Vicar opposes 'gay' rebels

A Solihull vicar has voiced his full support for the Archbishop of Canterbury, who confronted the views of the rebel Anglicans striving to split away from the church.

On Tuesday, Archbishop Rowan Williams challenged the creation of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (Foca), a global network representing around 35 million Anglicans opposing homosexual priests and marriages.

Foca formed at the end of the Global Anglican Future Conference (Gafcon), for leading evangelical Anglicans in Jerusalem. As well as their stance on gay clergy, they plan to diminish the role of the church's spiritual head, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

But Dr Williams warned leaders of the conservative coalition that demolishing existing structures was not the answer to their concerns. He accused the faction of lacking legitimacy, authority and integrity.

Added to the on-going division over women priests, many now fear the church could be in crisis.

  Vicar opposes 'gay' rebels
ic Solihull.co.uk, UK 

Gay Episcopal bishop sees hope for progress

lmost exactly five years after he was elected as the Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson remains the most controversial Christian in the world.

His consecration as the first openly gay, partnered Anglican bishop launched a global conversation about sexuality in Christianity and divided the Anglican Communion, the largest Protestant body in the world with 77 million members.

Yet what he is doing now may be more radical: Robinson is traveling the country and the world to talk more openly and more publicly than ever about his faith.

"The principal identity that I have is as a follower of Jesus," said Robinson, who was in San Francisco this weekend. "I think I'm so 'dangerous' because I'm so normal. ... What terrifies (conservatives) is that people will get to know me and find me to be not all that extraordinary and, indeed, find out how theologically orthodox I am. And then all of their arguments fall apart."

Robinson recently published a memoir about his faith and experiences, "In the Eye of the Storm," and is on a national tour to promote his book, which he hopes will give theological perspective and understanding to how the Bible views lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

The Bible, Robinson said, is on their side.

"I think there are a lot of people, a lot of religious people from all kinds of traditions, that are ready to support us," he said. "But the second someone conservative starts quoting Scripture, they sort of crumble in their response.

"I believe in my heart that God's love is not only inclusive, but extravagant," he said. "I know what it's like to be told by my church and culture that I am unworthy in God's eyes, and I know the kind of liberation that comes from discovering that God loves me beyond my wildest imagining. I want to bring that good news to LGBT people who have been wrongly told otherwise."

In a midday interview at his San Francisco hotel, Robinson was buzzing with energy. His day had begun at 6:45 a.m. with a radio interview in Berkeley and was going to end just before midnight on the campus of San Francisco State University, where he was going to present the award-winning documentary "For the Bible Tells Me So," which profiles his life.

Three weeks ago, Robinson had a civil blessing of his 20-year relationship with his partner, Mark Andrew. He did so now because death threats have been pouring in as he prepares to fly abroad. Robinson, who was consecrated with a bulletproof vest, wanted to give his partner and two daughters from a previous marriage legal protections in New Hampshire should he be killed abroad.

On Monday, he flies to England to be present for the once-a-decade gathering of Anglican Communion bishops, an event called the Lambeth Conference.

He'll be both the center of attention and on the sidelines.

More of  Gay Episcopal bishop sees hope for progress
San Francisco Chronicle,  USA 

Gay Anglican vicars embroil the Queen in new controversy over ...

The two gay vicars whose church marriage blessing plunged the Anglican communion into fresh turmoil over homosexuality have triggered a new controversy which threatens to embroil the Queen. Rev Peter Cowell is planning a party at Westminster Abbey, where he has conducted services for 10 years, to mark his departure to New Zealand with his partner Rev David Lord.

The couple will use the party to celebrate their civil partnership.

The Daily Telegraph can disclose that Mr Cowell has now tendered his resignation as priest-vicar at the abbey. He has not conducted any services at the abbey since the furore over his blessing in the 12th century St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London.

But the prospect of a party for the gay vicars in one of Britain's most historic churches, where Kings and Queens have been crowned for centuries, has outraged traditionalists in the church.

Lord Pilkington of Oxenford, a member of Parliament's Ecclesiastical committee, said: "I regard it as remarkably insensitive. It is most unfortunate. They could show some sensitivity to the church."

