Affair vicar has ‘mark of Cain’
A vicar has been banned from office for four years after having an affair with a married mother of four children.
…
However, a Church of England tribunal at Leeds Crown Court accepted the 2004 relationship was not sexual.
I am glad that firm action is taken in cases like this. But I wonder, would this have been handled similarly, with a court case and a ban from office, if this vicar had had an affair with a married father of four children? How many clergy are in fact living in gay and lesbian relationships, outside marriage, to which their bishops are turning a blind eye? Could the Church of England have one set of rules for heterosexual extra-marital relationships, even when they are “not sexual”, and another one for homosexual ones? Well, if similar action is ever taken against clergy in clandestine gay or lesbian relationships, they can hardly claim that they have been discriminated against.
This seems like a complicated case.
It really doesn’t seem worthy of your intelligence to use it to say ‘Adultary would be condoned if it had been homosexually expressed.’
Additionally, it seems totally illogical to me to suggest that a faithful lifetime relationship between gay people (“How many clergy are in fact living in gay and lesbian relationships, outside marriage?”) to tearing apart the security of a spouse and children by betraying trust.
Even if a person thinks that monogomous gay sex is technically unbiblical and sinful, to say that the two are equivalent is just illogical.
Confirms my suspicion that the big sin which destroys lives of an extended circle of people (adultary) is forgivable because so many straight Christians commit it. Homosexuality is unforgivable because I’ll never be gay.
Pam, I did not say that one is forgivable and the other is unforgivable. I said, or implied, that they are both on the same level. And I deliberately wrote about “clandestine gay or lesbian relationships”, to distinguish them from publicly acknowledged long term ones, and about “a married father of four children”, so that in both cases we are talking about “tearing apart the security of a spouse [or, I suppose, civil partner] and children by betraying trust.”
Now if a single male vicar had a single woman clandestinely living with him as a sexual partner, or for that matter a single woman vicar has a single man partner, would this vicar be condemned like the “mark of Cain” one? I don’t know, but I suspect he or she would at the very least be told to put an end to the situation. This is perhaps more analogous to most of the actual gay and lesbian clergy situations in the Church of England. Are the same standards applied to homosexuals and heterosexuals in cases like this? I really don’t know. But I believe they should be.
I have no idea how various bishops treat homosexual relationships in the Anglican church.
I do know what I was told whilst an independent student at an ecumenical college in 2000; I don’t know what policies are now. A lesbian prospective URC minister had to go before the URC’s main governing body to explain her relationship and to commit to a relationship that is marriage-like (lifetime monogomous fidelity). A Methodist tutor said that the Methodist church has a similar process and that conceling rather than revealing such a realtionship would be taken as a breech of trust.
The situation is obviously now more complicated with Civil Partnerships. ISTM that the honourable and straightforward thing to do is to have a Civil Partnership and a church blessing ASAP, but of course the latter is not permitted and a CP would set up a minister for all sorts of condemnation from a range of people within the church.
The church would be in a much more powerful position to scrutinise the sexual expression of gay ministers if it permitted the union of gay people and demanded that they were faithful, lifetime and monogomous. But to put gay people in a situation where they are forced to be devious and then accuse them of deviousness is disingenuious.
Gay relationships are not analagous to every sexual sin a heterosexual person commits. What is analgous to a man cheating on his wife is a “married” lesbian cheating on her wife or a “married” gay man cheating on his husband.
If bishops have no way of having oversight over the relationships of gay clergy, it’s because the church has no standards for gay people. If it has no standards for gay people, it’s because the church insists on equating gay monogomy with heterosexual infidelity.
Until we recognise that gay people have sexual lives that are the same as heterosexual people (except for gender of partner) we will be in no position to say that our standard for gay relationship is a monogomous, lifetime relationship.
To do that PamBG we would first have to ignore Gods opposition to homosexuality, monogamous or not
Pam, thank you for your comments, which I would agree with if I could accept your implied premise that stable gay relationships are not sinful. And even though I do not accept this, I can agree that, if the Church of England or any other church does not wish to outlaw gay relationships completely and effectively
– or else the URC and Methodist rules should be copied. Indeed I wrote something like this before, and came under fire both from you and from the conservative side.
But I am responding in this post to the alleged situation in the Church of England, in which the bishops nominally uphold the rule that ministers should not be in gay relationships, but many of them simply turn a blind eye to relationships which they must know about. So the problem I am addressing here is one of double standards.
I suspect that among the bishops who turn a blind eye is my own Bishop of Chelmsford, whose personal chaplain Chris Newlands is organising a meeting of “a support organisation for male and female, lesbian, gay, bi-sexual or transgender clergy, religious, ordinands, seminarians and their partners.” (One report I have seen suggests that this meeting, scheduled for 29th November, will not now take place.) Now this is not proof that Rev Newlands is in an active gay relationship, but would Bishop Gladwin, a patron of Chaging Attitude, discipline him if he were?
