WATCH (London) Invitation
17 CommentsPreparing for Elections
Everyone is welcome to St James’s Church Piccadilly (nearest underground Piccadilly Station, Piccadilly Line or Green Park Station, Victoria and Jubilee Lines) on Wednesday 17 April 2013 from 6.45pm – 9.15pm
This event will provide an opportunity for us to prepare for the forthcoming elections to Deanery Synods now and in 2014 at which members vote for those standing for General Synod.
It is crucial we are prepared for this as soon as possible so that the expressed wishes of those in the Church who support Women Bishops can be properly represented.
Revd Lucy Winkett, Rector of St James’s, Piccadilly will give a key-note address.
The Revd Stephen France, Rector of Christ Church Brondesbury in the London Diocese will take us step by step through the synodical processes to secure a General Synod lay membership which represents far more accurately than the present House of Laity the overwhelming desire of church people to welcome women as bishops.
Pamphlets giving clear guidance will be provided at the meeting for distribution in your parishes. Individuals who have been closely involved in Synod’s various efforts to achieve women in the episcopate, members of General Synod past and present and from the National WATCH committee will be on hand to hear your views and experiences.
There will be time for questions and comments. We will end with Compline.
Light refreshments will be available.
Andrew Brown writes in The Guardian How do churches get new bums on seats? Get rid of the boring old ones.
Ysenda Maxtone Graham writes in The Spectator Brace yourself for the real experience of going to a rural parish service on Easter Sunday.
Sarah Coakley gave a series of ten Meditations on Holy Week at Salisbury Cathedral.
Diarmaid MacCulloch in The Guardian asks Who is the antichrist? Not Obama. Not even Satan, exactly.
This week’s Church Times has two comment articles available to non-subscribers
Paul Valleley The complex web of global hunger
Jonathan Bartley Now is the time to be subversive
and this leader Blaming the poor.
The Church Times reports: Tutu wins £1.1m Templeton Prize.
ARCHBISHOP Desmond Tutu was awarded the Templeton Prize on Thursday for “advancing spiritual principles such as love and forgiveness”.
The award, which is now worth £1.1 million, was established 40 years ago by the late global investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton, to reward a person “who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works”.
Dr Tutu will receive the prize at a ceremony at the Guildhall in London on 21 May. A celebration will be held next Thursday at St George’s Cathedral, Capetown…
The full text of the press release from the Templeton Foundation is currently here. Other background information is also available.
3 CommentsThe Anglican Communion Office has published three reports of the business recently transacted by the Standing Committee, which met in late March. In case you’ve forgotten, the committee’s structure is explained here.
The reports of the 2013 meeting:
There have been several reports of the recent election of a primate for the Anglican Church of Tanzania.
First there was this announcement: New Archbishop elected by Anglican Church of Tanzania.
Then there was a follow-up item Tanzania bishops welcome Archbishop-elect Jacob Chimeledya.
And most recently there was this: Tanzania’s General Secretary clarifies Archbishop election.
…The Special Electoral synod of the Anglican Church of Tanzania met on 21st February 2013 in the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, Dodoma to elect the sixth Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Tanzania. Since then some unfounded accusations of corruption, bribery and tribalism surrounding the election of our new Archbishop have been made on the internet.
The internet can be used to develop relationships, but it can also be used to spread gossip and destabilize the church. None of those writing these false stories sought to confirm them with us. It is very sad that someone who did not attend the election would spoil what was confirmed by all our bishops as a fair and transparent election…
To understand what this refers to, see other earlier reports: here, here, and here. And then also here, and here.
And there is news from Uruguay via Anglican Journal: Pollesel election in Uruguay ratified.
The Anglican Province of the Southern Cone has reconsidered the diocese of Uruguay’s appeal and has voted to ratify the election of Archdeacon Michael Pollesel as co-adjutor bishop.
