Today has been designated as National Coming Out Day.
There’s been so much going on recently in the media and social media about gay bishops in the Church of England.
This seems to me to say it in a more elegant way than all the letters to the press, editorials, blog posts and twitter posts by the score.
Nicely put, he seems to feel entitled to freedom from criticism. It’s a censorious attitude that I thought the CoE put behind it when most of us learned to laugh at the Life of Brian and it is contradicted by the church’s own call to participation in democracy.
The poor old Arch. He really is an old school establishment man who cant really understand where the deference has gone. The Green Report, the other Reports on the ‘future’ of the Church of England and the ‘Conversations’ all speak of a deeply controlling man who is deeply frustrated that there is no control to be had any more. When the split comes he will probably want to make what is left into a more confessional and defined group (the evangelicals have always wanted that) but I suspect the Church that will emerge will be more liberal than he likes even if it is outwardly more evangelical and enthusiast than the Church of England has been for a very long time
@Andrew I’d switch that around. Justin Welby is someone who does not show deference to what has in Western society become The New Orthodoxy (definitions on a postcard please), this is why he provokes such puzzlement, and thus consternation and anger.
Andrew, I don’t see how that can be, really: he hasn’t the pedigree to be “an old school establishment man.” He’s a late vocation who had been a high-power figure in the corporate world–meaning he’s undoubtedly accustomed to having the last word.
As to his attitudes toward gay people, I’m disgusted with him and the many others who accept the natural sciences’ contradiction of bible, but just can’t bring themselves to the same place with the behavioral and social sciences, and even with medicine itself–ignoring along the way that homosexuality is found in upward of 450 animal species besides our own. Otherwise they seem perfectly comfortable with dispensing with the savagery found in much of “holy scripture.”
I love the line “who am I to judge them for their sins, if they have sins” makes us seem angelic compared to those who have children. Only one problem we, according to the bible commit sin just by being together. Does this mean that he is disagreeing with orthodoxy, and we are not sinning by being together.
God bless all and may his words of love bring more, troubled, souls to him.
“Only one problem we, according to the bible commit sin just by being together.”
I *think* you meant “according to false translations/interpretations of the bible…” (or should have meant).
“Being together”: can we call sex, “sex”? If not, why not? [And can we call marital sex (same- or opposite-sex) “marital sex”?]
best line for me:
You say that stuff and you are going to get people observing that there’s a lot more archbishops who claim that gay people are their friends than gay people who claim archbishops are their friends.
Could you all go over and see Cliff Piper over at http://morayrosscaithness.blogspot.com/ He is obviously not getting enough attention as the Dean of Moray, Ross and Caithness so he has started a blog. He is taking his first steps in the Blogosphere and needs our encouragement and compassion. He says on twitter that its scary.…
I note the report on Sweden’s Local news-site that bishops from England and Ireland are boycotting the consecration of the next Bishop of Stockholm. (Tip of the biretta to Fr Madpriest). Does anyone know which Scottish bishop is going? We are usually quite good at turning up to things in Sweden.
I nearly preached about relics for our All Saints Festival on Sunday. No, I’m not talking about the congregation, who are far from being relics, I am talking about, you know, holy relics. (Not that the congregation are not holy, either). It was that tour of the relics of Thérèse of Lisieux that made me…
We had some theological students in church yesterday who had come as a group to observe our goings on. This is something that I got involved in last year too. They go around several churches and then invite the preacher into their class which takes place later in the week to discuss what happened. I…
Leave a Reply