One senior lay member of the abbey congregation said: "It is an incredibly inflammatory idea so soon after the uproar they caused with their church wedding. It could embarrass the Queen if enough people complain."

 

 Gay Anglican vicars embroil the Queen in new controversy over ...
Telegraph.co.uk

Time to come out of the liberal closet on gay clergy, Archbishop

If Rowan Williams continues to claim moral superiority to politicians, he must be honest on this issue

 

By George Walden

 

The crisis in the Church of England over homosexuality is a personal one for the Archbishop of Canterbury himself. Whether you are a supporter or not, a Christian or a non-believer, it is increasingly clear - as the threat of schism over homosexuality and women priests intensifies - that the leader of the Established Church is in a false position. Dr Rowan Williams portrays himself as radically inclined, yet on homosexuality he has aligned himself with a conservative cause.

This false position arises because there is every reason to believe that he is going against his conscience, and that, on homosexuals in the Church, he is a closet liberal.

The oblique way that he addresses the subject suggests that he finds it as difficult as many others to see how the Church can continue to discriminate against practising homosexuals in an age in which scientific knowledge tells us that sexuality is rarely a question of choice. Sacred texts can be disputed, but all that matters is what the Bible would have said had it been known that homosexuality is largely genetic. How Christian can it be to deny men and women a sexuality that is, in Christian terms, God-given?

Why does the Archbishop not say out loud what we all suspect that he believes? His views on everything from Israel to Afghanistan via a third runway at Heathrow airport are as forthright as they are predictable. To listen to the Archbishop, the infamy of US imperialism is unparalleled in human history, yet on gays in the Church he marches, if not shoulder to shoulder, in perilous proximity to the American Right. Besides seeking to avoid schism he perhaps fears that an openly liberal stance could damage the CofE's image even among the modern-minded, and that the pews would be emptier than ever. However rational these fears, they are based on calculation, not conviction.

Dr Williams has form on moral evasion. His failure to condemn the Sudanese Government over Darfur during his visit to Khartoum in 2006 is one example. The man who never hesitates to pass judgment abroad on the policies of his Government and its closest ally was sparing of the feelings of the perpetrators of genocide, presumably to avoid irritating Muslim opinion at home.

Seen alongside his Sharia moment, and his counterfeit conservatism on homosexuality, in a man of such ostentatious virtue, not to say spiritual pride, it is all a little ignoble.

Obviously the Anglican Church is in a tricky position on gays. At home it faces internal opposition, abroad it is rocked this way and that by events over which it has no control. But so are politicians, and one might feel sympathy for the Archbishop if he showed more charity towards those in public life who face similar problems. Instead even believers can smile in a most unchristian manner as they watch him twist in the wind.

If he were an avowed pragmatist with a disinclination to moralise, that would be another matter. His stated priority would be to hold the Church together, his actions would be true to himself, and bad faith would not be an issue. But with Dr Williams it is.

Where is the conscience of a man who habitually denounces the Philistine politician for expediency and lack of moral leadership while himself pretending to be someone he is not, for political reasons?

“The more politics looks like a form of management rather than an engine of positive and morally desirable change,” he intoned a year ago, “the more energy it loses.” As Dr Williams seeks to resist change that he almost certainly believes in, his Church presents a pretty good spectacle of energy-leaching entropy itself. “Hurtful,” I hear tender-minded clerics mutter, but I have seen genuinely honourable government ministers bear far more vicious criticism, much of it underserved, without complaint. If the Church wants to play at politics it will have to get used to the rough and tumble.

The Archbishop is apparently writing a book on Dostoevsky, no doubt about grand spiritual dilemmas. But he should also reflect on the decidedly unspiritual hero of Notes from Underground, whose opening line announces the mass man of the future: “I'm a sick man, I'm an angry man, I'm not a pleasant man. I think there is something wrong with my liver.” This is what the Archbishop is ultimately up against - narky folk whose instincts tend to be the opposite of liberal on sex or anything else. If he finds them impossible to deal with, he might be better off in academia.