The decision came 10 months after the province’s house of bishops rejected Pollesel’s election. The Uruguayan diocesan synod had appealed the decision, but “for technical canonical reasons the form of the original appeal was not valid” and had to be presented again, said Southern Cone Presiding Bishop Hector Zavala in a press release.
The Southern Cone house of bishops and provincial executive council, “with joy and thankfulness to God,” ratified Pollesel’s election after new consideration of the appeal and the presentation of new background material, Zavala said…
Again, in case you had forgotten, here is the Anglican Journal earlier report on his rejection, and our own much earlier report about that diocese’s discomfort with the Southern Cone province.
1 CommentEd Thornton reports in the Church Times: No excuses on poverty goals, religious leaders warn G8.
EIGHTY religious leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, have signed a letter warning the G8 group of world leaders not to use the financial crisis as an “excuse” to delay fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The letter was published in the Financial Times on Friday, 1000 days ahead of the deadline to meet the MDGs. The G8 leaders are scheduled to meet in the UK in June…
The full text of the letter can be read on the Lambeth Palace website (scroll down) and the full list of signatories is below the letter.
0 CommentsFinancial crisis is not an excuse for missing Millennium Development Goals, say religious leaders. Supporters encouraged to add their voices on Twitter using#1000DaysToGo
With 1000 days left to achieve the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has joined religious leaders across the G8 urging governments to keep their promises on foreign aid.
Archbishop Justin is among 80 religious leaders who have signed a letter to the Financial Times today, urging G8 countries to follow the UK in meeting existing commitments to spend 0.7% of national income on aid.
With a focus on tax, trade and transparency, the religious leaders argue, the UK Presidency of the G8 has the potential to advance the MDG agenda in ways that strike at the underlying causes of poverty, in particular by ensuring the wealth created by developing countries is not lost through unfair tax practices, a lack of transparency or a failure to secure the benefits of trade for developing countries…
The Governing Body of the Church in Wales will be meeting on 10 and 11 April 2013. The agenda includes group discussion on women bishops, as this extract from a press release describes.
The ordination of women as bishops will be discussed by clergy and lay people from all over Wales at a key Church meeting next week.
Theological arguments for and against women bishops will be presented to members of the Church in Wales’ Governing Body during its two-day meeting at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David, in Lampeter, on April 10-11.
The 144 members will be put into seven groups, each facilitated by a bishop, to consider two papers – one outlining the case for the ordination of women and one setting out the case against.
The discussions are being held ahead of the introduction of a two-stage Bill to the Governing Body in September to ordain women as bishops. That legislation, however, will not be addressed by the groups next week.
The Bishop of St Asaph, Gregory Cameron, says, “It is now five years since the last time that Governing Body considered the question of the ordination of women to the episcopate, and many of its members will have changed. The bishops feel it is important that Governing Body has the opportunity to explore the theological questions behind these issues, and understand the conscientious reasons why those opposed to the ordination of women to the episcopate would not be able to accept the sacramental ministry of a woman bishop as well as the theological reasons why those in favour believe that the time is right for such as a step.”
The discussions will take place on Thursday morning from 9.30am.
The full agenda is available online.
The Governing Body previously considered a bill to allow women to be bishops in April 2008. It was defeated then as it failed to achieve a two-thirds majority in the House of Clergy.
81 CommentsHere are some recent items about women bishops and women’s ministry.
GRAS (Group for Rescinding the Act of Synod) has published a spring newsletter. The major item in this is The central principle of justice and liberation for all women, the address given at the GRAS Conference and AGM held on 2 March 2013 by the Revd Canon Jane Charman.
Today’s Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4 was about Women and the Christian faith.
Jane Garvey looks at the position of women in the Christian faith. Jane visits the Coventry parish of the Reverend Katrina Scott. Also taking part are the Rev’d Lorna Hood, Moderator Designate of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and also on the Woman’s Hour Powerlist; the Rev’d Anne Stevens, Vicar of St Pancras Parish Church, London, and part of the current consultation on women bishops and a member of WATCH (Women And The Church) which is campaigning for women bishops; Sister Catherine Wybourne, a Roman Catholic nun who runs a contemplative community in Herefordshire and Tweets under the name DigitalNun.
