Yesterday I was opining about the MU. Today I receive an invitation from another group which does good works.
Would I like to go to their open day in November? Well, yes, probably. I would quite like to see what they do.
Would I like to go to a celebration service that they’ve organised with one of the highest profile anti-gay Christians in the country as the preacher? Well, although the event is very close to where I live, thank you, but no.
Would I like to give them £60 as a Diamond donation to mark their 60th anniversary?
What do you think?
So, the SEC has a very vocal anti-sexual minorities movement? Is it small, medium or large? Well organized?
I would not describe the MU as a very vocal anti-sexual minorities movement David. I just would not regard it as a particularly inclusive movement either, for specific reasons that I’ve mentioned.
The MU does not exist to campaign against gay people or anyone else. It exists to support family life. I just don’t think that it has been as supportive to families with children coming out as it could have been in recent years and has not been as supportive as it once was.
You can read their Vision Statement online. You can see if you read it, why MU folk will feel very hurt at my suggestion that they have not supported some families as they might have done.
You would have thought that said group would at least have idea of your ethic, background, faith, etc before offering such an invitation.
The MU used to be quite reasonable about LGBT issues until a year or 2 back. That had some quite good articles and lit on parents supporting their LGBT children. But they went all conservative due to pressure from the global south where most of their members are. A pain, as I’ve been an MU member for 13 years! My vicar in London enrolled me ,when I was an innocent young curate!
John, many thanks for confirming what I’ve been saying about the MU, particularly as you are a member of it.
You would think from some of the correspondence that I have received about this that I was making it up. The fact is, the MU used to be a more inclusive organisation than it is now.
Pointing out that this is a matter for regret does not seem to me to be unreasonable. It is hardly a position that they can expect all of us working in congregations to applaud.
I agree. The day theology is decided by a majority vote is not a good one for reasoned theology. I wasn’t best pleased when it happened.
My question, good Revdo, was about the unnamed other group, the one inviting you to hear a high profile anti-LGBT speaker.
As to the MU, Trish Heywood’s comment, “I thought I had made my personal opinions clear when I was the leader of the MU in Scotland … It was more difficult to advertise my rather liberal attitude when I became the World President,” clangs precisely with the same irritating noise of one +Rowan Cantur.
Why does elevation to higher office seem to invariably involve devolution into an invertebrate life form?
Sorry I misunderstood David. The other group is not normally anti-gay either. I just regret their choice of speaker at a particular event. Indeed, I’m very surprised at it. I don’t think they would give a platform to a racist speaker and expect people like me to turn up and support them. However a well known anti-gay speaker seems to be acceptable to the group.
I don’t think anyone should be surprised that I’m not interested in attending or promoting the event to others.
In the midst of the debates about sexuality in the church there are quite a lot of people who offer support to gay folk in private but not in public.
I don’t understand it at all.
However it is not unknown to find characters who will go out and make homophobic attacks with their friends and then go cruising themselves when on their own. Perhaps that is similar, I don’t know, and I don’t really know how to respond to it.
I think you’ve responded in the best way anyone can Kelvin – by not delving into the hypocrisy and allowing your own integrity in this matter to speak volumes where others would keep silent.
As a side question – do we have any other groups in the SEC who have taken up the mantle of supporting those young people the MU seem to have left behind?
Fr Kelvin, as a proud Kiwi whose Anglican countrywomen ditched the MU and formed the Association of Anglican Women when MU was being unreasonable over divorced women and their families, is it not now the time to set up the first branch of FU – the Family Union – to thell the MU what we really think??
FU? That’d certainly tell them what we thought of them!
🙂