Virginia Church Uses ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ to Create Message That Combats Divorce, Adultery and Pornography

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Virginia Church Uses ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ to Create Message That Combats Divorce, Adultery and Pornography

Christian Post report– A Virginia church is using the buzz over the wildly popular Fifty Shades of Grey book and movie to create a message that combats some of the themes found in the film.

Richmond Community Church in Glen Allen will address topics of adultery, divorce, co-habitation, pornography and gay marriage with a new sermon series titled “5 Shades of Grey” which will start the Sunday after Valentine’s Day.

“I want them to have a positive view of sexuality, but I want them to understand the dangers that are out there,” pastor Rick McDaniel told CBS 6 News.

The film “Fifty Shades of Grey” releases in theaters on Friday and tells the story of a college student who engages in an unorthodox tryst with a wealthy businessman that includes bondage.

McDaniel believes the movie portrays a lot of human interaction that wouldn’t be pleasing to the God of the Bible and hopes to piggy back off the film’s popularity while teaching his congregants more acceptable ways to view sex and love.

“What they get involved in would not be the kinds of things that I believe would please God,” McDaniel said about the relationship between the film’s two main characters.

He’s also alarmed by the high number presale ticket sales for “Fifty Shades of Grey” in the Southern Bible belt states.

“A lot of mothers and women are interested in it, erotica, whatever you want to call it, and that tells me there is something going on that needs to be addressed,” he said.

McDaniel and his church are not the only Christians to voice concern about the overwhelming popularity of the film.

Dr. Juli Slattery, who’s a clinical psychologist and co-author of a book that deals with some of the concepts presented to women in the film, titled Pulling Back the Shades: Erotica, Intimacy and the Longings of a Woman’s Heart feels that the movie is working toward a movement to normalize porn for women.

“There are a lot of people who won’t read, but will go see a movie,” Slattery told The Christian Post in July. “The fact that this movie is so mainstream and that it’s on ‘Good Morning America’ and all over social media means that [our culture] is normalizing pornography.”

She agrees that “Fifty Shades of Grey” shows sinful behavior with the hopes of normalizing it in American culture. Her nonprofit, Authentic Intimacy, fights to convey healthy messages of love and intimacy to women.

“At Authentic Intimacy we constantly hear from Christian women that are defending ‘Fifty Shades of Grey;’ they don’t see the problem with it,” she said. “Having read the book, not just the sexual content that’s included, but the fact that the F word is used over 100 times in each of three books, that there are spiritual themes that are very dark [in them]. When Christian women are engaging in them and not having the discernment that there’s something wrong [with them] there’s a huge negative effect.”

Source: Christian Post

 

Atheist Group May Sue Florida School Over Student’s ‘God Bless America’ Comment

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Atheist Group May Sue Florida School Over Student’s ‘God Bless America’ Comment

Christian Post report– A school district in Florida is considering a complaint sent by a Washington, D.C.-based atheist organization regarding a high school’s morning announcement including the phrase “God Bless America.”

The legal arm of the American Humanist Association recently sent a letter of complaint to Nassau County School District and Yulee High School on behalf of two students who took issue with the phrase “God bless America” being used on the school intercom.

Sharyl W. Wood, spokesperson for Nassau County School District, told The Christian Post that the school is reviewing the situation.

“The Superintendent of Schools is conducting a research process on this issue and will respond when prepared to do so,” said Wood.

Recently during the morning announcements at Yulee High a student over the intercom said: “God bless America.”

The reportedly improvised declaration prompted two students to contact the Appignani Humanist Legal Center, a division of the American Humanist Association.

On Monday, the legal center sent Nassau County Superintendent John L. Ruis and Yulee Principal Natasha Drake a letter of complaint.

Monica Miller of the legal center stated in the letter that “it is clear that the school district is in violation of the Establishment Clause.”

“As such, the school district and its officials may be sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for damages, an injunction, and attorneys’ fees,” wrote Miller.

“This letter serves as an official notice of the unconstitutional activity and demands that the school district terminate this and any similar illegal activity immediately.”

Miller also wrote that public schools are meant to be neutral on religious matters and having an official announcements with religious messages violates that neutrality.

In comments to local media and to CP, Wood of Nassau County explained that the student who said the “God bless America” comment was talked to for going off script for the announcements.