The programme can be listened to for the next seven days on the BBC iPlayer.
Damian Thompson reports in The Telegraph that Russian Orthodox tell Archbishop of Canterbury: ordain women bishops and you can forget about unity.
Madeleine Davies writes for the Church Times about a new book, Women and Men in Scripture edited by Stephen Croft and Paula Gooder: Support for women bishops ‘is biblical’.
53 CommentsThe Sunday Times commissioned a poll to provide it with a news story for Easter about the Church of England. This newspaper is behind a pay wall, but Reuters has this report: UK poll points to mistrust of clergy, lack of moral leadership.
Only around a half of Britons trust the clergy to tell the truth and a similar proportion think the Church of England does a bad job of providing moral leadership, a poll showed on Sunday.
The survey by pollster YouGov commissioned by Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper further showed that 69 percent of respondents thought the Church of England, mother church of the world’s 80-million-strong Anglican communion, was out of touch.
Forty percent of those polled said they did not trust priests, vicars and other clergy to tell the truth, and overall doctors, teachers and judges were rated as more trustworthy.
Fifty-four percent believe the Church of England has struggled to give moral leadership, the poll found…
Clive Field at British Religion in Numbers has reported at length on the survey, see Easter Day with the Sunday Times. Here’s a small extract, but do read the whole analysis.
…Trust in clergy
54% have a great deal or fair amount of trust in priests, vicars, and other clergy to tell the truth, rising to 73% among Christians, with 40% having little or no trust in them. Clergy are the sixth equal most trusted profession on a list of eighteen occupations, the range being from 83% for family doctors to 13% for estate agents.
Church of England
31% contend that the Church of England is doing a good job in providing moral leadership, over-60s (38%) and Christians (55%) being especially inclined to think so (54% for Anglicans). A majority (54%, including 65% of Liberal Democrats, who are committed to disestablishment, and 37% of Anglicans) rates it as doing a bad job, with 16% unsure.
Still more, 69%, feel that the Church of England is out of touch, with particular highs for UKIP voters (75%) and Scots (76%). Even 53% of Christians take this line. Just 21% of all adults view the Church as being in touch, and no more than 28% of over-60s and 41% of Anglicans. 10% express no opinion on the subject.
A plurality (49%) say the Church of England is wrong to oppose same-sex marriage, including 66% of 18-24s, 63% of Liberal Democrats, 60% of Scots, and even 37% of Anglicans. 37% support the Church’s position, with 57% for the over-60s and 52% of Anglicans. 13% are undecided.
78% feel that the Church of England should allow women bishops, including 89% of Liberal Democrats, 85% of Anglicans, 83% of Conservatives, 82% of women and Scots. Opponents of women bishops number 9% overall but 19% of Catholics, 15% of UKIP supporters, and 13% of Londoners. 13% do not know what to think…
YouGov has published the full results of the poll on its own website, and they can be downloaded as a PDF from here.
13 CommentsThe Irish Government has established a Constitutional Convention to consider a number of possible changes to the Irish Constitution. These issues are varied and include changes to the electoral system, the removal of the offence of Blasphemy, and provisions for same-sex marriage. The latter may or may not be precluded by Article 41 of the Constitution as currently worded.
Changing Attitude Ireland has made a written submission to the Convention, which can be read or downloaded as a PDF. Here’s the Executive Summary:
Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland the Guardian reports Northern Ireland’s ban on gay marriage to be challenged by Amnesty in court.
Amnesty International and gay pressure groups have warned that Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government will soon face a human rights legal case over its refusal to allow gay couples to marry.
