Jeffrey John's strongly worded letter came after this was sent from the Bishop of Swansea and Brecon:
The latest: https://t.co/QE6T7V8ZaC pic.twitter.com/ru6G1OBE86

— Harry Farley (@HarryFarls) March 19, 2017

History was made on Saturday when the Church in Wales consecrated its first woman as a bishop in front of more than 500 people.

The Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, consecrated Joanna Penberthy as the 129th Bishop of St Davids.

He also paid tribute to the Church’s women clergy for “daring to trust and hope” during what had been a “long and hard journey” to ordination.

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Canon Joanna Penberthy will become the 129th Bishop of St Davids in Pembrokeshire.

An electoral college of 47 people from across Wales spent two days locked in St David’s Cathedral before coming to their decision.

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Anyone who has been baptised will be able to receive Holy Communion in church, regardless of whether they have also been confirmed, under new guidance coming into effect in November.

The Church in Wales is re-adopting the practice of the early church on admission to Communion ”“ the sharing of bread and wine ”“ in an effort to strengthen ministry to children and young people in particular.

In recent times, people wishing to receive Communion have usually had to have been confirmed first ”“ confirming promises made on their behalf at their baptism as infants.
However, from the First Sunday in Advent ”“ November 27 ”“ everyone who has been baptised will be able to receive Holy Communion. The policy will be rolled out across the parishes and ministry areas over the next year.

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Average Sunday attendance for over-18s had fallen from 30,424 in 2014 to 29,019 in 2015: a fall of five per cent. Easter communicants were down one per cent to 51,435, while the number of Christmas communicants had fallen three per cent to 49,972.

“I’d like to make clear I am not here as a doom-and-gloom merchant, merely to present the facts,” the chairman of the Representative Body, James Turner, said.

“Attendances appear to be falling, but that is not the case in nearly half of our parishes. We fear the church is losing touch with our young people, but there are indications that, through hard work and intentional investment, good things are happening around the country.

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We want to wish the Archbishop well in his retirement. We note the Archbishop’s final presidential address at Governing Body, and still struggle to understand how his approach to scripture is not just licence to disregard its authority. We believe that the inclusivity of Jesus, to which the Archbishop referred, was one not only of loving everyone, but also of calling everyone to a degree of repentance which would result in following him exclusively as Lord. We note Jesus gave an invitation to everyone, but warned repeatedly and frequently of consequences for those who rejected him. We are therefore delighted that one of the closing discussions at Governing Body got people talking about the need to engage in mission and evangelism. We hope and pray that these are the issues that occupy the time and energy of the Church in Wales in the years to come.

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In the New Testament too, some of the passages often cited are not about loving, committed, faithful relationships between people of the same sex, but about pederasty and male prostitution. But all that apart, and given that each of the passages purported to be about homosexuality can be interpreted in more than one way, we come to the fundamental question as to whether taking the Bible as a whole, we can come to the same conclusions about committed, faithful, loving, same-sex relationships as we did about slavery.

We are not thereby abandoning the Bible but trying to interpret it in a way that is consistent with the main thrust of the ministry of Jesus, who went out of His way to minister to those who were excluded, marginalised, and abandoned by His society because they were regarded as impure and unholy by the religious leaders of His day, either because of their gender, age, morality or sexuality. Taking Holy Scripture seriously means paying attention to Jesus’ ministry of inclusivity.

And all of that without bringing into the reckoning what we now know about same-sex attraction in terms of psychology and biology and the experience of homosexual people. And surely if God is the creator, He reveals Himself to us through new knowledge and insights so that, for example, we no longer believe the world was created in six days. As I have tried to show, in the Bible there are a number of totally different perspectives on the same issue. What was responsible for this shift was a growth in understanding about the issue in question.

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He compared biblical interpretations of same-sex relationships with those of slavery ”“ a practice once defended by the Church. As opinions on that changed, he suggested, so may the Church’s view on same-sex relationships.

“In spite of all the passages in favour of slavery, when you examine the Scriptures as a whole and the ministry of Jesus in particular, you realise it is about freedom from all that diminishes and dehumanises people. No Christian I hope would today argue that slavery is good, but for nineteen centuries the Church accepted it and defended it. God through His Holy Spirit has led us into the truth of seeing things in a totally different way today and we are rightly horrified when we read about people who have been kept as slaves by others.

