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A welcome for gays
• AS members of the congregation of St Thomas’s Church Finsbury Park, we write to seek to redress the balance after noting with concern the content of the two letters relating to church attitudes to homosexuality (Faith has no expiry date, October 16).
Our church is one of a growing number of Church of England churches throughout London and nationwide which have chosen to make a public commitment to be a welcoming and open congregation, supporting the organisation Changing Attitudes UK in working towards the day when the Anglican church fully accepts, welcomes and offers equality of opportunity to all gay, lesbian and transgender people and their partners. Visitors to St Thomas’s can be assured of a warm welcome regardless of their sexual orientation.
Jon Blanchard, John Burrows, Julia Burrows, Rob Cheek, Christine Cox, Katie Dawson, Emma Dixon, Emma Hall, Rowan Howard, Philip Kirkpatrick, Justice Konneh, Helena Konneh, Susanna McKnight, Anne Rose, Stavroulla Stavrou, Liz Thorrington, Harriet Ware-Austin
Congregation of St Thomas’s Church, N4
• I AM sorry to hear continued challenges to Islington Council’s sensible application of the law on civil partnerships. Civil partnership ceremonies are quite explicitly non-religious events which confer in law a civil status on the couple.
Members of religious groups who do not accept gay people will presumably not wish to celebrate those partnerships in their own church communities, but that is a matter for them in their churches, not at work in the council’s offices.
Happily not every religious community is homophobic, and at Newington Green Unitarian Church, and our sister church, Unity Church, Upper Street, we are very happy to bless couples – both gay and straight – who wish to publicly celebrate their joy in their relationship in front of family and friends.
It is a great shame that some local Christians seem intent on sustaining religion’s reputation for intolerance rather than celebrating a message of love and inclusion.
Guy Bentham
Chair, Newington Green Unitarian Church
• WHY do your correspondents who promote a strictly biblical interpretation of Christianity only write in about homosexuality?
Why do they not put pen to paper about murder, rape, theft, racism or social injustice?
John Whitehead
Breton House, EC2
• DAVID Joseph is not following Jesus’s teachings, but his own opinions (Gays and the bible, October 9).
In Romans, chapter 13, verse 1, we find Christians urged to submit to the authority of the government, but also to refuse, if it conflicts with the truth of the Gospel. In Acts, chapter 5, verse 25, 29, we find Peter saying: “We ought to obey God, rather than men.”
Jesus’s teachings endorse righteous living. Remember, he said to the woman caught in adultery, whom he forgave: “Go and sin no more” (John, chapter 8, verse 10,11) not “Go and keep on sinning.”
The scripture quoted in the letter is John, chapter 15, verse 18, not Luke, and is encouraging true believers who are persecuted by non-Christians. It is not supporting gays.
God loves all people, and sent Jesus to die on the cross to save all. But he doesn’t support sinful lifestyles.
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