The College of Bishops met on 27th January, 2014 to begin a process of reflection on the issues raised by the Pilling Report (GS 1929). The College expressed appreciation to Sir Joseph Pilling and to all members of the working party for the work they have done on behalf of the Church.
We are united in welcoming and affirming the presence and ministry within the Church of gay and lesbian people, both lay and ordained. We are united in acknowledging the need for the Church to repent for the homophobic attitudes it has sometimes failed to rebuke and affirming the need to stand firmly against homophobia wherever and whenever it is to be found.
We are united in seeking to be faithful to the Scriptures and the tradition of the Church and in seeking to make a loving, compassionate and respectful response to gay men and women within Church and society.
We recognise the very significant change in social attitudes to sexuality in the United Kingdom in recent years.
Recent Featured Entries on the Pilling Report and Responses
Links to recent posts about alternative baptism liturgy for the Church of England
So sad for those in the CofE.
They ask for a small group to design a process for facilitated conversations and to create additional materials to support and enable them.
Now where have we heard that before?
This will create the non-confrontational delay which has worked in TEc to soften resistance as the new worldview continues to creep in until resistance is futile.
Imperial edict issued by CofE bishops to churches in the colonies:
Very Welby.
By the way, where is the money coming from for these ‘facilitated conversations’? Whose silver have you taken Justin?
Can you imagine TEC Bishops ever allowing this to be stated publicly, or Anglican Church of Canada:
“No change to the Church of England’s teaching on marriage is proposed or envisaged. The House of Bishops will be meeting next month to consider its approach when same sex marriage becomes lawful in England in March.”
But what of SSU’s, Prof Seitz? Seems to me both Welby and the College of Bishops have failed to stand up on that, and of course Lambeth Resolution 1:10. It is what it is. Sadly showing no indication of fitness for purpose or for leadership in the church, much less the Communion, however many Primates they go and try to schmooze, or however many weazel words they use. After all, what else are ‘facilitated conversations’ about?
The College of bishops have today failed to stand up for biblical teaching, and Welby has got exactly what he intended – license to facilitate and Indaba, with someone’s money from over the pond.
Looking back, how prescient my A1 rant from before Christmas is looking:
Dr. Seitz: Considering that the CofE is behind TEC and ACoC and also considering that this is a move to placate conservatives, I could very much see a group of “moderate” TEC or ACoC bishops make such a statement 10-15 years ago. For a fair amount of time, we in North America were told – “oh, nobody is asking that gays get married! You are an alarmist and muckraker. We have no plans to demand gay marriage.” It is pretty much SOP for these kind of folks to say exactly what the CofE bishops have said when gay marriage is the end goal.
It’s kind of like the boss telling the workers not to worry, and that despite the company’s plunging sales, there are no current plans for any layoffs. Nope. They just haven’t gotten around to making them yet.
I don’t know that I disagree. The theological ballast in the wider AC will come from the GS, and the future of the Communion entails their witness. What we see in the CofE–that we cannot identify but in minimal ways in NA–is some percentage of the HOB who will likely wish to track with the GS theologically.
Such a bloc is wider in the ACoC in my view than in TEC. But in both places the open question is survival of a conservative witness that is in clear communion with the AC of the GS. I don’t think it takes a much skill in prognostication to see a similar dynamic emerging in the CofE.
My only point was that the changing of teaching on marriage–which faces a difficult challenge in a national church governed by Parliament in England–will meet HOB opposition in the CofE. TEC is much further along in distancing itself as a US denomination independent of/disinterested in Communion aspirations.
There is no biblical precedent for facilitated conversation that I can think of. As for conversation, bishops are well educated and well mannered gentlemen. Why is it necessary to design a process, except to control the outcome? Why is it necessary to have facilitators, except to control the outcome?
I wish the Archbishops, as an afterthought, would at least organize certain Lenten days for fasting for the Church of England. (A solemn assembly like Joel 2 would be even better, but that is too much to ask.) I am so sick of seeing Western church leaders act like CEOs.
#6 Prof Seitz
Oh TEC is not disinterested in Communion aspirations. Quite the reverse, which is why it is pouring money into Communion and Lambeth Palace programs which suit it.
Otherwise, without that influence, it will be unable to export its culture of death to England and Africa, and be seen for what it is, a once fine church become an unimportant collapsing remnant, now only half the size of the CofE and going down the pan.
