Keith Mascord ViaMedia.News The Wholly Unnecessary Split in the Anglican Communion: A View from ‘Down Under’
an anonymous member of the Church of England Surviving Church A View from the Rural Pew
Peter Sherlock Heresy 1: On the marriage of the clergy
Church Times Leader comment: Category error? What is, or isn’t, a safeguarding matter
Stephen Kuhrt Safeguarding the Institution The impact of ‘Captain Darlings’ on the Church of England
Good article from Keith Mascord, where once again, we learn that people change their tune once they have gotten to know real people at a relationship level. “They have, in fact, had their readings and understandings modified by encounters with equally capable female leaders and preachers and by the thoroughly natural and healthy lives of our LGBTIQ+ fellow citizens.” Especially good that, and all that follows in the author’s penultimate paragraph.
It is good to know Keith Mascord has moved on from his 19th Century view of Scripture. Sadly Sydney Anglicans remain stuck there. Ironically Sydney’s Pride March is one of the biggest in the world. Celebrated by “real people” with joy and happiness, it doesn’t affect the gloom and hatred spread by Sydney Anglicans who remain as miserable as ever.
Good article; but I don’t know much about the author. I note the extended by line reads: “He is an advocate, and a co-founder of the LGBTIQ+ support group – Equal Voices Australia. He traces his intellectual and spiritual journey in a now completed set of three books: A Restless Faith (2012), Faith without Fear (2016) and An Honest Faith (2025)”. Intellectual and moral conversion, especially in theology, interests me greatly. Judging by his book titles, they may speak to my area of interest. The only Australian scholar I know anything about is Lonergan scholar Neil Omerod. The theologian who almost wasn’t: Neil Ormerod | Melbourne… Read more »
We should be grateful to Keith Mascord, because his piece is certainly one of a Thinking Anglican whose courageous work is also eirenic. He writes of the Australian Gafcon leadership: “I sought to engage them with the ideas that are now expressed in this article. I was seeking to better understand their movement. Sadly, not one was willing to engage. Was it fear? Was it pride? Was I being cancelled?” Keith, bless you for trying! Keep on going; do not be discouraged, for in doing so you will “heap coals of fire on their heads”, and maybe, maybe one sinner… Read more »
Interesting little article here from The Melbourne Anglican on Mascord’s book, An Honest Faith in which “Mascord takes the reader through his personal journey from studying philosophy at university to being stripped of his right to officiate as a priest in the conservative Sydney Anglican diocese…”
https://tma.melbourneanglican.org.au/2025/08/an-honest-faith-should-we-question-the-resurrection/
Not by the ones I know. I have tickets for the Sydney Test, so will probably need a bit of cheering up!
You’ll be ok if you don’t go to Church.
Plenty of cheer in Sydney if you know where to look: try Christ Church St Laurence to see what Sydney could be (but generally isn’t). Splendid liturgy, music, and a very inclusive welcome. Refreshment in the desert…
Professor Sherlock refers us to Article 32. What this says is that clergy have the same freedom to marry as anyone else. But then the question must be ‘what freedom to marry do people in general have?’. And that is the point at issue. If we say ‘freedom to marry any consenting adult, regardless of sex’ then Article 32 ensures that this is something that the clergy are free to do in the Church of England. But if we say any of the three things that homophobes say Gay sex is an abomination, declared as such by God in scripture… Read more »
To be or not to be, that is the question.
I’m guessing the anonymous view from the rural pew is written by one of the retired clergy in the benefice. The situation sounds desperate but the church is reaping what it has sown. Clergy trained at evening classes are not likely to have the same priestly formation as those who have trained residentially for two or three years. I found that many clergy anticipated that they would become a ‘someone’ by being ordained. If you find that you are not considered to be officer material and only suitable for the jobs no one else wants there is every possibility of… Read more »
Stephen Kuhrt’s representation of the patronage wielded by bishops is spot on. I felt outnumbered by the Captain Darlings who were sent with good ideas about my ministry, a ministry they’d barely if at all experienced themselves. They often were as oleaginous as Captain Darling too. The only way to stay sane was to laugh at the more bird brain suggestions.
