Intolerant attitude (From The Bolton News)

Intolerant attitude

STEPHEN Crow complains (Letters, July 10) over the issue of gay bishops that "elements within the Church are making us (evangelicals) appear intolerant."

Not at all. What makes evangelicals appear intolerant in the present dispute is their attitude to those who do not share their conviction of what biblical teachings on human sexuality imply.

What evangelicals seem to be saying in the present dispute is that they have the indisputable truth about what the Christian line on human sexuality ought to be, and that anybody who takes a different view of scripture, or of human sexuality within the Church of England, is not fit to hold high office. That is a textbook illustration of intolerance, if not of Fascism.

I have been in the Church of England from the time I became a chorister at the age of nine. For the most part I have found that the Church of England was genuinely a Broad Church. Yes, there are gay vicars -- I know at least three. And yes, there are evangelicals, whose views I do not entirely share, though I value their right to hold them. What is distressing is the way in which evangelicals are attempting to exclude from high office anybody at all who does not fully partake in their view of Christianity. It is a recipe for schism, divisiveness.

There are probably more gay people in England now, than there are convinced Anglicans. The Church of England has to make up its mind whether it is prepared to come to terms with the human condition, or not.

Peter Johnston,

Kendal Road,

Bolton.