equation leaves his willingness to bless your life and bring good things into it…he is full of surprises- if only we would trust him and give ourselves completely into his hands.
God is very interested in the minutae of our lives and is readily accessible through his Son.
He has a plan for you and we are all eejits if we hang onto our Sin and our idols and our stuff instead of cooperating with the God who loves us even unto death.
Trust him who is trustworthy and go for it. You will be rewarded.
Peter,
You raise an important point about loneliness and friendship, and whether marriage (to the opposite sex, one has to specify today) is a realistic possibility.
The ‘Living Out’ movement questions whether our sexual feelings are simple binaries; and since not a few people in the LGB ‘community’ (or demographic) call themselves ‘bisexual’, I wonder if there is more fluidity than is sometimes admitted. I know of at least three cases of Christians with SSA who have married and raised families.
But I also know of three married churchgoers who left their spouses to form a same sex relationship, so I know the traffic goes both ways.
I also know of a good number of heterosexual Christians who, for one reason or another, are not able to find a spouse. As I’m sure you know, in the United States and elsewhere, many more people are living on their own, so isolation is certainly not an issue for gays alone. Legions of young (and not so young) men today would like to be married but cannot find a wife. Nor is marriage a panacea for human problems.
You raise deeper questions of what it means to be the family of Christ.
The problem with this argument and of Living Out’s mission is the supposition that anyone who experiences sexual fluidity would choose to be straight. They might; they might not.
And if they did not, they would show a child’s ingratitude by throwing their superlative originator’s design back in his face.
Almost everything comes down to awe or the lack of it.
Christopher
God loves Their queer children.
Or are you suggesting that God only loves straight people?
You really don’t seem to understand what Christian conversion is, what sin is, Peter, what the Good News of Jesus Christ in the Triune God of Christianity is: of faith, trust in Him for salvation, sanctification, and eternal life in union with Him, redemption, reconciliation, repentance, not by works, in responsive love, as our first love, with concomitant consequences of change identity, status, significance, acceptance, adoption, righteousness, in union with Jesus Christ. It is of eternal consequence.
Most people don’t.
Few will.
Just need to respond to Jesus knocking at the door of our life
so we will become one of The Few.
Russell Brand swerved the rape and abuse allegations. Charlie Kirk was a racist homophobe.
Not such an erudite comment from Dr Doe, as it has nothing to do with the article, has no relevance. Irrelevant, except it does reveal that vexacious intent is writ large, lacking in any substance. Duff ‘doctoral’ stuff from Dr Doe, PCD, sadly letting herself down.
Even the question of God’s eternal judgment is ignored. Maybe there is the underlying, undisclosed embrace universalism even at the same time bridling and opining on heinous sin.
Geoff
It was a response to Peter’s comment. So, kindly desist from insulting me, there’s a dear.
It’s called self-harm: shooting self in the foot, hobbling self, Penelope, sweetie-pie. Do take more care, with your aim. It has rebounded.
Aren’t those allegations still being investigated?
I don’t know enough about Kirk to agree.
Such summary dismissals will never be accurate, but the conversation had already gone beyond that (to DEI and positive discrimination contexts), and the fact that that needed to be avoided at all shows that it was a point that could not be answered.
Peter
All you need to do is Google some of his speeches and ‘debates’. He condemns himself out of his own mouth.
Some of his debates? Where to start?
He worked an 18 hour day,
often with multiple debates per day
and was hot on giving individual attention.
He always spoke off the cuff for the reason that he could not know what questions he would be asked.
A tabloid journalist would say: If once in his lifetime he did questionable argumentation (but please cite examples – debate cannot proceed otherwise) then that is all we need to know about him. 99.9999% of his life is not data.
But that is only because tabloid journalists scrabble around in the gutter and do not like or even acknowledge anything that is higher than the gutter. What a level to choose for oneself.
Everyone falls short from time to time even if they are able to premeditate their comments. You, me, everyone. He was not able even to premeditate them. So each of us (you, me) should be assessed on the basis *only* of the least adequate answers we have ever given within a lifetime? Explain that reasoning.
