The Bishop of Sherborne, the Archdeacon of Dorset and I met with 10 clergy from Dorset who had contacted me following my remarks on same-sex relationships in an interview published in The Times on 3 February, and on the BBC Radio 4 Sunday programme on 5 February.
Bishop Graham and I disagree about the appropriateness of using the word ‘marriage’ for same-sex relationships. He expressed his concerns to me privately and in the meeting. We are, however, committed to working together creatively.
I welcomed the open and robust conversation, which covered the following areas…
Well that’s cleared that up!
Lot of words saying nothing. A church with such leaders deserves the dust bin of history.
When heresy becomes the topic of open and robust dialogue one can pretty much say that orthodoxy has lost.
Appointing Holtam as bishop of Salisbury was a disastrous move by Rowan Williams and the chickens were not long in roosting.
Watch out fro the same thing to happen in Southwark Diocese in London where ‘Affirming Catholicism’ leader John Clark has been made an assistant bishop in Croydon.
“Pageantmaster” in the Uk had his ear to the ground for this one.
John Richardson in England nails it:
“Once again, the Dire Straits Principle (“Two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong”), would seem to apply. If the Bishop disagrees with his clergy about the definition of marriage, but supports marriage as it is currently understood, then presumably they have a different view of marriage from the current one. Either that, or the reverse is true. What seems clear is that they cannot both be supporting the current view of marriage (whatever the word “current” is supposed to mean) and be disagreeing.”
Holtam is profoundly confused. He shouldn’t be a priest, let alone a bishop.
I agree, Clarin.
Nick Holtam is a disaster, an unmitigated catastrophe. But he represents a very significant chunk of the CoE, and an even bigger chunk of the highly secularized and de-Christianized population of Britain.
I respect +Graham Kings. He is a man of honor and integrity, but he is now in an impossible situation, under an openly unrepentant promoter of heresy and immorality. He is committed to working within the system, as many evangelicals in England are, whether that is ultimately foolish or not. As an American who doesn’t pretend to understand the complicated state of things in the UK, I won’t pass judgment, but only register my profound regret that he is stuck in such a forlorn, hopeless position.
The tragic case of the inexcusable appointment of Nick Holtam to a senior post in the hierarchy of the CoE not only reflects bad judgment on the part of ++RW and the elite group that selected him, it also provides Exhibit T, U, or V verifying the sad truth of the famous dictum of the astute theologian Richard John Neuhaus (founder of the journal [b]First Things[/b]) , i.e., that wherever orthodoxy is optional, it sooner or later becomes proscribed. Heresy is like gangrene or a deadly cancer. It cannot be tolerated, or it grows and eventually kills the patient.
David Handy+
P.S. Talk about going from the proverbial frying pan and into the fire, +Kings was in an awkward bind already while he served under Holtam’s predecessor, David Stancliffe, who was the generally acknowledge leader of the so-called “Affirming Catholicism” movement in the CoE. +Stancliffe was bishop of Salisbury from 1993 to 2010, and he was bad enough. He pretended to be Catholic, and in some ways he was genuinely high church, and he wouldn’t have made the sort of in-your-face, strident public comments that +Holtam delights in. But that only meant that, as a wolf, his sheep’s clothing disguise was better than Holtam’s.
But Holtam strikes me as blatantly Broad Church or Latitudinarian. More importantly, he is flagrantly and unabashedly Liberal. He doesn’t even pretend to be catholic, as Stancliffe did.
These sorts of dilemmas face orthodox Christians, lay or ordained, who are trying to bear faithful witness within a severely compromised state church like the CoE. That’s what you get when you have an established church that tries to be all things to all people. It is doomed to fail from the start.
David Handy+
Proponent of disestablishing the CoE