Brights News Feed

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.”

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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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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Numerous liberal bloggers quickly spread the word about the American Family Association’s transparently biased anti-gay internet poll over the last few days. The AFA clearly expected the poll — asking whether consumers will shun businesses which adhere to what the AFA called the “homosexual agenda” — to be filled out mainly by their own supporters.

But the traffic the AFA site actually received, thanks to the bloggers’ ad hoc democratic publicity, clearly turned the results they expected around. Having at first seemingly faked the results of their homophobic poll the American Family Association now appears to have pulled the page altogether.

For the present, however, you can still see the ridiculous survey in the Google cache.

You can even still see the fixed results in the Google cache (these exact same fixed results, as opposed to the real data, were being displayed to everyone who filled out the survey once the wave of bloggers’ traffic skewed the results in the opposite direction from the skew that they had wanted).

It’s worth pointing out that completion of the poll also submitted users’ details to a mailing list. Not only is this a further indication that the AFA had by and large expected only anti-gay responses from their own sympathizers, it also means that many liberal bloggers are now being emailed their rhetorical diatribes and details of the AFA’s anti-gay activist plans. So presumably the liberal blogosphere will now be able to keep an even closer eye on them.

(Also see: GoodAsYou.org)

The Christian “traditional morality” pressure group the American Family Association has posted an unscientific poll on homosexuality. Not only does the poll appear on their own site (where responses are likely to support the conclusions they want to find), but the results are rigged anyway, with every submission returning the same apparently bogus data.

The poll question is:

If a corporation supports the homosexual agenda, would you:

Be more likely to do business with that company
Be less likely to do business with that company
It would not affect my buying decision

At the time of writing, the results that will be returned after you vote are:

Be more likely to do business with that company. 6,238
Be less likely to do business with that company. 188,722
It would not affect my buying decision. 3,946

These “results” are clearly intended to imply that businesses should avoid supporting “the homosexual agenda”.

(Via Seldo)

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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The Anglican Communion has agreed a deadline of September 30th, for the Episcopalian churches in the US to step into line with wider Church doctrine. They are called upon to stop the practice of blessing same-sex unions, and to change the policies which led to the appointment of the first woman bishop. Widely regarded as an “ultimatum” to the Episcopalians, the move represents a hardening stance on the part of the Church authorities, in order to prevent a split with the more demanding Churches of Asia and Africa, which are fiercely set against the liberal Episcopalian line. It also represents a climb-down for Archbishop Rowan Williams, whose previously more liberal views have become politicized by the pressures of keeping the Communion together.

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A few weeks ago, when Anglican archbishops backed Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor over the issue of Catholic adoption agencies, I wrote in jest: “The Anglican leadership temporarily un-schismed with the Catholic Church, last night…” Now it seems the idea is actually not so far from the truth.

Yesterday The Times (UK) broke the story that — in response to the teetering fragility of the Anglican Communion over the issue of gay clergy and women bishops — the Church really is considering how a reunion with Papal authority might be established (”Churches back plan to unite with the Pope“).

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Chancellors do it. Home Offices do it. Now, is the Church of England also indulging in the practice of “burying bad news”?

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The debate is over. Despite threats from the Catholic Church — backed by the Church of England, and regarded as “blackmail” by many — that their adoption agencies would be closed if they were forced to treat gay couples the same as heterosexual couples, the British Government has today confirmed that the Sexual Orientations Regulations in the Equality Act will apply to religious institutions. A transitional period will stretch to 2008. It may or may not herald the closure of the agencies, but either way it will ensure that vulnerable children will not be neglected, Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly insisted.

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