Colin Coward, Director of the UK LGBT ministry "Changing Attitude" offers a lengthy response to the Archbishop of Canterbury's Advent Letter on the CA website. I commend it to you in its entirety, but offer the summation below as a word of hope and challenge on this third Sunday of Advent.
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The experience of Changing Attitude’s work in the Church of England for the past 13 years leads us to endorse the Archbishop’s belief that is only in the context of prayer, mutual spiritual enrichment and development of ministry that divisive issues can usefully be addressed. Changing Attitude has engaged in fruitful, if unresolved, prayerful conversations with many who disagree with us. We know from this experience that more, not fewer, such encounters are needed. We accept the challenge “to pray seriously together in the hope of seeking a resolution that will be as widely owned as possible.”
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We cannot refuse God’s invitation to purse conversations with each other across our current divisions. Direct contact and open exchange of convictions are crucial. We want to extend our networks to help resource the “fruitful ways of carrying forward liaison with provinces whose policies cause scandal or difficulty to others.”
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We LGBT Anglicans present the bishops of the Communion with a challenge by our very presence and our relationships. We ask the Communion questions about “fidelity to Scripture and identity in ministry and mission, not only about the one issue of sexuality” and “about what it means for the Anglican Communion to behave with a consistency that allows us to face, both honestly and charitably, the deeply painful question of who we can and cannot recognise as sharing the same calling and task.”
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We are not going away. We will slowly become more visible and vocal. We are already present in every Province of the Communion and will continue to be present in every Province, diocese or congregation that secedes. We are the children, parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, work colleagues and friends, present wherever Christians gather to worship God.
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We live in Advent hope. We LGBT Anglicans know change is possible. God challenges and changes lives and God is challenging and changing our church.
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1 comment:
I really hope Changing Attitudes will put down their prayerbooks and hit the street during the lambeth conference. I feel that the Episcopal Church and the Canadian Church have been carrying the burden for the rest of the communion. As our Bishop Robinson is shut out at the gate, I pray that British Christians will be called to witness for lgbtq rights/rites in a real (perhaps non-polite)way.
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