Tag Archives: Justin Welby

Justin Welby wobbles on homosexuality question

Posted on by
7

Conservative politician Ann Widdecombe questions the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Q: “is homosexuality wrong.”

A: “I am not going to answer that straightforwardly because it’s a complex question.”

He goes on to say: “my position is that the the historic position of the church is that sexual relations should be within marriage and marriage is between a man and a woman”. Of course, it’s an unarguable fact that the historic position of the church is that  sexual relations should be within marriage and marriage is between a man and a woman; Welby could scarcely say his position is that that is not the church’s historic position. What Welby does not say is: “my position is the same as the the historic position of the church.” Perhaps I am splitting hairs, but I suspect not.

Admittedly, Wobbling Welby isn’t as incoherent as Rambling Rowan but he still falls very short of the kind of clarity we see from other parts of the Anglican Communion.

Justin Welby to meet with Fred Hiltz

Posted on by
1

From here:

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and his wife, Caroline, are expected to arrive in Canada on Monday, April 7, for a “ personal, pastoral visit,” with Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada.

The brief visit is a part of Welby’s personal commitment to visit the primates (senior archbishops) of the Anglican Communion, to meet them and learn about their provinces prior to the next meeting of all the primates.

If a prior meeting is anything to go by, what Welby learns from Hiltz is going to be slightly one-sided: the lawsuits, the attempts to intimidate conservative clergy, the inhibiting of clergy and the acquisition of buildings will, I am sure, all be glossed over.

[Welby] has said that his visits are aimed at fostering friendship and “mutual understanding.”

And here is the fundamental problem: there is already mutual understanding. Conservative Christians understand the Anglican Church of Canada so well that most of them have left. The Anglican Church of Canada understands that conservative Anglicans who have left are engaging in unfair competition by preaching the genuine Christian Gospel. What more is there to understand?

Justin Welby meets Noah

Posted on by
4

There was probably a time when if an actor met the Archbishop of Canterbury, we would be forgiven for presuming that the Archbishop would offer his opinion on matters spiritual while the actor listened attentively, hoping to learn something. Not so today, of course: when Russell Crowe paid a visit to Justin Welby, it was the actor whose exposition – albeit from a prior interview – on the meaning of the Flood was reported by Christianity Today, not the archbishop’s. It’s all about the environment and our treatment of animals, apparently.

All that was missing to make the visit complete was Justin Welby explaining how to pursue a career as an an actor.

archbishop-of-canterburyFrom here:

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby welcomed Hollywood actor Russell Crowe to his official residence on Tuesday ahead of the UK release of Noah on Friday.

The Archbishop’s office said the two men discussed faith and spirituality during the short private meeting at Lambeth Palace.

[….]

“The great thing about this film, whether you’re somebody of faith or not, is that you come out of this movie and you want to talk…about our stewardship of the earth, our relationship to animals, what is spirituality, who am I in this world, all these fantastic subjects for conversation.”

Rowan, Justin and Either/Or

Posted on by
8

Justin Welby’s recipe for holding the Anglican Communion together was elucidated in his address to synod:

Already I can hear the arguments being pushed back at me, about compromise, about the wishy-washiness of reconciliation, to quote something I read recently.  But this sort of love, and the reconciliation between differing groups that it demands and implies, is not comfortable and soft and wishy-washy.  Facilitated conversations may be a clumsy phrase, but it has at its heart a search for good disagreement.

[…..]

We have received a report with disagreement in it on sexuality, through the group led by Sir Joseph Pilling.  There is great fear among some, here and round the world, that that will lead to the betrayal of our traditions, to the denial of the authority of scripture, to apostasy, not to use too strong a word. And there is also a great fear that our decisions will lead us to the rejection of LGBT people, to irrelevance in a changing society, to behaviour that many see akin to racism. Both those fears are alive and well in this room today.

We have to find a way forward that is one of holiness and obedience to the call of God and enables us to fulfil our purposes.  This cannot be done through fear. How we go forward matters deeply, as does where we arrive.

In attempting to resolve the disagreements in his church about sexuality, Rowan Williams tried to find a middle ground between the opposing views. He used Indaba groups to do this. He didn’t succeed partly because there was no middle ground to find and partly because, even if it had been found, anyone with any common sense knew that once the mythical entity was spotted, it would immediately start to drift leftward.

