The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend and Right Honorable Justin Welby, has "apologised" to the LGBTI community for continuing to throw them under the bus in the interests of Anglican unity
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It feels very strange as an atheist to be wishing fervently that the Archbishop of Canterbury would pay more attention to the Christian virtues of righteousness and repentance.
Yes, that's exactly how I felt about it. Or if not those values, Christ (so far as we know) always sided with individuals against big institutions. This was a decision choosing to throw LGBT* folk under the bus because the institution of the church is more important than the victims.
If you read his BBC interview carefully, he neither gives his own view (indeed kind of denies that he's eligible to have one), nor apologises for anything. He just said that he was sorry about the hurt caused in the past - not that he regrets directly causing more of the same in the future. This doesn't resemble the Christianity I was taught at school.
(It didn't take, and I'm an atheist, but apart from being interested in the C of E's political power, it's enraging to see someone acknowledging hurt while weaselling out of acknowledging having any responsibility for it.)
Oh, I like that as a model, thank you. It's quite close to the one I was taught around repentance - although it lacks a bit on making amends to my mind. Obviously, you can't un-break the toy / un-punch them / edit your institutionalised homophobia out with a time machine, but you can seek to try to make it up to them in an appropriate way. Though this gets in to atonement and I'm not sure that's a terribly helpful concept in interpersonal relationships ...
Christianity is pretty much impossible to practice in full but you wouldn't be the only thinking atheist who takes it seriously enough to expect minimal standards from the ABC
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Yes, that's exactly how I felt about it. Or if not those values, Christ (so far as we know) always sided with individuals against big institutions. This was a decision choosing to throw LGBT* folk under the bus because the institution of the church is more important than the victims.
If you read his BBC interview carefully, he neither gives his own view (indeed kind of denies that he's eligible to have one), nor apologises for anything. He just said that he was sorry about the hurt caused in the past - not that he regrets directly causing more of the same in the future. This doesn't resemble the Christianity I was taught at school.
(It didn't take, and I'm an atheist, but apart from being interested in the C of E's political power, it's enraging to see someone acknowledging hurt while weaselling out of acknowledging having any responsibility for it.)
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