Members of The College of Deans have responded to the new proposals following the Living in Love and Faith project.
Read their response in full here.
“Cathedrals serve all the church and community and often have track records of being safer places for LGBT+ people in a church that can be poor at radical Christian inclusion. We recognise change has been too slow and that perfection can be the enemy of the good. Therefore, we generally welcome the new proposals from the College of Bishops following LLF. Cathedrals will look forward to officially offering services using ‘Prayers for love and Faith’ with gay and lesbian couples.
Many of us still yearn to go further and to be able to offer equal marriage services. We recognise this is a legitimate hope about which there need be no unhealthy conspiracy of silence whilst others will disagree with that hope. We also recognise that dismantling homophobia is not a quick or painless task in our cathedrals and so we commit to taking the words of apology from our bishops and turning them into local actions that will address harm caused to so many siblings in Christ.
Yours sincerely
David Monteith (Canterbury and Chair of the College of Deans), Rogers Govender (Manchester), Abi Thompson (Sheffield), Dominic Barrington (York), Simon Robinson (Acting Truro), Mandy Ford (Bristol), Jo Kelly-Moore (St Albans), Tim Stratford (Chester), Christine Wilson (Lincoln), Joe Hawes (St Edmundsbury), Jonathan Greener (Exeter), Peter Atkinson (Worcester), Simon Cowling (Wakefield), Matt Thompson (Birmingham), Dianna Gwilliams (Guildford), Anthony Cane (Portsmouth), Catherine Ogle (Winchester), Mark Bonney (Ely), Chris Dalliston (Peterborough), Sue Jones (Liverpool), Andrew Nunn (Southwark), Nick Papadopolous (Salisbury), Jane Hedges (Acting Newcastle), Nicola Sullivan (Southwell), Andrew Braddock (Norwich), John Dobson (Ripon), Nicholas Henshall (Chelmsford) and Andrew Tremlett (London)”
