I'm not sure what is meant by the statement above that "the explanation for all this" can be found in the statement by Chelmsford Anglican Mainstream. I can say categorically that they were completely surprised by Bishop John's decision to accept the offer to become a patron of Changing Attitude, which was announced in the church press here on Thursday. The story broke in the secular press in Kenya some time on Sunday, and a close examination of the newspaper reports suggests that the press got hold of it well before the Church authorities there. How this came to be, I don't know, but I can state categorically that CAM's involvement began only yesterday (Monday), after the situation had begun to develop.

From The Standard: "The story claimed that the bishop was the patron of a gay and lesbian lobby group in the UK and was in the country to preach at the Mbeere ACK diocese." "If the story were true, we would not have dared to step in any church in this country," [Canon]Mathews told the congregation."

Err, hadn't Bp Gladwin told Canon Mathews that he had just become a patron of Changing Attitude ? And that CA is a lobbying group for Gays and Lesbians that has the headline aim of "The day when the Anglican Churches fully accept, welcome and offer equality of opportunity to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people." ?

Bishop Gladwin has aligned himself as a key public supporter of a contentious cause - he can hardly be surprised if he is rejected in public by people who think that same-sex sex is a sin to be met by a call to repentence - not "full acceptance".

Public support would just be read as public support for his cause !

And I am hardly surprised that Kenyans are confused by statements about upholding the teachings of the Church of England (meaning "abiding by them while they are Canon Law" - rather than "believing they are true, good and right"). Of course they will such dissimilation as attempted deception.. The Truth is out there; and everyone can see it nowadays.

Perusing the Changing Attitude homepage I find no list of "patrons" and I must confess that the links given do little to enlighten me.

So what is this?

Slander? Truthiness? Angry congregationalists lobbying for lay "presidency"?

Can anyone knowlegable please inform me!

"Furthermore, we note that Bishop John is not alone in his patronage of ‘Changing Attitude’, and that the bishops of Wolverhampton, St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, Ripon and Leeds, Lincoln and Worcester are also listed as patrons. All of them seem thereby committed to taking the Church of England in a direction that would estrange it from the majority of the Anglican Communion and the worldwide Church."

Who's "estranging" whom?

This would seem to be the equivalent by "Anglican Mainstream" {*cough* Read as "Extreme" *cough*} to murder their parents, and then demand allowances because they're orphans... >:-/

The sequence of events leading up to the CAM Statement to which you refer started with an automatically generated Google Alert for "Church of England" which I received on Thursday the 18th listing a number of articles in the Church of England Newspaper. One of these concerned the minister in Cunmor who had resigned because he was considering entering a homosexual relationship, at the foot of which was a paragraph about +John Gladwin becoming a patron of 'Changing Attitude'. I wrote this up as an expanded article, which was posted, as might be expected, on the CAM website and was included in the update mailing to the CAM list that day (the 18th), although it is now listed as a story on the _21 May_ on the website. On the evening of Saturday 20th, I received another automatic Google Alert, this time for "Bishop of Chelmsford", with the link to the Kenya Daily Nation story. On Sunday evening, I posted the link to the story on the CAM website. As this was a "subscription only" service, however, and as I reckoned many of the list members would be too lazy to subscribe and read it (!), I also copied and pasted the whole story to the CAM mail list on the morning of Monday 22nd. However, I pointed out this was a one-off and in future they'd have to subscribe if they wanted to read anything else from this source. I found a second link later in the day on the main Anglican Mainstream website to the story in the Kenya Standard, which I similarly posted. Later, a third link came from somewhere to a similar story in Africa News. I think I did a Google News search to find that one. It seems clear to me that the Kenyan press indeed knew more than the Kenyan church - or perhaps had a different 'take' on similar material. However, the basic story the press picked up about the patronage issue was (a) true and (b) public domain. How they got hold of it, however, I have no idea.

"Public support would just be read as public support for his cause!"

Now, if this is not "guilt by association"... what is?

The patrons of Changing Attitude can be found on the web site by clicking on the plus next to 'About Changing Attitude', at the top left of the home page. In the list which opens, you will find patrons.

Just read an article on the Bishop of Chelmsford. What I continually fail to understand is the "doublespeak" we hear from people who are supposed speak with honesty. How is it possible to simultaneously claim to be committed to upholding the teaching of the church and at the same time be a patron of a group which exists to change it? Even the ABC with his great intelligence expects people to believe that he can support two positions at the same time, holding his personal beliefs but upholding Lambeth etc. Is it any surprise that the CofE has such a poor image in England? Look at the damage done to Tony Blair by claims of "spin" and "saying one thing but doing another" and we see that the public are not easily fooled by clever words. They want the truth and they have a right to expect truthful church leaders.