“If a student is reading the announcements over the PA system, the student should read the scripted announcements and not add any further comments,” said Wood.

“The student may then go out on the campus as an individual student and say ‘God bless America’ any time he wants.”

Sent to school officials Monday, the legal center gave Nassau County seven days to provide an official response. Failure to do so could lead to legal action against the school district.

Source: Christian Post

 

Yemen:Muslim Clashes Left 26 Dead

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Yemen:Muslim Clashes Left 26 Dead

Christian Today report– Tens of thousands of Yemenis demonstrated in several cities on Saturday against the rule of the Shi’ite Muslim Houthi movement as clashes between Houthis and Sunnis in a southern mountainous region left 26 dead.

It was the second day of nationwide demonstrations against the Iranian-backed Houthis in less than a week after their dissolution of parliament this month unraveled security and sent Western and Arab embassies packing.

Houthi gunmen fired on protesters in the central town of Ibb and wounded four, medics said.

Activists said they were enraged by the death on Saturday of Saleh al-Bashiri, who they say was detained by gunmen as they broke up an anti-Houthi protest in Sanaatwo weeks ago and was released to a hospital with signs of torture on his body on Thursday. There was no immediate comment from the Houthis.

Yemen’s upheaval has drawn international concern as it shares a long border with top world oil exporter Saudi Arabia. It is also fighting one of the most formidable branches of al Qaeda with the help of US drone strikes.

Heavy clashes between Houthi fighters and Sunni Muslim tribesmen fighting alongside al Qaeda militants in the rugged southern province of al-Bayda on Saturday killed 16 Houthi rebels along with 10 Sunni tribesmen and militants, security officials and tribal sources told Reuters.

Two weeks after the Houthis took formal control of the capital and continued an armed push southward, Yemen appears to be barely functioning as a state.

INTERNATIONAL PULLOUT

The United States, Western European countries, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey have closed their missions in Sanaa and withdrawn staff, citing security concerns.

Yemen’s rich Sunni Gulf Arab neighbors loathe the Houthi fighters and have called their rise to power a coup backed by Shi’ite Iran, Saudi Arabia’s main rival for power in the Gulf region.

Gulf foreign ministers on Saturday urged the United Nations Security Council to pass a “Chapter 7” resolution authorizing economic or military force to compel the Houthis to back down, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV said.

The Houthis say they are trying to drive out corrupt officials and avert economic ruin. They have dissolved parliament and set up their own ruling body earlier this month.

The Houthis’ advance from the north towards well-armed tribal regions in the east and south has led locals to make common cause with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, one of the deadliest arms of the global Sunni Muslim militant organization.

Source: Christian Today

 

Iraq:Priest Kidnapped by Islamists Returns to Home Country as Bishop

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Iraq:Priest Kidnapped by Islamists Returns to Home Country as Bishop

Catholic Herald report– An Iraqi priest who survived a traumatic kidnapping in his homeland is to return there as bishop.

Fr Basel Yaldo, a Chaldean Catholic priest who has spent the last nine years in Michigan, was installed as Auxiliary Bishop of Baghdad last Friday. The 44-year-old was one of two Chaldean priests from the Detroit area recently elevated by Pope Francis, along with 58-year-old auxiliary bishop Emanuel Shaleta, who will serve in Toronto.

Fr Basel was kidnapped by Islamists in 2006 and for three days was beaten, and continued to receive death threats until in 2007 he was transferred to Michigan, which has a large Chaldean population, where he has served at served at St George Chaldean Catholic Church in Shelby Township, north of Detroit.

Fr Basel told the Detroit Free Press that the kidnapping “brought me closer to God and strengthened my faith. It also pushed me to be more serious and be more involved. Virgin Mary was the one who helped me when I was kidnapped, and I’m sure she will help me in Iraq.”

Since the US-led invasion of 2003 between a half and two-thirds of Christians have fled the country, and last summer over 100,000 were forced out of the Nineveh Plains after the area was overrun by ISIS. Most are refugees in the Kurdish-controlled north of the country, while up to 4,000 Assyrian Christians have signed up to a new militia, the Nineveh Plains Protection Units, to take back their homeland.

Chaldean Catholics, who came back into Communion with Rome in the 16th century, are more likely to come from Iraq’s major cities, Baghdad and Mosul being home to large, thriving communities until the late 20th century.