Only quoted examples are a valid springboard from which to proceed.
Christopher
Not true. He insisted on being provided with the questions first. Which is why, when confronted with skilful debaters, he fell apart.
Christopher
And speaking off the cuff doesn’t excuse his bigotry.
Geoff You must realise that when PCF takes aim, she leads with her antlers – now there’s a deer!
That’s just stag (gering), Colin, as well as gendering, clearly on the horns of a dilemma.
This place goes from Oxford union debate to bar room brawl in seconds!
Brother Russell Brand stands trial next year and has swerved nothing.
Saint Charlie Kirk was the very best of us. I mourn his loss greatly. To me he is worth ten thousand of his detractors. Luckily for them, Jesus died for each one of them and his offer of salvation to lovers of evil stands.
Those who lie and falsely accuse will ultimately get their reward.
Time to repent of sin and turn to Jesus to be saved.
I mourn the loss of anyone killed prematurely
Especially since it didn’t give him the time to repent from his sexism, homophobia, and racism. Funny how some right wing Christians always manage to avoid the inconvenient texts which challenge their white supremacist world view. He’s not the only one, but he’s a symptom of a post Christian rot.
Crocodile tears. Your grief for the young family is palpable.
It’s possible to think his death was a tragedy and still know that he was a nasty piece of work. His wife doesn’t seem to be grieving much, but that could be the way she is coping.
It is true that great grief has to be apportioned out over time in order to be manageable at all; also true that (1 Thess 4) we do not grieve as the world grives, without hope – since CK lived his best life and achieved far more good in 31 years than most in a full lifetime. She knows, like all truthful people and all Christians, both that we will all die and that this could be soon/young. She shows great composure. Saying things like ‘his wife doesn’t seem to be grieving much’ is small and horrible.
It’s my perception. Grinning and laughing with Trump doesn’t look like grief. But at least I have the grace to admit I might be wrong.
And if you think Christians grieve less because of our hope, you know nothing about mourning and trauma.
I think our degree of mourning is greater than normal but our proportion of mourning within our overall aspect is less than normal.
What was St Paul getting at, then?
Christopher
He’s telling them, as he tells the Corinthians, that death is not the end. But it’s mainly eschatological. Here, Paul believed that the Parousia would happen in his lifetime. He was wrong. But, in later letters, he had (probably) changed his eschatological expectations.
Penny, I think the idea that Paul believed the parousia would happy in his lifetime any more than we do is old hat. I don’t think there is any evidence of it, and the idea that the NT came into being because of failed eschatological expectation is without any warrant.
But are you denying that a Christian as opposed to a nonChristian, when faced with bereavement, differs in having more:
-hope
-gratitude
-perspective?
Paul is right that Christians have more hope than if they were not Christians.
Ian
I’m not talking about the whole of the NT. My observations were about Paul and his early letters. I would argue that, for various reasons, his eschatology changed and developed. Plenty of scholars agree. And some see an imminent Parousia expectation in the Gospels too. It seems to be mainly evangelical scholars who have a less literal reading of these texts because they have a problem with the authors being wrong (or, worse, Jesus, as reported, being wrong).
“We can ensure we welcome all, and in particular walk with those who find the teaching of Jesus here challenging, but confident that he is our good shepherd whose teaching is life giving.”
The age-old platitude at the end. Sorry if I can’t muster much enthusiasm for this hypocritical guff. The discussions on here demonstrate just how far away from this we are.
I don’t see the conservative voices in Synod, Archbishops Council etc. showing much appetite to walk with anyone. The hatchet job on the prayers for covenanted friendship which still, after all this time, has never been explained or defended is a case in point. It underscored to me that we really are just a plaything for quite a few, and a piece to move on the board in their wider political machinations.
So if folk really are serious about this (and I don’t for a second think they are) the starting place is going to be revisiting Issues, and being clear about a few things – e.g. are gay people really gay, is it chosen, can it be unchosen, can it be ‘cured’, are we telling them to be open or not, are we telling them to be lifelong celibates or not, are we advising gay people to enter straight marriages etc.. You’re not walking with us if you won’t even acknowledge that the path exists.
