Letter to the Church of England’s College of Bishops

Posted on October 15, 2016 
Filed under Church of England, Culture wars

Church of England“I am publishing here, with permission, a letter that has been sent to all members of the College of Bishops prior to their next meeting to decide what proposals to bring to General Synod in February.  …

First, this is not a PR exercise. Although the sending of the letter has been reported in Christian Today, it has not been circulated to media outlets, unlike some other previous letters. It is intended to be an honest communication to the bishops of the concerns of the signatories and others like them.

Secondly, it attempts to give a clear outline of the major theological reasons why this is felt to me such an important issue. …

Thirdly, it is striking that the signatories come from the whole range of the evangelical constituency, including ‘open’, ‘charismatic’ and ‘conservative’ evangelicals. These are people involved in key initiatives in the Church at the moment, and although they do not claim to represent the groups they work for, there will be many others who share these concerns. …

The Church of England is at a crossroads in her calling to bring hope and transformation to our nation. The presenting issue is that of human sexuality, in particular whether or not the Church is able to affirm sexual relationships beyond opposite sex marriage. But the tectonic issues beneath, and driving, this specific question include what it means to be faithful to our apostolic inheritance, the Church’s relationship with wider culture, and the nature of the biblical call to holiness in the 21st Century. …

We do not believe … that it is within our gift to consider human sexual relationships and what constitutes and enables our flourishing as sexual beings to be of ‘secondary importance’. What is at stake goes far beyond the immediate pastoral challenges of human bisexual and same-sex sexual behaviour: it is a choice between alternative and radically different visions of what it means to be human, to honour God in our bodies, and to order our lives in line with God’s holy will.

At this crucial juncture, as our bishops pray and discern together regarding how the Church of England should walk forward at this time, we urge them not to depart from the apostolic inheritance with which they have been entrusted. …”

– Read the full letter, with its eighty nine signatories (our readers will know many of them), reproduced by Ian Paul at Psephizo.

The letter has now also been published at GAFCON UK’s website.