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Today, Monday, she is to be announced as the new director of Accepting Evangelicals, whose patrons include Baptist minister Steve Chalke and worship leader and commentator Vicky Beeching, who herself stunned the evangelical community worldwide when she came out last year.

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
I guess I opened this can of worms first but I never claimed AE were thoroughly anglicans, merely that the Abp of York honoured Ozanne's letter with a lengthy and yes, very tedious, answer. He enumerates every milestone on the gay debate for the last fifty years or so and points out that, whenever the church published awful, lengthy documents, there was always a couple of lines saying, 'oh but wait, we oppose homophobia and violence against you.' Actually they never do, can anyone even think of a single church initiative that has done so, more than a pronouncement? Now, any gay man or woman reading this after fifty years should conclude: I am a klutz... but am I a useful one?

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
I guess I opened this can of worms first but I never claimed AE were thoroughly Anglicans.

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
Now, any gay man or woman reading this after fifty years should conclude: I am a klutz... but am I a useful one?

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
Someone privately (why?) suggested that the recent effort to stamp out homophobia from schools should at least be acknowledged.

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Originally posted by Adeodatus:
But the CofE doesn't support its LGBT clergy, mdijon.

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Originally posted by Adeodatus:
if you're "useful", toe the party line in public, turn a blind eye to the conservative financial stitch-up, and put on a big smile and say everything in the garden is rosy.

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Originally posted by Adeodatus:
But the CofE doesn't support its LGBT clergy, mdijon. Or rather, my experience is that you'll be supported if you're "useful", toe the party line in public, turn a blind eye to the conservative financial stitch-up, and put on a big smile and say everything in the garden is rosy. If you don't do that, you're left to fend for yourself.

I think I'm at the stage now where, in my head, I'm no longer a member of the CofE. Now I'm just waiting for my heart to catch up.

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
It does indeed depend on whether one thinks "innate but not God's best" is an acceptable compromise. I think it's utter nonsense but I'd be prepared to live with the nonsense should its consequences be benign. If it means no partners, no civil partnerships, no sex, no marriage, no preferment for clergy and no leadership positions for laypeople then, frankly, what difference will it make?

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oh, and no teaching kids that their relationships are 'not God's best' whereas their mate's are a beautiful sacrament and image of his love for his church. Thanks, but no thanks.

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This touches on what I feel to be an important point, although I haven't as yet managed to articulate it to my satisfaction.

If "innate but not God's best" has about it a whiff of superiority, I agree, forget it.

I think where common ground might be found is a recognition that this phrase describes pretty well the entire human condition, albeit with the "not God's best" manifesting itself in different ways for different individuals, and with "not best" excluding neither great good nor grace.

In the specific field of sexuality, I think there are a pretty much infinite variety of ways our inclinations and behaviours can be "not God's best", but that is not a ban on us all trying to make the best (in all senses of the term) of where we find ourselves.

Where that gets complicated for everyone, of course, is how that impacts others' sensitivities. I think Paul's teaching on our own and others' consciences has a lot to say to this, but that doesn't stop it being difficult, frustrating or indeed very painful in some cases.



*I love the Adrian Plass story in which Jesus receives a young man for counselling on homosexuality and Jesus' PA is disconcerted to discover they spent most of the time talking about billiards.

[ 21. February 2016, 17:58: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy

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Originally posted by Bibaculus:
'Innate but not God's best' is how I was told I am by a Roman catholic priest.

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Originally posted by mdijon:

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Originally posted by Bibaculus:
'Innate but not God's best' is how I was told I am by a Roman catholic priest.

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We can't say this. It's just wrong. We wouldn't say it about women, black people, the disabled, the lower classes... we can't say it about gay people either. We are all God's best.

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Originally posted by Bibaculus:
'Innate but not God's best' really means 'flawed'.

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Originally posted by mdijon:
We are all God's best.

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I think believers are all simul iustus et peccator - both justified and sinners.

I really do struggle with this.

I know it's not easy, too many responses are trite or dimissive, and that a cishet happily married for over 30 years, as I am, has zero chance of walking in your shoes.

I've been through Bibaculus' list (or something like it) more than once in the past in my mind and rejected those comparisons as inadequate. But I can't get away - so far - from heterosexual monogamy as an archetype in the Bible, although not a few people here have almost persuaded me otherwise.

It follows that I see the Church as having some responsibility to uphold that archetype. At the same time it has a responsibility to welcome all, and to adapt to social change, and for that welcome not simply to be a sugar-coated poison pill that expects people to repent down the line, be cast out, or be sidelined. It's complicated

[ 21. February 2016, 21:20: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy

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Originally posted by Bibaculus:
Well, I agree with you. But clearly substantial numbers of Christians don't. They see being gay as a sort of impediment or misfortune.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
Not throwing that attitude back in their faces might mean putting up with a lot, and perhaps you think it's too much to ask considering everything you've had thrown in your face, but still...what if that's where their conscience has got them to? Can you find it in yourself to respect that, even in the face of mountains of perceived disrespect for who you are?

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Originally posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom:
I am proud of my own record of not being sucked into equal rudeness. A newspaper article once described me as "nice," and I'm happy with that.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
At the risk of sounding cheesy, this is one of the things I find so attractive about Jesus. He had this knack of confronting people whilst respecting them, and not letting their disrespect (or ire) get to him. A hard trick to pull off, but one I aspire to imitate (with nowhere near as much success as I would like, I admit).

