Jonathan Petre has blogged some reflections at Dust settling on the Synod.
Bishop Nazir-Ali of Rochester wrote this article for the Sunday Telegraph: I believe in Trident, and using it if necessary.
Anglican Mainstream published the text of the intervention by Chris Sugden in the debate on the Gilbert motion. AM had this comment on the debate:
The danger is that this can be taken to mean that lesbian and gay Christians are welcome as full members of the church, whatever their behaviour and practice.
AM also reported on the scripture reading used at synod on Thursday morning, saying rather oddly: “the following scripture, chosen some time beforehand, was read at the opening Morning Worship” when in fact it came from the authorized Weekday Lectionary of the Church of England, so “chosen” by the General Synod itself.
As previously noted, AM published the text of Paul Perkin’s remarks on Wednesday afternoon.
The Observer carried this leader comment yesterday on the media debate.
Additions
Two items from Sunday’s radio programme Sunday now available:
Trident
“Morally unacceptable” said the Archbishop of Canterbury at Synod this week, talking of the Trident nuclear weapons system the Government wants to buy. “Morally acceptable” said one of his Bishops, Michael Nazir Ali of Rochester, in the Sunday Telegraph. And he said a preemptive strike against Iran could also be justified.
Bishop Michael was unavailable for comment. The Bishop of Reading, Stephen Cottrell, who on Friday is going to celebrate Holy Communion outside Faslane Naval base to protest Trident, spoke to Sunday.
Related link: The ethics of Just Wars
Listen (5m 8s)
Synod and sex in entertainment
The Synod of the Church of England voted unanimously to express concerns over TV standards and warned that shows like Big Brother and Little Britain can “exploit the humiliation of human beings for public entertainment”.
The Synod also heard claims that the British Board of Film Classification was “making pornography easier to access by giving hardcore material 18 certificates”.
The former President of the Board, Andreas Whittam Smith, who passed two of the most sexually explicit and violent films, is a Synod member.
Listen (4m 2s)
Nuclear deterrence has worked so far. Covert intervention e.g. assassination of other governments’ challenging leaders or supporting a more sychophantic regime have worked so far too. So why not keep them all going? Who cares that one nation spends 41% of the world’s military budget, and that it is funded by ignoring social welfare in the current generation and incurring debt for further generations. Military bases in strategic locations have worked so far too. Go read John Pilger’s book “Freedom Next Time” to see what lengths they will go to achieve that too. Have no illusion a lot of the… Read more »
‘He was in a gay relationship. And through prayer, the gospel of Jesus, the power of the spirit, the support of friends, and finally the love of a woman, he has in his own words been released from an unwanted same-sex attraction.’ Chris Sugden at Synod. Very touching indeed. I wonder whatever became of the other person in the ‘gay relationship’ ? ( Why not just say relationship in fact ?). This other young man is simply implied en passant, and I am sure that you and I are supposed not to give HIM a second thought. Is this ethical… Read more »
Funny how these things happen. Something that was kicked into touch and then kicked into further touch for good measure ends up being a paradigm shift, that events happened in the General Synod that changed the ground in the Church of England on the whole homosexual inclusion issue. The previous set position, the one to which the Arhbishop refers, somehow now has the skids underneath it, and is no longer the set position at least in these parts. The Daily Telegraph blog summarises this quite well. It makes me believe in a theology of the Holy Spirit moving things constructively… Read more »
I am unsurprised by the peculiar attitude of AM to the lectionary. The local AM/Reform offshoot across the river happily puts its notice sheet online, and (setting aside the fact that to join the fellowship one has to undergo, not baptism but an Alpha course) makes no systematic use of scripture whatsoever, preferring a locally drafted ‘thematic’ approach which often means that no Gospel reading is used, even at the Sunday Eucharist. I noted with some concern that at Christmas the John 1 1-18 reading never saw the light of day, despite the fact that ‘belief in the incarnation’ would… Read more »
Michael Nazir-Ali is justifying a huge waste of money on the basis of al-Qaeda getting hold of nuclear material… But al-Qaeda has a theology of death, and not life – so threatening them with mutually assured destruction is just one more road towards paradise. His logic is baffling. Talk about “virtually two religions”!