Jesus’ teachings on wealth, possessions and welcome to the alien are challenging but Christians manage to ignore (or relativise) these every day. ‘Oh, you just don’t understand the context ….”
Reading Calvin on usury was eye-opening…
As an antidote to this triumphalism perhaps folks could read David Monteith’s reflections on this decision. It is heartbreaking and it shows how the CoE has colluded in this cruelty for a long time. Shameful.
Have you got a link for that Penny? I’d like to read
I tried to copy the link, but failed as I often do! It’s up on ViaMedia. Superb. Heartbreaking. Enraging.
I meant to add that if a senior cleric in the CoE has been treated like this, I pity the lowly queer priests in ‘ordinary’ parishes, chaplaincies etc. The burden and the cruelty must be intolerable.
Thanks Penny. I’ve found it. It is a heartbreaking and harrowing read. Conservatives should be hanging their heads in shame. And as someone has commented on Via Media, every bishop in the CofE needs to be sent a copy of it.
https://viamedia.news/2025/10/22/winded-after-the-death-of-llf/
Andrew
Every bishop archdeacon, priest, PCC, Synod member, member of CEEC, The Alliance, The Society, The Gospel Coalition, Living Out, Inclusive Church, Mosaic, Changing Attitude … Have I forgotten any?
People need to read about the disgusting consequences of their cruelty and indifference.
Except LLF has not died. Prayers for same sex couples in services are still allowed if PCCs approve them. Just bespoke services for same sex couples or indeed full same sex marriages in C of E churches would need the same 2/3 majority that remarriage of divorcees and female clergy and indeed women bishops on its second attempt achieved.
After allowing graffiti in parts of Canterbury Cathedral even if temporary for an exhibition I would have thought David Monteith would be keeping his head down
I noticed how he seems to characterise most or all who disagreed with him on this issue – ‘I have listened to those of a conservative view with grace. I have watched them behave despicably in meetings, soaking up their violence against me and mine and so often with an annoying smile.’
He refers to violence a number of times. Is that really how people have behaved?
If the leaders of the CoE had been clear in the first place, that God does not approve of same-sex sexual relationships and therefore anyone in a leadership position could not have such a relationship, his situation would never have arisen. Instead the powers that be effectively encouraged clergy of both sexes to have same-sex partners, whilst simultaneously sometimes telling them not to talk about it. You couldnt make it up.
So the CoE has only got itself to blame for this mess.
Peter Parker:
That is correct. A very serious error was committed by the Church of England when civil partnerships were invented. The C of E leadership decided that clergy could enter civil partnerships because they were not expressly sexual in character – although the whole world knew that they were in fact. So the absurd situation arose of the Church appointing people in homosexual relationships who had to pretend to their bishops that these relationships were not sexual. This was an utter travesty of the kind of honesty in relationships thst Christian leaders are meant to model.
If the Church of England had declared that clergy may not enter such legally ambiguous relationships, it would have prevented much of this mess.
The Lord of the Church said, “Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Anything else is from the devil.” We must walk in the light, not the murkiness of ambiguity. The Bishops seriously failed here because it suited them to introduce ambiguity.
I meant to add that if a senior cleric in the CoE has been treated like this, I pity the lowly queer priests in ‘ordinary’ parishes, chaplaincies etc. The burden and the cruelty must be intolerable.
2 Timothy
3 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
6 For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,
7 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
8 Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.
9 But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as their’s also was.
10 But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience,
11 Persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra; what persecutions I endured: but out of them all the Lord delivered me.
12 Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.
13 But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.
14 But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them;
15 And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
17 That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
Yeah, Jeannie I’ve read it. And in better translations too.
“All scripture is given by inspiration of God”
Of course. But it is important to note that 2 Tim was certainly NOT scripture when that was written.
So you dont view the New Testament as Scripture?
Of course I do. Obviously. But what Paul was writing then wasn’t scripture at the time. Obviously.
