abuse

Rethinking Christianity

Rethinking Christianity

Last Wednesday, 15 January 2025, two serendipitous events occurred. First, Thinking Anglicans listed just two opinion articles, one by Gilo for ViaMedia and one by me for Unadulterated Love. A conversation developed between us and others posting comments. The second event occurred later that morning. I came across the latest podcast by Sam Howsen, a conversation with Robert Thompson delving into the challenges facing the Church of England under a new Archbishop. Sam and Gilo are both contributing in their own very particular ways to living and imagining and exploring themselves and their life experience in the context of Christianity and I am a fellow traveller and seeker with them.

Makin, substitutionary atonement and the distortion of homosexual desire

Makin, substitutionary atonement and the distortion of homosexual desire

The toxic culture of prejudice and abuse affected by public school pathology and an addiction to substitutionary atonement theology advocated by conservative evangelicals is not going to be overcome until the Church of England Synod and in particular the House of Bishops and the Archbishops’ Council are shaken into a radically changed attitude in their understanding, teaching, practice, liturgy, doctrine and corporate life leading to a dramatic change in C of E culture and teaching.

The Podcast, the Archbishop, Makin, Resignation, and the Future

The Podcast, the Archbishop, Makin, Resignation, and the Future

A sequence of three events in the last three weeks has conspired to create turmoil in the Church of England resulting in a crisis that will be difficult to resolve. As a result of our contemporary inability to talk openly and honestly about the God we do and don’t believe in it may well be almost impossible to agree the appointment of a new Archbishop of Canterbury. The next Archbishop will need to have the most remarkable and combined gifts of courage, vision, prophecy, awareness and resolve.

The church’s problem with sex according to Diarmaid

The church’s problem with sex according to Diarmaid

A Sunday morning energised and enlivened by a new book by Diarmaid MacCulloch providing ammunition for someone campaigning for a healthy, fully inclusive church. Diarmaid MacCulloch has provided us, LGBTQIA+ people and allies, and the Church itself, with a new resource, a resource that is almost certainly more authoritative and healthy than the Living in Love and Faith book, an egregious book that panders to conservative evangelicals, he says. Diarmaid and the book, Lower Than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity, are the subjects of an article in today’s Observer Review where it is described as “an incendiary new book that challenges centuries of fakery, abuse and homophobia.”

The past, the present and the future Church of England

The past, the present and the future Church of England

I visit churches in the hope of finding inspiration and wisdom, of finding something, anything, that communicates the essence of Christian love, truth and faith as I have experienced and known it through earlier periods of my life. There have been notably few places where love, God’s unconditional, infinite, intimate love, is the first truth the church wants to communicate.

Changing Attitude – campaigning against the hostile, abusive, prejudiced and homophobic god of the CEEC

Changing Attitude – campaigning against the hostile, abusive, prejudiced and homophobic god of the CEEC

I haven’t lost my faith, but my trust in the experience of divine presence and love had been dramatically undermined by the relentless determination of conservative Christians to argue for belief in a God who, to me, is hostile, abusive, prejudiced and homophobic.

The Zone of Interest – ways of thinking about God

The Zone of Interest – ways of thinking about God

Conservatives claim that declining numbers in progressive congregations are the result of progressive, non-Biblical, non-orthodox, non-traditional, non-creedal formulations of Christianity. I claim that declining numbers are due to people abandoning the Church because people think traditional theologies are no longer believable.

Abusive unhealthy traditional Christianity, theology and practice

Abusive unhealthy traditional Christianity, theology and practice

Foundational Anglican Christian theology with its reliance on scripture, tradition and reason is responsible for creating and justifying a core theology, an edifice on which and within which abuse has been built. The edifice supports conservative Christian homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, racism, prejudice against other religions and cultures and particular categories of people.gy and culture that underpins abuse in the Church. Abuse has become systemic.