In Depth:  Church Times

Peter Tatchell, the veteran gay rights campaigner, was invited to speak at Liverpool Parish Church in late October. There he encouraged clergy to engage in civil disobedience by officiating at same-sex blessings and marriages.

He suggested that, in opposing same-sex marriages in church, the Anglican leadership was ‘echoing the past opposition’ to interracial marriages.

Nine men were ordained on 6 December as the first deacons and priests of the Anglican Mission in England (AMiE), the breakaway conservative evangelical movement that seeks to plant Anglican churches in England but outside the Church of England.

The nine were ordained by the Rt Revd Andy Lines at a service at a Baptist church, the East London Tabernacle.