Unionist parties have voted at Stormont to ensure Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK where lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people are excluded from the same-sex marriage bill, which was passed in the Commons in February…
Paul Johnson at ECHR Sexual Orientation Blog has more legal detail: ECHR complaint is likely if same-sex couples cannot marry in Northern Ireland.
9 CommentsPossible court action could be brought under the Human Rights Act in the domestic courts and, if that failed to remedy the situation, a complaint could be made to the European Court of Human Rights. Such a complaint to the Court would present a novel legal issue which it has hitherto not considered: the existence of different arrangements for same-sex marriage within a nation state. Whilst the Court has so far been reluctant to recognize a right to same-sex marriage under Article 12 of the Convention, the existence of differences in treatment in marriage within the jurisdictions of the UK based solely on sexual orientation could make a more compelling Article 14 case than those argued in previous applications. What would the Court make of a situation whereby citizens of a Council of Europe state could contract same-sex civil marriage in one part of the state but not in another?
I should not blame the men for not believing us, but I do. The story was, coldly considered, incredible, but then the last year had been equally unbelievable. Jesus. His life, his death, all unbelievable. Yet, after all we had heard and seen and gone through, the men should not have turned to us and told us we were hysterical and not to be believed.
We had done what we always do. We had taken ointments for flesh that will never heal, perfumes that we know too well the stench of death will drown. Why? But we do. We cannot help it. I remember that Jesus told somebody to leave the dead to bury the dead, but no, we could not.
It was all the more grim because of the delay. We had done the best we could for his shattered body on the Friday, but we had little more than moments.
It was the Sunday, early. If you need do terrible things, do them as soon as possible. Go as soon as you are awake, without eating. If you have not slept, that will be early, before the light starts up. Best to go before the day starts to heat up, before the body starts to decay further. Understand, we know death. We know it as an intimate enemy, even as an occasional friend, but we know how death works. And then — none of us wanted to go that near the site of the execution. Remember how close the site of the execution was to the tomb, nestled in a dog-leg of the wall.
Rolling back the stone was not a challenge to women like us. But when we got there, the city making its first stirring noises behind the wall, the light starting to wash grey gently in, the stone was already rolled back. We were, oh, worried, but then he had so many who loved him, who might be there first, and what else could we do but go in?
There was no person. There was no body. And there was the shroud, lying there. Even had somebody moved the body, they would have kept it in the shroud. We had been steeling ourselves for the unwrapping of the shroud, now, over a day later, and after a hurried committal.
I don’t know when we began to take in the shining figures. It seemed absurd afterwards that they were not the first thing we saw, but they were not. When we did see them, another kind of fear filled us.
They spoke. They asked why we would look for a living person among the dead. Our hearts filled with images our minds could not grasp. Light, and water, and dazzle. Fear transformed to awe. Awe to something so stupendous that neither mind nor heart could rise to its level. I no longer know if we dared to leave the shining figures, or if they went as silently as they came. The next thing I remember is running back to the rest, to the men.
When we burst in through the door of the house where we lodged, with the words of angels ringing in our ears, and the shining reflected in our faces, and a growing confidence in our voices, the men should have believed us. But they did not. Not then.
10 CommentsGiles Fraser writes in The Guardian that Jesus is not destroyed by our hatred.
Rosemary Hannah writes about Turning off King Lear.
The leader in The Spectator is Twitter vs Easter.
Andrew Brown writes in The Guardian that Atheists need to run an Alpha course of their own.
Benny Hazlehurst writes about Taking offence…
Jo Bailey Wells writes for Continuing Indaba about Living with the conflict, in hope and sacrifice.
Hugh Rayment-Pickard writes in the Church Times that churches should Have the nerve to follow the early Christians.
ABC Religion & Ethics asked a number of theologians and lay people to offer their thoughts on Rowan Williams and their hopes for Justin Welby: What now for the Archbishop of Canterbury? Reflections on Rowan Williams and Justin Welby.
