Gay cleric ‘just missed out on bishop role’
A LEADING gay cleric narrowly missed out on becoming the Bishop of Llandaff after he failed to gain two thirds of the votes in a Church in Wales election, reports have suggested.
The Very Reverend Jeffrey John, who was born in Tonyrefail, near Pontypridd, has previously been turned down twice for senior roles because of his sexuality.
According to the magazine Christian Today, the 64-year-old won more than half of a Church in Wales electoral college, but fell short of the two-thirds majority required. Dr John’s failure to win election was linked to his long-term civil partnership with Grant Holmes, another Anglican priest, it has been suggested.
Last month, the electoral body of 47 people, made up of locals from the diocese, bishops and the official nomination committee, failed to agree on a candidate. The final decision will be down to senior bishops, despite Dr John winning strong support among electors in the mainly Anglo-Catholic region of Llandaff.
Neither the Church in Wales nor the Church of England are opposed to clergy being in civil partnerships. The Church of England requests that clergy in civil partnerships vow to remain sexually chaste, but the Church in Wales has no such restriction.
Dr John is currently the Dean of St Albans. In 2003 he was nominated to be Bishop of Reading, but was forced to withdraw after anti-gay “traditionalists” said they would not accept him as bishop.
In 2008, he was mooted as the new Bishop of Bangor and in 2010 as the Bishop of Southwark, but on both occasions he was turned down.
Christian Today states: “Dr John’s latest rejection to be Bishop of Llandaff is particularly striking because of the strong support he received among local clergy and parishioners in the largely liberal diocese.”
The recently retired Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, used his final address to urge the Church to rethink its stance on LGBT couples. He said supporting gay marriage did not mean “abandoning the Bible”.
Dr Morgan said Biblical texts used to condemn homosexuality could be “interpreted in more than one way” and read as a whole it was impossible to say there is “one settled understanding of what the Bible says”.
He said: “What all this amounts to is that one cannot argue that there is one accepted traditional way of interpreting scripture that is true and orthodox and all else is modern revisionism, culturally conditioned... so taking the Bible as a whole and taking what it says very seriously may lead us into a very different view of same-sex relationships than the one traditionally upheld by the Church.”
He added: “We are not thereby abandoning the Bible but trying to interpret it in a way that is consistent with the main thrust of the ministry of Jesus, who went out of His way to minister to those who were excluded, marginalised and abandoned by his society because they were regarded as impure and unholy by the religious leaders of his day, either because of their gender, age, morality or sexuality.”
The Church in Wales has apologised for its mistreatment of gay and lesbian people and has indicated it could allow or bless same-sex marriages in the future. It will not comment on the election.