Bishop Basel comes from Tel Keppe, formerly a Christian town of 40,000 people which was overrun by ISIS last August. Born in 1970, he entered seminary in 1994 and went to Rome two years later for his theological studies. He was ordained in 2002. He taught at a seminary in Dora, Baghdad, a heavily Christian area of the town that has seen some of the worst violence in the post-Saddam age.

Bishop Yaldo will serve under Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako. His goal, according to the Detroit Free Press, will be to “give people hope and to keep their faith alive”.

Source: Catholic Herald

Liberals Criticism about Obama’s National Prayer Breakfast Speech

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Liberals Criticism about Obama’s National Prayer Breakfast Speech

Christian Post report– Criticisms of President Barack Obama’s National Prayer Breakfast speech did not fall neatly along ideological lines. Some liberals criticized the speech while some conservatives defended it.

Here are three of the criticisms heard from liberals.

1. Comparing ISIS to the Crusades and Inquisition was outdated.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, conservative columnist David Brooks defended the speech while liberal MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell disagreed, arguing Obama made a mistake to talk about the Crusades.

“You don’t use ‘crusade,’ number one, in any context right now. It’s too fraught. And the week after a pilot is burned alive in a video shown, you don’t lean over backwards to be philosophical about the sins of the fathers, you have to deal with the issue that is in front of you or don’t deal with it at all when you talk about faith,” she said. Later she added, “you can’t really go back to 1095.”

Liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson made a similar point in a Monday op-ed.

“It should be noted, however, that the Spanish Inquisition took place 500 years ago and the First Crusade nearly 1,000 years ago. The world has changed a bit since then, as has the state of human knowledge. We understand, for example, that deadly epidemics are caused by germs — not by the failure to burn enough witches or slay enough infidels,” he wrote.

2. His history lesson was incomplete.

Robinson also criticized Obama for not telling the full story when he noted that slavery and Jim Crow were defended by Christians who claimed that their faith supported their views. While that was true, Robinson reminded that those who opposed slavery and Jim Crow were also often Christians inspired by their faith, such as William Wilberforce and Martin Luther King Jr.

“But it is also true that the abolitionist movement grew out of Christian belief and the Christian church,” he wrote. “… Long before the Civil War, the religious and moral argument had been won by the anti-slavery side. Perpetuating the horror was, for slave owners, essentially an economic imperative.”

And, “… the civil rights movement never could have triumphed without the Christian churches, both in the South and the North, which served as organizational nodes.”

3. He was patronizing and inartful.

Even though “historically accurate,” overall, Robinson found Obama’s remarks to be “glib, facile and patronizing.”

The part of the speech where Obama called for humility and said that Christians should not “get on our high horse,” “rings hollow,” he wrote, “coming from a leader who routinely sends missile-firing drones to blow suspected militants to bits.”

And comparing the current atrocities committed by ISIS to the Crusades and Inquisition was “patronizing in the extreme.”

Michael Wear, who worked in the Obama White House and ran the faith outreach effort for Obama’s 2012 campaign, was gentler in his criticism than Robinson, but argued that Obama’s remarks were “inartful.”

In a Monday appearance on MSNBC’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,” Wear said Obama should have delivered a more hopeful speech similar to his Cairo speech.

Obama should have said, “we have a reason to be hopeful even in the midst of this religious violence, because we have a history of Christians perverting their religion to justify slavery but then we also had Christians who stood up to take back the mantle of their religion to speak up for a God who crushes oppressors and frees slaves,” Wear remarked.

Source: Christian Post

 

Bible Proves The Existence of Unicorns, Says Expert

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Bible Proves The Existence of Unicorns, Says Expert

Christian Today report– Unicorns exist, and the Bible proves that they are not just mythical creatures found in fiction.

This was the position taken by Answers in Genesis, a creationist apologetics ministry that helps Christians defend their faith effectively.

In a recent post by Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell on the group’s website, she cited several Bible verses referring to the existence of the unicorn as a common animal like lambs, peacocks and lions (Job 39:12). She said that the passages refer to a single horned creature skipping like calves (Psalm 29:6), travelling like bullocks and bleeding when they die (Isaiah 24:7).