Justin Welby has astutely noticed that Rowan’s efforts were a dismal failure so, rather than look for a half-way point between opposing views, he is seeking, through the odious tedium euphemistically known as “facilitated conversations”, to convince polar opposites to coexist within one organisation – he calls it “good disagreement”. What will prevent the whole thing flying apart is “love” – it’s all you need, after all.

At heart, I am a simple minded computer technician and, through bitter experience, I have been forced to reach the conclusion that if I write a program in which false and true propositions are compelled to coexist, disaster will ensue. Programmers are renowned for being sentimentally attached to their creations but, no matter how much love I pour into it, a routine whose rules of logic include (1 ∨ 0  =  0) ∧ (1 ∨ 0 = 1) = 1 is destined for spectacular failure.

Now, you may say, that’s all very well for computers; they are by nature binary, almost Kierkegaardian in their Either/Or obsessiveness. When it comes to sexuality and the Church one must expect diverse opinions, differing interpretations, loving disagreement. Complete nonsense. If the church can’t come up with a unified view on a subject which it has been pondering for 2000 years, something whose boundaries are clearly prescribed by the book it claims to follow, something – morality – in which it supposedly specialises, then it is time for the clergy to call it day, dissolve their institutional church and find more useful employment.

Archbishops of Canterbury and York call for pastoral care for homosexuals

Posted on by
17

From here:

“Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ

In recent days, questions have been asked about the Church of England’s attitude to new legislation in several countries that penalises people with same-sex attraction. In answer to these questions, we have recalled the common mind of the Primates of the Anglican Communion, as expressed in the Dromantine Communiqué of 2005.

The  Communiqué said;

‘….we wish to make it quite clear that in our discussion and assessment of moral appropriateness of specific human behaviours, we continue unreservedly to be committed to the pastoral support and care of homosexual people.

The victimisation or diminishment of human beings whose affections happen to be ordered towards people of the same sex is anathema to us. We assure homosexual people that they are children of God, loved and valued by Him and deserving the best we can give – pastoral care and friendship.’

We hope that the pastoral care and friendship that the Communiqué described is accepted and acted upon in the name of the Lord Jesus.

We call upon the leaders of churches in such places to demonstrate the love of Christ and the affirmation of which the Dromantine communiqué speaks.”

Yours in Christ,

+Justin Cantuar   +Sentamu Eboracensis

The church, once again, is permitting its agenda to be set more by cultural priorities – and there can be little doubt that our society is obsessively preoccupied with homosexuality – than God’s. If it were the other way around, I can’t help suspecting that there would be at least the occasional ecclesiastical Communiqué calling for protection for the unborn. But that, of course, is not something that would be universally popular and the last thing that Western Anglicanism is interested in is being less than culturally relevant.

As expected, the emphasis is on pastoral care for same-sex attracted individuals – so long as no one is encouraged to resist same-sex attraction. This will inexorably lead, as we have discovered in North America, to blanket approval of homosexual activity within committed, faithful, monogamous relationships.

Justin Welby calls Nigeria’s Anglican Church “A Powerhouse”

Posted on by
2

From here:

The Archbishop, who regularly speaks with contacts in Nigeria, described its Anglican Church as an ‘extraordinary powerhouse’.

Welby did not go on to point out that while Anglicanism in Nigeria is a Powerhouse, in the West it’s more of a Bathhouse: a Gay Bathhouse.

Archbishop of Canterbury wants industry to show generosity

Posted on by
8

From here:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has criticised energy companies for imposing huge price rises that will hammer struggling families.

Justin Welby said power giants had a ‘massive’ moral duty beyond squeezing customers for maximum profit, and challenged the firms to justify their huge increases in bills.

The Archbishop, himself a former oil executive, said he understood the anger over apparently ‘inexplicable’ rises and called on the companies ‘to behave with generosity and not merely to maximise opportunity’.

Whatever next? Justin Welby exhorting the Anglican Church of Canada ‘to behave with generosity’ and stop suing congregations and individuals in order to acquire their assets? Probably not.

