The story of the Church of England's agonies over sexuality, and in particular the place it gives to LGBT people and their relationships seems never-ending. It is easy to lose the thread. Here is the short version: The 1980s The Osborne Report (1989) takes evidence from gay and lesbian people The Higton Motion (1987) undercuts …
Continue reading Living in Love and Faith: a Whole Lot of Hot Air?
We have just started watching the latest series of Grantchester, the clerical murder mysteries set in the eponymous village near Cambridge. The date is 1958, and the timid curate, Leonard Finch, has, with great tentativeness, started to come out of his closet, and embarked upon a very secretive and illegal relationship with a local photographer. …
Continue reading An anniversary: and some weddings and funerals
Apart from the attenuated version which General Synod members are going to be put through in July, the Shared Conversations are over. This £300K exercise has brought together groups of dioceses and their representatives for three-day residential meetings to allow people from all sides of the church to talk, and more importantly to listen to …
Lurking behind some of the commentary following Tuesday's rejection of the Measure allowing women to become bishops is a piece of linkage that needs examining. Some of the resistance to women in the episcopate was coloured (to put it no more strongly than that) by a fear that admitting that the people who hold up …
From The Quire 