Brights News Feed

Dr Evan Harris MP (Lib Dem), Frank Dobson MP (Lab) and David Wilshire MP (Con) have tabled an amendment that would effectively abolish Britain’s archaic blasphemy law. The vote is tomorrow.

From New Humanist:

A letter published in today’s Daily Telegraph makes the case for repealing the law: “As the Law Commission acknowledged in 1985, when it recommended repeal, it is uncertain in scope, but lack of intention is no defence, and the law is unlimited in penalty.

This, together with its chilling effect on free expression and its discriminatory impact, leaves it in clear breach of human rights law. In the end, no one is likely to be convicted under it.”

The letter is signed by a host of honorary associates and distinguished supporters of the Rationalist Association, the BHA and the NSS, including Richard Dawkins, RA President Jonathan Miller, philosopher and regular New Humanist contributor AC Grayling, historian David Starkey and author Philip Pullman. It’s even been signed by former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, with the letter pointing out that “the Church of England no longer opposes its abolition on principle”.

The NSS point their members and subscribers to www.theyworkforyou.com where you can write to your MP in support of the amendment. The BHA have a specific “Write to your MP” page with a pre-set message about the law. Don’t delay! MPs will vote on the amendment as early as tomorrow.

Via FaithInSociety, the blog of Ekklesia thinker Simon Barrow, comes this interesting segment on what the man almost always referred to as “gay bishop Gene Robinson” said to the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams recently, in a challenge to Lambeth Palace’s equivocating position in the middle of the gay rights debate which is dividing the Anglican Communion.

A little while ago, in the only time that the Archbishop of Canterbury ever deigned to see me, we were having a little “chat”, and at one point in our conversation, he was explaining to me that, actually what The Episcopal Church should have done prior to electing and consecrating me, was that we should have figured all this out theologically and intellectually… We should have come to a common mind, and then passed canons and and then done this thing. And I said to him with as much respect as I could, “Your Grace, it seems to me that all of the great steps that has taken, have been as a result of our doing the right thing, and only then, “thinking” our way to what we did. It’s not the other way around. I mean, if we had waited for instance in this country for everyone to have been on the same page about civil rights, there would still be separate drinking fountains, wouldn’t there? And if we had waited until women were valued as equal and full members of society and the human race, for goodness sakes, all of that discrimination would still exist.”

The Anglican Bishop of Carlisle, recently maligned in the media for comments to the effect that the UK’s current bout of flooding was God’s punishment for society tolerating homosexuality, attempted to deny that he had said any such thing today.

But judge for yourself…

He [Bishop of Carlisle, Graham Dow] said: “I did not say that the Yorkshire floods were God’s action or because of recent legislation.

“Sadly, that was what was written. The way I see it is that all through Scripture - from Genesis 3, through Noah’s flood, the period of Old Testament kingship, right through to Revelation - God views life as a whole; that is, our morality and the health of the land are all one piece.

“The land is not neutral to us; it is God’s, and for us to steward. If we want to enjoy its fruits then we must live God’s way. That is the message all through Scripture.”

The Bishop said: “Of course we know that disasters have physical causes; but I believe that at such times we also do well to ask questions about our morality, as the book of Revelation does.”

(From the Bishop’s local newspaper.)

Echoing comments made by “conservative” US figures in the aftermath of the New Orleans flooding, several Church of England bishops have made extraordinary comments (for a relatively sane and liberal denomination) blaming the swathe of localized flash flooding across the UK on modern lifestyle, modern power structures, and of course, the modern “witch” (i.e. gay people).

The Telegraph article is worth reading in full — although it’s not clear where, or why these (obviously very recent) comments have been made, perhaps they were solicited individually? — but here are some choice quotes.

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Philosopher A. C. Grayling famously believes that the current upsurge in religious news coverage, protest, and renewed political assertion, is a symptom of decline: religion is in its “death throes”.

This week he twisted the knife, exploring the responses to the recent wave of successful secularist publishing (”Tome truths“). Basically, he makes a fairly convincing case that the backlash of protest doth protest too loudly.

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You’re the head of the worldwide Anglican Communion. One of your denominations in the US has gone ahead and consecrated a gay bishop, spakring worldwide controversy, without the full backing of the wider Church. Another of your denominations in Nigeria has protested so vehemently that it has helped the “conservative” (anti-gay) element in the other denomination to break away and form a new denomination. The once-a-decade conference for the whole Communion is next summer and will melt-down if both parties are present.