As for us in England, we are not interested in survival as a conservative witness in a liberal shell, but in revival and the conversion of England under The King. Pity our leadership have demonstrated today that they are not up to it.
[blockquote]to read and reflect upon the Scriptures and to continue to discern together the mind of Christ.[/blockquote]
That is a good phrase. I have simply become cynical, having seen TEC’s promotion of the LGBT agenda called the work of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus told us to look at the fruit (Matthew 7:15-20). Let us hope the college of bishops recognizes the membership decline, the litigation, the de facto schism of the Anglican Communion, and the lies as the bitter fruit of this agenda.
“Faciitated conversations.” With Jill Woodliff, I wonder where the Scripture is in that.
Katherine and Jill, I believe the Scripture to be cited for “facilitated conversations” is Genesis 3:1 – “Hath God said …?” or in the ESV “Did God actually say …?”. The original facilitator technique and facilitator has not changed.
Anyone remember this?
That was Integrity’s [url=http://claimingtheblessing.org/files/pdf/CTBTheology_Final_.pdf]position[/url] ten years ago.
And let’s not forget that while all this tip-toeing and designing and facilitating and the like is being orchestrated by the +ABC with funds from TEC no doubt, the choir of “unity” is warming up in the background to sing and announce that it really isn’t so important what we believe, as long as we all hang together to preserve the Communion. Because in the unity, as one bishop said recently, is God’s call to us.
Unity certainly is a worthy calling if it is for the right, authentic, reasons. But so far unity in the Anglican Communion means getting relevant by accomodating the secular trajectory. Not holding to the faith delivered once and for all to the saints.
Thanks to everyone for the stimulating comments above. I myself would particularly agree with jamesw (#5) and driver8 (#12). But I’ll throw in two points no one has yet raised (at least explicitly, although PM has probably done so implicitly).
1. As PM has suggested, to agree to allowing a process of “facilitated conversations” to go forward, and especially to force such unwanted conversations on the GS, is to give away the store. What I want to stress is that this isn’t just true from a pragmatic, procedural standpoint in terms of church politics. More importantly it’s true from a theological standpoint. Can anyone possibly imagine St. Paul agreeing to such facilitated conversations with his Judaizing adversaries? Or Irenaeus agreeing to such managed talks with his Gnostic foes? Or Athanasius agreeing to facilitated dialogues with his Arian or Semi-Arian opponents? Would Augustine have ever agreed to such talks with Pelagius and his supporters?? Answer: of course not.
The point is that even to agree to having such discussions is to allow the church to be conformed to the ways of the world in ways that are intolerable. Although it seems “unreasonable” to many who are more deeply formed by our increasingly pluralist and antinomian culture than by the gospel and the biblical witness, the relevant biblical injunction would be something like this stern and unpopular text from Paul:
“I urge you, brothers and sisters, to keep an eye on those who cause dissensions and offenses, in opposition to the teaching that you have learned. AVOID THEM. For such people do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the simple-minded.”
2. What is most disturbing to me, personally, is that the English HoB has again, like virtually all high-level Anglican bodies, failed to grasp the nettle, grab the bull by the horns, and face the real issues at stake in this wretched controversy. Until the root issues are faced, and faced squarely and unafraid of the consequences, this vexed dispute will not, and cannot, be solved.
For myself, I’d state those root issues this way. They are twofold.
Root Issue A. HOW do we tell what are Romans 14 issues from Gal. 1 issues?? Or perhaps more importantly, in the end, WHO gets to decide which are which? The blue-ribbon Windsor Report alas punted the ball on that one back ten years ago, and there has been no really serious advance in clarifying that all-important matter since then. Here is how I like to put it:
The clear and consistent teaching of Scripture and Tradition must not be set aside and overturned on the basis of dubious and conflicting evidence from Reason and Experience.
IOW, when the witness of both Scripture and Tradition is clear, unequivocal, and emphatic, as it is when it comes to homosexual behavior, which is universally condemned in the strongest terms by both Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition, then one has to assume, until PROVEN otherswise and beyond any reasonable doubt, that the issue is indeed a Galatians 1 issue, where we are dealing with two different gospels, only one of which is the Christian gospel.