It is sad to see people in church leadership positions who are continuing to damage the gospel by holding positions which lack integrity and common sense.

There is a particular difficulty for the C of E, though, in that no one on either side believes in all of its official positions. If you think the Church is bound by the Lambeth resolutions, then it is also bound to listen carefully to gays and Lesbians, which may even involve talking to them. and being persuaded by them, or talking to people who do talk to them, or, if that's too horrible, talking to people who have talked, once to someone who was at school with a gay man -- etc.

Obviously, the "Global South" is not going to take any such risks, any more than their opponents are going to start believing that homosexuality is uniquely depraved. But don't let's pretend that either side upholds the agreed position of the church.

I must say, a most interesting article about Esther Mombo. I have just tried the Google search that the article referred to and I came up with interesting results. The ‘Men seeking Men Kenya’ search came up with 10.900.000 hits!, but already hit number three or four seemed to be irrelevant and around hit ten I ended up in Scotland! A "Men seeking Men Kenya" gave nothing at all and a "Men seeking Men in Kenya" search came back with 8 hits.

This is a very interesting piece of spin from the CA activists and worrying signs regarding the quality of some of the Anglican Community's theologians.

It ought to be pointed out that Ruth Gledhill has gone a bit overboard in saying that +Gladwin and his group have been abandoned in Kenya. In fact, the programme of activities for the curates is continuing, so it is only the Bishop's role which is affected by Nzimbi's ruling.

It is either naive or perfidious in the extreme for Bishop Gladwin, having taken up patronage of Changing Attitude, to go immediately to Kenya and expect all to be sweetness and light. Depending on your viewpoint rightly or wrongly, Kenya has already broken links with ECUSA, refused grants and money from ECUSA, and could only be accused of hypocrisy if they then hosted a Bishop who apparently shares the same agenda as ECUSA within the Anglican Communion.

So it's a page out of the Nigerian Book?

Kill the messenger.

But that is tantamount to saying that no-one can be part of the Church of England unless they are prepared to go along with the majority view - which of course means change will never happen.

This is actually the conservative agenda in any case, I simply wish people would all be a bit more honest.

Spot the difference:

a) believing something and having a respectful dialogue with others who disagree;

b) saying you believe something but also agreeing with those who completely contradict what you say you uphold.

The first option is a reasonable position. The second is daft, if not deceitful.

Spot the difference:
(1) Lambeth resolutions are advisory, and offered to the rest of the worldwide communion as consensus of that particular decade's Lambeth meeting;
(2) Lambeth resolutions are legislation, and represent the conformed position of all Anglicans believers worldwide, and can be prosecuted as such.

That is the Anglican definitional dilemma, which is finally a power dilemma. Queer life is just the easiest of the available wedge topics, because worldwide consensus is still negative enough to exploit rather nicely. If you wish to get a room full of conservative believers together, you can talk about the awful queer folks, and you will probably get everybody's attention, especially if you then go on to contrast the awful queer folks with the wonderful straight folks who still - bless 'em - love God with all their conservative minds, hearts, and money. Self-righteous conservatives who wouldn't be caught in public reading from a scandal sheet about how aliens landed in the backyard and married my mother-in-law, feel curiously bidden to preach scandal sheet sermons about the filth and danger of queer neighbors. Even when this is reduced to minimalist code - homosexuality is incompabtible with our reading of scripture - we all know of whence those sermons speak. One would be mistaken to imagine that all this could be settled, rather easily, by empirical knowledge of our queer neighbors, combined with common sense and that empathy that glues us all together as one humanity. But, alas, not.

If you press on the queer stuff, you get a whole laundry list of conservative realignment themes or Anglican wedge topics, loaded up with conformed ways to do everything in Christian life, from reading scripture, to science, to cultural mores and ways of life. (aka Split. aka Realignment. aka Holiness. Depending.) Now all of a sudden, bishops possess Apostolic stem cells from which all believers must simply be cloned. Others are declared non-viable, and jettisoned from this wide-eyed new conformity.