Graham Kings has been to South Sudan: Learning Together in South Sudan.
Ralph Jones writes in The Independent that The Church of England is in desperate need of a modern dictionary.
8 CommentsJust another pointless death. A provincial prophet, a failed rebel, a stirrer-up of trouble is brutally executed by the imperial regime. A story that has been repeated innumerable times before and since. What did he and his followers expect? What did he think he could achieve against the power and privilege of the establishment even in such a minor, far-flung trouble spot? What a waste.
But here we see Jesus of Nazareth continuing to proclaim the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is near you, among you, he had preached. The kingdom of God exists wherever God’s will is done; a place where the hungry are fed and where each forgives the wrongs done to them by others. A place where that forgiveness is immediately recognized by sitting down and eating together, breaking the barriers.
And this is how Jesus dies: breaking bread with his friends and forgiving those who executed him. Here in this one day (by the reckoning of the ancient world), beginning at sunset on Thursday evening and culminating on a hillside outside the city a few hours later. Here is the epitome of the kingdom.
And so, as Jesus dies on the Cross proclaiming Love, this is no less than the inauguration of the kingdom of God on earth, as it is in heaven.
1 CommentMaundy Thursday commemorates the last meal that Jesus had with his disciples before he was arrested by Jerusalem’s temple guards, a meal at the time of the Jewish festival of Passover. It’s a meal which has gone on since to be ritualised by Christians as the eucharist, our defining ritual.
As with many things administered by organisations, meaning can be the first casualty of the systems which support it. Many years ago I asked a class of schoolchildren what they already knew about the eucharist, and they told me it needed a priest, and folk had to be confirmed in order to participate. What I took from this was that the regulations had obscured the meaning.
In fairness, the ease with which churches sat in British culture, until the 1960s and even some time after, meant that it would take a considerable leap of the imagination to understand the subversive character of a faith conceived in opposition to imperial domination, and the radical power of the rituals which it conceived. The eucharist I grew up with had been domesticated into a rite designed to foster personal piety.
These days, as we recover our identity as counter-cultural bodies, churches are developing eyes to see how potentially inflammatory our primary rite is. We can now imagine what it must have been like, in occupied Jerusalem, for the Roman authorities to anticipate a festival which was the subjugated people celebrating their identity. Passover was nothing less than a re-telling of their origins as a people, a people liberated from subjugation from an imperial power. This festival, in the context of occupied Judea, made it potentially seditious.
Setting the fourth gospel aside for the sake of brevity, Mark, with Mathew and Luke following him, style the Last Supper as a Passover meal. As with other meals which passed through Jesus’s hands, bread and wine, no less than loaves and fishes, are shared out in accordance with the idea that there is enough for all. The land is God’s, says the Torah, we are tenants and the distribution of its bounty is according to God’s justice, which is to say, enough for all. In a country where the land was being commercialised by the Romans and the Jewish aristocracy, God’s food for all is an unwelcome, and counter-cultural, conviction.
For Christians, the primary acts of Jesus’s meal, the sharing of bread and wine as body and blood, and for it to be shared with all, even Judas, is saying that to live counter-culturally is to court violence upon yourself. The meal is an enactment of denying self and taking up your cross, ‘for those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it’ (Mark 8:35) It is an attempt to bring all his followers into step with his way through death to new life.
Just as the Passover meal was food for the journey, so bread is about belonging together, and wine, representing blood, is a reversal of the old sacrificial notion that blood should be left on the altar as representing divine life-force. By sharing the wine Jesus is telling his followers to take divine life-force into themselves and to be empowered by it.
Maundy Thursday takes us back into the cauldron of occupied Judea, to the opposition of the Empire of Caesar and the Kingdom of God, and this rite embodies all the challenges which arise from that collision.
To recover and to enact all those meanings of the rite is far more important than who is authorised to make the rite happen, and who is permitted to partake in it.
