The Possibility of Difference

Gafcon are bearing strange gifts. In January, the ACNA bishops banned certain words so that it became heretical in their jurisdiction to describe someone even as being an SSA Christian (never mind a gay Christian). They soon found however that internal dissent wouldn’t be silenced. Even in their tightly run ship.  And this dissent means that ACNA, which body of churches split off from the Episcopal Church in the US because of that body’s affirming attitude to LGBTQ+ people, is now itself too liberal for some Gafcon provinces. There is a struggle over how homophobic a Gafcon church should be.  Even the conservative-leaning Andrew Goddard has had enough of this. He is critical of the ACNA bishops, but writes on the Fulcrum site of the Nigerian response to ACNA: ‘ The word ‘homophobic’ is often misused to label traditional understandings and I normally therefore avoid it but it is, sadly, the only possible word that can be used in the face of such unacceptable language. ’ He goes on t

Last time I raised three questions of the LLF Next Steps Group. I asked about -   the nature of the LLF advocates; the impossibility of safe spaces in church discussions around sexuality; the absence of any mention of LGBTQ+ people in their documents, and indeed from their plans - except possibly from an advisory group that would be used at some stage (and which would have people chosen for age, class, churchmanship, gender, race & sexuality in it to give a real good mix). Well, it seems the February meeting of the Next Steps Group has tried to answer two of my questions: Thank you! Here’s the full text of the (brief) write-up of that meeting in mid-February on the LLF site (bold type where they go for my questions): The second meeting for 2021 of the LLF Next Steps Group was held on 10 February remotely via Zoom. In line with its decision to do the LLF Course together, the group spent the first part of the meeting engaging with Session 1, Learning Together. Following the decisio