So the words ‘became’ Scripture. ok
The writings to which the writer of the letter was referring were the HB (though not as we have it today) and texts that aren’t considered canonical today. Also ‘inspiration’ is a poor translation.
The Cof E must now do several things at once.
Take responsibility for allowing godless men to infiltrate the church,
for giving them so many of them power and position
and for allowing them to take over the church
For aligning with the god of this world and
bowing to the endless perversions of the age
For dispensing with Church Discipline as set out in the bible
For replacing The Will and Word of God with word salad aims of ‘disagreeing well’ and ‘mutual flourishing’
For denying countless people the true and full gospel of Jesus Christ and introducing endless debates and discussion on matters which are clearly forbidden by God.
For valuing sinful behaviour above God and for allowing Sin to be accepted, promoted, affirmed and included, risking the eternal destination of countless souls.
For deceiving and misleading sheep into misunderstanding God’s stance on Sinful behaviour
For not standing up and fighting for the Truth
For not disciplining all those in Sin on day one of seeing it but instead allowing sin to grow and infect The Church, even to almost destroying it.
The C of E has to take ownership of their wrongdoing and their guilt.
Whilst there are ungodly men who invaded the Church and its leadership, it is the church herself who allowed this to happen and did not fight hard enough to protect the church.
Time for repentance and sorrow and a total clear out of calling what is wicked as though it is good.
And a very careful discipling and discipling of those wounded who are still open and keen to follow Christ in holiness in newness of life.
Not all involved are wolves and snakes or goats.
Great care needs to be taken going forwards.
But not taking personal responsibility for harm done is not an option.
No more compromise.
No more tolerance of Sin.
But definately the Truth of the gospel.
And recognition of reality.
And your point is…?
Unbelief? In the doctrine of God? In the doctrine of scripture?
To be supplanted by your own combination of what? Modernism, Higher Criticism, discipleship of Honest ot God. Postmodernism, Deconstructionism, permissive -sexual -revolution, universalism, pluralism, closed-material-world -system, syncretism?
Oh, almost forgot to add to the mix, vestiges of the Jesus Seminar?
Oh The Jesus Seminar and their balls.
Indeed, Peter. Should never be forgotten.
You’ve never been able yo understand that a different exegesis, a different hermeneutic doesn’t mean unbelief. As the priest said, you worship God in your way, and I’ll worship Him in His.
But if your interlocutor is not worshipping God in His way, it follows that s/he has the wrong hermeneutic, and/or unbelief.
Nobody of any brains is unable to see the self refuting nature of relativism. We all knew that there were lots of exegeses, hermeneutics, so why is that treated as being news? Some are complementary; some are not; the vast majority are always going to be wrong; among these, very many are obviously wrong; and there will never be a time when logic and evidence are not the determinants of this, and indeed of how the available proposals rank.
It was a joke.
How do you know what that is? On what is it based? Belief in what, which God, which, teaching?
Of course I understand different hermeneutics. What is key is belief: what pre/ post conversion presupposition are formative in hermeneutics. I’ve listed some.
Some contributors to comments have asked, when Ian Paul has posted articles on the Gospels whether Jesus said that, what is recorded.? What belief or hermetic is that based on?
Another, (was it you Penelope?) indicated that what is recorded in the Gospels, particularly involving the supernatural, was all ‘parable’.
That is also revealing of their doctrine of God, let alone pointers to their doctrine of scripture.
That wasn’t me.
Do you recognise that is an extant hermeneutic, with some weight of influence in circles of Bible teaching? Is it a heterodox hermeneutic.
Haven’t you self identified as heterodox. What are the hermeneutics embraced by your form of heterodox, heterodox belief.?
No I don’t. No I haven’t.
One observation I would make on this debate and the latest announcement by the Bishops is that the responsibility for this tragic saga cannot all be laid at their door. Whatever their missteps and failings across several years others have also made mistakes. It cannot be that they are solely to blame. They have been working in a complex context which has included various church pressure groups each of which has been convinced that their own views and approach are totally correct. I have read nothing by e.g. the Alliance, Inclusive Evangelicals, the CEEC or any other group that recognises their own contributions to this situation or the LLF process have been damaging – it’s always other people’s fault, especially those awful bishops. It’s been a dispiriting season of finger pointing. The recent Alliance campaign document is a prime example of a contribution that has served to damage relationships even further and make the process of restoring trust more difficult, irrespective of the correctness of the Alliance’s stand on this issue.
