Updated again Friday morning
The Public Bill Committee meets again on Tuesday and Thursday this week.
Meanwhile, a further tranche of written submissions have been published. Among these:
Supplementary evidence from Dr Augur Pearce
And from the previous tranche, this from Liberty, but also available from the Liberty website, here, and also an earlier version here.
Today the Telegraph reports (no byline) on a submission made by Patricia Morgan, which is available in full on the SPUC website (PDF).
The latest listing of amendments can be read here or as a PDF file.
Hansard record of Tuesday’s hearings:
The committee has now dealt with Clauses 1 to 8. It meets again on Thursday.
Another tranche of written submissions has been published, all listed here.
They include:
SPUC (see item above about Patricia Morgan)
Hansard record of Thursday’s proceedings:
Another response to the consultation is available on the REFORM website, written by Rod Thomas.
23 CommentsBBC Radio 4 Monday 4 March
This morning the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland is waking up to one of the biggest crises in its modern history. A few weeks ago, Cardinal Keith O’Brien was expecting to be in Rome electing the next Pope. Now he’s in disgrace, vowing that he’ll never again take part in public life .
We still don’t know the details of what he did, simply that he’s admitted to sexual misconduct amongst his fellow priests. Charges of hypocrisy have been swift to follow. This month last year, the Cardinal was on this very programme attacking gay marriage as evidence for the “degeneration of society into immorality”. Indeed, he insisted: “if the UK does go in for same sex marriage it is indeed shaming our country.”
So why is it that all the churches – and not just the Roman Catholic church – seem to attract so many gay men who are themselves so virulently hostile to homosexuality? Perhaps it has to do with a misplaced sense of shame about being gay, a sense of shame that they go on to reinforce by being vocal supporters of the very theology that they themselves have been the victims of. As the novelist Roz Kaveney tweeted yesterday: “I feel sorry for O’Brien. I hope one day he realizes that the sense of sexual sinfulness the Church forced on him was an abuse.” And that “O’Brien needs to distinguish between his sexual desires and his bad behavior and not see all of it as sin.” I totally agree.
The election of a new Pope provides an opportunity for real change. The culture of secrecy that fearfully hides this bad behavior – and not least the clerical abuse of children – needs dismantling from its very foundations. Inappropriate sexual relationships, relationships that trade on unequal power and enforced silence, are the product of an unwillingness to speak honestly, openly and compassionately about sex in general and homosexuality in particular. The importance of marriage as being available to both gay and straight people – and indeed to priests – is that it allows sexual desire to be rightly located in loving and stable relationships. I know there are people who see things differently, but I’m sorry: the churches condemnation of homosexuality has forced gay sex into the shadows, thus again reinforcing a sense of shame that, for me, is the real source of abuse.
Things may now be changing. It is encouraging that four priests have had the courage to speak out against a Cardinal – though one of them has expressed the fear that the Catholic church would “crush him” if they could. This is precisely the climate of fear that does so much to create the conditions of clerical abuse.
“It seems to me that there is nowhere to hide now,” said Diarmaid MacCulloch, the professor of the history of the church at Oxford University in a recent interview. He goes on: “We have had two Popes in succession that have denied that the church needed to change at all. The Roman church has to face realities that it has steadily avoided facing for the last thirty years.” And I might add, not just the Roman church, but my own church too.
31 CommentsUpdated Friday 8 March
The Cutting Edge Consortium is organising a meeting with this title at the House of Commons on Monday 11 March, sponsored by Ben Bradshaw MP.
Please note the location for this meeting has been changed to the Jubilee Room, which is directly off Westminster Hall.
The meeting starts at 6.30 pm.
Further information on this meeting is available here.
Background on CEC here.
11 CommentsHere is another submission to the consultation by an individual, Hilary Cotton. (PDF)
3 CommentsWomen Bishops: The Church in all its Fullness is a day conference sponsored jointly by Yes2WomenBishops and by Fulcrum.
