The C of E bishop who was invited to address Irish evangelical clergy on sexuality etc., has found himself in the news again having commended a book which sanctions marital rape. He has had to withdraw the commendation this week.
The book, Britain in Sin by Stephen Green, was endorsed by Bishop Wallace Benn, the Suffragan Bishop of Lewes, as “… interesting and disturbing reading. We desparately need to understand, as a nation, that our Creator knows what is best for us, and to return to His way as the best way to live.”
Ekklesia reports: “Bishop Wallace Benn has ‘wholly and completely’ disassociated himself from the extremist pamphlet by Stephen Green – though without an apology or full explanation as to how his original endorsement came about, or which views he is repudiating.”
“Britain in Sin” argues that the UK has declined spiritually, morally and socially due to the abandonment of Christianity since the mid-twentieth century. In the booklet, Green lists government decisions which he regards as contrary to the Ten Commandments, beginning with the UK’s membership of the United Nations in 1945.
The booklet opposes a legal right to equal pay for men and women, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and power-sharing in Northern Ireland. Green supports the death penalty and advocates an extremely right-wing approach to economics, with heavy cuts to the welfare state and the abolition of all inheritance tax. It implies that adultery should be a criminal offence.
Samuel FB Morse comments: “The book in question, Britain in Sin by well-known fundamentalist Stephen Green of ‘Christian Voice’, accuses the Queen of breaking her Coronation Oath by signing into law 57 pieces of what Green describes as ‘unrighteous legislation’ which he claims offend Biblical principles. These include the Criminal Justice Act 1994, which introduced the offence of marital rape. As recently as 1990 (R v Sharples), a man avoided prosecution for forced and unwanted sexual intercourse with his estranged wife, by successfully arguing that even a Family Protection Order did not constitute a withdrawal of consent to sexual intercourse by a married woman. Green claims that “the marriage service of the Book of Common Prayer” establishes “a binding consent to sexual intercourse” and a married woman therefore has no right to refuse unwanted sexual advances from her husband. The book also criticises the 1970 decision to abolish a man’s right to petition a court for “the restoration of conjugal rights”.”