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
But part of Jesus' art was to get the timing right and not make a habit of it - thus making it all the more, um, striking. Also, I think he had his anger directed at the correct target.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
In the LGBT debate (as elsewhere) I try and seek out those on either side who I feel have arrived at their views with humilty and sincerity, and who do respect (at least as people) those who differ, and then try and get them talking to each other.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
But part of Jesus' art was to get the timing right and not make a habit of it - thus making it all the more, um, striking. Also, I think he had his anger directed at the correct target.

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That's interesting. In a couple of sentences (to avoid going too Kerygmaniay) it has always seemed to me that he directed his anger at the wrong targets - not the Romans, not Herod, not those Jews who were selling their own brethren, not the woman-in-adultery, not the Samaritans.. etc but the religious authorities who (arguably) were only doing what they were told to do by the deity. And the whole temple incident is pretty bizarre when one contemplates that JC appeared to believe that the religion of "temple and place" was being overturned and that the Kingdom of God was not a physical place but something that lived within believers wherever they were. Wouldn't it have been better to leave the temple in a huff proclaiming that God didn't live there no more?

Anyway, I think that the problem with these things is that they're open to equal and opposite claims. Who actually would Jesus be angry with today?

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Originally posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom:
I can't work out if this is really patronising or what!

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I'm not just talking about my views, I'm talking about my life. I think this is a huge divide that those who are on the other side from me just don't get. (...) Were I to raise, for instance, the number of divorced members of General Assembly, I'd be shouted down in flames for being too personal.

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The humility has to start with recognition of the power differential - which means it has to start with the powerful.

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As an example of gross disrespect, it ranks right up there, given the real attempts at dialogue and prayerful consideration that the committee undertook right around the country.

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Yes, I admit it does. Sigh. Maybe it's time to braid a whip after all

[ 22. February 2016, 08:13: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy

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In my opinion the importance of this nuance is borne out by your story. The power-brokers refused to listen to the grassroots OR the specialists. They are not doing what they are supposed to (in my view) in terms of being accountable to those under them - it's not fair or constructive to take their policy as representing what everyone in their constituency thinks.

In the evangelical world (which is the one I know best) it seems to me that at grassroots level, the lines are shifting, and it's those holding the power that won't budge. If that's the case, the problem isn't intrinsically about LGBT rights but about the use and misuse of power by church authorities irrespective of the issue.

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
'everyone's welcome; it's not our job to convict, we'll just love them and preach the Gospel, God will show them...'

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the very presence of gay people in their congregations, aka useful idiots, allows them to show they're not hateful in the slightest.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I've never heard of 'innate but not God's ideal' before, and it's certainly an interesting, not to say, astonishing idea. I suppose it could be applied to lots of things, for example, snot. And masturbation? Not sure if that's innate though.

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I think a more frequent comparison is with disabilities rather than bodily fluids

That's not without disagreement either - there are some Christians with a disability who view their bodies as "broken", and others who take the line that God intended their body to be blind / deaf / unable to walk / whatever.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
I don't think it's made any easier by the fact that a lot of straight people don't feel their identity is bound up with their orientation or sexuality to the extent I perceive a lot of gay people do.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
(As I type I'm wondering if "straight privilege" might be a thing in the same way "white privilege" is.)

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Originally posted by Penny S:
I've noticed recently how suddenly the heated argument that there was absolutely nothing of the Neanderthal in any moderns has totally disappeared (there may have been an element of Yukk about that one, with interspecies miscegenation being involved.)

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innate but not God's best

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Originally posted by mdijon:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
(As I type I'm wondering if "straight privilege" might be a thing in the same way "white privilege" is.)

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I think you are on to something here.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Why is this even a question?

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For my part, because that's just how far I've got in my thinking. I apologise for not being as penetratingly lucid in all areas as you expected

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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy

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Originally posted by mdijon:

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Originally posted by Penny S:
I've noticed recently how suddenly the heated argument that there was absolutely nothing of the Neanderthal in any moderns has totally disappeared (there may have been an element of Yukk about that one, with interspecies miscegenation being involved.)

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I hope this doesn't seem petty if I point out that it may well have been data that changed this one. Genome sequencing data have shown pretty clearly that there is a lot of Neanderthal DNA in modern European humans. I suspect that people really have changed their minds, or if they haven't they only talk about it quietly and can't make a fuss.

Also (perhaps even more petty) interspecies miscegenation doesn't seem like a sensible term to me. Miscegenation is a non-biological term with a lot of racist baggage attached to it - and the completely unscientific idea that race was a term with biological meaning. It isn't and doesn't have any useful scientific evidence or meaning.

If two individuals can breed and produce fertile offspring then strictly speaking they are of the same species (although people fudge and probably have to fudge about subspecies). So I think we are left with the conclusion that Neanderthals were humans rather than a separate species.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Why is this even a question?

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For my part, because that's just how far I've got in my thinking. I apologise for not being as penetratingly lucid in all areas as you expected

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
that is the nature of such privilege; it is transparent to those who posses it.

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Originally posted by RuthW:
Yes, in just the same way that white people don't feel our identity is bound up in being white because we don't have to think about it, since it's presumed to be the default setting. A straight person living in a largely gay neighborhood and white person living in a largely black or brown neighborhood very quickly learn that their identity is very much bound up with their orientation and color.

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Originally posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom:
Not in every case - there was one major and hilarious exception, who clearly had some ideas about houses suitable for lesbians,

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Originally posted by RuthW:
A straight person living in a largely gay neighborhood and white person living in a largely black or brown neighborhood very quickly learn that their identity is very much bound up with their orientation and color.

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