Andrew Spurr is the Vicar of Evesham in the Diocese of Worcester
9 CommentsUpdated Wednesday evening
The Church of England has published the results of a survey by ICM which are available in full as a PDF file here.
The press release which accompanied this is here: Four out of five believe in the power of prayer.
Four out of five British adults believe in the power of prayer, according to a new ICM survey in the run-up to Easter. Holy Week and Easter are the most important period in the Christian calendar, marking the last days of Jesus’ ministry, his death on the Cross and resurrection to new life…
As the notes to the press release explain:
The question asked was: “Irrespective of whether you currently pray or not, if you were to pray for something at the moment, what would it be for?.”
There has been some criticism of the claims made in the press release, see
Huffington Post Church Of England Accused Of ‘Dishonesty’ In Prayer Survey
British Humanist Association Church of England spins Prayer Survey
New Statesman Church of England commits sins against statistics
TA readers may wish to study the full results of the survey for themselves and comment on whether they think the wording of the press release was justified.
Update
The British Religion in Numbers website has published this detailed critique by Clive Field of the press release and the survey, and of other reports of it in the media: Prayer in a Spin.
15 Comments…The Church based its claim on a misreading of the fact that 81% of the 2,015 adult Britons interviewed online by ICM Research on 13-14 March 2013, in a poll commissioned by the Church, had replied ‘something’ in answer to the question ‘irrespective of whether you currently pray or not, if you were to pray for something at the moment, what would it be for?’ This was slightly below the figure (85%) in the equivalent poll this time last year…
Honest to God, by Bishop John Robinson, was first published in 1963, and has been in print ever since, selling over a million copies. To celebrate this anniversary, the publisher SCM Press is sponsoring a commemorative evening in April at St Martin-in-the-Fields and has assembled a panel to discuss its influence and contemporary resonance.
Free event — everyone welcome
Monday 29 April, 7:00pm
St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 4JJ
The panel includes popular authors Francis Spufford and Mark Vernon, Archdeacon of Canterbury Sheila Watson, and vicar of St Martin’s the Revd Dr Sam Wells. It will be chaired by BBC World Affairs Correspondent Mike Wooldridge.
More details at stmartin-in-the-fields.org/event/honest-to-god-at-50.
4 CommentsThe Church of England issued this update this afternoon.
31 CommentsUpdate on progress on women bishops legislation
26 March 2013The consultation document on women bishops issued on 8 February generated 376 responses by the closing date of 28 February. Of these, 10 were from organisations and three from bishops. Of the remaining 363 submissions, 154 were from General Synod members and 209 from others.
The working group has met twice in March and has further meetings scheduled for April and May. It remains on track to report to the House of Bishops before the meeting of the House on 20/21 May, when the House will be deciding what proposals to bring to the Synod in July. At its April meeting the group is having further facilitated conversations with those who joined it for the earlier discussions at the beginning of February.
Notes
The consultation document on women bishops was issued as below
http://www.churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2013/02/consultation-document-issued-by-working-group-on-women-bishops-legislation.aspx
Today we begin our Holy Week journey with Jesus, following the Way of the Cross. It’s a week when people like me, who are a clear ‘T’ or Thinking type personality, have to let our intellectualising take second place to our emotions. We need to feel first, and then strive for some modest measure of understanding afterwards.
Once again I’m indebted to that great saint, Francis of Assisi, for showing the way. For beyond the sentimental image of Francis preaching to the birds and befriending the animals is the reality of a man who took the Way of the Cross into the heart of his life. When Francis prayed that he might feel in his own body as much as he could humanly bear of what Jesus felt on the cross, he did so not out of perverted masochism, nor even like those contemporary flagellants who sought to punish their bodies as an expiation of sin. Francis embraced suffering because he knew that this was the only way in which he would be able to feel in his own body as much as he could humanly bear of the love that held Jesus to the cross, and held him there with a force no nails could equal. What Francis had found was that the cross is not some intellectual solution to the questions of Judgement and Salvation, instead it is the place where divine love shows itself in its fullness, and so doing conquers all.