I write as an authority on neither the Church nor homosexuality, but as a not conspicuously successful former politician, who nevertheless retains respect for ministers who have to reconcile their convictions with reality to get things done. For their pains, they are indiscriminately mocked and excoriated, not only on the Today programme but from the pulpit, by the Fourth and the First Estate, led by a man whose ethical superiority is increasingly less apparent.

The ethical course for an archbishop who is a tireless critic of politicians can only be to stand up for what we must assume he believes - the full enfranchisement of homosexuals in the Church. Since that would appear impracticable, his alternative is to do what ministers are frequently enjoined to do, which is to explain his position, and resign.

 

MPs' Threqaten They Will Force Church To Allow Women Bishops

By Toby Cohen  The Church of England Newspaper  July 4, 2008

IF the Church does not scrap its discriminatory laws against women, and allow them to become full Bishops, the Government will force them to, according to Labour and Conservative MPs.

At a press conference hosted by Watch (Women and the Church) at Westminster Abbey last Monday, chair Christina Rees read a letter by Conservative MP Robert Key: "I can guarantee that if Synod sends us a Measure that discriminates against women and seeks legal exemption from our well established law against discrimination it will certainly be challenged and probably rejected.

"I pray that Synod will not even try going down that path, but will accept the advice of the House of Bishops."

It received the support of Labour MPs Chris Bryant and Ann Cryer, and also Baroness Elspeth Howe, one of the first People's Peers. The parliamentarians saw this as the first step towards levying anti-discrimination law on other religions, with Ms Cryer announcing her plan to oblige mosques to admit women as readily as they do men.

On the other side of the debate, pressure was being piled on by Forward in Faith who published an open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, from 1,333 clergy scared that the Act of Synod could be repealed.

"Should the Church of England indeed go ahead with the ordination of women to the episcopate, without at the same time making provision which offers us real ecclesial integrity and security, many of us will be thinking very hard about the way ahead.

"We will inevitably be asking whether we can, in conscience, continue to minister as bishops, priests and deacons in the Church of England which has been our home."

Although they continue by saying "we do not write this in a spirit of making threats or throwing down gauntlets," they add: "our Graces will know that the cost of such a choice would be both spiritual and material."

The Dean of Southwark, the Very Rev Colin Slee, dismissed this threat: "First it's rubbish because if they were going to do that, they would have had the 14 years since we ordained women as priests in which to do it and it's very curious it's taken them all that time to make their mind up.

"Second, it's rubbish because it's simply being used as a threat, in the same scaremongering way they did last time.

Third, the evidence of those that did leave last time is that a very, very substantial proportion has returned to the Church of England... the haemorrhage never occurred, and this is exactly the same tactic and that bluff needs to be called."

The concern for those opposed to admitting women to the episcopate this time, including the 11 bishops who signed the open letter, is that they may no longer benefit from the protection offered by the Act of Synod. The Act has allowed those who disagree with the ordination of women not to work with them. Many would therefore feel forced to leave and hope to continue their ministry within the Roman Catholic Church.

Ruth McCurry of the Group for Rescinding the Act of Synod, said: "If I may be pragmatic, and as a lay person one can be pragmatic, the Roman Catholic Church has a lack of clergy and we have unemployed clergy, so I can't quite see why this is regarded as a bad thing."

The vice chair of Inclusive Church, The Rev Philip Chester, said: "We can't be held hostage as a Church. The fact people may leave the Church is regrettable, but there are plenty of people who are put off coming into the Church right now by the line we're taking, and I suspect that's more than will leave."

 

'Disagree in love' plea to Synod as Vote on Women Bioshops Nears

The Church of England's General Synod has been urged to be a model of how Christians can "disagree in love" as it debates plans for women bishops.

The Rev Prebendary Kay Garlick, at the opening meeting in York, acknowledged the outcome would inevitably bring "hurt" to some members.

But she said the Synod should present a model of how Christians who disagree can respect and care for each other.

Some 1,300 clergy have threatened to leave the Church over the issue.