It is described as:
…a conference for all those in favour of women bishops
Christ Church, New Malden, Saturday 16th March 2013 10.00 am – 3.00 pm
Organised by Fulcrum and Yes2WomenBishops
Speakers – Jody Stowell, Stephen Kuhrt, Rachel Treweek
Price £15 (lunch provided)
Stephen Kuhrt writes about it for the CEN and Fulcrum: Women Bishops: Church in all its Fullness.
To sign up go here.
20 CommentsThere is a starkness to Lent, from the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness to his brutal death on the cross. Raw physical hardship, deprivation and pain run through the entire season. This Sunday’s Gospel reading contains two harsh passages, the first, Jesus’s blunt message of ‘repent or perish’, and the second, his parable of the barren fig tree.
When, after three years, a vineyard owner finds no fruit on his fig tree, he instructs the gardener to cut it down. The gardener pleads for the life of the tree, saying he will dig around it and spread manure on it, and if it doesn’t produce fruit by the following year then he will cut it down. Tantalisingly, we are not told what happens after the year is up. Jesus leaves the fate of the fig tree hanging in his hearers’ imaginations.
Both the passage preceding today’s reading and the one immediately following feature further stories of a strangely stern Jesus, accusing the crowds who had come to listen to him, as well as the religious authorities who were trying to find fault with him, of being hypocrites. Jesus’s words offer no comfort, no solace, only a piercing indictment of sham, hypocrisy and lack of true compassion.
The Jesus, who, when the time came, would be willing to make the awful journey to Golgotha, is also the Jesus who saw the full extent and consequence of human fear, self-righteousness and self-deception. His sternness arose, not from a condescending judgement of human waywardness, but from the depths of his compassion and it spoke into the chasm between the reality of his own intimate and trusting relationship with God and the needless barrenness of so many people’s lives around him, living without a vision of the true God and of the community of love into which they were continually being invited, if they could but see.
This chasm, this sharp and agonising dissonance between Jesus’s internal reality with his Father and the world in which he lived is most beautifully expressed in a parable Luke relates a few chapters further on. It is the story that, perhaps more than any other, expresses the mis-match between human rebelliousness and false projections onto God and the true divine nature. The parable of the prodigal son tells the story of human wilfulness and folly, and eventual repentance, but more than anything, it reveals the depth and breadth of divine longing, compassion and love.
Jesus’s earlier harsh sentence on the fig tree and his scathing accusations of hypocrisy can be seen as urgent appeals to his listeners to come to their senses, to listen to what he has been telling them and to turn from their delusions about themselves and God, and turn to the offer of loving unity and intimacy that Jesus expresses in his prayer to his Father recorded in John chapter 17, on the night he allowed himself to be arrested.
What is the main work of Lent? It will most certainly be different for each and every person who attempts anything other than the pattern and habits of the rest of the year, but is there any one thing that commends itself as a prime task or focus?
Very simply, my answer would be that there is one thing above all others that is the proper work of Lent. It is to see Jesus with new eyes and to hear his message with new ears, and seeing and hearing, to open ourselves anew to Christ’s transforming power and vision, so that the living out of our faith moves from being about Jesus to being more profoundly and intimately of and with Jesus.
If it is true that we already inhabit eternity at the same time as we live out our days on our spinning planet, then it must be the case that we can become more aware of and acquainted with the eternal Now. It is clearly a good thing to understand and accept the challenges and constraints of our earthly existence, but for Followers of the Way, that can never be enough. We are compelled by Jesus’s life and actions, and by his paradoxical teachings and his perplexing parables, to look deeper, further, to lift the corner of the deceptive curtain that separates our rational and physical existence from our sensed and half-remembered spiritual reality.
Our willingness to do this, to venture into the known-unknown will depend on our view of God. Do we shrink back in fear at Jesus’s harsh exposing of our barrenness and hypocrisy, or do we respond by acknowledging our folly, picking ourselves up out of the swill, and turning back to home?
