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Andrew Goddard writes: The House of Bishops met on Monday October 9th and in the early evening a press release appeared which set out some of their decisions. One of the key questions has been by which canonical route the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF) will be introduced into the church. The short summary is that … Continue Reading
Andrew Goddard writes: The Church of England is waiting for the bishops to decide (likely on Monday October 9th) the next steps in their discernment concerning Living in Love and Faith (LLF). These will be published shortly after the House of Bishops meets and brought in some form to General Synod (Nov 13th–15th). It is, however, … Continue Reading
There was a flurry of both despair and excitement earlier this week, when Pope Francis answered questions raised by a group of five cardinals on a series of questions—about the nature of God’s revelation, the possibility of the ordination of women, the role and authority of bishops in relation to the pope, the relation of … Continue Reading
Andrew Goddard writes: Back in June I wrote a number of posts concerning the various canons that might be used to introduce the proposed Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF) into the liturgical life of the Church of England. In three parts it considered the original proposal to commend for use at the discretion of the … Continue Reading
Andrew Goddard writes: When serving on the Co-ordinating Group of Living in Love and Faith (LLF) from 2017 to 2020 there were inevitably parallels drawn at various points between our work and the contemporaneous national Brexit debate. How was the way we were handling in the Church of the England the complex, seemingly irresolvable, and divisive … Continue Reading
At the end of July, Kaya Burgess, the Religious Affairs correspondent of The Times, sent out an email to 5,000 Church of England clergy, inviting them to complete a questionnaire giving their views on a whole range of issues, including whether Britain is a ‘Christian’ country any more, the Church’s teaching on sexuality, their own … Continue Reading
Joshua Penduck writes: In this long review, I have explored several critiques of Charlie Bell’s book Queer Holiness. In Part II, I looked out how despite all the merits of his book (some of which were outlined in Part I), his polemical rhetoric has led to problems of internal inconsistency, privilege, strawmanning, othering, a lack of … Continue Reading
Joshua Penduck writes: Let’s review. Bell has argued that the Church of England must reach the point of accepting gay marriage as well as implying some kind of concordance with contemporary sexual ethics in the modern West (his suggestive reference to aggiornamento on p 159 is revealing). Although the Bible has a narrative function within this, … Continue Reading
Joshua Penduck writes: In Part I of this review of Charlie Bell’s book, Queer Holiness, after outlining his overall argument, I noted that the hints and implications of some of his arguments lead to a ‘sacralisation’ of contemporary Western norms for sexual ethics, that is, equating our current culture with divine revelation. As such, I proposed … Continue Reading
Joshua Penduck writes: The following is a review and critique of Charlie Bell’s book Queer Holiness: The Gift of LGBTQI People to the Church. It will be divided into four blog posts (though a complete version of the review can be found here: Review-of-Charlie-Bell-Queer-Holiness). The first part is an introduction to Queer Holiness, plus the beginnings of … Continue Reading
Andrew Goddard writes: Following my recent article on where we should be going on LLF I had a few brief exchanges with David Runcorn on my Facebook page. This made clear that he and I were viewing the current situation in quite different ways but, as he commented, “that needs a long conversation”. I was therefore … Continue Reading
Ian Paul: theologian, author, speaker, academic consultant. Associate Senior Research Fellow, Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology; Associate Minister, St Nic's, Nottingham; Managing Editor, Grove Books; member of General Synod and Archbishops' Council. Mac user; chocoholic. Tweets at @psephizo
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