I’m also very sceptical about such claims. It is quite possible for a bisexual person to sublimate the gay element of their orientation, but that doesn’t mean that it goes away. In fact, to be fair, not all of the ex-gay groups promote this line. They recognise that change in orientation is unlikely. The real point is that well-balanced and happy gay people do not wish to change, because they are happy to be the people they are. And in the UK< the total number of ex-gay group membership is barely in three figures. Compare that to the ever increasing… Read more »
Nazir-Ali is a disgrace. I suppose the relevant Lambeth resolutions about war and nuclear war don’t matter, just the ones about sex.
What a come-down: first reading Barry Morgan’s brilliant essay, then Michael Nazir-Ali’s article in the Tory-graph. From the sublime to the borderline-offensive.
Would it not be strange for the wider UK society and law to shift towards equality for its gay citizens and their relationships, and the CoE to remain completely unaware and unaffected? I do get that many pockets of CoE life are much more conservative than otherwise. But surely that may be said of almost all provinces, up to the majority conservative provinces, whose side pockets probably have progressives and/or closets aplenty.
As an ex-ex-gay pioneer of what is now misleadingly called Reparative Therapy, I can attest that the case of me and my family, nothing happened except three outcomes. First, great truck loads of terrible and unnecessary suffering were borne by me and by my extended and church families, all in order to accept God’s plan to make gays straight, and to be able to live that for the greater glory of God. The claims of ex-gay change get loudly repeated, but so far no methodologically sound study is available to sort out the confounding issues. Were most of the later… Read more »
Third. Going through that much unnecessary pain and surviving it do something profound to all involved. Some folks in my church and/or extended biological family never actually recovered. They are cut off from me (since I failed in their views), or are cut off from country USA Bible Belt church (since the church failed in their views), to this day. Others of us experienced such a deep shift that it is difficult to explain or describe the change, to this day. A change for the better. A profound experience of the sheer idolatry that may be involved in what Herbert… Read more »
>>>The danger is that this can be taken to mean that lesbian and gay Christians are welcome as full members of the church, whatever their behaviour and practice.
One cannot be too careful. First hateful, sex-obsessed fundamentalists were welcomed into the church, and now they have decided that they *are* the church.
Thanks for this drdanfee
“shows like Big Brother and Little Britain can “exploit the humiliation of human beings for public entertainment”.
Really!
The Church does it much better:
‘He was in a gay relationship. And through prayer, the gospel of Jesus, the power of the spirit, the support of friends, and finally the love of a woman, he has in his own words been released from an unwanted same-sex attraction.’
Chris Sugden at Synod.
Pluralist wrote “…Al-Qaeda has a theology of death, and not life – so threatening them with mutually assured destruction is just one more road towards paradise.” Well done. That is the crux of my contemplations in the week following 9-11. That humanity had reached a hubris where fighting fire with fire was literally going to feed into the enemies of humanity and this planet. It became clear that peace could not be imposed. We could not wait for the “perfect” world where there was no violence or injustice to start building the new world. All the evil one had to… Read more »
Hi Martin A good principle, I find, is to trust a person’s own testimony over testimonies that others may give on their behalf and/or suggest to them. If this person’s own testimony was that this constituted a deliverance, then he knows best. Far better than you or me. By denying that this can be the case in even one instance, you would be breaking a second important principle: namely the desirability of analysing cases on a case-by-case basis. Is your position that there is no such thing as an unwanted same-sex attraction? Or that those that are unwanted ought to… Read more »
Christopher,
how about you scroll back up this thread and read drdanfee’s moving posts about this?
I note that Christopher believes in partner swapping, which is contingent upon partner dropping. You seem to wish to import this from the straight world, into the gay world.
Nonetheless, I welcome your acceptance of ‘wanted same sex atraction.’
Hi Laurence Wow – I don’t remember saying any of that. I certainly don’t believe any of that. (1) Partner swapping – no. Rather, I have never affirmed the idea of a homosexual partnership in the first place. (2) Only straights and not gays partner swap? You know very well that this is not true – so why did you say it? (Unless to demonstrate your bias for all to see?) The truth is that in modern Britain there is a great deal of both. Have you read figures on homosexual promiscuity? (3) I do not remotely accept ‘wanted same-sex… Read more »