So will any of those groups be willing to recognise their own part in this tragedy – or will they continue to maintain that it’s only other people who have been at fault?
Is standing firm and proving your case, against change through a long game campaign by special interest activists a fault? When the Bishops were espousing generally following culture (see BP Croft) and propounding it was merely matter of indiffence?
Sure, it has laid bare the unGodly machinations, of the CoE as an organisation and the progressive protagonists seeking to obscure and occlude processes in an atmosphere of hiddeness rather than opened, an atmosphere that was engendered a terminal lack of trust.
Geoff,
Tim is a fervent loyalist of the House of Bishops who thinks the duty of “lower clergy” and laity is to obey their betters. Tim thinks that frank speaking out about doctrinal unfaithfulness is rude and unacceptable because tone is all-important and clergy who lead services under Canon B5 which are doctrinally orthodox but deviate from printed order of services are guilty of spiritual unfaithfulness, but clergy having same sex relationships is quite acceptable.
Tim thinks bishops don’t have duty of openness to their subordinates.
I see he’s really rattled you.
Silly and unreflective comment, Adam. I am not “rattled” by Tim’s episcopal loyalism and his inability to understand Canon B5 which allows churches to vary their liturgy provided they faithfully teach the doctrine of the Church of England. But I sm surprised to see this Laudianism in the 21st century.
And its bizarre to see churches which recite every word of a CW service- and then deny the doctrine in the sermon.
Unfortunately, Tim exemplifies those religious critics in the Gospels who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.
Tim, you are ever a loyal son of the bishops in a way that would bring joy to the most fervently Cyprianic of clerics, and that has led you here to some egregious gaslighting.
You have completely lost sight of:
– who was pushing this whole agenda
– what their goal was and still is
– what they did
The answers are clear:
1. The whole push has come from liberal bishops.
2. The goal has always been to institute same sex marriage into the Church of England for clergy and laity.
3. They pushed to bring in ambiguous “prayers of blessing” as a first step toward ssm, hoping to make them like a church wedding.
A stealth process, in other words.
And all of this at the same time as pretending they were not changing the Church’s doctrine of marriage. Finally they had to admit that the legal advice the Church paid for confirmed that they – the House of Bishops- were attempting something that is against the law of the Church of England.
And then you condemn evangelicals for pushing back at this illegal power grab!
I get it that you are a former evangelical yourself and want to see same sex marriage in the Church of England. I know some fomer evangelicals myself (women clergy, as it happens) who now embrace liberalism. But those of us who reject liberalism will not be browbeaten and gaslighted by bishops trying to subvert church law.
If you care about “restoring trust”, start with getting the Bishops to speak truthfully- and to publish the legal advice which the whole Church paid for.
(Also learn what Canon B5 allows in worship before making silly comparisons.)
No, they simply recognise the Church of England is established church of a nation where same sex marriage is legal and some recognition of same sex parishioners relationships and prayers for them is now required in their parish church in services. Even the Pope and Vatican allow non liturgical prayers for same sex couples now. The bishops have still affirmed that a 2/3 majority of Synod is required for bespoke services or same sex marriage services as 2/3 of Synod approved remarriage of divorcees in Church and 2/3 of Synod approved female ordination and on a second attempt female bishops
Nothing simple about their ways at all, Simon. The bishops have not walked in the light. The whole LLF farrago was drenched in ambiguity but with a clear agenda, to drive the Church of England inevitably into accepting same sex marriage.
You also constantly make the egregious mistake of entirely misunderstanding English law, Church law and the nature of the established church.
