Colin Coward
Changing Attitude, Human Connection and ...

There is something missing in the public conversation about human connection and community identified by Catharine Viner in a recent Guardian article. I observe that human connection and community are also missing in the Church of England. Discovering this essence would be a valuable outcome of changing attitudes, helping people develop lives well-lived and enriching all our lives, engaging with unadulterated love and living life in all its fulness.

Changing Attitude, Human Connection and Community and Unadulterated Love

Diocese of Southwark

The Diocese of Southwark – an archetypal story of flourishing and decline

The Diocese of Southwark – an archetypal story of flourishing and decline

This week, after nine months of searching, I found the WhatsApp Southwark Affirming Clergy: social and political organising. The group has a membership of one hundred and eighty-five clergy. It is exclusively for LGBTQI+ licensed clergy. I am not allowed to join. This is the culture of Southwark Diocese and the wider Church of England today. Why? Because the culture of the Church of England has become toxic, abusive and unsafe thanks to the failures of Living in Love and Faith, the Clergy Discipline Measure and the safeguarding process. Powerful Conservative forces in the Church have, in the space of less than thirty years, transformed the culture, tolerated by Archbishops and bishops desperate to ensure the survival of the Church.