A great letter from Gavin Ashenden

I have been so impressed by a letter to The Times today that I felt the need to publish it here:
"Sir, 

Ruth Gledhill may be right when she observes that liberal Christian expectations of the Archbishop of Canterbury may be disappointed, but the reasons she adduces do not do the complex competing priorities justice (“Dreams of Church liberals are almost dead”, Dec 7).

Whatever rhetorical capital can be gained at the Archbishop’s expense, no one believes that any public gesture of his against the Ugandan Government’s legislative programme, obscene as it is, will have any effect; his office says he has been working discreetly out of the public gaze.

But why might the Archbishop have muzzled his own personal sympathies for the liberal Episcopalian project in America? There are still questions to be asked of our cultural preoccupation with defining ourselves by our sexual attractions and appetites. Many, perhaps most Anglicans throughout the world, are not convinced the insistence of a small community of American Episcopalians to make sexual preference their defining critique of Christianity and the Church. Critics of the Americans believe they may be replacing the call to deny the self, embrace sacrifice and follow Christ for a spiritualised version of the secular penchant for self-expression, posing as human rights.

The Episcopalians have been asked to exercise some restraint in their cultural reflexes in order to achieve the greater goal of Christian unity. Neither romantic love, nor sexual companionship, are given priority in the Gospel or Christian tradition. There are abuses of human rights in the world that a united Church, not just across the Anglican Communion but extended to the Catholics and the Orthodox, might be better placed to give its energies to; and even more importantly, Christ commanded this unity of self-denying humility.

Dr Rowan Williams has not added to the confusion about which minority to offer support for; he is acting as a bishop who has responsibility for the unity that Christ made his first priority for practising Christians.

The Rev Canon Dr Gavin Ashenden

Steyning, W Sussex"

Says everything I was about to post (but betterer)