Justin Welby at GAFCON

Posted on by
6

Justin Welby refuses to take sides. He is continuing in the vein of Rowan Williams by attempting to maintain the fiction that the worldwide Anglican Communion has not already split, that Western Anglicanism’s god of self-gratification – preferably obtained through homoeroticism – can somehow be reconciled with the Cross. It can’t.

Perhaps what is worst of all is that Welby views the division in worldwide Anglicanism as something bad which should be resisted, rather than what it actually is: God separating the faithful from the unfaithful.

Read it all here (my emphasis):

“There is a need for new structures in the Anglican Communion, “the archbishop said, adding the issues that divide us are “simple and complicated.”

To address them “we need a new way of being in communion, not the colonial structures” of the past, he said. But it was unclear as to what the solution was as each province offered its own solution to the problem, yet “we must find a way to live together, so the world will see” Jesus is Lord.

The Anglican world must be a sign to the world of the power of Christ and must engage in a deliberate program of “witness, worship, evangelism, and a passion for the Holy Spirit.”

“The more seriously we take the Bible” the more effectively we will be able to deal with our divisions, he said.

How the Church of England should compete with Wonga

Posted on by
2

Wonga makes short term loans to people at exorbitant rates. The idea is that the loan is repaid on payday: it is a payday loan company.

Justin Welby wants to “compete Wonga out of business” by creating church assisted credit unions. The problem is, it will take ten years to accomplish; meanwhile Wonga is approving 10,400 loans a day and makes £1.2million a week in profit now.

After lending more than a £1billion in a year for the first time, it now plans to expand by encouraging customers to buy luxuries they would otherwise struggle to afford.

Its ‘Pay Later’ deal allows borrowers to buy ‘higher value goods’, such as furniture or a dishwasher, for up to £1,000, with an up-front charge of 7 per cent of the price.

The idea of buying luxuries we “would otherwise struggle to afford” was not a problem that afflicted my family as I was growing up. Post-war rationing made ½ a pound of butter a luxury, afford it or not; my parent’s lives were not so devoid of meaning that they felt the need to fill the emptiness with “luxuries they would otherwise struggle to afford.” Not so for many people today, I fear.

In trying to set up competing credit unions, the Church of England is foolishly engaged in trying to beat the world at its own game: for some reason, it will keep doing this – possibly because it has forgotten what its own game is – and it always fails.

If Justin Welby really wants to compete with Wonga, preach the Gospel – the real Gospel – and give people meaning and purpose in their lives so that they don’t have to yield to the impulse of attempting to fill their vacuous existence with luxuries that they don’t need, can’t afford and won’t satisfy.

The Anglican Church is drunk man staggering ever closer to the edge of a cliff

Posted on by
9

So says the Archbishop of Canterbury:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has warned that the Anglican church is tottering on the brink of disintegration amid disputes between liberals and traditionalists.

At last someone has noticed. Sadly, although the prognosis is probably accurate, the diagnosis isn’t.

The cause of the Anglican malaise has never been the fact that there are disputes between liberals and conservatives; the cause is simply that liberals have got it wrong.

Justin Welby went on to note:

In his most stark comments yet about divisions over issues such as homosexuality, the Most Rev Justin Welby said the Church was coming perilously close to plunging into a “ravine of intolerance”.

“Intolerance” isn’t the problem either; misrepresenting Christianity – and that’s what liberals in the homosexuality debate tend to do  – is intolerable.

Yet he added that many of the issues over which different factions in the Church were fighting were “incomprehensible” to people outside it.

Undoubtedly true; but the incomprehensibility of the debate doesn’t mean – as Welby seems to imply – that both factions must be incorrect.

“On one side is the steep fall into an absence of any core beliefs, a chasm where we lose touch with God, and thus we rely only on ourselves and our own message. On the other side there is a vast fall into a ravine of intolerance and cruel exclusion. It is for those who claim all truth, and exclude any who question.”

The first sentence is a suitable epithet for North American Anglicanism. The second is a sure sign that Welby has been conned by liberals into believing that conservatives are intolerant and that making any demands of anyone renders a church exclusive. The third appears to be a concession to contemporary relativism: truth is unknowable.

At least one thing is correct: we are staggering close to the edge of a cliff.