At next month\u2019s General Synod, the Church of England will try a new approach to avoiding a disastrous formal schism over homosexuality. After two days of discussing legislative matters in open session and once all outsiders have left, the 550 representatives from around the world will break into groups of 20 for three days of intensive and personal discussions about sexuality.<\/p>\n
The idea is not to reach agreement \u201d\u201c 30 years of wrangling have established that this is quite impossible \u201d\u201c but to try to bring people on both sides of the debate to see their opponents as fellow Christians. Conservative evangelicals have denounced the scheme as an attempt to manipulate opinion, which of course it is. The question is whether it will work.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s new about this approach is that the manipulation that Justin Welby\u2019s strategists have in mind is not to be carried out from the top down. It is hoped that the process of facilitated conversations will allow the church\u2019s activists gathered in the synod to take note of the social changes that are happening in their own congregations and their own families, where acceptance of gay people is becoming much more common.<\/p>\n
This week a book of evangelical reflections on sexuality was published in which the bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Rev Paul Bayes, announced he had been \u201cprofoundly changed\u201d\u009d by encounters with lesbian and gay Christians in his own family…<\/p>\n