A meeting of Church of England bishops in York this week has broken up without agreement on whether gay clergy should ever be allowed to be chosen for promotion to bishoprics, Andrew Brown reports in The Guardian. Church Times and Daily Telegraph comment also follows with a memo by the late Dean of Southwark, Colin Slee. Legal advice is being sought on the impact of the Equality Act of 2010
Andrew Brown, writing in the Guardian, has a report headlined” Church of England tied in knots over allowing gay men to become bishops.”
The leadership of the established church remains tied in knots over how far it can comply with the Equality Act in its treatment of gay people. Church lawyers have told the bishops that while they cannot take into account that someone is homosexual in considering them for preferment, they also cannot put forward clergy in active same-sex relationships and, even if they are celibate, must consider whether they can “act as a focus for unity” to their flocks if appointed to a diocese.
Conservative evangelicals remain bitterly opposed to the ordination of gay people, even though many clergy are more or less openly gay, and some are in same-sex partnerships…
The report continues with details of
…an anguished and devastating memorandum written by the Very Rev Colin Slee, the former dean of Southwark Cathedral, shortly before his death from pancreatic cancer last November. Dr Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, and John Sentamu, the archbishop of York, vetoed candidates from becoming bishops of the south London diocese…
And it concludes by mentioning that
The House of Bishops sought legal advice to discover whether it would be illegal to deny John a job. A briefing in December from the Church House legal department appears to state that though it would be illegal to discriminate against him because he is a celibate gay person, it was perfectly in order to discriminate against him because there are Christians who cannot accept gay people.
The briefing states: “It is not open to a crown nominations committee or a bishop making a suffragan appointment to propose someone who is in a sexually active same-sex relationship; it is not open to them to take into account the mere fact that someone is gay by sexual orientation.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/church-england-gay-clergymen-williams
Colin Slee memo
http://www.scribd.com/doc/56396384/Slee-Redacted
Church Times report – see LHS
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=113056
Jonathan Wynne-Jones is the Religious Affairs and Media Correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph. Commenting on the above he writes that:
The Church of England cannot hide from a fight over gay bishops:
It is interesting, if unsurprising, to hear that the Church of England is agonising over gay bishops again. The issue had gone quiet following my revelation last year that Jeffrey John was in contention for the post of Bishop of Southwark.
But the leaked memo from Colin Slee shows that rather than going away, it has merely simmered under the surface, causing anguish and pain.
Not least to the former dean of Southwark and to his family, who suggest his “hurt and anger were contributory to the cancer from which he died”. While the impact of the ordeal on his health is impossible to calculate, there is no doubting how upset he was by the rejection of John and Nick Holtam, and then to be accused of leaking the story to me. Which he didn’t, for the record.
A normally ebullient, convivial figure, he cut a chastened and dejected figure at last year’s General Synod, complaining to me that he was finding the atmosphere intolerable. It is not difficult to understand why Rowan Williams was upset that the story had leaked out, but there was great hypocrisy from some of those most upset by the disclosure, with one senior lay evangelical protesting just a little too much.
The Archbishop will be disappointed that the row has surfaced once more as his handling of the gay clergy issue has plagued his time in office ever since he asked Jeffrey John, his old friend, to withdraw from becoming Bishop of Reading.
But it really will not go away, and the introduction of ever more liberal laws to bring greater equality for gay people means that the Church will look increasingly out of step with society.
There’s nothing wrong with being counter-cultural, but the problem for the Church is that its stand, in truth, only reflects the significant, and wealthy, evangelical minority. It is not a stand that appears to come from a position of conviction and it is hard to think of more than a handful of diocesan bishops who would be prepared to defend it.
Yet, with the resignation of the most outspoken liberals, and Colin’s untimely death, there are equally few willing to champion a more progressive, not to mention realistic, attitude towards the Church’s gay clergy. I suspect that if Jeffrey John had been appointed as the Bishop of Southwark, life would have gone on much as normal, but having been bruised by previous experiences, it was a fight that Rowan Williams was not prepared to have.
It takes courage to be counter-cultural, but it is also going to take a brave archbishop to appoint an openly gay bishop and it’s hard to see who that will be. Until the Church does that, the row will continue to fester, with the risk that it will look increasingly out of touch with society – yet unable to offer an explanation for its stand, and stuck in a damaging and seemingly endless drift.
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Jonathan Wynne-Jones is the Religious Affairs and Media Correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph. He was described as “the scourge of church and state” at the Britsh Press Awards for 2009