Following reports of my interview, in Jamaica, with Martin Beckford of the Daily Telegraph, I have received a number of letters and emails relating to the views which I shared in that interview, including an open letter from students in the JCR of my beloved college, Selwyn, Cambridge.
Media reports of long interviews are inevitably selective, and the full transcript is available here for clarification: (http://www.archbishopofyork.org/articles.php/2338/archbishops-interview-with-the-daily-telegraph).
A number of letters endorsed the points I made in that interview. Others challenged my views, raising a number of points on which my arguments differ from theirs.
I am therefore writing a general open reply to all the issues raised in these letters….
[blockquote]Second, I have pastorally supported people in same sex relationships even before Civil Partnerships came into being. [/blockquote]
So he supports gay fornication, just not in marriage. He would do well as a TEC bishop.
Really #1? That was your take away from this piece? That seems a willful misreading of the Archbishop’s words.
No, I don’t think so. He seems to have no problem with civil unions and I reject the fiction that they are celibate.
[blockquote] “Some have argued, in letters and emails to me, that the secular law has engaged through Acts of Parliament with the law of marriage on many occasions since 1753. I do not disagree. However Parliament has been concerned with matters of process and procedure …
The definition of marriage upon which English law is based is drawn from the Book of Common Prayer …
No Act of Parliament touches upon a definition of marriage. …” [/blockquote]
Good points. Marriage has been defined by the common law of England for hundreds of years as a union between a man and a woman for life, and in fact was defined the same way for many more centuries if not millenia before that. This very recent attempt to define “marriage” as including same-sex couples is nothing more than a trendy fad, and in defiance of the weight of history as well as the clear teaching of the Scriptures.
We might also note Sentamu’s wise words about social norms as capable of building us up, of strenghening us, as against our culture which in its shallow way routinely seems norms as oppressive. Brave, I think, to stand against the tide and I salute him for it.
Apologies: should read, routinely sees norms as oppressive …