What do you do?

You refuse to invite either the legitimately consecreated gay bishop, Gene Robinson, nor the head of the new Convocation of Anglicans in North America, Martyn Minns.

Will the maneuveur appease the critics on either side, or will it please no one?

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Renowned Anglican theological college, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University (UK) “is in chaos following a barrage of resignations, forcing a crisis meeting of the governing body to limit the damage to the college’s reputation… From September 2007, Wycliffe Hall will have lost all its best loved and most respected staff members. [Principal Richard] Turnbull will replace them all with conservative evangelicals. More than half the teaching staff have resigned this year. Most will not be replaced in time for the opening of the next academic year…the college will not be capable of teaching its regular curriculum.”

The above text has been circulated to all remaining members of staff at the college. Since Richard Turnball’s appointment in the top job his alleged attempts to swing the college’s theological stance sharply in the conservative evangelical direction, especially with regard to homosexuality and the ordination of women priests, have led to allegations of bullying and intimidation, followed by a slew of resignations, and an alleged attempt to quash the concerns of radio personality Elaine Storkey which has now backfired in the extreme.

According to the Guardian:

The dispute appears to mirror splits in worldwide Anglicanism - and the Church of England - over theology and homosexuality, which have been aggressively led by conservative evangelical groups.

Dr Turnbull denies being a member of conservative evangelical pressure groups, although he did sign a covenant launched last December by leaders of such groups threatening to stop associating with more liberal churches and reject the authority of bishops they disagree with.

The Telegraph (London UK) reports today on Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’s new book, Tokens of Trust. The leader of the Anglican Communion apparently gives much credence to the place of angels within the Anglican Creed. He says angels “can be at least a powerful symbol for all those dimensions of the universe about which we have no real idea”, which nearly implies that the holy beings may only be symbolic and not literal angels. But the book is also quoted as reciting that, “a human form appears to give a message from God and something in the event tells the people involved that this is a moment of terror and truth, and they recognise that they have met an angel in disguise”, which may imply a more literal understanding of the winged creatures.

The commentator for the Telegraph, Christopher Howse, apparently agrees with the Archbishop about the veracity of angels, even warning against dismissing their existence out of hand:

Belief in angels is far more respectable [than belief in Muslim djinn’s or related creatures of folklore]. Why should there not be pure intellects, with no admixture of matter, who are located wherever they act, are of immense intelligence and power, and vary greatly from individual to individual? They remain servants of God.

In the 17th century the danger was to attempt to use angels for magical purposes; the contrary danger in our own day is to assert the impossibility of their existence, as if we were the only creatures in the universe that counted.

Controversial Nigerian archbishop of the Anglican Communion, Peter Akinola, will visit the US next week. The move is intended to establish conservative members formerly of the Episcopalian churches as a new “Convocation of Anglicans in North America”, effectively an offshoot of the “traditionalist” (anti-gay) Nigerian church. As much as this move may consolidate the conservatives, it will only further distance the mainline Episcopal congregation from the Anglican communion.

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The automatic rights of a certain number of Anglican bishops to sit in the British House of Lords was seriously undermined last week, by comments from the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, which displayed a dazzling lack of human insight. His speech is proudly displayed on the Diocese website. How do we know that, deep down, everyone is religious? This is how:

Twenty-seven years ago I was chaplain to a young offenders remand centre, Latchmere House. Every inmate was asked to declare his religious affiliation, and four young men were registered as having no religion. One Sunday, all the inmates were offered the chance to go to worship.

The four young men with no religion declined the offer, while their fellow inmates on the A wing took up the offer. The prison officer, not wanting the four men to remain locked up in their cells, asked them to clean the toilets on the wing. The following Sunday, our four non-religious young men took up the offer to go to worship. The prison officer was puzzled why they had opted in this week. “Why are you going to chapel?” he asked. The four replied, “Sir, we didn’t like the ‘No Religion’ place of worship”. Crudely as they put it, those four young men were saying in their naivety that we are all essentially religious.

So, not only does the bishop fail to understand why someone would rather sit in a quiet room than scrub a prison bog, but he passes without remark the notion that non-religious inmates should be given undesirable chores. Indeed, it sounds as if he did not object in any way to this policy at the time.

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