Category Archives: Church in Wales

The curious case of the Archbishop who doesn’t need to get married in church

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I used to live in Machen, a small Welsh village about 12km away from where the new Archbishop of Wales, the Most Rev. Cherry Vann, is to be consecrated in Newport Cathedral. Much as I would enjoy visiting my old home, I won’t be using that as an excuse to attend Ms. Van’s installation as Archbishop.

Vann is collecting a catalogue of firsts to add to her résumé: she was the first female priest to be ordained in the UK, and now she is the first lesbian primate to be in a homoerotic relationship with her partner for the last 30 years.

What is curious about that, you may be wondering. After all, the only thing that the Anglican church can do that excites any interest in the secular press is to have yet another scandal exposed or to appoint a new archbishop with unusual sexual tastes. I’ve come to suspect that it’s all part of a devious Anglican strategy to be noticed.

The curious thing about it is that, while every liberal Western province is clamouring to enshrine same-sex marriage into their liturgies, this Archbishop says she doesn’t need to be married in church.

If an Archbishop doesn’t need to be married in church, why does anyone else?

Problem solved: there will be no same-sex marriages in churches because it isn’t needed.

From here:

The archbishop grew up in a religious family in Whetstone in Leicestershire, following in her church organist father’s footsteps by studying at the Royal College of Music and then the Royal Schools of Music, where she trained as a teacher.

She entered an Anglican theological college in 1986 to prepare for ordination and then worked in the Manchester diocese, becoming a priest in 1994 and archdeacon of Rochdale in 2008.

Gender and sexuality are still highly divisive issues in the Anglican communion. Even in her new role as the first female and first openly gay archbishop in the UK, Vann was cautious on the topic of gay marriage.

“I don’t personally feel the need to get married in church; Wendy and I have been together for 30 years, we’ve made our vows, and we are committed to each other.

Bishop of St Davids to retire

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The last time I visited Wales it was the hottest driest summer for 300 years. It didn’t even rain in the Lake District where every shop displays umbrellas and raincoats in the front window.

The only time it rained was when I was in St. Davids and the cathedral flooded. I like to think it was to protest the bishop of St. Davids, Joanna Penberthy. In an effort to elevate herself from the depths of obscurity that is the natural habitat of Anglican bishops, on March 25th 2021 she tweeted “never, never trust a Tory”.

Not only that, she uses an iPhone.

In June she apologized or, more likely, was made to apologize (for the tweet, not the iPhone).

She has announced that she will retire this year on the 31st of July. I expect the sun will shine on that day.

From here:

Bishop Joanna was elected in November 2016 and made history as the first woman to be consecrated as a Bishop in the Church in Wales in January 2017. She has served as Bishop for six years after a long and well-travelled ministry that took in the dioceses of Durham, Llandaff, St Asaph, Bath and Wells, Swansea and Brecon as well as a spell as Priest in the diocese which she later came to lead.

Announcing the retirement, the Archbishop of Wales, Andrew John, said “I want to thank Bisop Joanna for her ministry in the diocese and province. She has contributed significantly to areas of church life in particular on environmental matters and with our Social Responsibility network.”

Bishop Joanna will retire on 31st July 2023.

Church in Wales’ newest vicar is transgender

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I grew up in Cardiff where, in the city centre, you can find St. John The Baptist Anglican church. As a child I was much more interested in what was opposite the church: Cardiff Market wherein was all the excitement of competing vendors manning their stalls and shouting their wares to passers-by. There was a lot of fish as I recall; the whole place stank of fish. I bought goldfish in a plastic bag for threepence.

Coincidentally, this Sunday’s Gospel reading is about John the Baptist and it includes this verse:

As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness:  ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

The path of St. John’s new vicar has not been entirely straight. Rev. Sarah Jones, started life as a boy, married at the age 20, decided she was supposed to be a girl, had a sex change, renamed herself “Sarah” and became an Anglican vicar.

I have no reason to doubt her sincerity. What seems odd is that up until now so many new Anglican vicars have been gay; now the transgender phase is beginning. Rather like Cardiff Market, the odour of something fishy is wafting through Western Anglicanism.

From here:

The new vicar of Cardiff’s city centre parish St John The Baptist has ambitious plans to make it more open to the whole community.

[….]

She had an unusual route into ministry. Leaving school at 16 after her parents’ marriage broke up she had to change her original plans:

“I wanted to go to university but that disappeared overnight. I got a job in a music shop and I realised that I really enjoyed interacting with people”. Over the years she had a variety of jobs in sales and training in the music business and in industry.

However this is not the most unusual part of her background. Sarah was brought up as a boy and is the first Anglican priest to have undergone a gender change before being ordained into the church.

“I looked like a boy and there was no reason to doubt it when I was born. However I knew from the age of six or seven that I was more one of the girls than one of the boys.

“I was slightly different. I did fit in and I wasn’t bullied but by secondary school I knew deep down inside that I should have been one of the girls.

“However I thought that I just had this feminine side to me but that I could carry on with a normal life.”