The fact that something is legal in England is Entirely Irrelevant to Church Law. Prostitution, watching and making pornography, worshipping Hindu gods, and taking class A drugs are all legal (or tolerated) in England. But any cleric or office holder given to these activities would be deposed and rightly so. (Well, not sure about the Hindu worship.)
You need to learn basic logic and stop commiting the schoolboy howler of thinking that if something is legal in England it must be permitted in the Church of England. The error is tedious and indicates you don’t understand what the Church of England actually is. You sem to think it’s a kind of Government Department for social ceremonies.
Simon
Since when does the state of England get to tell God what he must accept? It is legal in England to be a Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and various other religions – and quite rightly the only prayers for those of such other religions are that they should repent of their false religion and become Christian. Ditto for those who insist on sexual practices which contradict the Bible – no prayers of approval, just prayers for their repentance….
Of course these issues would be much easier if the CofE adopted a biblical practice about Church and state relations and cancelled the very ‘of this world’ establishment ….
Yes, Stephen – Simon Baker does work on very strange understanding of theology and the Church of England. He seems to think (sometimes) that this is still 1558 when it was illegal to be anything other than Church of England in this land and Catholics, dissenters and atheists were punished or banished, and Jews and Muslims (‘Turks’) were banned from living here.
He also seems to think that whatever is legal in the Kingdom of England must be approved of by the Church of England. Simon has a very peculiar grasp of the facts.
James, for some reason you seem to slide into offensive and insulting comments. The impression is of someone who is angry, which may not be the case but that’s how it reads. That’s up to you – you’re responsible for what you write. But please don’t direct them at me. I have never advocated same sex marriage, am not a ‘liberal’ (whatever that means, it’s as vague as ‘evangelical’ these days). I’m not trying to browbeat or gaslight anyone. I suggest you re-read what you have written and then, imaginatively, put yourself in the position of someone who receives your words.
An excellent question. I couldn’t agree more. The Alliance campaign manual was revealing, but appalling. Quite astounding to see them suggest that the PCCs are so unlikely to agree with the planned schism, that they recommend forming teams to meet with PCC members individually and intimidate/nobble them. I’ve served on two Church PCCs in my time. I’m amazed anyone thinks that’s a good way to handle this.
“Nice little church you got here – shame if something was to happen to it.”
Yes, private conversations are “intimidation” and “nobbling”.
You forgot to add that the Mob – I mean the Alliance- specislises in pulling out fingernails.
Is this how you ran your PCCs James?
Adam, we were pussycats compared to the MU ….
Imagine if a bishop wanted to ensure that his/her proposal was passed by Diocesan Synod but heard that some clergy were planning to oppose him. Would it be OK for him to identify them and send the archdeacons round, after training, to persuade the clergy to vote the way the bishop wanted? I cannot imagine such a thing. And I cannot imagine any incumbent behaving in the way the Alliance suggested.
Tim Evans strongly criticises evangelical clergy who, he says, are conducting services not according to the order of the Church of England. Tim says such clergy are breaking their Vow of Obedience to their bishops and he considers this a grave matter of spiritual unfaithfulness (equal to or worse than sexual immorality).
I have no idea what services Tim has witnessed, so I cannot comment on the accuracy or otherwise of his claim.
But Tim is surely aware that Canon B5 of the Church of England allows clergy to “make and use variations which are not of substantial importance in any service … according to particular circumstances”. In other words, Church law permits great latitude in liturgy. But not heresy in sermons.
The same canon says that any questions about this provision can be referred to the bishop for pastoral guidance.
Tim, have you ever referred your questions about services to a bishop?
James, please read what I have written. Ordination vows are taken before God and the church – the whole church, as are marriage vows. They are not private vows to the bishop. I did not compare it to sexual sin; my point is that if bishops are accused of breaking ordination vows in one area as they frequently are here then the Alliance should be equally firm about other areas e.g. liturgy. Public worship is absolutely central to ordained ministry and so we should be fulfilling our ordination vows in that area. Yes, there’s a lot of freedom, especially using A Service of the Word, but that doesn’t mean, as I have experienced in many places, no liturgy, no creed, no Lord’s prayer. My point applies just as much with those who use the Roman Missal instead of the BCP or CW. Please only respond if you can do so with courtesy and avoid the unpleasant tone of your previous comments.
