Those who attacked +Philip North have made same-sex blessing compromise impossible

Mar 10, 2017 by

by Archbishop Cranmer:

Remember that “radical new Christian inclusion” Justin Welby spoke of in the wake of Synod’s decision not to ‘take note’ of the Bishops’ report on marriage and same-sex relations? Well, you can forget it. There can now be no radically inclusive formula of words, no guiding principles, no memorandum of agreement or synodical ‘fudge’ by which those Anglicans who oppose the creation of some sort of liturgical same-sex blessing (proto-marriage), and those who advocate it as a fundamental equality or Christian social justice, can coexist in the Church of England. The hounding of Philip North from the Bishopric of Sheffield has put paid to all carefully-crafted yarns of mutual flourishing and rose-tinted via-media tolerance: mob rule has supplanted synodical governance; bullying and hounding have usurped reason, vocation and love.

“If, as Christians, we cannot relate to each other within the bounds of love, how can we possibly presume to transform a nation in the name of Christ?” Bishop Philip pleaded in his statement of withdrawal. “The highly individualised nature of the attacks upon me have been extremely hard to bear,” he explained with great sorrow. Yes, indeed. The more one is called a ‘bigot’, ‘hater’ or ‘misogynist’, or accused of advocating “sacrilised sexism“, the more one might be inclined to curtain one’s head in the incense. To assail a flawed theology is one thing, but to attack a man for his deeply-held orthodox beliefs is not only ungracious, it is contemptible, wicked and fundamentally un-Christian.

“Philip North would have excelled among the diocesans in defending the poor & the parish, & promoting evangelism outside evangelical mould,” tweeted Cambridge theologian, the Rev’d Dr Andrew Davison. All that remains is the conditional perfect; a hypothetical event. Henceforth the intolerant inclusivist Test Act will be applied ‘robustly’ to candidates for episcopacy. Those who do not conform to the new inclusion dogma will be hounded out of office and hauled to the stake for incineration. The Church of England has hewn its sturdy catholic branch so that the ever-sprouting twigs of liberal reform might flourish. Mutuality has become a beatific pipe dream.

Read here

Full coverage of the Sheffield controversy may be read in our carousel item above

 

Related Posts

Tags

Share This