“The unicorn mentioned in the Bible was a powerful animal possessing one or two strong horns—not the fantasy animal that has been popularised in movies and books. Whatever it was, it is now likely extinct like many other animals. To think of the biblical unicorn as a fantasy animal is to demean God’s Word, which is true in every detail.”

Mitchell said that the existence of this magnificent creature is proof of God’s greatness and it would not have been referenced in the Bible if it did not actually exist in the past.

She further explained that men should not be surprised if there are no more unicorns now as extinction is a natural occurrence.

“The absence of a unicorn in the modern world should not cause us to doubt its past existence. (Think of the dodo bird. It does not exist today, but we do not doubt that it existed in the past.),” she wrote.

She also cited rock drawings and eyewitness accounts of “fierce, single-horned, equine-like animals.” In Edward Robinson’s Calmet’s Dictionary of the Holy Bible , there is a reference to “a single horn, directly in front, about as long as one’s arm, and at the base about as thick. . . . [It] had a sharp point; it was not attached to the bone of the forehead, but fixed only in the skin.

Mitchell explained that the unicorn’s identity may cause some confusion as the text could not conclusively say how many horns the animal had as the King James version only referred to them as “wild ox”. Luther’s German Bible referred to the creatures as the Septuagint while the Latin Vulgate cited a “one-horned animal.”

 

Bible Retreat Centre to be Established in Ghana

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Bible Retreat Centre to be Established in Ghana

Christian Today report– A Bible retreat centre may soon be realised in Kitase which will give Christians a conducive venue to meditate and communicate with God. But while plans have already been set, there is still a need to collect funds to assure its completion.

Rev. Erasmus Odonkor, who serves as the General Secretary of the Bible Society in Ghana said that the contractor is now starting clearing operations to prepare the land for the three phase project, which entails the construction of an administrative block, matron’s accommodation, hostel, church and pastor chalets.

The ambitious project is part of the BSG’s flagship programmes for the celebration of its golden jubilee anniversary in Ghana.

As of now, a five-member project steering committee has been formed as well as another five-man tehnical team to ensure that the project progresses smoothly. The Business Plan is already in its final stages while the detailed architectural and structural drawings have already been completed.

However, Odonkor is appealing to benefactors, philantrophists and generous Christians to extend their contributions to fund the project as the BSG is a non profit Christian organisation which only relies on the support of donations sourced locally and internationally to implement its projects.

He said that investing in this project is the organisation’s way of “broadening its services and make income to further support its operations.”

Meanwhile, Rev. Professor Emmanuel Asante, President of the BSG extended his gratitude to those who have supported the organisation for the past five decades.

Among the organisation’s past projects were activities aimed at making God’s word “available and affordable and encouraging its use.” It has held Bible studies, National Council meetings, translation seminars, Bible themed competitions and Days of Prayer. It also has ongoing campaigns to provide youth and soldiers with Bibles, helping people with AIDS and providing audio scriptures for people who cannot read to educate them on God’s word.

The construction of the Bible retreat centre is the biggest project so far and provides the group with an avenue to conduct its activities.

Asante said he is calling for a revolution against sin by setting aside a day for the celebration of the Bible, where Christians across the country would hold programmes focusing on the Bible to create awareness of the word of God.

Source: Christian Today

Museum of the Bible Construction Begins

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Museum of the Bible Construction Begins

Christian Post report– Construction has officially begun on the Museum of the Bible, a longtime project spearheaded by Hobby Lobby President Steve Green, which is scheduled to open in Washington, D.C. in 2017.

“In many respects this is the kickoff of a three year project. We’ve been working on it for two years, this is the first time that anything major will be exposed to the public,” Cary Summers, president of the Museum of the Bible, said Thursday flanked by artistic renderings of the 430,000-square-foot-building.

“Hopefully, it will be a great addition to this city. As you know, Washington, D.C. is the capital of museums in the world.”

Creating a Museum

For years, Hobby Lobby President Green has been looking to create a museum focused on the history, stories, and narrative of the Bible.

A collector of numerous valued biblical artifacts, Green eventually purchased a facility in the nation’s capital back in 2012.

According to the museum’s fact sheet, once completed the Museum of the Bible will include eight floors and a basement that will house more than 500 biblical texts and artifacts; one rooftop biblical garden; permanent exhibits on the history, impact and narrative of the Bible; libraries and museum galleries; and will be open to 60 seminaries and universities worldwide whose students will be conducting research on the Green family’s collection.

