In defence of Justin Welby: mediator, not homophobe
by James Macintyre, Christian Today:
How strange it is to be at an event and then see it misreported. Stranger still to see that misreporting to be based on your own report of that same event.
Last weekend, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury came to the Greenbelt festival in Northamptonshire for the first time. There was a mood of enthusiastic anticipation on the Saturday lunchtime when Welby sat down on the main stage with the ‘Gogglebox vicar’ Kate Bottley, in front of hundreds of festival-goers. But despite the initial applause, there was no guaranteeing a favourable reception for what he had to say, especially on the inevitable question of sexuality. Greenbelt veterans warned that the festival’s crowds could be “spiky”. Their centre of gravity was certainly left-of-centre.
Yet in the event, Welby’s carefully balanced answer when the question came was well received, not just because it was unusually human, but because it was, broadly, progressive.
At Christian Today, we chose the headline: “Justin Welby: ‘I am constantly consumed with horror’ at the way the Church has treated gay people.”
Yet later, Pink News took the opposite viewpoint, taking 43 words out of their context from a 55 minute question and answer session in which Welby went out of his way to be fair to both sides of the debate.
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