Concerning the rural pew, one would like to hear a voice from the other side of the aisle
Why does Mascord think an ancient like St Paul would have viewed the Genesis narrative of Genesis 2-3 as being literal? The creation accounts in Genesis 2 and Genesis 1 are quite different. For example, in Genesis 2 Adam is formed before the plants, but in Genesis 1 humanity is formed after the plants and all other creatures.
Paul must have realised the Genesis account is a figurative description of the connections between sin and death. Given that, I can’t see why GAFCON’s reading of Paul’s reading of Genesis would be unsettled by modern science.
Presumably Paul believed the Creation took six days.
Unlikely since in Romans 5 he quotes from Genesis 2-3 where the order of creation is different from that of the six day creation of Genesis 1, and given his comments in Romans 8 –
For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.
Oh I see. He’s a Darwinian . I wonder if he thought the world was round?
An interesting question. I believe that the Greek world had long since concluded from observation of (eg) the earth’s shadow on the moon that the earth was broadly spherical, and had calculated its diameter pretty accurately. (I suppose Ptolemaic cosmology does rather demand a spherical earth, come to think of it.) Meanwhile, if memory serves me correctly, the Mesopotamian cultures seemed still to adhere to a ‘flat earth’ model, despite their advanced computational skills. So, I guess the questions would be (a) how culturally Greek was Paul and (b) to what extent had the Hellenistic take-over of Palestine under the… Read more »
And Eratosthenes in the 3rd century BC estimated the circumference of the earth, with remarkable accuracy, based on the angles of shadows in two places at noon, and the distance between the places.
Remarkable understates just how remarkable it was. The method is brilliant. The full details are lost, and the version recorded in Cleomedes’ On the Circular Motions of the Celestial Bodies is simplified: amongst other things, Cleomedes doesn’t state (or doesn’t know) how Eratosthenes actually measured the angles. Eratosthenes’ estimate was 250 000 stadia, or fifty times the distance from Syene to Alexandria, but we don’t really know how long a stade actually was. His calculation is flawed in a bunch of ways he couldn’t fix: he doesn’t have an accurate distance for his baseline, he’s making assumptions about Syene being… Read more »
“…to whom we can all feel smugly superior…” Our knowledge is certainly superior. One suspects that ancient philosophers would have rejoiced to know what we know. The desire to know more correctly is characteristic of all honest thinkers, both ancient and modern. Always interesting to see how threads become a bit of a long and winding road. Reproduced below is what Mascord actually writes in his article. Concisely, Paul is using a kind of type/anti-type argument about the relationship between sin and death and salvation. Paul’s argument falls, not under the category of science but of that of biblical mythology.… Read more »
The employment tribunal judgement which leads to the Church Times leader referenced above is here. I am fascinated by tribunal judgements, so I have read all 85 pages of it.
All one can say, in general, is how so very very different is this to the home life of our own dear King.
It does show how safeguarding, particularly when it has poor definition and boundaries, can be weaponised by the manipulative.
Keith Mascord’s paragraph on hermeneutics catalogues briefly some of the critical issues one encounters. His question in the follow on paragraph on ‘plain sense reading’ is astute. “With respect to a plain sense reading, one could well ask, ‘Whose plain sense reading?’ ” . The issues go deeper. One can also ask about the underlying assumptions of the text world, and the need to read it now against the grain. Below is something of D.H. Lawrence. One wonders about the problem Christianity has with the whole notion of the human body. How about the following in an easter sermon? “Why… Read more »
Re: A view from the rural pew
I would like to hear from the incumbent. I wonder how she was received across the parish? What challenges has she faced? What types of support were provided by the local dean, archdeacon, bishop? What parish issues were they aware of? Were these shared with her? Did the outgoing incumbent provide handover? How is she, particularly when an article has been published which is highly critical of her?
It would be inappropriate for us to receive answers to many of these questions. I pose them, for reflection.