Ms Garlick, from Much Birch, Herefordshire, told the meeting: "The business committee [of the General Synod] have striven... to allow Synod to rise to the challenge of presenting to those who follow our progress a model of how Christians can disagree in love, respect one another's sincerity and care for one another as we try to discern God's will for our Church."

The Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch, will lead a debate on Saturday on a report outlining the options open to the Church of England in proceeding with women bishops.

Consciences

Traditionalists want the legal right to opt out of the supervision of a woman bishop, and into the care of a male alternative.

The Synod has already agreed in principle to ordain women as bishops.

BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott says it faces an awkward decision about how to treat traditionalists whose religious consciences will not allow them to serve under a women bishop.

He says Anglo-Catholic Anglicans argue that Jesus chose only men to be his immediate 12 apostles, the men who were given leadership of the early Church.

They point out that an unbroken chain of male bishops has led the Church since then.

Our correspondent says they believe that a man ordained by a woman might not be properly ordained, and might not in reality be a priest.

Such a suggestion is strongly rejected by women priests and many others in the Church.

Meanwhile, a traditionalist Synod member has accused officials of suppressing his call for an explicit policy of converting people of other faiths, including Muslims.

Paul Eddy's motion was backed by about a quarter of the Synod, but officials say the agenda was too crowded.

The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans - the international alliance of traditionalist Anglicans formed in Jerusalem last week - has made the duty to evangelise other faiths one of its key policies.

Thanksgiving

The General Synod will also hear a presidential address on Saturday from the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu.

He opened the meeting with a series of prayers including thanksgiving for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the National Health Service.

He also prayed for the Church throughout the world, and for Zimbabwe.

Ugandan-born Dr Sentamu, who cut up his clerical dog collar in protest at the regime of President Robert Mugabe, said: "We pray for our brothers and sisters in Zimbabwe. God bless Africa, especially the people of Zimbabwe. Guide her people and guide her leaders and give her peace in Christ our Lord."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7489043.stm

• News
• World news
• Anglicanism

Conservative bishop attacks rebel faction

• Riazat Butt, religious affairs correspondent
• The Guardian,
• Friday July 4, 2008
• Article history

One of the most senior bishops in the Church of England yesterday condemned rebel clergy for setting up a breakaway faction within the Anglican communion, describing their action as "deeply offensive" and a form of "bullying".

The Right Rev Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, said the leaders of the Global Anglican Future Conference, Gafcon, were "taking a global sledgehammer to crack the American nut", referring to divisions in the US Episcopal church over the ordination and consecration of gay bishops.

His comments, in an interview with the BBC's World at One programme, were the strongest yet from an English bishop and reflected a move to distance the established church from Gafcon, which met last week in Jerusalem.

"I spend 90 to 100 hours a week doing the work of the gospel in my diocese," said Wright. "To be told that I now need to be authorised ... by a group of primates somewhere else who come in and tell me which doctrines I should sign up to is not only ridiculous, it is deeply offensive.

"The idea that they have a monopoly on biblical truth simply won't do. We must stand up to this. It is a kind of bullying."

Wright's comments were all the more significant because he is seen as a touchstone theologian for conservatives: his opposition to women bishops, gay clergy and same-sex unions are unifying factors for traditionalists.

His hostility may deter clergy from affiliating to Gafcon. Earlier this week Gafcon figures were in London, inviting parishes to express their solidarity.

 

Conservative bishop attacks rebel faction
guardian.co.uk, UK 

 

Conservative columnist claims: "Church faithful may block the move for women bishops to stop the risk of defection by clergy"

“Proposals to consecrate women bishops in the Church of England could fall at the last hurdle as church members take fright at the prospect of mass defections among the clergy, The Times has learnt.

Sources at the General Synod, which began meeting in York last night to discuss the ordination of women bishops, predicted that many lay members would try to scupper the move in an attempt to preserve the unity of the Church.

The 207 lay members of the synod have traditionally been the most conservative house of all. The 205 clergy are less conservative than the laity, but more so than the bishops, who are dominated by the Church’s liberal wing.