More to come…
David Handy+
Continuing my #14,
Root Issue B. The ultimate issue, however, arises once we face the stark reality that there is no possible theological justification for the pro-gay agenda. Zip. Zilch. None. Not only Scripture and Tradition, but also Reason in the form of Natural Law clearly rule out any possible legitimzation of homosexual behavior for Christians, much less engaging in the travesty of sanctioning what God cannot sanction by taking the blashphemous step of officially blessing same sex unions, as if they were a legitimate form of marriage, which they can never be. For in the end, Paul is obviously right, homosexual behaivor is manifestly and indubitably “contrary to nature,” as he takes for granted in Romans 1. Once we face that fact, and acknowledge that it is precisely that, a FACT, and not merely an opinion, then Root Issue B takes center stage and it can and should dominate the discussion. Yet alas, there is NO sign that the English HoB has even started to have the theological and pastoral discussion that’s really needed.
Root Issue B is this: Granted that Enlgish society, like every other society in the Global North, is embracing the lie from the pit of hell that marriage is a merely human institution that can be redefined at will and by majority vote (as if the will of God or the laws he has written into the universe could be overturned by a 2/3 vote), we are faced with a stark and momentous dilemma that can no longer be evaded. Here it is:
Will the Church choose to stay in the mainstream of Christian tradition, or will it instead decide to go along with the powerful currents of our decadent and confused society and be swept, with that anitnomian culture, over a waterfall that will lead to its own destruction? Which mainstream do we want to be in, the Christian mainstream or the cultural mainstream?
That is the ultimate question, and the only one that really matters in the end. We are faced with a fork in the road that can’t be avoided any longer, a decisive fundamental choice about our allegiance. Like Joshua at Shechem (Josh. 24), or Elijah at Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18), we are all called upon to take sides, once and for all, between the ways of God and the ways of this world we live in.
That, and nothing less, is at stake here. And this seemingly innocuous report from the HoB shows us all we really need to know. The HoB is full of men (at this point still all men) who are desperately seeking to postpone the inevitable, i.e., the formal, official breakup of the CoE.
But the die has been cast. The Rubicon has already been crossed by many with the CoE. They have chosen Baal instead of Yahweh (Baal was, after all, a fertility god and the standing stone, an obvious phallic symbol, was a primary symbol of that pagan god).
I’m sorry, PM. I’m afraid the CoE is doomed to split. And all I can say, if it’s permissi ble for an American to say so from this side of the Pond, is that the sooner it happens, the better !! Before the gangrene of heresy and immorality spreads and gets even worse.
David Handy+
#14-15 Many thanks indeed Rev Handy for your comprehensive comments – I don’t have an answer to your questions at the moment, but do please continue to pray for us and the mission of Christ’s Church in these isles. God bless. PM
I was reading the Wiki entry on John Henry Newman the other day and was struck how it worked through the usual topics one would expect and seemed to draw to a proper close, but then we had an additional 20% on whether he was Gay.
I think this describes very well the distinctive of our season in the West. “Were Lewis and Clark really Gay?” could be strung like a banner across this generation’s priorities.
The short book “The Whig Account of History” ought to be must reading. Our age is so sexualized it has no way to think of the past that is not the present’s preoccupation. Maybe Qoheleth will make a come-back and exhort us to sanity.
“I am X” is the mantra, and not “our lives are hid with God in Christ” or “you are a new creation.”
Sadly, I agree with David handy+, the sooner the CofE can rid itself of its gangrenous parts, the better! When faced with spiritual “gangrene”, better to find a surgeon that is willing to cut off the gangrenous parts especially when “antibiotics” (lambeth resolutions,windsor process, indaba etc) have failed to treat the disease. Sometimes surgery can be lifesaving! However there must be a “surgeon” willing to perform it otherwise the “patient” is doomed to die. I will pray that a spiritual “surgeon” be raised up in the CofE.
Thanks to PM (#16) and SC blu cat lady (#18) for their kind words.
Let me assure all readers that the gloomy perspective on the future of the CoE that I adopted in my #14-15 above brings me no joy. I again hark back to the famous saying of the late, great historian of Christian doctrine, Jaroslav Pelikan about the Protestant Reformation. In what I regard as a brilliant and balanced assessment, he called that 16th century Reformation “a tragic necessity.”
As a then committed Lutheran, Pelikan went on to point out that Catholics were prone to feel keenly how tragic the breakup of European Christianity was, without fully realizing how necessary the break with Rome was. OTOH, he noted, Protestants took the necessity of the Reformation for granted and usually downplayed or failed to grasp how terribly tragic the smashing of the institutional unity of the Church was.