Tim,
I have read what you wrote and you did indeed equate the failure to lead Anglican dervice according to Common Worship as a serious sin of vow breaking and spiritual unfaithfulness. This is obviously absurd, straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel for four reasons:
1. You say nothing at all about whether the sermons you heard contradicted church doctrine. This is easily the most important issue – and I have attended serviced which are punctilious about liturgy and very loose on doctrine. In fact, that’s how liberal Anglicanism functions.
2. You show no awareness of Canon B5 which gives great latitude to leaders of worship to have changes “which are not of substantial importance”. Do you actually understand Canon B5?
3. You do not indicate whether you raised your concerns with the local bishop, which Canon B5 allows. Why haven’t you?
4. I don’t believe in liturgical anarchy either and in fact believe that some well known prayers – and psalms – have a good educative effect on congregations. I’m also very happy with free, informal participatory worship and many, many years of charismatic worship in the C of E have made this very mainstream – as Canon B5 recognises. But I’ve never – or hardly ever- witnessed in an Anglican church a communion service or baptism service which didn’t use the prescribed prayers. My experience is obviously different from yours but I rather doubt thd anarchy you complain of is actually happening. At the least you may not understand or appreciate the latitude that B5 gives.
James, for some reason you seem to slide into offensive and insulting comments. The impression is of someone who is angry, which may not be the case but that’s how it reads. That’s up to you – you’re responsible for what you write. But please don’t direct them at me. I have never advocated same sex marriage, am not a ‘liberal’ (whatever that means, it’s as vague as ‘evangelical’ these days). I’m not trying to browbeat or gaslight anyone. I suggest you re-read what you have written and then, imaginatively, put yourself in the position of someone who receives your words.
Tim,
tu quoque. All your comments are criticisms of evangelicals – but all they amount to is your subjective dislike of tone and the claim that they are not “listening”. You are also very deferential about bishops in a way that seems frankly Laudian to me. I submit there are four things you need to do,
1. You need to recognise that the stakes in this game are Very High – they strike at the heart of the gospel. You may not think so, but thst is because you don’t think same-sex sex is sinful. If you did, you would understand the issues better and see that those promoting change are actually driving the church into division and ruin. We saw how this business wrecked the American Episcopal Church and we don’t want to see that happen here.
2. Politeness is certainly a virtue – but it isn’t the sum or the acme of Christian virtue. Faithfulness to Christ is. There were many things in the words of Christ and his apostles which were jarring and even offensive to their hearers (“that fox Herod”, “blind leaders of the blind”, “whited sepulchres” etc etc) which I can never read comfortably because they could well be addressed to me at some point in my life. Don’t make the mistake of majoring in minors.
3. You need to recognise that those of us who uphold the Christian Church’s doctrine of marriage have indeed been listening to what the revisionists have been saying – for a very long time – and we have patiently and exhaustively answered it MANY times. We are not fools or newborns. What we have seen is that the LLF business was from the start a dishonest game which evaded honestly dealing with orthodoxy – even in a book of 400 pages! It is very condescending of you to accuse us of not “listening”. This is the oldest play in the book.
4. Your Laudian deference to bishops may still chime with some in England who are beholden to the old class system, but it shows you don’t understand what bishops mean in the evangelical Anglican world. Essentially they are senior presbyters – no more and no less – and they exist for the good order of the church. They don’t possess other gifts of the Spirit just because of their office, and their first calling – like thet of all presbyters- is to faithfully teach the gospel, not to undermine it. When they do that, they must be opposed.
I am so tired reading the fallacy that the Church has had one unchanging doctrine of marriage. It has had many. Just as we constantly negotiate with scriptural texts to create meanings and teachings which are useful and agreeable to us. We are rather expert at ignoring inconvenient truths and seeing Christian polity in our Global North cultures. If you think that sexual behaviour is affected by secularism, I think you are ignoring that all our belief and actions are affected by late capitalism. By all means, create a hedge to protect your purity, there is a long history of cults and sects within Judaism and Christianity, but leave the Church alone?
