In the UK there has recently been a flurry of interest in the Rt Rev’d and Rt Hon. Lord Carey of Clifton, PC’s new initiative to combat the “bullying” of Christians at work and in society. The poster-person for this is a person who was forbidden to wear a neckchain with a cross on it at work (she’s a nurse). Another person who worked for British Airways was sacked for refusing to remove a neckchain with a cross when on duty. According to Carey (the former Archbishop of Canterbury), along with such usual suspects as the Rt Rev’d Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester and the Rt Rev’d Peter Forster, the Bishop of Chester, this amounts to bullying of Christians in the workplace. Some would go so far as to defend the registrar in Islington who was sacked for refusing to conduct civil partnerships and the marriage counselor for Relate who could not bring himself to counsel same-sex couples in need of relationship counseling. (I apologise for using links to the Daily Mail, in which I would normally not even wrap fish.)
Now the British examples are relatively benign, in that very British way where we are enormously polite to each other in public. The alleged bullying or persecution of Christians seems, to me, to be a last-ditch attempt by those who have traditionally run things in the United Kingdom to preserve their special status and keep the right to discriminate for themselves, while denying that right to everyone else. Imagine the outcry if a Wiccan registrar refused to register the wedding of a devout Christian couple because of their attitudes towards Wiccans.
In any case, were the Rt Rev’d Lord Carey to win out, I wonder if this news item would be the result, translated to England. Would HWMBO and I be the targets of radical and violent Evangelical proselytising at home after having solemnised our civil partnership at Southwark registry office?
I have said (and continue to say) that ++Cantuar has a job I wouldn’t have for all the tea in China, because no matter what he does, there will be nasty critics.
When first appointed I was prepared to give him a lot of leeway when he wasn’t doing as much as I wish he would in re homos. That came to an end in 2007, with this story.
It was when HM Government was about to change regulations to insist that same-sex couples had equal rights in adoption matters to opposite-sex couples. Several religious organisations, particularly RC adoption agencies got their knickers quite twisted. They threatened to pick up their marbles and go home (aka close up shop) rather than place children in homo households. HM Government, to their great credit, called their bluff, and the regulations changed as proposed, and the agencies have I believe folded.
During the
kerfufflediscussion period when the changes to the regulations were pending, ++Cantuar and ++Ebor wrote an open letter supporting the RC viewpoint, that they should be able to opt-out of new rules on religious grounds. What the CofE types were saying right there in black-and-white was “we believe that it IS, indeed, acceptable to discriminate against homosexuals on religious grounds”. At that precise point, they lost me. I no longer defend them against charges of anti-homo bigotry(*), because that’s demonstrably what they are.Christians in England persecuted? poor babies. my sympathy is seriously limited.
(*)I’m not sure “bigotry” is the right word, because that has overtones of “unthinking”, and this attitude from Lambeth Palace was clearly well thought out.
[tangentially: it amuses me that the Wikipedia article on “bigotry” has two “See Also” links at the bottom: Purity, and Westboro Baptist Church]
I wouldn’t defend the C of E against bigotry charges or even anti-LGBT-discrimination charges, as they are demonstrably so (as you say). Luckily Carey is only one of a few voices crying about this, and our society yawns whenever religious subjects come up in the news.
If, as I expect, Nick Baines is the next ABC, then we’ll see quite a turnaround in this situation, as he is a skilled communicator who seems to have truly Christian attitudes about LGBTs (and lots of other people and situations as well).