When being reminded of the deadline for my Anglican Update this month, I was asked, among other things, to stay off the already much reported topic of gay marriage. This, however, is actually quite hard to do.
One of the websites I regularly visit to get a ‘feel’ for what is going on in the Church of England is grandiosely titled ‘Thinking Anglicans’. It is resoundingly liberal in its theology and utterly persuaded of its own wisdom, but it is depressingly short on variety when it comes to content. Thus their coverage of the recent election of a new Archbishop of Sydney focussed ultimately on his attitude to women’s ordination and same-sex relations. But then that is true of the website as a whole, where these two issues provide the mainstay of news and comment.
However, this is not just a problem for outright liberals. The other website I dip into for a contrary view to my own is that of Fulcrum, the open evangelical group founded back in 2003. Here there is more interest in the wider Anglican Communion, but still the focal interests are the same. Indeed, earlier this year Fulcrum sponsored a conference in support of women bishops titled ‘Church in all its fullness’. The verbal parallel to Jesus’s offer of ‘life in all its fullness’ suggests, consciously or unconsciously, the status accorded to this issue.