The debate on women bishops, which takes place this morning, with the crucial vote on Monday, threatens to divide the Church even more deeply than the ordination of women priests or the conflict over homosexuality.” More

Vote on Women Bishops, Converting Hindus & Muslims set for Church of England Confab Today

The Church of England is accustomed to attacks on its unity on one front.

When its ruling Synod meets in York for its summer session on Friday, it faces a pincer movement by two deeply divisive issues.

The first is over an issue that is not even on the agenda.

A traditionalist member of the Synod, Paul Eddy, gained strong support for his motion calling on the Church to make the conversion of people of other religions - including Muslims and other sizeable minorities in Britain - an explicit part of its purpose.

Mr Eddy got more than 100 signatures supporting the motion at two successive Synod meetings, and says he was led to believe his motion would be up for discussion this weekend.

He claims it was suppressed for fear of offending people of other faiths, with whom the Church has a delicate relationship. Church officials say there was simply no room in a crowded agenda.

This dispute might have gone relatively unnoticed but for the events in Jerusalem last week - and the rally by some 800 traditionalist Anglicans in London on Tuesday.

The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FoCA) created in Jerusalem identified backsliding in the duty to convert people of other religions as part of the liberal drift they say is undermining a true understanding of the Bible's teaching.

The Church of England's "suppression" of a motion reiterating, what to these traditionalists is a fundamental Christian duty, and belief provides them with an opportunity to portray it as being among the liberals' rewriting the Bible to suit the convenience of contemporary circumstances.

But one liberal bishop, Stephen Lowe, who has worked hard to foster better relations with Muslims in particular, said it was a question of how the Church approached other religions.

"Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation for me", he said, "but I don't want to impose that on other people".

Gathering support

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has also firmly denied that the Church is in some way backing away from evangelism, but the dispute is likely to have an ominous outcome for Dr Williams.

At a special meeting on Monday, members of synod will be invited to sign the "Jerusalem Declaration", and it is a fair bet that traditionalist frustration over the disappearance of Paul Eddy's motion will act as a recruiting agent for FoCA.

Suppose FoCA were to get the signatures of the 100 or more members who backed the Eddy motion.

It would be presented as the support of a quarter of the non-bishop members of the Synod, and, by extension, of the wider Church.

That would provide the traditionalist alliance - with its ruling council of overseas archbishops - with a boost to its standing and influence in the "mother" Church of England it could barely have imagined a week ago.

As if that were not enough, another dispute threatens the Church's unity - over women bishops.

The Synod has already agreed in principle to ordain women as bishops, but it faces an awkward decision about how to treat traditionalists whose religious consciences will not allow them to serve under a women bishop.

Quit threats

Anglo-Catholics Anglicans base their objection on Jesus's choice only of men to be his immediate 12 apostles, the men who were given leadership of the early Church.

They point out that an unbroken chain of male bishops has led the Church since then.

They take the view that a man ordained by a woman might not be properly ordained, and might not in reality be a priest, a suggestion fiercely rejected by women priests and many others in the Church.

A week or so ago, 1,300 traditionalist clergy - including 11 serving bishops - wrote to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York threatening to leave the Church unless special measures were put in place.

Ideally they would like a number of over-arching non-geographical dioceses - havens for traditionalists, free of female bishops - to be pasted over the structure of the existing dioceses.

They fear that all they will get is a non-binding "code of practice" that simply urged existing bishops to make concessions to traditionalists.

The traditionalist Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church has dwindled in recent years, but it has one ace up its sleeve.

'Male headship'

For the legislation to progress a two-thirds majority will have to be achieved among bishops, clergy and lay members of the Synod, and the Anglo-Catholics have found allies among the more numerous evangelicals.

They are likely to back the idea of opt-outs, partly to establish a precedent for them to escape a liberal bishop in the future.

Some of the evangelicals say the Bible teaches "male headship", the idea that men should lead the Church, and families too for that matter.

Ranged against the traditionalists is another powerful alliance, of women priests, and a middle ground that sees no reason for a Church that has accepted women priests to prevent women becoming bishops.

They too seem not to be in the mood for compromise.

Four thousand Anglicans - more than half of them clergy - wrote their own letter this week, arguing that any concessions for traditionalists would directly undermine the status of women bishops, in a way that would be discriminatory.

