“Bishops may have sealed their fate”
Jonathan Bartley of Ekklesia wonders if the bishops in the Lords have brought themselves a step closer to redundancy with last night’s vote on the Equality Bill and says ‘not in my name’!
The Church of England website makes the claim that the bishops in the Lords “are a voice for all people of faith”. Well I am a person of faith and they don’t speak for me. They weren’t speaking for gay people of faith tonight either, who will now legally not be considered for many church jobs or employment with many Christian organisations. Nor were they speaking for the Quakers, who recently backed civil partnerships, the Unitarians or some Jews, who all wanted the Equality Bill amended to permit religious symbols to be used in civil partnership ceremonies. They weren’t speaking for the religious groups involved in the Cutting Edge Consortium set up around the Equality Bill. In fact, one might fairly suggest that whilst they are prominent members of the Church of England, they weren’t speaking for any Christian who believes that the message of the Jesus means a warm welcome for all to join in and be included in the community of God.
So just who do bishops represent? Bishops must be male, from one part of the UK (not Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland) – a strange thing that even predates Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question. They must be from just one denomination, within just one faith.
On many issues they are divided and can not invariably be found voting as both ‘content’ and ‘not content’ on the same issues. It is often only when it comes to the interests of the institutional church that they suddenly seem to join together with one voice.
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/11101
The British Humanist Association has been working with sympathetic parliamentarians on the Equality Bill which gives “excessive privileges to religious groups to discriminate against not only gay and lesbian people but against the non-religious and those of other religions.” The BHA also campaigns against the bishops who stand as of a right in the House of Lords.
