The Diocesan News Letter of the Bishop of Southwark in the Church of England, Christopher Chesson, (linked below) gives powerful testimony to the Church of England’s need to fully accommodate the LGBTQI community in the ministry and mission in the national Church – in accordance with the civil laws that prohibit discrimination on the part of the Church towards any of her citizens.
The aftermath from the recent meeting of bishops of the Church of England, called to discuss the outcome of the long-extended Document: ‘Living in Love and Faith’; is that several of those bishops, beginning with the senior Bishop of Oxford, Steven Croft, have expressed their preference for a more inclusive Church – beginning with the welcoming of LGBTQI people as full members of the Church, with access to all of its sacraments. Here is a link to the Southwark Diocesan Newsletter:
Inevitably – as is only to be expected – in the conservative evangelical, Gafcon-dominated, Diocese of Sydney; its web-based mouthpiece in Australia, ‘Anglican Church League’, has jumped to publish an objection to the Bishop of Southwark, written by Dr. Martin Davie – from another conservative blog known by the curious title of ‘Anglican Mainstream’, which however, by its content, being at the extreme fundamentalist end of the Anglican spectrum, might better be named ‘Anglican Slipstream‘.
In the meantime, the Church of England seems determined – through its bishops – to direct the mission of the Church to streams of Living Water, with the compassion and mercy of the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, Saviour and Redeemer of the whole world – not just of the self-assuming ‘pure and holy’.
Fathe Ron Smith, Christchurch, New Zealand
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