Christina Rees
2 CommentsAnthony Priddis, the Bishop of Hereford, has announced that he will retire on 24 September 2013.
1 CommentWomen and the Church (WATCH) has made a formal response to the consultation.
The main body of the response is in this document (PDF):
The WATCH response to GS Misc 1042 Women in the episcopate: a new way forward.
Or it is available here as a normal web page.
There are several appendices:
6 CommentsUpdated Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening
The final version of the proposal to replace the dioceses of Bradford, Ripon & Leeds, and Wakefield by a new diocese of Leeds (or West Yorkshire and the Dales) was discussed by the three diocesan synods this morning.
Bradford voted in favour.
Voting: 90 for, 4 against, no abstentionsRipon & Leeds voted in favour.
Voting: 70 for, 18 against, 2 abstentionsWakefield voted against.
Voting: 40 for, 76 against, 4 abstentions
The Church of England quickly issued this press release after the votes.
Results of vote on new single diocese for West Yorkshire
02 March 2013Bradford and Ripon & Leeds dioceses today voted in favour of a scheme from the Dioceses Commission to reorganise Church of England structures in West Yorkshire and the Dales. Wakefield diocese rejected the scheme.
The neighbouring dioceses of Blackburn and Sheffield receiving six and two parishes respectively from the area of the proposed new single diocese also need to vote on the scheme: Sheffield gave its consent on 16 February; Blackburn votes on 13 April.
The overall proposal is to replace the existing dioceses of Bradford, Ripon & Leeds and Wakefield and create a new single one.
Now consent has not been given by at least one of the dioceses, it is up to the Archbishop of York to decide whether to allow the scheme to go forward for debate at General Synod (possibly in July). This could happen if he is satisfied either that
(a) the interest of the diocese is so small that the withholding of consent should not prevent the scheme being submitted to the General Synod; or
(b) there are wider considerations affecting the province or the Church of England as a whole which require the scheme to be submitted to the General Synod.
The Archbishop won’t be in a position to announce his decision until after Blackburn diocese’s vote is known in mid-April.
Speaking today after the votes, Chair of the Commission, Professor Michael Clarke said: ‘It is good to know that the Dioceses of Bradford and Ripon & Leeds support the Commission’s proposals. Looking at the voting in Wakefield, there is significant support there, even though the vote was lost.. The process, however, continues. Blackburn votes next month. It will then be for the Archbishop of York to decide how to take this forward.’
The three diocese have also issued their own press releases.
Bradford votes for new, single diocese
Ripon and Leeds approves plans for a new diocese
Wakefield says No to Dioceses Commission Draft Plan for new single diocese
Sunday update
The Radio Leeds Johnny I’Anson programme gave extensive coverage at intervals to this story this morning. This included interviews with Nick Baines, the Bishop of Bradford, (starting at 1 hour 9 minutes) and Stephen Platten, the Bishop of Wakefield, (starting at 2 hours 7 minutes).
3 CommentsMiranda Threlfall-Holmes writes for The Guardian that Justin Welby has already signalled his faith in women’s ministry.
Marc Handley Andrus (the Bishop of California) writes for The Washington Post about The Episcopal Church’s gay rights pilgrimage.
These articles look ahead to the next pope and what awaits him.
Religion & Ethics Newsweekly carries this interview: New Archbishop of Canterbury on New Pope.
In The Guardian there is this video: Diarmaid MacCulloch on the next pope: the Catholic church is in crisis – it has avoided reality for too long
and Andrew Brown writes about The new pope’s three key challenges.
Giles Fraser writes in The Guardian that We cap benefits but not bonuses. How on earth are we ‘all in this together’?
Peter Graystone writes In praise of wishy-washy Christians for the Church Times.
Also in the Church Times Angela Tilby writes about A profession that needs to earn respect.
