Andrew Goddard’s Oxford Union speech on practicing gay bishops

Recently the Oxford Union debated the motion “This House believes that a homosexual lifestyle is no bar to becoming a Bishop.” Andrew Goddard of Wycliffe Hall spoke in opposition to the motion and spoke very well. I commend his speech to you.

The most interesting part of the speech to me was his quote from a gay atheist of all people, Matthew Parris:

Knowingly to appoint gay bishops robs Christianity of meaning. It is time that convinced Christians stopped trying to reconcile their spiritual beliefs with the modern age and understood that if one thing comes clearly through every account we have of Jesus’s teaching, it is that His followers are not urged to accommodate themselves to their age, but to the mind of God. When the row over the appointment of gay bishops first blew up I expected, being gay, to join the side of the Christian modernisers. But try as I do to summon up enthusiasm for my natural allies…passion fails me.

Why do so many church leaders not have that much sense?