In an interview with The Christian Post, Summers explained that the local response to the work at the site has intentionally been “low key.”

“It’s been very low-key only because we have not really exposed much. Inside the building there is a tremendous amount of construction going on,” said Summers.

“Floors are being removed. So what you see and hear inside is multi times this. So it’s been rather quiet and that is exactly what we would hope at this stage.”

Summers also explained that once completed, they expct to see tour groups from public, private and homeschool groups, based off of their experiences with the traveling exhibition of biblical artifacts destined for the museum.

“Primarily private school groups and homeschoolers, but also we’ve entertained numerous universities throughout the world as we’ve traveled,” said Summers. “Some, especially overseas, public and private, have come.”

Creating a Bible Education

The Museum of the Bible isn’t the only endeavor the Green family has undertaken to advance people’s knowledge about the Bible.

Via the Green Scholars Initiative, the owners of Hobby Lobby have also developed an elective curriculum for public schools about the history and themes of the Good Book.

Initially the course in question was going to be introduced in Mustang Public School District in the Greens’ home state of Oklahoma.

However, concern from groups like Americans United for Separation of Church and State prompted the school district to backtrack on the implementation of the elective course.

Steve Green, who was present for the press conference, told CP that the elective course developed for schools and the museum overlapped in their information.

“It just seems to make sense because of the scholarship that we have, the artifacts that we have, the museum that we have, that we develop that into a curriculum that basically teaches what the museum displays,” said Green. “That is a venture that we’re working on as well.”

Located within a block of Federal Center Metro Station and two blocks from the Air and Space Museum, the Museum of the Bible is slated to open in November 2017.

 

 

 

(Christian Post)
(Christian Post)

 

Cincinnati Archbishop Describes Fifty Shades of Grey as an Assault on Christian Marriage

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Cincinnati Archbishop Describes Fifty Shades of Grey as an Assault on Christian Marriage

Christian Today report– Adding to the growing clamour and criticism against the controversial film, a Cincinnati Bishop is calling on Americans to boycott the film, describing it as an assault on the sacrament of marriage.

According to the Christian Post, Archbishop Dennis Schnurr has asked his parishioners not to go and see the film, which opened in US theatres on Friday.

“This movie is in direct contrast to the Christian message of God’s design for self-giving and self-sacrificing love, marriage and sexual intimacy,” the Archbishop warned his flock. “The movie is a direct assault on Christian marriage and on the moral and spiritual strength of God’s people.”

The Archbishop then expressed the need for an information and awareness campaign to warn people about the “destructive” message that the film promotes and to highlight “highlight the beauty of God’s design for loving relationships between a husband and wife in the bond of marriage.”

The film, which is based on the 2011 novel by EL James, tells the story of businessman Christian Grey and college student Anastacia Steele. In the novel and the film, the two characters are engaged in a sexual relationship that involves domination, sadism and bondage.

The film’s premise garnered criticisms from both religious and secular groups. A coalition comprising of news organisation LifeSiteNews, the groups National Center on Sexual Exploitation and the Family Research Council, and the website Counter Cultured spoke out this week against the film and also called for a boycott.

“The film sets a particularly dangerous example for younger viewers, who may not understand that attractive, charismatic young billionaire Christian Grey is also an abusive sociopath, especially since victim/narrator Anastasia Steele continually describes and portrays him as a god,” the group’s joint statement said.

The group also criticised NBC for capitalising on Valentine’s Day, noting that the relationship between the two characters is “anything but caring or loving.”

The film is the first of a planned trilogy of films based on EL James’ popular but controversial series of novels.

Source: Christian Today

Church of England to Start Sexuality Talks

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Church of England to Start Sexuality Talks

Christian Today report– The Church of England is to begin talks on whether to authorise prayers to mark same-sex relationships.

The question is raised in the resources published this week to go with the “shared conversations” on sexuality which are about to enter their second stage.

The “second circle” of the shared conversations, set up last year in an attempt to resolve the Church’s crisis over sexuality, will begin regionally in April. The dioceses will meet in 13 “clusters” of between three and five dioceses at venues across England between April this year and March next year.