2 CommentsFrom Downing Street:
The Queen has approved the nomination of the Venerable Julian Tudor Henderson, MA, Archdeacon of Dorking, for election as Bishop of Blackburn in succession to the Right Reverend Nicholas Stewart Reade, BA, on his resignation on the 31st October 2012…
From the Diocese of Blackburn:
From the Diocese of Guildford:
From the Church Times:
…Unlike his two predecessors – the Rt Revd Nicholas Reade, who retired on 31 October; and the Rt Revd Alan Chesters – Archdeacon Henderson is willing to ordain women as priests. He said on Friday that he was “in favour of women serving as bishops”, although he voted against the draft women bishops Measure in November ( News, 23 November).
Archdeacon Henderson said in a statement issued by Church House: “Let me be clear, I am in favour of women serving as bishops and will want to introduce a change in the current diocesan pattern by ordaining women as deacons and priests.
“But I hope my vote at General Synod last November will be a reassurance to those opposed to this development, that I want to be a figure of unity on this matter and will ensure there is an honoured place for both positions within the mainstream of the Church of England. Might Blackburn be a model for the rest of the Church of England!”
Update
The Faith in Conflict conference “Finding Better Ways to Handle Conflict in the Church” was held in Coventry Cathedral this week.
The Archbishop of Canterbury gave this address at the closing Eucharist.
The cathedral website has links to some of the other addresses. At present these are available.
The Exasperating Patience of God Sam Wells audio | text
Bill Marsh interviews the Revd Tory Baucum and Bishop Shannon Johnston audio
The Habits of Conflict Resilience Jo Bailey Wells audio | text
Advance publicity included the conference website and this page on the cathedral website.
2 CommentsAnother excellent response to the consultation (which has a deadline of today “if possible”) comes from Jonathan Clatworthy.
See How we argue about women bishops.
13 CommentsThis is a personal statement but the main points aim to express the theological tradition of Modern Church, which has supported the ordination of women since the 1920s. I support a simple measure which removes the obstacles to the consecration of women on exactly the same terms as men.
The focus is on how to handle the theological disagreements.
No legislation will last long unless it is both self-consistent and theologically coherent. Legislation containing contradictions will fail the test of time, however strong the short-term pressure for fudge.
Currently there is no genuine theological debate between the two sides. This is partly because of the polarisation of views, but also largely because there is no agreement on how to do our theological disagreeing. It is an epistemological issue rather than a theological one…
Press release from Lambeth Palace
Thursday 28th February 2013
Archbishop of Canterbury announces new Chaplain
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is delighted to announce the appointment of the Reverend Dr Jo Bailey Wells as his new Chaplain, based at Lambeth Palace. Her primary focus will be for the spiritual life at Lambeth Palace and for supporting the Archbishop’s pastoral and liturgical ministry.
Speaking about her new position, Dr Jo Bailey Wells said:
“I am honoured and delighted to be joining Archbishop Justin’s team at Lambeth as he takes on a heavy but exciting mantle. I look forward to supporting him personally and pastorally – above all by praying for his flourishing in that role – and so to facilitating the wider flourishing of God’s people in God’s church.”
The Reverend Dr Jo Bailey Wells was ordained in 1995. Her ministry thus far has focused on nurturing faith, mentoring vocations teaching Old Testament and training leadership – in Cambridge, in the United States and in South Sudan. Previous positions include Dean of Clare College Cambridge and most recently Director of the Anglican Episcopal House of Studies at Duke Divinity School in North Carolina. She holds degrees from Cambridge, Minnesota and Durham and has written two books, God’s Holy People (Sheffield: 2000) and Isaiah: A Devotional Commentary for Study and Preaching (BRF: 2006).
Speaking about her appointment, the Archbishop said:
30 Comments“Jo is an outstanding speaker, scholar and pastor, with a very wide experience of the Anglican world. I am delighted that she has been agreed to come and work with me at Lambeth.”
Updated to include links to Thursday debates
On Tuesday the Public Bill Committee resumed its examination of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill. It also met on Thursday of this week.
