Unity over integrity

From today's Guardian leader -

Compromise is often necessary and rarely glorious; but the outcome of the meeting of Anglican primates, which has just ended in Tanzania, does not even have the merit of balance.[...I]n the face of all the challenges facing humankind, not least in Africa, primates spent five days obsessing about their attitude to gay sex. Religion and homosexuality have long enjoyed a close, if covert, relationship, but while much of the modern world has come to adopt an approach that supports an open understanding of gay and lesbian people, Anglicanism seems to have retreated from it.

Why should I stay in this farce? I'm a cradle Episcopalian. I'm also gay. It's not simple, but I choose to remain in the Episcopal Church to bear witness to the love of God and the inclusive gospel of Jesus Christ. I try to think of other liturgical, sacramental churches I could attend, and then I realise the rest are even worse off than TEC.

After the bombshell yesterday from Dar es Salaam, I read Libby Purves with my morning Whittard. I didn't know Ms Purves wrote for a Murdoch paper. I've been delighted for years by her broadcasts on BBC R4. She's just the kind of person who'd have sat down with the dinnerladies at my school, after the washing-up. --

Pray lift your eyes above the belt
The Churches’ sexual obsession makes me despair

At the conclusion of her commentary, she writes --

Let the Churches concentrate on condemning promiscuity, infidelity, exploitation, predation — whether gay or straight. Nobody asks them to go the full Gay Pride, bathhouse-culture route; but let them recognise kindness and mutual support as virtues, and bless all honest unions. Let them condemn proselytising from either side, making it clear that there is nothing cool or clever about random sexual tourism, any more than there is anything evil in being born gay. It just happens. Being gay can, without doing any violence to the Gospels, be accepted as a potential route to holiness.

It won’t be. They’ll squabble and fudge and cling to their hierarchies and their terrors, and some will scuttle to Rome and Rome will feel smug. And the rest of society will sigh and turn away, thinking that Christianity has nothing to offer.

She's a keeper alright. Three cheers for Libby. Go gurl!