The pragmatics of the sexuality debate

Dec 5, 2016 by

by Ian Paul, Psephizo:

I offer here the second of three planned reflections on the sexuality debate—before returning to the bigger questions such as question of biblical interpretation, the importance of apocalyptic.

Adrian Hilton recently published an exchange of six letters (three each) with Martyn Percy, Dean of Christchurch, Oxford, and in the last one Percy claims that:

 I am quietly confident that ++Justin is softening up the hard edges of conservative evangelicalism, and is preparing the ground for a complete volte-face on human sexuality.

He offers several pieces of evidence to support this claim. The first is rooted in Justin Welby’s own style of working, which Percy describes as characterised by ‘directness and clarity…borne out of a certain kind of courage.’ Percy is not always impressed by this kind of courage, and some of his earlier comments in the correspondence earned a civil-servant-style rebuke from the busy Secretary General William Nye along the lines of ‘This is not the kind of language I recognise as Christian.’ Percy is not, though, the only one to have concerns about such direct styles of working, according to his summary of a report ‘on an earlier phase of ++Justin’s ministry – long before he began at Canterbury’ which ‘concluded that his staff, though highly motivated and dedicated, lacked good oversight and good management to enable them to develop and flourish.’

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