Going in the wrong direction

http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/2008/06/30/going-in-the-wrong-direction/

[Anglican Mainstream] 30.06.08--A leader in the renewal movement of the Episcopal Church has informed me that a one-sided book on the homosexuality issue may have been sent to all Episcopal (and Anglican?) bishops as ‘preparation’ for the upcoming 2008 Lambeth Conference. The book is entitled Other Voices, Other Worlds: The Global Church Speaks Out on Homosexuality (edited by Terry Brown and published in 2006 by Church Publishing in New York). In the leader’s words, sending out the book may have been part of a broader strategy of the radical left to ‘persuade those who go [to Lambeth] that [the left’s stance on homosexual practice is] reasonable and centrist and not way on the left.’ The book contains a 16-page essay by a scholar-cleric by the name of David Atkinson entitled, ‘The Church of England and Homosexuality: How Did We Get Here? Where Do We Go Now?’ (pp. 298-313). Since Atkinson’s article contains a brief critique of my first book, The Bible and Homosexual Practice (Abingdon, 2001), the leader mentioned above asked me to comment on the critique. I did more than I originally planned on doing, offering not only a response to Atkinson’s comments on my work but also a response to the article as a whole.

Atkinson is an interesting case in that he is an evangelical (or at least used to be) who once wrote a book against homosexual practice but since the mid-1990s has adopted a position that at least seeks to accommodate committed homosexual unions. He was formerly a Fellow and Lecturer in Theology at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he taught Christian ethics and psychology of religion, as well as a visiting lecturer in pastoral theology at Wycliffe Hall. Over a decade ago he published some Old Testament commentaries with a pastoral bent for Intervarsity Press’s series The Bible Speaks. Since 2001 he has been Suffragan Bishop of Thetford in the Diocese of Norwich (England).