“What all this amounts to is that one cannot argue that there is one accepted traditional way of interpreting Scripture that is true and orthodox and all else is modern revisionism, culturally conditioned. Scripture itself is diverse and theological views held in some biblical books are reshaped in the light of experience by other writers”¦.

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The Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, will retire next year after nearly 14 years at the helm of the Church in Wales and 24 years as a bishop.

Dr Morgan, who is the longest serving archbishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion and also one of the longest serving bishops, will retire on his 70th birthday at the end of January. He will also retire as Bishop of Llandaff after more than 17 years service, having previously been Bishop of Bangor for nearly seven years. He will continue his work and engagements in both roles as normal until then.

Paying tribute to his ministry, the Archbishop of Canterbury described Dr Morgan as an “extraordinary servant” who would be “deeply missed” while the First Minister of Wales praised his “vast contribution” to Welsh life. Wales’ senior bishop, the Bishop of Swansea and Brecon, praised his “courageous leadership” of the Church in Wales.

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The Referendum debate has been a divisive, brutal, dehumanising, victimising, bitter experience, and at times not even a debate; but now that the campaign is over, the UK must learn from its mistakes, and move towards reconciliation and healing within communities, church voices across the UK have said.

Primates, bishops, archdeacons, chaplains, and academics made their views clear this week on how the country ”” its people and Government ”” had conducted themselves throughout the campaign, and on what the next step should be both for the Church and communities across the UK.

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Only two per cent of Anglicans in England and Wales are converts, a new study suggests.

The director of the Benedict XVI Centre at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, Dr Stephen Bullivant, has gathered statistics on religious affiliation from the annual British Social Attitudes surveys. His report, Contemporary Catholicism in England and Wales, launched on Tuesday in the House of Commons, deals mainly with the Roman Catholic Church, but looks at other denominations for comparisons.

His deduction is that, in a group of 100 Anglicans, 93 will have been brought up as such, five will have started life in another Christian denomination, and only two would have belonged to no religion. (The sample group was 1681 Anglicans.)

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The Revd Stephen Trott has tabled a Private Member’s Motion at General Synod, as follows:

“CIVIL PRELIMINARIES TO MARRIAGE IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

The Revd Stephen Trott (Peterborough) to move:

“That this Synod, noting the Registration of Marriages Regulations 2015 and the growing burden and complexity of the legal requirements imposed on members of the clergy who conduct weddings in the Church of England, invite the Archbishops’ Council to bring forward draft legislation to replace ecclesiastical preliminaries to marriage by universal civil preliminaries, such as those which have been in operation in Scotland ”¦ when banns were replaced by a Marriage Schedule issued by the civil registrar.”

He has raised the issue before. I

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The next point I want to make I think is one that is of increasing importance in a time when there is a certain set tendency to say that religion should be privatised. To use an old expression, many think religion should be only between consenting adults in private.

Far from it, the faith communities are those who provide the glue in society in so many ways, from their social action through to the eternal values which they reflect and support, and which eternal values are themselves the foundation for British values of which we’ve heard a lot over the last few months. Because of what the Scriptures teach us, especially from the prophet Jeremiah, we are committed to seeking the welfare of the place where we live, the common good.

Christians and Muslims are not called to a ghetto-like existence, although both our faiths have from time to time acted in that way, through fear or defensiveness. We are called by contrast to be actively involved in our society not for our own good but for the common good. We are called to seek the flourishing of the society, as Jeremiah said to the Jewish exiles: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” [

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…Why is this a step back from same-sex marriage in the Church in Wales? Up until September 17th there appeared to be a strong tide of opinion in the Church in Wales running towards changing our marriage discipline. To some it seemed irresistible. But things have changed. After the Governing Body and the ballot, it is not realistic to expect a Bill to be brought forward by the Bishops in the immediate future. Quite apart from the hard evidence that it would fall short of the numbers required under Bill procedure, the Archbishop’s observation is fully justified: this is a highly divisive issue which has engaged passions even more than the debate over women bishops, and in which further action would do no more than create an acrimonious stalemate.

That is not to say the debate is finished. Those pressing for change will be disappointed that they did not persuade Governing Body on this occasion and they will no doubt hope to carry the fight on. They have strong support in all three houses and the ballot revealed the important fact that they have the majority of Bishops behind them, something which had never been shown publically before or acknowledged officially.

But significantly, and surprisingly to many of us, the Governing Body of a province which is often regarded as one of the most liberal in the Anglican Communion has found its own voice and shown that it can be faithful to the teaching of scripture and to the witness of tradition. We have to pray that the province as a whole can remain so in the days ahead.

