 |
| Source: imgur |
Dr Ian Paul probably came closest when he asked at Synod: "Do you think it is at all helpful or permissible for members of this Synod to describe voices in the videos on Living in Love and Faith (LLF) as transphobic to seek to silence them?"
Former nurse, Dame Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London, who was leading the 'Passing the Baton' session on LLF had said that the Church of England 'should be a safe space for people with opposing theological views on the issues of marriage, gender and sexuality'.
In response LGBT activist Jayne Ozanne accused conservative Anglicans on General Synod of "transphobic and homophobic rhetoric".
Ms Ozanne told the bishop: "The LGBT community feel they are constantly being asked to love those who are abusing them and that in itself is abusive.
"There is transphobic and homophobic rhetoric even in these questions coming from people, which we are not even allowed to call transphobic and homophobic.
"I would remind people of what the definition of that is. It is views that are seen as transphobic by the person they are aimed at." [My emphasis - Ed.]
How convenient. The NHS definition of phobia is "an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal".
Phobia charges have become weapons as have charges of misogyny. There is a well trodden path in Anglicanism of people claiming victimisation. Anyone who differs is charged with being phobic, a misogynist or, as the bishop of St Davids claimed, being 'at the receiving end of prejudice and discrimination' simply for taking a different position.
Such tactics stifle debate, perpetuating the notion of victimhood.
The Church of England is being dragged along the road to secularism, seemingly ignorant of the fate of other Anglican Churches that have taken the same path.
David Virtue writes in The Episcopal Church: The Day The Music Died:
"Slowly, but surely, The Episcopal Church is being depleted of people. We still don't know what COVID has done to overall church attendance. As long as there is no scandal, the Episcopal Church is glad to see the back of orthodox bishops and clergy as they leave.
"Why and what does it really matter if bishops like Love, Howe, Bena, Herzog, Wantland, Ackerman, Iker et al., leave? After all, why would you want someone to stay if they did not share the same progressive views as you do about the faith once for all delivered to the saints? Why have a thorn in the flesh when you can have it removed?"
Closer to home the CofE has only to look at the fate of the Church in Wales on the other side of Offa's Dyke where virtually anything goes now that traditional Anglicanism has been all but snuffed out.
The days of both are numbered with ever decreasing attendances.
There is a personal price too. Christian Concern reports on the case of a Christian pastoral administrator who was sacked for two Facebook posts that raised concerns about transgenderism and sex education at her son’s Church of England primary school.
"Having worked for 7 years as a pastoral assistant at Farmor’s School in Fairford, Gloucestershire, Mrs Higgs was summarily dismissed in early 2020 after sharing a petition against the extension of relationship and sex education on her private Facebook case.
"After an anonymous complaint attacked Mrs Higgs’s views as “homophobic and prejudiced”, the school promptly dismissed her for bringing the school into disrepute. Last October, Bristol Employment Tribunal rejected Mrs Higgs’s claim for religious discrimination." She has won the right to appeal her case.
There is a much wider problem.
While the Islamic terrorist organisation ISIS has been driven underground or dispersed, there is more evidence of atrocities committed by the Taliban which enforces a strict interpretation of Islamic law in Afghanistan.
A video has emerged of Afghan commandos being shot dead after an apparent surrender. The Taliban rejects the video, saying it's fabricated!
From All Africa: "After the so-called 'Islamic State' saw its influence in the Middle East wane, the group and its affiliates have targeted poorly governed areas in Africa.
"Jihadis have taken control of significant territories in the Sahel and the Lake Chad regions, which include parts of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, and Nigeria. In 2018, the West African Centre for Counter Extremism (WACCE) reported up to 6,000 West Africans, who had fought with the 'Islamic State', returned home from Iraq and Syria after the group's self-proclaimed caliphate collapsed.
"It was only a matter of time before we would begin to see ISIS activities replicated in their home countries," says Mutaru Mumuni Muqthar, director of the WACCE in Ghana."
The UN has told the BBC that the situation unfolding in Afghanistan is a "humanitarian catastrophe" and one of the worst crises in the world. Around 18 million people, more than half the country’s population, are in urgent need of life-saving support.
The fate of non-Muslims (Dhimmitude) in Islamic states has been made plain many times but still, in countries where Islam is not dominant, any questioning of Islam attracts charges of Islamophobia.
Instead of heeding the warning, revisionist have taken the practice on board to silence opposition, leading to the slow demise of the Church of England, following in the steps of the Church in Wales and TEC. But nobody in authority seems to care!
I caught sight of the Bishop of London's crabbed, managerial face on a Youtube video of the General Synod. That was enough. I could stand no more. Radiant with compassion and a vibrant spirituality it was not.
ReplyDeleteRob
The opening paragraphs of this blog called to my mind the preoccupation, in recent years, of the Labour party with certain 'niche issues', which at least arguably conveyed to potential swing voters the message that the party had relatively little to say around matters which actually concerned them.
ReplyDeleteI do wonder whether the now decades-long and ever-increasingly intricate disputes around sexuality have a similar suppressing impact on ordinary uncommitted and secular people who, as I once did, have developed a curiosity about 'the idea of the holy' and an impulse to explore it.
Leading them, perhaps, to the conclusion that 'this lot' - i.e. the Anglicans! - seem to have a lot to say about certain things, but relatively little to say about the matters that are, in the back of their minds and yet insistently, teasing their own thinking!
Well said - the preoccupation with many who contribute to this site has nothing to do with the holy but simply the 'holier than thou'. Always makes for sad reading but thank you, John, for your intelligent contribution.
DeleteThe Teaser
Personally I don't see the problem that I've suggested as one which is confined to the contributors on this site, but rather as one which touches Anglicanism - well, at least western world Anglicanism - as a whole. Most who comment on this site take a contrarian position on certain matters of human sexuality to that which is increasingly advocated in British Anglicanism. But the preoccupation is still, to put it baldly, about sex, sin and what is God's will.
DeleteNone of those things are insignificant and unworthy of comment. But I'm still left with an uneasy sense that contemporary Anglicans are no less preoccupied with 'sex and sin' than their forebears were in Victorian times. The perspectives now may be very considerably upended when compared with the perspectives back then, but the preoccupation seems to me to be still essentially the same. I just wonder whether that's a right ordering of concerns and priorities - on both sides the the divide!