Ballad of Reading Gaol

“A prison wall was round us both, Two outcast men we were, The world had thrust us from its heart, And God from out his care.” A line from Oscar Wilde (‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’) helps us capture the isolationist pincer forces tearing up the Church of England.

A radically liberal group are seeking to redefine marriage and gender, disregarding history and tradition, so that book wisdom of various kinds (Biology textbooks, Book of Common Prayer and Bible) are disregarded.

A savage fundamentalist party, in polar opposition to the liberals, has left a trail of damaged lives or deaths. Lee Furney (see ‘soulinformation. org’) has exposed obscene bullying, cynically concealed within the Church of England’s evangelical wing. In just one parish alone, up to 27 adult victims have been identified, with evangelical ministry trainees an especially vulnerable group. The sheer scale, of the emerging Anglican adult abuse cover up problem, possibly resembles the child abuse crisis previously uncovered in Roman Catholicism.

“B rand” - o r- ” cha r ismat i c celebrity”-needed to be protected, even when the most horrendous scandals were uncovered. Lee Furney and others (often cast as “troublemakers”) have bravely taken on Archbishops and Bishops, to demand answers on the severity and scale of abuse, plus its cynically satanic cover up. Have evil senior leaders shown contempt for national law, Anglican Church rules and biblical principles of natural justice? Church members may be asking one very simple question, now of paramount

importance: do senior heads need to roll? James Hardy by email