The Inclusive Church will always have an uncomfortable edge as it remains open to the outcast, leper & those deemed ‘unrighteous’ on the edges of our Church. May God give us grace to see with the eyes of faith & listen with our hearts, and not just with our pre-conceptions.

Dana – we have to find a way to make sure that this issue doesn’t just disappear, while at the same time avoiding provoking WW3 between those who hold extreme views on either side.

Another observation. A friend of mine maintains that the sexuality debate and the debate over women’s orders are precisely the wrong way round, in that the sexuality debate is argued in terms of theology and biblical analysis when it is actually an argument about equality, and the debate over women’s orders is argued in terms of equality when it is actually an argument about theology and biblical interpretation. I’m not necessarily convinced he’s right, but it’s an interesting way of looking at things.

But why does offering a home to disaffected ministers bring the universal church into disrepute? Maybe it does if this gesture is seen in the context of power play politics, which it never struck me as. But then I am not in the thick of it, hearing the buzz and gossip in hallowed halls, so maybe I would not pick up on that.

Plus, despite my cultivated cynism there is still a little lad inside me who looks up to authority and says, “But they wouldn’t do that, would they?”