I think you are confusing ‘doctrine’ with ‘administration’.
The doctrine of the C of E is:
The Church of England affirms, according to our Lord’s teaching, that marriage is in its nature a union permanent and lifelong, for better for worse, till death them do part, of one man with one woman, to the exclusion of all others on either side, for the procreation and nurture of children, for the hallowing and right direction of the natural instincts and affections, and for the mutual society, help and comfort which the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.
That has certainly not changed since 1662. But can you point me to a place where a Christian church has believed that marriage is something other than a lifelong union between one man and one woman?
Of course, RC sees marriage as a sacrament and indissoluble. But its sacramental nature is more concerned with status than theology.
It has changed in many ways since 1662, as the CW form of matrimony shows, and changed even more in 2000 years of Christianity. There wasn’t even a concept of Christian marriage until centuries after Christ. But all this is in a sense irrelevant because, until SSM is introduced into the CoE, it’s current doctrine won’t change (although as the Prayers of Dedication after a Civil Marriage show, the rules can always be nuanced, and by commendation rather than authorisation. It’s simply that some evangelicals care more about same-sex relationships than they do about divorce.).
‘It has changed in many ways since 1662’ Penny, could you name one or two for me? How the doctrine of marriage as between one man and one woman has changed? Or anytime before that?
No, I don’t accept the assertion here that “there wasn’t even a conception of Christian marriage until centuries after Christ.” That’s a throwaway comment that is obviously false as it entirely ignores the many, many statements that Christ and his Apostles make in the NT about marriage. It’s true that canon law was a later development but that is only to be expected as a function of historical development. But canon law is not the same as a theological understanding which was there from the beginning.
Do some evangelicals today take a lax view of divorce and remarriage? Yes, they probably do. Does that make their laxity right?
No, it doesn’t.
So what are you asking for – a return to the old discipline?
But I know exactly who would be howling denunciations of hard hearted judgmental Pharisees etc if evangelicals expressed the kind of opposition to divorce that was common in the 1960s and 1970s.
All divorces are caused by sin, and sometimes that sin (desertion, cruelty, infidelity) lies more on one side than the other.
“But I know exactly who would be howling denunciations of hard hearted judgmental Pharisees etc if evangelicals expressed the kind of opposition to divorce that was common in the 1960s and 1970s.”
Sure – the other evangelicals in their congregations.
Well, we’ve been here before, but, on spite of your contention that CW can’t change the doctrine expressed in the BCP, it clearly reorients the requirement for marriage to be procreative. That’s quite a significant change!
No one, as far as I know, is arguing that marriage hasn’t always been male/female (though not always one female), but that doesn’t mean that doctrine has remained unchanged.
James
You may not accept the assertion. However, it’s historically accurate.
Penny ‘We’ve been here before’, yes, and before, you could not answer the question either.
Changing the order of the three goods of marriage is by no stretch of the imagination a ‘change of doctrine’.
I rest my case.
It’s more than changing the order. It’s changing the goods.
Penny, what goods have changed? None.
Procreation is no longer mandatory/necessary/essential.
It’s a fundamental change.
I think the idea that doctrines of marriage have been changing is a perpetually repeated cliche – and to be a cliché is always a worrying start.
Practices have changed. Understandings of what marriage is socially have changed. Neither of these is doctrine. Nor has marriage ever failed to be much the same thing as a father and mother’s unity in procreating and bringing up their children together as a household.
Your last sentence shows that the essential understanding of what marriage is has changed. And that essential understanding is doctrine.
Heart of the Gospel? Like the divinity of Jesus, God’s love for the world, or the resurrection?
Don’t you know? Seems not.
Adam, I would say that heart of the gospel is that the kingdom of God is at hand, and that we need to repent and believe the good news. Someone once expressed it in this way I seem to recall.
I was drawing on:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” – John 3
It’s somewhat surreal that I have to point that out.
Saying the heart of the gospel is believe the gospel is a bit circular, no?