Dr John Sentamu, the archbishop of York, (pictured) has told David Cameron, the prime minister, not to legalize gay marriage*. He said (in an interview in the Telegraph this weekend): “Marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman ... I don’t think it is the role of the state to define what marriage is. It is set in tradition and history and you can’t just [change it] overnight, no matter how powerful you are ... We’ve seen dictators do it in different contexts and I don’t want to redefine very clear social structures that have been in existence for a long time and then overnight the state believes it could go in a particular way ... “
In the News
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January 30th, 2012
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January 30th, 2012he Most Reverend Dr Philip Boyce is the Catholic Lord Bishop of Raphoe. He preached a homily on 20th August 2011, entitled ‘To Trust in God’. His Grace reproduces it in its entirety, for the two sentences highlighted in bold have landed the Bishop in a bit of hot water.
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January 30th, 2012The Archbishop of York has come out in opposition to gay marriage weeks ahead of a Government consultation on the issue.
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January 30th, 2012A Norwegian court sentenced three people Monday for their roles in a plot to attack a Danish newspaper that published cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet Mohammed.
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January 30th, 2012Hundreds of members of the Yasmin Church (GKI) in Bogor staged a demonstration yesterday in front of the presidential palace in Jakarta, calling on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to stop the acts of discrimination and intimidation against them. GKI members also held their Sunday service in front of the palace.
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January 30th, 2012The “marriage equality movement”: that’s the name chosen for themselves by same-sex “marriage” supporters. The implicit argument is that the state’s granting marriage licenses only to opposite-sex couples is undue discrimination. The claim has an initial plausibility: the state grants a marriage license to John and Mary but not to Jim and Steve. Isn’t that unequal treatment? But this charge, I will show, rests on a profound confusion about both marriage and equality. A state’s recognition that marriage is only between a man and a woman is not unjust. What’s more, a state’s endorsement of same-sex “marriage” does create an arbitrary and invidious discrimination.
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January 30th, 2012'The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of a religion,” says Alain de Botton in the first sentence of this book, “is whether or not it is true.” Many believers will find this an unpromising start, but de Botton is not writing for them. His book is subtitled “A non-believer’s guide to the uses of religion”.
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January 30th, 2012Senior figures in the Church of England have supported a Christian counsellor who treated a gay man when he asked to be cured of his homosexuality.
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January 29th, 2012
A HOMILY delivered at Knock shrine by the Bishop of Raphoe, Philip Boyce, is being investigated by the Director of Public Prosecutions following a formal complaint by a leading humanist who claims the sermon was an incitement to hatred.
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January 29th, 2012If this is true, for the parties they are trying not to offend, anything short of Islam -- of professing that there is no god but Allah, and that Muhammad is his messenger -- would be "offensive." This is not making Christianity more palatable. It is de-Christianizing it. It is manufacturing yet another Christian heresy.