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The Archbishop of Wales …[this week] urged church members to put reform of the office of Archbishop back onto the agenda for the benefit of his successors.

Dr Barry Morgan, who has served as Archbishop of Wales for the past 12 years, warned that increasing demands on the job put the current model at breaking point and he appealed to the church to reconsider alternatives for his successors.

At the moment, the Archbishop is elected from among the diocesan bishops and, once elected, also remains bishop of that diocese, based in that diocese. That means the Archbishop is doing two jobs ”“ leading the Church and running a particular diocese ”“ and doesn’t have a permanent see. Several efforts at reforming the office have been made over the years but none have yet been accepted. A recent independent review of the church, however, recommended creating a permanent see for the Archbishop and that recommendation has brought the issue back onto the agenda.

Read it all and note the link to the full text his his recent Presidential address.

The Governing Body of the Church in Wales has voted narrowly in favour of allowing same-sex couples to marry in the Church. But it appears that the non-binding, advisory-only secret ballot has not produced enough votes in favour to persuade the Bishops to frame new legislation.

The vote on Thursday does not constitute a decision of the Governing Body. Instead, the results ”” and the two-and-a-half-hour debate that preceded the vote ”” will be used to guide the Province’s Bench of Bishops when it meets to discuss the issue in October.

Three options were under consideration: the first would mean no change to the Church’s current teaching and practice on marriage and partnerships; the second would allow same-sex unions to be blessed in the Church in Wales; the third would enable same-sex couples to be married in church.

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Same sex marriages should be conducted by the Church in Wales its governing body believes, but results of a secret ballot held were too narrow for change to be considered now.

Members of the Church in Wales Governing Body voted 61 in favour of gay marriages in church, nine in favour of blessing gay partnerships and 50 for making no change.

The result shows a majority in favour but does not constitute a decision and bishops are unlikely to draft a Bill for gay marriage as any such Bill requires a two thirds majority of each of the three houses the Archbishop of Wales Dr Barry Morgan said.

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A prominent priest in the Diocese of Menevia has announced he is leaving the Catholic Church for the Anglican Communion.

Fr Ceirion Gilbert was a parish priest at Briton Ferry in Neath, director of youth services, chaplain to two secondary schools, secretary to the bishop’s council and in charge of the diocese’s online and social media presence. He is also a fluent Welsh speaker. He has now, however, announced he is to be received into the Church in Wales on 12 October and will continue ordained ministry in the Diocese of Llandaff.

In the letter below he explains why he decided to leave the Catholic Church.
…the church is wherever and whenever in a life or in the life of a community Christ is proclaimed as Lord, and the Paschal Mystery of sacrificial and hence life-nurturing Love proclaimed, not so much in rite and liturgy but in reality and life. The question that will be asked of us before the Gates of he Kingdom of heaven will not be what particular brand of Christianity we belonged to but, surely, the one question that takes different forms in the Gospel stories but remains essentially the same: “Have you loved? Have you been a person of compassion, solidarity, of healing and hope, as you were able, in the places and with the people whose stories touched your own?” Love one another, as I have loved you. Ecumenism is not about doing everything we can do so that “they ( non-Catholics) come back to us” (an interpretation that, sadly, seems still to be in practice that of the Catholic Hierarchy) but is rather about dismantling the unnecessary and obstructive barriers of dogma and definition, history and tradition that have decimated our common home and prevent us from seeing the clarity of that simple but immense and profound truth. We are all disciples, walking in our own ways, in our own time, with our own baggage, and yes with our own styles and differences of expression and language – but together following him, the crucified and risen one. Where he leads us, not where we think we should be going.

And it is him, his words and his life that have led me to that other “truth” that I find defines my life and my choices – and this decision, as well. What is the Church – and ministry and priesthood and liturgy and sacrament- really “for”?

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RS Thomas’s poetry “reduces most other modern verse to footling whimsy”, said Kingsley Amis. It is simple in expression, powerful, and sometimes bleak, which is the feeling of his parish of Aberdaron ”“ he was an Anglican priest ”“ on the windswept Llyn peninsula in Wales. It is the last stop on the pilgrims’ route to Bardsey Island, where holy men sleep in their tombs.