The groups will consist of gay and straight clergy and laity.

One of the questions the groups are being asked to consider is: “Should the church offer prayers to mark the formation of a faithful, permanent, same sex relationship? If so, what is the right level of formal provision that should be made?”

A further question asks: “More specifically, given that same sex marriages are now taking place, what should our pastoral and missional response be to married same sex couples who seek to be part of the life of our church locally?”

The Church of England’s position has traditionally been that, whatever their faith, a couple is entitled to be married in the parish church of either, although marriage after divorce is less straightforward.

When same-sex marriage became legal in Britain last year, the Church of England, which opposed the legislation, won “protection” in law for itself from ever having to perform one.

This means that some couples who are legally entitled to marry cannot now do so in their own parish Church, even if they are practising Christians and have been churchgoers all their lives.

One of the difficulties for the Church of England is the consequences of a change of mind for the wider Anglican Communion, of which it is the “mother” church. Some Anglican provinces function in countries where homosexuality is illegal and carries serious penalties.

The questions in the conversations also ask: “How might parish churches in England reflect upon the responsibilities of being part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, in ways which remain true to their vocation to witness to God effectively in their local context?”

Those taking part are being asked to consider whether the concept of “pastoral accommodation” might help Anglicans to honour the consciences of fellow Christians while recognising that the church’s present teaching on sexuality has not changed.

In a paper put forward for the conversations arguing for the traditional, Biblical position, Dr Ian Paul, honorary assistant professor at Nottingham university, concludes: “It has been claimed that the biblical texts do not speak to our current context, since they show no knowledge of stable, same-sex, committed relations. But this is not the case; we know from other ancient texts that same-sex relations took a variety of forms. Though unequal, pederastic relations were the most common, equal partnerships akin to same-sex marriage were not unknown.

“It would therefore be more accurate to say that the biblical texts show no interest in the form that same-sex relations take. Scripture rejects the notion of ‘orientation’ as of defining significance in human identity, instead putting the binary identity of gender at the centre of its theological anthropology.”

In another paper, Canon Loveday Alexander, emeritus professor of Biblical studies at Sheffield university, says just “walking away” from the Bible is not an option for himself or the Church. “We can’t just abandon this text which has nourished the life of faith for two millennia. I can’t turn my back on a text which has sustained and informed my own faith for as long as I can remember. We have to stay with the Bible — but we have to find a way of making sense of it, in a world that is very different from the world (or rather worlds) in which it was written.”

But Dr Philip Groves, of the Anglican Communion, says in a third paper that the answer is not in choosing one option over another, or in finding a compromise that holds the strengths and weaknesses of each option in tension. “The answer is to aim for both.”

He concludes: “The radical step asked of the Church of England in deciding to enter into good disagreement is to find the energy for this mission. It is about reconnecting with society and discovering faithfulness. It is about relevance and identity. It will be hard, but it will be rewarding.

“The process will need to reflect theological diversity and to do this it will need to develop trust and relationships between unlike people so that the Scriptures and traditions of the Church can be properly examined and ways of faithfulness emerge.

“The time has come for good disagreement.”

Jayne Ozanne, director of Accepting Evangelicals, who recently “came out” as gay in an interview with Christian Today, welcomed the publication of the “conversations” timetable and resources.

She said the key was to accept there were different ways of reading Scripture. “What we are looking at is creating that middle space of accepting, as we have done with other issues, that there is an integrity to someone’s faith if they hold a different view on this.”

She said it was critical for the Church to create forums where people of different views could engage “safely” with each other.

“For me, Jesus embodied grace and truth. It is about grace, and understanding the hurt of those who hold a different point of view. For too long this has been a hot issue, a theological debate which has been a battle of words.

“When you embody these words in experience and personal testimony as we see Jesus did, I believe they take on a new meaning and authority.”

The conversations were just the start.

She called for reassurances of a “safe space” for all those taking part, including the suspension of any disciplinary measures against clergy. There are fears that clergy who share things in the conversations that might technically be against the rules, such as experience of a gay physical relationship, could be vulnerable to disciplinary action.

Ms Ozanne said: “For some, their very livelihoods are on the line. Words can never be unspoken. It is absolutely crucial that we look to our bishops to accept a moratorium on clergy discipline throughout these two years.”

Source: Christian Today

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