An open letter to the Secretary General of the Archbishops’ Council
To: Mr William Nye, Secretary General, Archbishops’ Council, Church House, Great Smith Street, London, SW1P 3AZ
From: Revd David Holloway, Vicar of Jesmond, Jesmond Parish Church, Newcastle upon Tyne NE2 4DJ
27 November 2016
Dear Mr Nye,
I write this open letter to you following your open letter to Revd Canon Andrew Lines, the chairman of the GAFCON UK Task Force. Your letter alleged that a GAFCON briefing paper is “significantly misleading”. The briefing was regarding irregular homosexual activities in the Church of England. In support of its criticism of named Church of England bishops and clergy, the briefing referred to a resolution of a former Lambeth Conference. You wrote to “correct some of the erroneous assertions” in the paper. However, the supposed correction included the following statement:
“The teaching of the Church of England on matters relating to same-sex practice and unions is, and remains, as set out in the document issued by the Church’s House of Bishops in 1991 Issues in Human Sexuality. That document pre-dates the Lambeth Conference of 1998, and is consistent with the resolution 1:10 of the Conference.”
This was to correct any assumption that the Lambeth Conference 1998 Resolution 1:10 could be said to determine the teaching of the Church of England. You are quite right. It has no binding force on the Church of England. Its effect is institutional, moral and spiritual. But the briefing paper never claimed this was “the teaching of the Church of England”. It was claimed to be “the authoritative teaching of the Anglican Communion on sexuality”. Certainly that particular resolution, 1:10, would reflect the view of the majority of Anglicans in the Communion, and not just in the GAFCON provinces but also in the “Global South”. Be that as it may, I fear you are wrong to suggest that “the teaching of the Church of England” in this matter of sexuality is that set out in the Bishops’ 1991 document.
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