I found Aberdaron last week. I had gone in search of Thomas’s places: the medieval church, in earshot of the crashing waves, where he preached to the minority in the village who were not “chapel”; the cliffs and beach; and (which took detective work) Thomas’s vicarage. It looms vast and austere on the hill behind shrubs grown wild, the walls clad in slate that has flaked off in patches, exposing the Welsh stone underneath. Two doctors bought it as a restoration job but have given up, perhaps daunted. The neighbour said I could wander down the grass-covered lane and look.

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It was clear that all four denominations were declining, but that in Wales, Scotland and the USA the Anglican churches were declining much faster than the Church of England. Both the C in W and the SEC had potential extinction dates about 2040, with ECUSA possibly lasting 10-15 years longer. Indeed, although the Church of England is declining, it is only on the margins of extinction if the current pattern remains, thus unlikely to face extinction this century.

Rather than just repeat the standard reasons given for church decline, in the light of the contrasts in decline patterns, I would rather look at a different question: What does the Church of England have, that the other three denominations do not, that may have helped reduce the effects of numerical decline?

Here are some suggestions, not exhaustive, and some may be a bit controversial….

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The Anglican Church, once a key institution in the English-speaking world, has suffered decline for over half a century. Although in both the UK and North America there are many examples of growing and lively Anglican churches, as national denominations the trend is downwards. This decline is in marked contrast to continued Anglican growth in Africa and other parts of the world. There the church is healthy. In the West it is sick. The question is ”“ is the Anglican sickness unto death?

In this blog I explore the different patterns of Anglican decline through four denominations: the Church of England (C of E), the Church in Wales (C in W), the Scottish Episcopal Church (SEC), and the Episcopal Church of the USA (ECUSA). The study is not perfect, nor is the data, but I hope it inspires debate and other studies. A subsequent blog will suggest possible reasons for their differences in decline.

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The video in my 24 June entry, + Richard outlines his survival strategy, gave some clues to the dismemberment of the Church in Wales as the bishops implement Abp Barry Morgan’s strategy for their survival, ie, retain all the bishops with their expensive diocesan structures, get rid of paid parish clergy and fool the laity into running the ministry areas nobody wants apart from Barry and his bench sitters.

Despite all Dr Morgan’s political posturing the secularised Church in Wales (CinW) is barely significant in Anglicanism representing less than 0.04% of the Communion. If he were to be represented in the above chart in proportion to the average number of people attending CinW services the Archbishop of Wales would be invisible. According to CinW published figures the average adult Sunday attendance in Wales is 31,048 (Table 1 here) out of a population of 3,063,456 (1%). With seven bishops supported that works out at a mere 4,435 attendees per bishop.

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Attendance in the Church in Wales has fallen in each of the measured categories in 2013, the Bishop of Bangor, the Rt Revd Andrew John, reported.

Average Sunday attendance had fallen to 37,235 in the Province – a fall of four per cent for the over-18s, and three per cent for the under-18s. Easter communicants were down ten per cent to 50,639 and Christmas communicants had fallen six per cent to 52,387. The biggest fall was in the number of confirmations: down 18 per cent to 1201.

“The trend is down across the board. There is no set of figures here that indicates a rise in physical numbers in any single category,” Bishop John said. “The report puts it bleakly. . . There are no positive indicators. Every single field shows decline compared with the previous year, and in some cases that decline is significant.”

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The Keep Me Posted campaign, which is pressing for the consumer’s right to choose how they are contacted by banks, utility companies and other service providers, has been joined by The Church In Wales.

In the face of an increasing trend for businesses to switch their customers to mainly digital communication, the campaign is calling for service providers to give customers the choice to retain paper bills without charge. Research from the campaign shows that it is often the poor and most vulnerable people in society who rely the most on traditional methods of communication.

The Church, which takes very seriously the economic, social and environmental needs of the communities of Wales, and works in areas of deprivation facing economic inactivity, poverty, debt and low skills, has recognised the barriers many people have to using the internet.

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t can be said that the Bible is very clear in its directives on same-sex relationships and by even discussing them the church is giving in to the culture of the age. The church’s relation to its culture is of course an important one and Richard Niebuhr, an American scholar, wrote a very important book entitled “Christ and Culture” in 1951. He outlined five possible Christian attitudes to the question of Christ’s relationship to culture. By culture, we mean the accepted beliefs and values of our age. Is Christ against culture, calling Christians to reject the world entirely? Or is Christ allied with culture as the perfector of all that is good in society? Or is Christ above culture, drawing us out to become what God means us to become as human beings? Or are Christ and culture totally separate, and set apart, until God’s Kingdom arrives? Or is Christ the transformer of culture, rejecting the bad aspects and enabling us to bring all that is good into God’s redemptive love? As the Gospel of John puts it ”˜being in but not of the world’.