A large number of amendments have now been filed, see the list as of Tuesday morning starting here, or there is a convenient PDF file of them.
Additional amendments were filed during Tuesday, see here, or PDF over here.
Update Amendment list as of Thursday morning, or as a PDF document.
On Tuesday the committee concluded its deliberations on Clause 1, without agreeing any amendments to it. There was however a lot of discussion about the exact position of the Church of England.
To read the full record of the Tuesday debate:
Links for Thursday:
Clause 2 amendments were debated but none were adopted.
Update
A large number of written submissions to the committee have now been published. This page contains links to all of them. Some of them have been linked previously.
Several of the new ones are from names familiar to readers of this website:
Erika Baker
Bishop Alan Wilson
Canon Rosie Harper
And there several other contributions from Church of England clergy but only one other from a bishop: Bishop Frank White.
This one is from the Mothers’ Union.
There is also a submission from the Quakers and another from the Unitarians.
The submission from the Roman Catholic bishops has been linked here earlier, but is now also available on the parliamentary website.
And then there is Professor Julian Rivers.
17 CommentsThe Bishop of Buckingham, Alan Wilson, reported a couple of weeks ago on the reactions to his recent public statements.
See My Marriage Equality Postbag.
Read it all but I particularly liked this bit:
5 CommentsOne lay comment sticks in my mind. The gentleman pointed out that a positive sense about homosexuality has been building in British society since the 1920’s. The resulting tsunami arrived in the 1990’s in the fields of education, culture media and sport, public life, the law, the military (in which he had been a senior officer), the police. In each of these areas of national life the overwhelming, when it came, was sudden and, surprisingly, almost entirely benign. The Church had parked itself in a siding in the 1990’s, and everyone else, as he put it, was somewhere round Birmingham by now.
The bishops, I was told, had simply taken the easiest way out — try to agree with everyone as much as possible, make generally safe noises about change, be nice to individual gay people whilst constructing fences against their full acceptance, humour reactionaries under a banner of inclusivity, generally treating past certainties as though they still applied as much as possible. As a military man he could say you cannot run any institution, least of all a Church, on niceness, evasion, pusillanimity, cowardice and hypocrisy. That’s one military view, anyway.
The Diocese of Sheffield has issued this press release: A statement from the Bishop of Sheffield on the Ordination in Kenya of Pete Jackson.
37 CommentsThe Bishop of Sheffield today issued the following statement on the Ordination in Kenya of Pete Jackson:
“On Sunday 10th February I received a short note informing me that Pete Jackson had been ordained in Kenya the previous day to serve the Church plant in Walkley in Sheffield. This news was a complete surprise.
“In 2003, Christ Church Fulwood planted a new church, Christ Church Central, in the centre of the city led by the Revd. Tim Davies. Despite extensive discussions, the plant could not be contained within the legal structures of the Church of England.
“The Diocese of Sheffield has a strong commitment to mission, to evangelism and to church planting of all kinds. Shortly after I became Bishop in 2009, I invited the community of Christ Church Central to explore with me the possibility of making a Bishop’s Mission Order to regularize their life once again within the Diocese of Sheffield and the Church of England. After careful consideration, this offer was declined by Christ Church Central because of alleged wider differences between Christ Church Central and the Church of England.
“In 2012, Christ Church Central established a new church plant, Christ Church Walkley, with the support of Christ Church, Fulwood. This new plant was established with no consultation with the Diocese or with St. Mary’s Walkley, the local parish. Although there has been some local contact between St. Mary’s Walkley and the new plant, no-one in the Diocese was given any notification of the plans to ordain Pete Jackson in Kenya on 9th February.
“I will be entering into correspondence in the next few weeks with the various parties involved in the decision to ordain Pete Jackson in this way to explore their motives and reasons for acting in the way that they have. I will also be making contact with the Archbishop of Kenya, the Most Revd. Eliud Wabukala and with Pete himself.
