The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, has written to David Cameron urging him to review laws that have seen Christians forced to abandon their faith in public.
He warned that reforms introduced under Labour promoted “tolerance, equality and fairness” at a cost of eroding Christianity as the foundation of British culture and society.
The warnings follow a series of court cases in which the beliefs of Christians have come into conflict with the state authorities.
Surely, amazing that so many should think it a Christian country when so few attend a church or have any Christian education.
And when the pro-gay policies of the last UK Labour government criminalized dissent and drove the Catholic Church out of the adoption business. BUt these were the people that Rowan Williams and most Anglican bishops supported.
I am not aware of any new criminal law that you (2.) claim was introduced by the former government.
On paper at least the new administration would seem to be more gay friendly.
It is hard to find any political party other than the fascists who take a different view
#2: Don’t you live in England and support the ‘Inclusive Church’ movement? You know what happened to Catholic adoption agencies that wouldn’t go along with gay adoption. And to Christian Bed & Breakfast owners who don’t want unmarried or gay couples staying in their homes. And to anyone who publicly questions the rightness of homosexual behavior: a visit from the police can be expected now in the country that Blair and Brown created.
That should be #3.
No I don’t live in England. Yes, I know that, despite the fact that the matter is still to be decided at law, all bar two Roman Catholic Adoption agencies now carry on this particular part of their work without official episcopal sanction – even though they often remain in RC owned offices and (as is the case of the one operating in my country) are indistinguishable from before.
Many of these agencies were happy to prepare gay people to foster and adopt previously (as in the USA).
B&B owners too await the outcome of a legal case, but remember this is a civil tort and has nothing to do with criminal law.
As to the “hate speech” laws, there has been some concern over how these might work out in practice and I believe recent direction will avoid the silly couple of cases we have seen over the last few years. Remarkable how few cases have been brought and no Christian has been prosecuted.
OK, then you are in Wales, a distinction largely lost on the other side of the Atlantic. The “Inclusive Church” Movement you support is trying to remake the Church of England (and presumably the Anglican Church of Wales) in the image of Tec, with partnered gay and lesbian bishops. I can’t see how that will lead to Britian becoming a more Christian country.
Accuracy and facts have more than a small amount to offer us #7, but much of what you have claimed above was heavy on the rhetoric and light on truth.
I have known several gay bishops here in my country and know two partnered gay English bishops – all achieved without the influence of “Inclusive Church”.
But I have noticed a growing trend for the distinction between fact and polemic getting increasingly “lost” on the other side of the Atlantic.
“I have known several gay bishops here in my country and know two partnered gay English bishops – all achieved without the influence of “Inclusive Churchâ€.”
That there has been a significant homosexual element in the Welsh Anglican Church – and in the late St Michael’s College – has long been known. It’s also a fact that Anglicansim has been steadily dying in the land of your fathers (not that’s it’s brimming with life on the other side of Offa’s Dyke). If you really do know “partnered gay English bishops” and are not just alleging so for political purposes, you should reveal their names, as you know they are breaking church law – a law that your group ‘Inclusive Church’ is seeking to overturn.
There are “significant” “element” of gay people in all denominations and in all faiths.
You will be glad to know that Llandaff diocese has been mounting something of a come-back in recent years, at least – I hope it will give you joy?
What has saddened me most has been the total disappearance of nearly all of the chapels – in particular the Calvinistic tradition that was once (in its many forms) the most significant presence in Welsh non-conformity. Do you think the strict and uncompromising teaching on homosexuality was responsible for its demise?
In a Church so erastian as the CofE a bishop in a civil partnership is not contrary to law – as Mr William Fittall recently explained to Synod.
There are no wholesome facts in your postings – St Mike’s College still flourishes!
Happy New Year
I don’t know why Welsh non-conformity has collapsed, but I can’t imagine its teaching on homosexuality is responsible for that: pro-gay denominations in the USA, especially Tec, are all in serious decline. Maybe it’s their cultural introversion and obsession with the 18th century in a changing world? Wales is in any case an aging, secularizing “principality” (as I beleive it is called), and the growing religion there is Islam, thanks to the greater fertility of immigrants. I see some of these young new “Welshmen” (from Bangladesh?) made the news recently.
As for church law, you know I was talking about sexual behavior, not the recently invented civil partnership. No Anglican bishops in the UK are in civil parnerships.