The trouble is you can find all these different attitudes to culture in the Bible if you look hard enough. The Bible, for example, sees the created world as God’s handiwork and so is to be cherished, valued and affirmed. When, however, Israel wants to have a king rather than a prophet as its leader, she does so initially because she wants to conform to the pattern and culture of neighbouring nations and against the advice of the prophet Samuel. In spite of that, the institution of kingship was introduced and came to be venerated but individual kings were castigated for their idolatry and mistreatment of the poor and “doing that which was evil in the sight of the Lord”. In other words, the culture of surrounding nations changed Israel’s own culture ”“ a culture that was sometimes endorsed and sometimes criticised by the prophets.

In the New Testament, Paul in 2 Corinthians 6, seems to ask Christians to separate themselves from non-believers “Come out from among them and be separated” ”“ do not be infected by the world about you”. Yet he was the apostle, along with Peter, who in the end advocated that Gentiles did not have to become Jews first in order to become Christians, so that purity laws concerning food and circumcision did not have to be observed. That was an affirmation of the culture of the Gentiles ”“ a culture that was alien to Judaism ”“ a view that was eventually ratified by the Council of Jerusalem. St. Paul also urges disciples of Jesus to follow whatever is noble, just and true in the culture around them. The issue of faith and culture is not, therefore, as straightforward as it seems.
What then of our use of the Bible? The few texts we have in the Bible about same-sex relationships are very negative. Yet, it can be argued that homosexual relationships as we understand them in terms of committed, faithful, monogamous, long lasting relationships, were unknown in biblical times and what the texts rail against is sexual promiscuity and experimentation. In 1972 the American Institute of Psychiatrists believed that homosexuality was a mental illness. We no longer believe that to be the case yet, that view was widespread just 40 years ago.

Holy Scripture itself is far more nuanced, subtle and complex than we often realise.

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Almighty God, who didst call thy servant David to be a faithful and wise steward of thy mysteries for the people of Wales: Mercifully grant that, following his purity of life and zeal for the gospel of Christ, we may with him receive the crown of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and ever.

The Bishop of St Davids, Wyn Evans, said violence against the weak and defenceless, particularly when sanctioned by the state, should have no place in a civilised society.

The Bishop was speaking at a vigil at St Davids Cathedral on Monday (Feb 3) dedicated to Ending Legalised Violence against Children. The service was led by the Dean, Jonathan Lean, and Canon Dorrien Davies. It was attended by the Mayor of St Davids, members of the City Council and the Churches’ Network for Non-violence which is part of an alliance of organisations under the umbrella of Children Are Unbeatable! Cymru which campaigns for a change in the law to give children the same protection under the law on assault as that currently enjoyed by adults.

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Llandaff Cathedral is planning a financial overhaul to protect the future of its ministry.

It is taking action to increase income and reduce expenditure in order to tackle a significant budget deficit.

Parishioners have already been asked to increase their weekly giving and cutbacks have been made to save on energy bills and staffing costs.

Now the Dean and Chapter are proposing slimming down the Cathedral Choir in order to save nearly £50,000 which would significantly cut down the anticipated deficit of £81,000. Seven men ”“ five lay clerks, one choral scholar and the assistant organist”“ are at risk of redundancy and will be invited to take part in consultation meetings over the next few weeks.

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The Church of England was left isolated in the UK in its opposition to women bishops after the Church in Wales voted yesterday to ordain women bishops.

The first woman could be consecrated in Wales in just over a year.

The bill was passed by a two-thirds majority in the houses of laity, clergy and bishops. A code of practice will now be drawn up to safeguard the place of traditionalists. The Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, said that it made “no theological sense” not to ordain women as bishops when the Church already ordained them as deacons…

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The Anglican Church in Wales voted on Thursday to allow the ordination of women bishops, putting pressure on the Church of England, the last part of Britain and Ireland to hold onto the men-only rule.

Disagreements over whether women can become bishops and over gay relationships have roiled the 80-million strong Anglican Communion – the world’s third largest Christian grouping after the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches.

The Welsh vote will intensify the spotlight on the Anglican leader, Archbishop Justin Welby, who wants to speed up plans to allow women bishops in England. Scotland and Ireland allow female bishops although none have been ordained.

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