Quite a few lay people, priests, bishops, and even archbishops may get caught in this crossfire - sometimes people may fall as a result of what the military calls, friendly fire. Straddling any of the fences, meant to get higher and higher in the current realignment compaign until certain folks find themselves finally outside once and for all (and others inside); straddling fences is particularly risky these days. Although, to be plain about it, that is what some sections of the Lambeth resolution about listening to LGBTQ folks, as well as some sections of the Windsor Report, apparently aim to do. Even Canterbury says that overt violence against gay folks is anathema, while going to African conferences to say that nothing essential has changed. (Except the African right to hunt down gay people and kill them for God?)

Alas. Lord have mercy.

Merseymike has hit the nail on the head. There is no mechanism for the alternative in hardened dioceses of the absolutist homophobic extreme, and they freely create an alternative communion within offending inclusive dioceses. In moderate dioceses, cohabitation would possible, but the absolutists agenda is to "rescue" these dioceses from their sinful theological interpretations, and they protect themselves from corruption by forming an alternative communion until their prayers for absolutist reform are answered.

It reminds me of the Nuclear Disarmanent Party in Australia in the 1980s, when an organised group of souls nearly hijacked the whole party because they were naive babes in the wood who did not recognise the organised pack of wolves hunting to gain unchecked control of the agenda.

With all due respect, Nersen, even the former will be seen in the worst possible light by those at extremes. Here in the American context the American Civil Liberties Union (the dreaded ACLU) is regularly reviled by extreme political conservatives as "dangerously radical" despite the fact that through their history they have militantly represented people from across the spectrum. Failing to refuse to talk to "those wrong people" is seen as bias toward "those wrong people."

That said, Bishop Gladwin's timing seems inept. One could argue that perhaps he shouldn't have gone himself to avoid muddying the purpose of the visit with the controversy.

However, the worst aspect it this is, I think, that there are those who want to talk about nothing but sexuality. That is, there are those who cannot imagine meetings on one topic without those meetings reflecting a position on another topic. Surely there are opportunities for people to meet and discuss Topics A and B, on which they can work together, while not discussing Topic C, knowing they don't agree and can't work together, at least at this time. The media, of course, jump to what creates controversy, because it sells papers. But surely we, recognizing each other as within the Body of Christ, if not in the same member, can work together on ministry without lowering everything to a discussion of sex. Folks, let's get our minds out of the gutter!

"How is it possible to simultaneously claim to be committed to upholding the teaching of the church and at the same time be a patron of a group which exists to change it?"

In the same way one can be a pacifist, AND a military chaplain?

I have no idea what +Chelmsford's "opinions on The Issue" are. But it seems to be that being a "patron" to any Christian organization, is essentially a *pastoral position*. For any group of Christians, one may have differences of opinion---maybe w/ ALL their opinions.

...but that doesn't mean any group of Christians should be denied *ministry to* them.

Why is it so difficult to understand the difference?

To comment with J C Fisher:

It is absurd to suggest that a bishop cannot uphold the rules of the church(teaching stretches the point) while still providing pastoral, or even political, support for a position not currently in favor. The Kenyans have behaved horribly; why blame the victim?

Please note, I have not expressed any hardline view or prejudice against any group.....one or two responses have made some assumptions and revealed their prejudices.

Integrity matters a lot, obviously, and the public soon lose respect for double-minded positions even if some Anglicans love their “fudge” and semantics.
• What would you have thought of Robin Cook if he was against the Iraq war but stayed in his government job?
• Would it have strengthened or weakened his case if Wilberforce was a slave-owner while he campaigned against slavery?
There is integrity in campaigning against and official position but none in upholding that official position at the same time as campaigning against it…. at least in the real world, this is the case.

Tony Blair has suffered badly from accusations that he says one thing but does another and we should learn from his mistake rather than trying to claim Anglican leaders can continue to take a similar stance with any benefit for anyone – inside or out. The decline in many Anglican churches in the last hundred years is not going to be stemmed by more "Anglican fudge." Credibility, in the eyes of those outside has to be earned and it will not be earned by saying one thing and doing another.

As a somewhat progressive Christian I differ from the others in my parish on some of the creedal rhetoric. That said, we all know that we don't agree on some of the particulars but we still we are a vibrant, loving community. We focus the example Christ gave us and work to build the Kingdom of God. The world is never going to agree on everything so we should focus on what we agree on, something we have in common. People are dying in Darfur and other places. It seems to me that our attention is better focused on those needs than finding out who the homosexual is in your local parish and making him repent.

The shame of this situation is the inability of ++Nzimbi to see the common work of Christ that Chelmsford and the Kenyan diocese(s) could accomplish if given the chance.