Fifty years on – the new Co-ordinating Group meets for the first time
by Colin Coward, Unadulterated Love:
The first meeting of the Co-ordinating Group set up the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to produce a new Teaching Document on human sexuality meets today for the first time.
Fifty years ago, in September 1967, the Board of Social Responsibility of the Church of England set up a Working Party on Homosexuality “to review the situation of both male and female homosexuality” following the passage of the Sexual Offences Act 1967 which partially decriminalised homosexuality. This was the first time the Church of England had formally set up a group to address homosexuality.
Nearly fifty years later, following the February 2017 Synod Group of Sessions, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York issued a letter on 16th February outlining their proposals for continuing to address, as a church, questions concerning human sexuality. The Archbishops committed themselves and the House of Bishops to . . . the development of a substantial Teaching Document on the subject.
The 1967 Working Party submitted its report to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1970. The “report would only be published if the Archbishop so directed.” The Archbishop did not so direct, but thanks to the Church of England’s Record Office I recently obtained a copy of the unpublished report.
The first meeting of the Coordinating Group overseeing the production of the new Teaching Document meets for the first time today. Their goal is to finalise the document by early 2020, fifty years after the first Working Party submitted its report in 1970.
The differences in the composition of the 1967 Working Party and the 2017 Co-ordinating Group are instructive. The members of the 1967 Working Party were:
[Editor’s note: This article raises some interesting points about the report from 50 years ago, and the conclusions are what one would expect from the former Director of Changing Attitude.]
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
