{"id":34922,"date":"2025-08-11T16:34:54","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T16:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/church-will-not-comment-on-archbishop-sexuality-row\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T16:34:54","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T16:34:54","slug":"church-will-not-comment-on-archbishop-sexuality-row","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/church-will-not-comment-on-archbishop-sexuality-row\/","title":{"rendered":"Church will not comment on archbishop sexuality row"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-component=\"text-block\">\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">The Church in Wales has said it will not respond to criticim of Cherry Vann&#8217;s sexuality following her election as Archbishop of Wales.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">The Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (Gafcon), which represents conservative views, described her appointment as &#8220;another painful nail in the coffin of Anglican orthodoxy&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">A chaplain representing the LGBTQ+ community in Wales said they were &#8220;saddened&#8221; but not surprised by the statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">After her appointment, Bishop Vann, who became the first female and LGBTQ+ leader of the church in Wales, told the BBC the <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/ckgyzzw2051o\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 bGFWdi\">church should represent<\/a> &#8220;the diversity that is in our communities&#8221;. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-component=\"text-block\">\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">Reacting to her appointment, Dr Lauren Mbanda, chairman of Gafcon and Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Rwanda, said the church had &#8220;bowed to wordly pressure to subvert God&#8217;s good word&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">Gafcon was formed by conservative elements of the church following the appointment of <a target=\"_self\" href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk\/3751544.stm\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 bGFWdi\">Gene Robinson<\/a> as the first openly gay bishop in New Hampshire, in the US, in 2003. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">It issued the 2008 <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/blogs\/ni\/2008\/06\/gafcon_the_jerusalem_declarati.html\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 bGFWdi\">Jerusalem Declaration<\/a> in response to the theological and moral divisions within the Anglican communion. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">The statement rejects the blessing of same-sex unions and is critical of the consecration of bishops in a homosexual relationship saying that it &#8220;undermines the authority of scripture&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">Rev Canon Sarah Hildreth Osborn, chaplain for the LGBT+ community in the St Asaph Diocese, said she was not surprised &#8220;one iota&#8221; by the response from Gafcon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">&#8220;If they&#8217;d been welcoming I&#8217;d have been shocked. I&#8217;m saddened by the idea that, as a church, our choice under the guidance of God can be wrong,&#8221; she said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">&#8220;It&#8217;s a shame that people can&#8217;t see that other parts of the world, other cultures, other parts of the Anglican tradition will do things differently,&#8221; she said, adding that the church in Wales had &#8220;made a good choice&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">&#8220;To call another part of the church out in those terms, well who is nailing the nails in the coffin as it were?&#8221; she added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c9877211ny6o?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Church in Wales has said it will not respond to criticim of Cherry Vann&#8217;s sexuality following her election as Archbishop of Wales. The Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (Gafcon), which represents conservative views, described her appointment as &#8220;another painful nail in the coffin of Anglican orthodoxy&#8221;. A chaplain representing the LGBTQ+ community in Wales [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[6149,4966,8115,682,11361],"class_list":["post-34922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wales","tag-archbishop","tag-church","tag-comment","tag-row","tag-sexuality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34922"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34924,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34922\/revisions\/34924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}