In a very similar way, my contention is, and has been for some time, that we are faced with a similar dilemma in our time. I firmly believe, with all my heart, that we are in the early stages of what will likely prove to be (in the eyes of future generations) a Second Reformation. And like the original one, this New Reformation of the 21st century is very much A TRAGIC NECESSITY. Everyone can see how devastatingly tragic it would be for the CoE, and the larger Anglican Communion, to split, formally and officially. Anyone can see that.
But what so many leaders REFUSE to see or take seriously the way that ought is that such a momentous breakup is also a NECESSITY in our time, because the gospel itself is at stake. Mind you, I’m NOT saying that the moral status of homosexual behavior by itself is a Gal. 1 issue, as opposed to a minor Rom. 14 issue. No, the real problem is that there is absolutely NO biblical justification for the new pro-gay agenda, and the deeper theological and moral relativisim upon which the revolutionary new moral assessment is based. IOW, it’s not that the sinfulness of homosexual behavior (and of all sex outside of marriage) is a “core doctrine.” Rather, the point is that it’s the authority of Holy Scripture and an absolutely uniform consensus of the Church for 2000 years (i.e., Holy Tradition) that is at stake. And if there is ANY core doctrine in Anglicanism, it’s the supreme authority of the Bible as God’s Word written, which the Lambeth Quadrilateral calls “the norm and ultimate standard” of faith (and practice). To abandon Pual’s position in Romans 1 that homosexual behavior is “contrary to nature” and an unthinkable adomination for Christians, i.e., to stop seeing it as a sign of perversity and paganism and rebellion against the good Creator by lost and confused and idolatrous humans, is to reject the authority of God’s Word. It’s NOT just to adopt a radically new interpretation of Scripture, it’s to throw Scripture overboard completely, when it comes into sharp and irreconcilable conflict with modern values and our permissive moral sensibilities.
But if I may, let me add Root Issue C to my earlier list in comments #14-15 above. Given that all that I’ve said before is true, the upshot of it all is this haunting question:
(Root Issue C)
Given its state church heritage and nature as a national church, established by law, and given that the CoE has blong been addicted to the support of the powers that be in English society and the privileged place that affords the CoE,
is the CoE even capable of adopting a radically different stance vis-a-vis its relationship to the nation and the dominant culture? In short, is the CoE even capable of becoming truly counter-cultural, now that the majority of the English population is no longer Christian at all,much less Anglican?? Can the CoE reinvent itlself, facing the stern and grim reality that its historic role as the national established church is clearly obsolete, and now counter-productive? Will the leaders of the hopelessly divided CoE be willing to bite the bullet and renounce its outmoded status as a state church, and face the fact that the CoE is now effectively dis-established, de facto, even if it hasn’t yet been legally disestablished, de jure??
That, it seems to me, is the million dollar question. And yet I see virtually no sign that ANY of the bishops in the CoE, even the most conservative ones (including the ABoC), have started to grapple with that crucial and all-important question.
For the undeniable reality is that many, many of the leaders of the CoE simply can’t conceive of such an unpleasant thing, and are most unwilling to face that “tragic necessity” in our time. And therefore, because attitudes toward the disestablishment of the CoE are as polarizing and controversial as the moral/sexual/theological issues themselves, I submit that the fate of the CoE is sealed. It is doomed to split.
Sad, but true. A TRAGIC neccesity indeed. But very much a tragic NECESSITY. Lord, have mercy.
David Handy+
(As an American, I dislike and distrust state churches anyway)
[blockquote]We accept the recommendation of the Pilling Report that the subject of sexuality, with its history of deeply entrenched views, would best be addressed by facilitated conversations[/blockquote] This is not just an acceptance but a restatement of what was said in the Pilling Report. Here is where the traditional Christian view of marriage is recast in a negative light by being described as “deeply entrenched views” as if it were something that had to be rooted out. If it implies that there are two views that are historically deeply entrenched, it is false. One view has been introduced only recently.
“These conversations should set the discussion of sexuality within the wider context of [b]Human Flourishing[/b]” Folks, I am seriously worried about this phrase and concept working its way into the church and becoming the new missiology replacing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Both ++Welby and before him KJS have used this terminology. Now the CoE bishops are using it.
Agreed. It’s like another soothing phrase that gets thrown around a lot, “radical reconciliation”. If we do not stay alert [Mt. 10:6, be wise as serpents and innocent as doves], we will be down a slippery slope before we know it.