“As a diocese we are particularly concerned to offer our support and prayers to the parish of St. Mary’s Walkley who quite understandably have found these developments unsettling. Bishop Peter will be present with them on Sunday 3rd March. We also hold the Revd. Pete Jackson and Christ Church Walkley in our prayers. We know that neither community will be helped by being the focus of an ongoing wider controversy.
“As a diocese we continue in our commitment to mission, to the making of disciples and to joyful and creative church planting within the order and polity of the Church of England.”
+Steven Sheffield
26th February, 2013.
Miranda Threlfall-Holmes has written this excellent response to the Consultation document on women bishops legislation.
Schrodinger’s Cat Theology? Response to Women Bishops Consultation
93 CommentsLuke’s story of the Pharisees warning Jesus about Herod depicts Jesus as being particularly tenacious and heartbreakingly poignant.
To repaint the scene, some Pharisees warn Jesus to leave the area because Herod is out to get him. This seems to be out of genuine concern (we’re not told otherwise, and there are no parallels in the other gospels). In any event, Jesus had no plans to remain, though this had nothing to do with Herod. To make that point clear, he urges them to go to Herod (even if only rhetorically), to tell him that he’s not going to stop doing what he’s doing. Jesus will continue his journey to Jerusalem because he must, because it is impossible to think that a prophet would die elsewhere. This determination to make his way to Jerusalem reinforces Luke’s overarching journey theme, which began when Jesus ‘set his jaw for Jerusalem’ (9.51).
There is a justifiable tendency to read ‘necessity’ in such texts. It is easy to think that Jesus was fated to die, that his death was somehow preordained, that the blood sacrifice had to be made for our salvation. For better or worse, that is one way of reading the whole story from Candlemas (with Simeon’s prophecy of Mary’s sufferings) to the cross. However, the descriptions of Jesus’s resoluteness ought to undermine such thoughts of fatalistic inevitability. The more obvious narrative explanation is that Jesus’s death owes more to his decisions, to the logic of what he said and did, than to any pre-written script. There is undoubtedly a strange rightness to his ending up in Jerusalem, but that rightness is appreciated not by a glimpse into fate, but by the realisation that any other choice would have been the end of it all — instead of the culmination of it all.
It is sometimes helpful to wonder what might have happened had Jesus kept his head down, had he stopped preaching and healing. What if he’d refused to go to Jerusalem, what if he’d stayed on the periphery and not gone to the holy city itself, not proclaimed his message there, where it really mattered? What if his fear of death had been stronger than his belief in the coming Kingdom? Safe to say, it would have been all over. The dream would have fizzled; his disciples would have scattered. Seen in this light, Jesus’s death has nothing to do with fate, and everything to do with faithful choices. Indeed, the Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan suggested that Jesus’ sacrifice is best understood first in terms of Jesus’s choice to put his life on the line, and only secondarily in terms of his actual dying — the former is something he did (it was his sacrifice), the latter was something done to him. (Lonergan’s view of the Eucharist is similar: we are invited to share in Jesus’s attitude rather than in his physical death — the former is something actual, the latter is something we do symbolically, as a way ‘to put on the mind of Jesus’.)
But there is still more to this passage. Jesus’s decision to go to Jerusalem is not a political or dramatic calculation, even though the text suggests finality or even fulfilment. Neither is it a provocation or a grand geste. Though Jerusalem may well stone and kill the prophets, Jesus nonetheless longs for something else: he has longed to gather the people safely together, as a hen might gather her brood under her wings — to protect them from themselves. Later, in the nineteenth chapter (v. 41), Jesus actually weeps over Jerusalem for much the same reasons.
Jesus’s willingness to die, to put his life on the line for those who could hear his message — this was not a test of obedience to a divine decree (‘I must go on my way’), but was rather the out-flowing of his compassionate love. There is a strange rightness here, but there is no line of inevitability apart from the trajectory of love’s ‘dart to the heart’. Though we are smitten, we must still choose.
Joe Cassidy is Principal of St Chad’s College, Durham.
26 Comments