If two individuals as different as St Paul and St John can be united in placing love at the apex of their theology, then we need to accept Francis not as just some medieval mystic, but as one of our prime theologians. But it’s a theology that forms and grows in the heart long before it finds a lodging place in the mind. And so my focus this Holy Week, and one I commend to you, is to so enter into the Passion of Christ that we enter also into the heart of his love, into that more contemporary understanding of the very word ‘passion’. Yet, as one whose faith ever seeks understanding, I want to take with me on this week’s journey a particular question, the question of why there must be suffering at all.
For I think I’ve received a glimpse that such answer as there may be lies in that preeminence of love. Can it be that the world is as it is, with all the pain, evil and corruption that afflicts it, because in no other world could love be freely given and freely received? Can it be that the true question is not that of how a God of love can allow bad things to happen, but of how great must be the love that can know, feel and embrace all that suffering, and taking it, transform it into more love?
David Walker
David Walker is Bishop of Dudley in the diocese of Worcester
Nicola Hulks writes for She Loves magazine about When The Church Said No.
Kirk Smith writes for the Episcopal Café that Ancient manuscript will influence new archbishop.
Iain McLean writes for Politics in Spires about The utility function of Celestine V and the election of Pope Francis.
Christopher Howse writes for The Telegraph about St Francis as the Pope’s patron.
Giles Fraser writes in The Guardian that I bang my head against the wall when evangelicals turn Jesus into Cheesus.
19 CommentsUpdated
Judgment has been given in the case of Core Issues Trust v Transport for London and you can find the full text either here, or as a PDF over here.
Frank Cranmer has published an analysis at Law & Religion UK: ‘Ex-gay’ London bus advert ban procedurally flawed – but still lawful which concludes with this:
…Comment TfL won – but not without the merest soupçon of egg over corporate face. As we have seen, Lang J’s view was that, if the proposed advertisement by the Core Issues Trust was “likely to cause widespread or serious offence”, so were those by the British Humanist Association and Stonewall which TfL had already displayed on its buses. What saved TfL in the present circumstances was that to have displayed the proposed advertisement would have been breached its statutory equality duty under s 149 Equality Act 2010.
Which raises the question, did the display of the BHA and Stonewall advertisements also breach TfL’s statutory equality duty? But we shan’t know the answer because that, of course, was not in play for adjudication.
Alasdair Henderson writes at UK Human Rights Blog Ban on ‘ex-gay, post-gay and proud’ bus advert criticised but lawful
I will add links to other legal blogs that comment on this case, as they appear.
I have seen no comment from TfL, but there are responses from Core Issues Trust and its supporters:
Statement on behalf of Core Issues Trust (PDF)
Christian Concern issued this press release: High Court Rules That Humanist, Stonewall and ‘Ex-Gay’ Bus Adverts should all have been banned.
Although Anglican Mainstream was a co-sponsor of the proposed advertising (its URL was part of the advertising copy), it took no part at all in the legal action. However, there are numerous links to media coverage on its website, here, here, here, and here (so far, no doubt more will follow).
There are also press releases from the British Humanist Association, and from Stonewall.
2 CommentsThe Church Times carries this news report of its own interview with the archbishop: No ‘chucking out’ over women.
The actual interview with Ed Thornton is available in full here: ‘You don’t have to agree to be in the same Church’.
Anglican Mainstream has published this: Primates of Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan and Southern Cone write to Archbishop Welby.
Today’s Guardian has this editorial: Archbishop of Canterbury: good and God.
At the Telegraph Damian Thompson writes on his blog The new Archbishop of Canterbury, enthroned today, must wish the gay issue would go away. But it won’t.
Colin Coward wrote at Changing Attitude Justin Welby speaks of stunning quality of gay relationships.
17 Comments