Church of England still homophobic, says bishop

Bishop of Buckingham Alan Wilson praises ‘courage and determination’ shown by gay members of clergy

The Guardian, Nicholas Watt Chief political correspondent, Wednesday 24 December 2014

In his Christmas sermon, Alan Evans complains that churches have a 'funny way' of showing Christian love towards gay people. Photograph: bishopalan.blogspot.com

The Church of England is still guilty of “serious institutional homophobia” and has yet to overcome “inertia and ignorance” towards same-sex couples, an Anglican bishop has claimed.

Alan Wilson, the bishop of Buckingham, praised gay members of the clergy for showing “considerable courage and determination” as they fight deeply ingrained prejudices to marry.

“In very few years people will wonder what the fuss was all about,” the bishop says in a Christmas sermon for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community recorded for Pink News. He adds: “But for now it’s a path that calls for considerable courage and determination. So please spare a thought this Christmas for them.”

Wilson’s intervention comes days after Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, said he was seeking to heal divisions between opponents and supporters of gay marriage.

In an appearance on Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4, the archbishop declined to say whether he had dropped his own opposition to gay marriage as he said of the two sides in the debate: “If you love them you have to listen to them very, very carefully.”

Richard Chartres, the traditionally minded bishop of London who is close to the Prince of Wales, is an opponent of same sex marriage. But Chartres, who led the funeral service for Lady Thatcher, praised Welby on BBC London 94.9 for authorising “properly disciplined conversations” to allow the church to deal with its differences on the issue.

In his Christmas sermon, the bishop of Buckingham complains that the Church of England and other churches have a “funny way” of showing Christian love towards gay people.

“Christians believe God is love and those who live in love live in God, and God lives in them,” he says. ”But, you may say, churches have a funny way of showing that sometimes. We still have a legacy of serious institutional homophobia, inertia and ignorance to overcome. The fact is, however, where people dare to think things could be different, think things through without prejudice, there is hope.”

The bishop said there was hope, but also danger in some parts of the world, for gay people. He said: “There is hope – I notice a new generation of evangelical Christians rethinking the implications of their faith in a far more truthful, just and generous way. At the same time, around the world, there are many places that are anything but safe for gay people.

“A Ugandan member of parliament is promising to bring back the notorious ant-gay bill that fell over this autumn. He calls it his Christmas gift to Ugandans – very much the sort of present you can do without. Wouldn’t peace on earth and goodwill to everybody be far more appropriate? But Christmas is Christmas. Love came down at Christmas, and the nativity story takes us back to the heart of everything. The miracle. The beauty of every human life is a gift of God deserving total respect full of hope. Happy Christmas.”

The bishop earlier this year criticised the Church of England for preaching a 1950s “Janet and John” view of human relationships even though many bishops have been and are gay.

In a blog about his book on same sex marriage in September, he wrote: “In the book I articulated the drearily obvious and well-known fact that a fair number of bishops in the past and present have been, in fact, gay … What matters to me is the fact that bishops have a range of sexual orientations including gay, not which bishops have what. Which particular bishops are Saggitarian, left-handed or red-haired? I know not in detail, neither do I care. I can, however, understand that curiosity about this is greater than it would be for a group of people who did not set themselves up as professionally straight while behaving in discriminatory ways towards gay people.”

Libby Lane's interests include learning to play the saxophone,
supporting Manchester United and doing cryptic crosswords.
Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

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Kryon Q&A

Question: Dear Kryon: Regarding homosexuality or transsexuals. WHY are they the way they are and WHY are they not accepted in mainstream society?

Answer: [From the Kryon Office]

There is often a tremendous amount of information on subjects that are not necessarily part of the on-line magazine Q&A database. Kryon has been channelling for fourteen years, with 9 books covering many, many topics. Homosexuality was one of them from the very beginning. Please see our "Books index page" for subjects contained in the Kryon books: [http://www.kryon.com/direct.html]

An excerpt from Kryon Book 6, page 306

Question from the book: Dear Kryon, I am gay, and an enlightened man. I live in an American society that barely tolerates me, and actually has some laws against my way of life. The church I used to belong to cast me out as being evil and anti-God. I don't feel that I am violating some Human ethic. My love is as true as any heterosexual, and I am a light worker. Tell me what I should know.

Answer from the book: Dear one, less than two generations from now, there will be those who find this book and laugh at the quaintness of this very question. Before I answer, let me ask you and those reading this to examine a phenomenon about Human society and "God."

Thirty years ago, interracial marriage was considered to be wrong by the laws of God. Now your society finds it common. The spiritual objections around it were either dropped or "rewritten" by those divinely inspired and authorized to do so. Therefore, your actual interpretations of the instructions from God changed with your society's tolerance level--an interesting thing, indeed, how the interpretations of God seem to change regularly to match a changing culture!

The truth, of course, is that you find yourself in a situation that is known to create a test for you. Right now, in this time, you have agreed to come into your culture with an attribute that may alienate you from friends and religious followers. You have faced fear of rejection and have had to "swim upstream," so to speak, just as an everyday life occurrence. Your contract, therefore, has been set up well, and you are in the middle of it. Additionally, like so many like you, you have a divine interest in yourselves! You feel part of the spiritual family. What a dichotomy indeed, to be judged as evil by those who are the high spiritual leaders--interpreting God for today's culture.

Now I say this: What is your intent? Is it to walk with love for all those around you and become an enlightened Human Being in this New Age? Is it to forgive those who see you as a spiritual blight on society? Can you have the kind of tolerance for them that they seem not to have for you? Can you overlook the fact that they freely quote their scriptures in order to condemn you, yet they don't seem to have the love tolerance that is the cornerstone of their own message?

If the answer is yes, then there is nothing else you must do. Your INTENT is everything, and your life will be honored with peace over those who would cause unrest, and tolerance for the intolerable. Your sexual attributes are simply chemistry and setups within your DNA. They are given by agreement as gifts for you to experience in this life. Look on them in this fashion, and be comfortable with that fact that you are a perfect spiritual creation under God--loved beyond measure--just like all humans. But then you know that, don't you?

"The Akashic Circle" – Jul 17, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: Religion, The Humanization of God, Benevolent Design, DNA, Akashic Circle, (Old) Souls, Gaia, Indigenous People, Talents, Reincarnation, Genders, Gender Switches, In “between” Gender Change, Gender Confusion, Shift of Human Consciousness, Global Unity,..... etc.)  - (Text version)

“… Gender Switching

Old souls, let me tell you something. If you are old enough, and many of you are, you have been everything. Do you hear me? All of you. You have been both genders. All of you have been what I will call between genders, and that means that all of you have had gender switches. Do you know what happens when it's time for you to switch a gender? We have discussed it before. You'll have dozens of lifetimes as the same gender. You're used to it. It's comfortable. You cannot conceive of being anything else, yet now it's time to change. It takes approximately three lifetimes for you to get used to it, and in those three lifetimes, you will have what I call "gender confusion."

It isn't confusion at all. It's absolutely normal, yet society often will see it as abnormal. I'm sitting here telling you you've all been through it. All of you. That's what old souls do. It's part of the system. …”