They said they would rather wait longer for women bishops than have them introduced under these conditions.

The battle lines have been formed, and the outcome could be both bloody and doomed to stalemate. From BBC

 

Now that that dance is over...

Mark Harris writes: “I believe that GAFCON, the Global Anglican Future Conference, held in Jerusalem in June 2008 marked a turning point. Prior to GAFCON the church division issues may have been about bad theology and bad practice on an Episcopal level - about Spong and Robinson and all the controversy for which they were the focal points. The bad dancers were in the West, and in the "older" churches. It was the US and Canada and even England that were to blame. Occasionally New Zealand would get a hit for outrageous prayer book language, or parts of Australia for thinking about lay presidency of the Eucharist, but mostly it was the North Americans who were the bad dancers.

After GAFCON the division is between some variation of Calvinism as interpreted by primarily English Evangelicals in an odd partnership with its opposite, a form of catholic ecclesiology in which conciliar and synodical structures and customs effectively negate the role of lay people, women, and other undesirables, on the one side and most of mainstream Anglicanism on the other.”

 

More here.

Judgment and Jesse Helms

Judgment and Jesse Helms
Washington Post

Most of us have strong opinions about public figures, especially politicians and especially those we've never met. But my grandfather taught me never to speak ill of the dead.

So I'll pass on passing judgment on the late Sen. Jesse Helms, who seemed to spend so much of his life passing judgment on anyone who didn't fit his narrow view of what is right and good and Christian.

No doubt his family and friends loved, admired and respected him very much.

"Jesse Helms is one fine gentleman. He loves the Lord and that came through in everything he did," Religious Right stalwart Paul Weyrich wrote in 2005.

The gentlemanly Jesse Helms known by Weyrich was not the bigoted Jesse Helms known by so many African-Americans, homosexuals, liberals and others who were the targets of his mean-spirited words and deeds over the decades.

Clearly, the man who once called the University of North Carolina the "University of Negroes and Communists" was a product of a particularly exclusive, judgmental and nationalistic strain of Christianity.

In an insightful Commonweal article in 1995, journalist and professor Ferrel Guillory explained "the political theology" of the Baptist born and bred senator from North Carolina.

"He grew up a Southern Baptist at a time when few of its white congregations questioned the prevailing racial segregation of the region and when the denomination's pre-Depression struggle between fundamentalists and modernists still echoed," Guillory wrote.

"To those who read the Bible literally and who rejected efforts to mesh the scientific with the religious, disagreements were more than mere differences of opinion between reasonable people . . . Anybody who did not agree, it was automatically assumed that they were non-Christian, or even atheist. '

Helms saw atheism, socialism and liberalism "infecting" his Christian nation. To "halt the long decline," Guillory wrote, "the senator proposes his brand of conservatism -- a brand rooted in the Bible but practically oblivious to the implications of such critical passages as the Sermon on the Mount."

Practically oblivious.

In 2002, just before he retired from the Senate, Helms agreed to meet with the rock star Bono, one of the world's leading advocates for fighting the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Helms, who had spent many years slashing foreign aid budgets, had rendered his judgment on AIDS loudly and clearly. In 1995, for example, he told The New York Times that the government should spend less money on people with AIDS because they got sick as a result of "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct."

But after talking to Bono, Helms apologized and said he was ashamed. "I have been too lax too long in doing something really significant about AIDS," Helms said.

What did Bono tell him?

"Christ only speaks about judgment once and it's not about sex but about how we deal with the poor, and I quoted Matthew, 'I was naked and you clothed me, I was hungry and you fed me.' Jesse got very emotional, and the next day he brought in the reporters and publicly repented about Aids. I explained to him that AIDS was like the leprosy of the New Testament."

If a rock star can have that sort of impact on Jesse Helms, there's no telling what Jesus can do.

 

Gay Nigerian Davis Mac-Iyalla Freed

LONDON, July 4, 2008  –  The gay Nigerian Christian lay preacher Davis Mac-Iyalla has been freed by the UK Home Office, Peter Tatchell reports.

