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May 24th, 2006

Bishop abandoned in Africa with 20 curates

hospitality

I’ve refrained from commenting on Anglican goings-on for a while as it has all been a bit tedious and all the commenters here on the blog have been getting along so well it seemed a shame to post anything controversial. This story would be laughable if (a) it wasn’t so sad and (b) it didn’t involve a curate who is a friend of mine.

church teaMy local Bishop, the Bishop of Chelmsford, and 20 curates are on a trip to Kenya. It emerges that the Bishop has become the patron of ‘Changing Attitude’, a society about which the Kenyan hosts are uncomfortable. Upon discovering this the Kenyan bishop and church has ‘withdrawn it’s hospitality’ from the group, leaving them stranded in some hotel in the middle of no-one-quite-knows-where. Ruth Gledhill has covered the story in the Times and on her blog (and also, incidentally, her Blogger blog). The local ‘Anglican Mainstream’ group have issued a statement saying that he jolly well deserves to be stranded in an obscure hotel in Africa and that he shouldn’t have been so silly in the first place (paraphrase).

Background and sundry information:
Thinking Anglicans: what is going on in Kenya?
Thinking Anglicans: more about Kenya and Chelmsford
The Bishop of Chelmsford, Right Reverend John Gladwin
Changing Attitude – Home Page
Changing Attitude – Patrons
BBC NEWS | England | Essex | Gay support bishop’s Kenya snub

Update: Cartoon added.

Further Update:Second cartoon added. Ruth adds: “I am assured that it is only the programme that has been cancellled, and that the Anglican church in Kenya is making sure that the bishop and his wife and curates are all being looked after and cared for properly for the rest of their visit.”

This is a relief. It perhaps means that my first cartoon goes a bit far. But I’ll leave it up so that anyone who wants to complain has a full and adequate opportunity to do so.

9 Comments »



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9 Responses to “Bishop abandoned in Africa with 20 curates”


  1. Karin says:

    Yes, I just heard that on the news. It is a worrying development, especially on top of the goings on in Nigeria mentioned here http://freedom-bound.blogspot.com/

    May 24th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
  2. John Richardson says:

    The whole point is, surely, that John Gladwin did not go to Kenya as an enemy, but as a ‘friend’, whom the Kenyans then discovered wasn’t quite what they thought (otherwise the issue would surely have been addressed before the trip was set up). What I find odd is the number of people who seem to want to blame anything – Anglican Mainstream, the Kenyan press, ‘homophobia’ – except the actions of the bishop which precipitated the crisis in the middle of an inter-diocesan exchange. Given that a trip to one of the other ‘twin dioceses’, Trinidad and Tobago, was cancelled last year over this issue, wasn’t this outcome predictable in advance?

    May 24th, 2006 at 7:36 pm
  3. Dave says:

    Hi John. Thanks for your comment. You may be right. I have no access to background information about the Bishop and the rights and wrongs of what should have been discussed when. My cartoon was directed against the withdrawing of ‘hospitality’, which from news reports I thought meant somewhere to stay, food etc. If however it turns out that ‘withdrawing hospitality’ means that the bishop has been stopped from attending some official engagements then my cartoon is an overreaction to the situation and I shall go and sit on my own in a corner for a while.

    May 24th, 2006 at 8:03 pm
  4. J. C. Fisher says:

    “The whole point is, surely, that John Gladwin did not go to Kenya as an enemy, but as a ‘friend’, whom the Kenyans then discovered wasn’t quite what they thought”

    Is that how friendship is defined, then? “Being what we think”?

    “There is no greater love than this: that one lay down one’s life for one whom is what one thinks…”

    Doesn’t quite have the same ring, does it? ;-/

    May 24th, 2006 at 10:28 pm
  5. Augustus Meriwether says:

    [drags Dave out of the corner, unfortunately over-stretching his jumper sleeve]

    I don’t think the cartoon is an overreaction at all. In principle, the cancelling of an official itinery of engagements in this way, and for such a reason, is the same as declining to offer a visitor (whether enemy or friend) food or drink or any other form of hospitality.

    They are officially shunning the visitors: their brothers and sisters in Christ.

    They are being inhospitable, self-righteous, judgemental and downright rude. These things are not consonant with the principles you allude to in your cartoon.

    You should stand on a chair with a big cardboard star stuck to your chest with double-sided tape.

    May 25th, 2006 at 2:24 am
  6. Chris says:

    Hey, you missed out the burning coals bit!

    May 25th, 2006 at 8:34 am
  7. Richard says:

    Dave – a friend’s sister is one of the twenty curates ‘abandoned’ with the Bishop, and so we are naturally worried for them. There has been some contact and I understand that they are OK at the moment, but that the future and the way home are not clear to them.

    May 25th, 2006 at 10:24 am
  8. Paul says:

    If you read the reports in todays papers it makes it clear that the scheduled activities for the curates are progressing – its only the involvement of John Gladwin that has been curtailed.

    May 26th, 2006 at 5:40 pm
  9. Ron says:

    Hospitality interruptus…we surely have not as yet “heard it all”…but leave it to our selective literalist brethren to find an obscure law to back it up.

    June 8th, 2006 at 9:04 pm