The Church Times and the Church of England Newspaper this week contain an advertisement for the Anglican Communion Office:
Church Times The Anglican Communion Office, Facilitator for the Listening Process on Human Sexuality/Permanent secretariat
The news of this is also reported in the Living Church under the headline Facilitator for Listening Process on Human Sexuality Sought (warning: the link from there to the CEN version of the advert is to a 1.2 Mbyte PDF file)
As TLC notes, the post has not been advertised in print journals outside the UK, and the key hurdle any candidate has to leap is that he or she must have: no previous public alignment on the subject of human sexuality.
It seems odd that this advertisement is not yet to be found on the ACO’s own website.
The trouble with having ‘no previous public alignment’ is that they will not have spoken about it and therefore may not have thought (or cared) much about it. Those who have thought a lot will generally have spoken or written.
“no previous public alignment on the subject of human sexuality.”
Which seems to rule out anyone with any interest in the topic….or experience…or indeed knowledge! And yet candidates are expected to know how the Ang Comm works…hmm…sounds like trying to find an unbiased jury for the trial of OJ Simpson…
What they’re effectively asking for is either someone who has been trapped in a cave for the last 30 years or else someone INDIFFERENT to the subject–i.e., someone for whom the issue is adiaphora. That’s hardly neutral in this context. So I hope they find the cave-dweller.