The Possibility of Difference

The Possibility of Difference - the book - is to be published in September by Kevin Mayhew! "A measured, compassionate plea for a more humane argument about sexuality in the Church - a model of debate."  Archbishop Rowan Williams I am so excited about this. As an evangelical, and as a gay man, and being just the wrong side of fifty, I have lived through all sorts of attitudes and responses to gay people in the church... Our debates often, it seems to me, focus in the wrong places and depend upon un-knowables (what does St Paul mean by this word? Does this extra-Biblical text show us?) because we have let a mind-set become established where the whole Bible has only seven or eight texts that are relevant. Hmm. Evangelicals don't work like that! On anything. Being an Evangelical scholar is about working with the whole of Scripture, knowing the nature and character of God, letting one thing work with another - and if it doesn't work, then it can't be right.  ...

The presiding bishop and primate of The Episcopal Church in the United States of America seems to have earned the respect and admiration of much of the world with his sermon today  at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Harry & Meghan. He started with their chosen text from Song of Songs, quickly moved to Dr Martin Luther King Jr, and found his own refrain with the words "There's power in love". He urged us to find the truth of Jesus' great command, to love God and to love each other, and took us to the cross with the power of Jesus' sacrificial love for everyone, via the chorus of a spiritual. A quick detour to French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin brought us back to Martin Luther King Jr, and the redemptive power of love was where he left us. The BBC's coverage had commentator Dermot O'Leary waxing eloquent about the sermon. Rugby player James Haskell picked it out as his highlight of the day in a quick interview after the serv...

I spotted a mention of the book 'Space at the Table' on a friend's feed a while back, and was intrigued. I ordered it from Amazon , and read it with great interest. It's the story of a father and son. An evangelical theologian father, Brad, and his gay son, Drew. It's a story of faith and loss of faith, of love and pain, of welcome and rejection, of talking and listening and not quite communicating. It's a remarkably profound book. You should buy it and read it for yourself. I think your response will depend on where you are in this story. I very much feel that fathers and sons will read this book differently; gay and straight will read it differently; those who hold a traditionalist theology of sexuality and those who don't will read it differently - and for all those reasons, I commend it. As a gay man, a bit of a wanna-be theologian, and an evangelical, I fit into different bits of this book at different times. There were moments in Drew's...