Glenn, thank you for a comment that for once I can completely agree with.
To do that PamBG we would first have to ignore Gods opposition to homosexuality, monogamous or not
That would be our point of disagreement.
I still don’t think it’s proper logic to take a story about a heterosexual minister’s emotional infidelity (there’s a complicated situation in and of itself!) and to use that as a launching point to deduce: ‘I’ll bet he’d have gotten away with if he were gay.” Where is the logic in that? It just sounds like sour grapes.
Indeed I wrote something like this before, and came under fire both from you and from the conservative side.
I’m not sure I gave you “fire”. I was simply surprised that someone who thought all gay acts were sinful would advocate Civil Partnerships at all because I think the two positions are inconsistent. It’s like me saying I think X=4 and you saying no X=3 but 3X is nonetheless 12.
In terms of speculating what the Bishop of Chelmsford would do, I really can’t and it wouldn’t be fair.
I’ll tell you that I HAVE encountered some of the founding members of Changing Attitude at the organisation’s beginnings and they were people I’d personally want to use as faith role models.
I can’t speak for now, but at its beginning, the ethos of CA was very specifically an ethos of relationship building, peaceful non-resistence and reconciliation. These were people who specifically did NOT want to be the in-your-face radicals that you seem to be implying that they are. This is why they stayed separate from the other, more radical LBGT Christian campaigning group.
I understand that you think that gay relationships are sinful. I don’t understand, however, how you give room for anyone to honourably disagree with you. I’m ‘dishonourable’ for advocating gay marriage and any gay person who doesn’t think it’s shameful to have a monogomous relationship is honourable.
The only honourable way to disagree with your view is to agree with your view.
Correction:
and any gay person who doesn’t think it’s shameful to have a monogomous relationship is DIShonourable.
Well, I suppose I think stable Civil Partnerships are less sinful than unrestricted gay sex, and that openness on such matters is less wrong than the hypocrisy of agreeing to ban something and then turning a blind eye to it happening. I appealed before to Mark 10:2-5 as a case of God through Moses accepting second best.
I don’t think Chris Newlands is associated with Changing Attitude, but with the Lesbian and Gay Clergy Consultation, an apparently more radical group. It is so secretive that it is hard to know what they stand for, but this paper did come from them.
I forgot to reply to this part of Pam’s comment (as corrected):
Pam, I don’t understand. I didn’t call anything “dishonourable”. I used the word “honourable” only in quoting and agreeing with you.
But I do hold that homosexual activity, whether or not monogamous, is sinful. I honour those who disagree with me on this point, but consider them to be either misunderstanding or ignoring the clear word of God. I don’t judge them, God is their judge. But I insist on the right to disagree with them.
Pingback: Ipod Iphone and MAC » In the Church of England, one rule for gays and another for “straights”?
PamBG, I would like to point out that it is Gods position you are disagreeing with.
PamBG, I would like to point out that it is Gods position you are disagreeing with.
Yes, Glenn, I heard you.
What is it that I can do for you further?
I don’t expect you to ever agree with my view and I’m not really inclined to debate the point here.
On this post, I’m challenging the logic of ‘A straight person is charged with adultary but there are probably gay people getting away with monogomy.’
But I do hold that homosexual activity, whether or not monogamous, is sinful. I honour those who disagree with me on this point, but consider them to be either misunderstanding or ignoring the clear word of God. I don’t judge them, God is their judge. But I insist on the right to disagree with them.
Well, I’m “for” lifetime, monogomous gay relationships. I also believe that this is not a Gospel issue.
My strong opinion on the whole issue is that if we fail to live together as people with different views then we have totally missed the point of being Christian.
I suppose that would make me a hypocrite: because I’m “for” gay lifetime monogomous relationships and I stay in a denomination that is technically against them, although there are many people who hold my views and many who hold yours.
You say it’s hypocracy and I say it’s trying to live with people with whom I disagree. There are times, though, I have to tell you, that I do think about chucking it all in and leaving the church altogether.
A denomination solely focussed on what it opposes is a denomination preparing for schism. I’m as certain that I can be that a denomination founded on the central principle that gay sex is a sin will rapidly find other theological issues over which to split. ‘Faith’ on the foundation of ‘this is what we are against’ is a faith built on sand.
Pam, the only thing I called hypocrisy is making rules but then ignoring them or applying them selectively. Bishops are supposed to uphold the authority of the church, and so should apply its agreed rules whatever their personal views on the issues.
Pingback: Gentle Wisdom » An averagely muddled Archbishop