Gavin Ashenden on the Philip North Affair

Studies and other responsibilities continue to restrain my blogging.  But I must direct your attention to two excellent posts on the Philip North withdrawal and its aftermath from Rev. Dr. Gavin Ashenden, former Chaplain to the Queen.  The Ashes of Cranmer has graciously hosted both posts here and here.

A segment from the second post stands out.  I will excerpt it and run:

The three-card trick that Professor Percy [The Dean of Christ Church Oxford who led the attack on North] and his cultural fellow-travellers play is to refuse to exclude anyone except those who don’t agree with them. You only get to be included in the equality stakes once you have accepted their moral and political presuppositions. So, of course, they do actually discriminate between anyone who shares their basic world view and those who don’t.

They pretend they are relativists by claiming that all views are equally legitimate, but become absolutists if you challenge their relativism. In other words, their ideas of equality and relativism are actually practised by placing their value above those who disagree with them, and discriminating against anyone who has the audacity and moral turpitude to dissent.

Meanwhile, they claim the higher moral ground by pretending to be something that they are not – outlawing discrimination while practising it.

This is, of course, hypocrisy – that is, saying one thing while doing another.

What happens when the hypocrisy is challenged, as with the attempt to include a bishop who embodies an older more traditional view in an inclusive non-discriminatory Church?

Well, we just saw what happens, haven’t we?

And, yes, Justin Welby is still silent about it.