Earlier this afternoon, London-based gay human rights group Outrage! reported that Mr. Mac-Iyalla, who is seeking refuge in UK had been arrested and incarcerated at the Oakington asylum detention centre in Cambridgeshire.

“The Home Office has just announced that [Mr.] Mac-Iyalla has been freed,W Mr. Tatchell said.

“After an intensive lobbying campaign for his release, the Home Office has relented and set free Mr Mac-Iyalla.

“I am delighted that the Home Office has finally seen sense and released him.

“But he was only freed because he has lots of supporters and a first-class solicitor, Abigale Evans of Wilson and Co.

“Many gay asylum seekers are not so lucky,” Mr. Tatchell pointed out.

“They end up in detention for months.

“Davis should never have been detained in the first place.

“Treating a victim of homophobic persecution like a common criminal is outrageous, said Mr Tatchell insisted.

It is not known if Mr. Mac-Iyalla will still be speaking at Pride London in Trafalgar Square tomorrow afternoon.

But Mr. Tatchell, who is also on the list of speakers, will be referring to the Mac-Iyalla matter, he said this afternoon.

SEE ALSO

Gay Nigerian Christian Lay Preacher Seeking Refuge in UK Arrested and Incarcerated.  Davis Mac-Iyalla, a leader of Changing Attitude Nigeria, the gay Christian and gay rights movement in Nigeria, has been arrested on the eve of Pride London . (UK Gay News, July 4, 2008)

Gay Nigeria Christian Leader Narrowly Escapes Death in Brutal Attack.  A shocking story of mob violence has emerged which almost culminated in the death of one of the leaders of the Changing Attitude Nigeria (CAN) group in Port Harcourt. (UK Gay News, March 21, 2008)

Protect Davis, Gay English Church Group Pleads to Nigerian Archbishop.  By Colin Coward.  Davis Mac-Iyalla, Director of Changing Attitude Nigeria, has been the subject of further intimidation last week.  He was visited, when absent from his place of work, by two men who were identified as Nigerians.  (UK Gay News, March 6, 2007)

Christian Gay Group Meets Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola.  Davis Mac-Iyalla, director of the Christian gay group Changing Attitude Nigeria, briefly met Archbishop Peter Akinola, Primate of All Nigeria, today. (UK Gay News, February 14, 2007)

 

Ethos of Anglicanism "betrayed"

The Modern Churchpeople’s Union is a theological organization founded within the Church of England. It promotes liberal theology based on scholarly learning.

As liberal Christians we reject outright the claim of The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans to be the representatives of orthodox Anglicanism. Their claim to be traditionalists is as bogus as their claim to speak on behalf of half of the world’s Anglicans.

Contrary to their claims, the Anglican Communion is traditionally one that embraces difference and respects diversity. Since the reign of Henry VIII the Church of England has sought to encompass a range of opinions because it recognized that no one group has special access to truth. Therefore engagement with those with whom you disagree is essential in pursuit of truth.

The formation of FOCA is nothing less than a pre-emptive first strike by those who are determined to have their own way come what may. Their abandonment of serious theological discussion and debate is a betrayal of the ethos of Anglicanism.

Jonathan Clatworthy, General Secretary of the MCU said: “They tried to take over, using homosexuality as a rallying-cry and threatening to split the Anglican Communion. Finding their more extreme demands rejected they have finally decided to go their own way. This will be an opportunity for the Anglican Communion to reaffirm its traditional openness and diversity, recognizing that nobody has all the answers”.

John Plant, Chair of the MCU added: “We deplore their personal attacks on the Archbishop of Canterbury who has been selfless and courageous in the quest to find a way forward. This group routinely calls for discipline but feels free to ignore it whenever it applies to them.”

Next week’s MCU Conference, “Saving the Soul of Anglicanism” reflects more authentically the true ethos of Anglicanism. It will provide a proper context for listening and theological debate. The conference will be chaired by Archbishop of Wales Dr Barry Morgan and speakers represent the diversity of Anglicanism including Bishop Gene Robinson and Bishop Trevor Mwamba, bishop of Botswana and Dean of the Province of Central Africa.