Stephen Parsons Surviving Church Responding to wounded abuse survivors. Can the post-IICSA Church get this right?
Anne Foreman ViaMedia.News Church of England – Please Mind the Gap!
Jeremy Pemberton From the Choir Stalls Deadly Pressure
Stephen Cottrell, Nick Baines and David Walker Yorkshire Post We must face up to the human heartache in a Britain divided by lockdowns – Archbishop of York
Interesting and timely article by Jeremy Pemberton. He is absolutely right in his comments about the Higton motion. Part of the trouble with Church of England synodical government is that it does not go backwards and repeal things that are a problem. Higton is a dreadful and shameful problem that belongs to a previous era. The Church of England only ever replaces something from the past with something new. Living in Love and Faith is unlikely to be able to do that, but it might open the door to a new motion saying something fresh and relevant to society as… Read more »
Jeremy Pemberton’s remarks about the ‘millstone’ of the Baughen ‘amendment’ of 1987 have sent me scurrying back to the records of that debate. Mr Higton, the ayatollah of Hawkwell, and a constant thorn in the side of the bench for more than a decade, declared (according to the reportage in the Times of 12 November 1987) that: “…he was not calling for a witch-hunt or for hasty accusations but for godly discipline which upheld the teaching of scripture, including the teaching that all homosexual practice was an abomination and a perversion. Those engaged in it should be challenged on an… Read more »
It’s perhaps a blessing that Tom Wright – cited by Jeremy Pemberton – is out of harm’s way and closeted in academia without much influence over the personal lives of clergy and good lay people . For Wright ‘s views to be superseded by no less than Pope Francis shows how far the Church has moved on Civil Partnerships. Perhaps the Pope has seen the writing on the wall. Attendance at his Church is in free fall in the secular West. Without a clergy consisting largely of gay men, there wouldn’t be a RC Church. Everyone knows the hypocrisy of… Read more »
FrDavid H: “Perhaps the Pope has seen the writing on the wall.” Alan Bennett’s Forty Years On: “when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall”. I’ll get my coat.
Thanks for this – but for those of us not in the know is there any reason why, when you say “one of whom had recently lost his seat in parliament (to a homosexual) and remains prominent in Synod and the Commissioners,” you can’t make it easier for us by giving us the gentleman’s actual name.
Many thanks. A brief biography of that erstwhile MP is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Bruinvels. The other correspondents were: (i) Hugh Craig (Church Assembly/Synod member 1950-95: https://www.latimertrust.org/product-page/towards-a-heritage-renewed); (ii) Frank Knaggs (executive officer of the Church of England Evangelical Council); (iii) M. H. Laird (Margaret Laird, third Church Estates Commissioner: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/margaret-laird-hxk3hlzx7h9); (iv) Julian Litten (a prominent conservationist, formerly of the V&A); (v) Dr Peter May (a Southampton GP); (vi) T. L. F. (Tim) Royle (prominent in reinsurance and chairman of the Lindley Educational Trust); and (vii) John Smallwood (a senior Bank of England official and an important person in the financial history of the… Read more »
Thank you. As someone living and working out in the sticks it helpful for me to get these glimpses into various hidden corners of the church’s life.
It sounds like Peter Bruinvels.
Indeed. We were members of General Synod at the same time, for his first 7 years or so. There was some comment at the time about him using the House of Commons portcullis logo on his election materials, which presumably he didn’t even attempt later.
Ah, the Higton debate. And then there was the Louden amendment on lifelong virginity… https://sharedconversations.wordpress.com/2017/08/03/getting-into-a-muddle-about-sex-lifelong-virginity-and-the-louden-amendment/