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UK bishop bashed over Brighton Pride New Year’s message

UK bishop bashed over Brighton Pride New Year’s message

Last updated on: January 19, 2021 at 4:49 pm by Barry Duke

UK bishop bashed over Brighton Pride New Year’s message 2021-01-19T16:49:51+02:00 Barry Duke

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ON January 1, The Argus – published in Brighton, Britain’s gayest and most godless city and my old home town – carried a New Year’s message from Michael Warner, the Bishop of Chichester.

Images via YouTube

It did not go down well with deranged Christian foghorn and frothing homophobe Andrea Minichiello Williams, inset, who has accused the bishop of being “anti-Gospel.”

What sent the head of Christian Concern’s blood pressure into the stratosphere was Warner’s observation that, in 2020:

Almost every big event had to be cancelled or moved online. There was, of course, no Brighton Pride, a huge gap in the cultural kaleidoscope.

Its loss, due to the Covid pandemic, might prompt us to ask what we have missed. There are some obvious answers.

We have missed the income. Shops, hotels, pubs, market traders have all taken a hit from the loss of this showcase event that brings crowds and cash into Brighton.

There has also been a cultural hit. The Pride march is its own piece of theatre: design, concept, imagination, and socio-political comment are essential ingredients in any procession.

And there’s an emotional hit. Brighton Pride is an exuberant affirmation that LGBTQ people are a distinctive element of everyday life. Like Brighton rock, the rainbow signature runs all the way through the local identity.

Williams, member of the Church of England’s Synod for Chichester, dashed off a furious response to the bishop’s words.

Your message laments the cancellation of Brighton Pride last year and its absence as ‘a huge gap in the cultural kaleidoscope.’ You go on to write glowingly that ‘Brighton Pride is an exuberant affirmation that LGBTQ people are a distinctive element of everyday life.’

Brighton Pride does not merely affirm the existence of LGBTQ people or campaign against their persecution. It celebrates all kinds of sexual relationships and practices that go well beyond what even the most liberal members of the Church of England support.

Further, it denies the call to put away our old self and old desires (Ephesians 4:22) and to live no longer for human passions but for the will of God (1 Peter 4:2).

In what possible way can this be something Christians can support? Do you genuinely believe God looks approvingly on an event that brazenly idolises and celebrates self, and sexual sin in all its forms?

Can you not see that Brighton Pride is antithetical to the gospel?

She ranted on:

It saddens me that your endorsement of Pride will confuse so many and is heartbreakingly detrimental to the gospel. It distresses me that, as a result, people will be led astray.

I am not suggesting for a moment that the way to use this opportunity was to criticise Brighton Pride – rather, that to deliberately promote it is at best a bad misstep and at worst something much deeper and troubling.

This was a moment to declare, in the midst of a health pandemic, when people are fearing for their mortal lives, the glorious good news that Jesus Christ came to rescue and redeem each one of us from our sin, and through His death and resurrection, to restore and transform us into His likeness … Jesus was not even mentioned in your message.

Instead, readers were offered the spirit of the age, with the barest sprinkling of Christian wisdom at the end.

Every word Williams utters proves that Christianity is the very antithesis of of wisdom.

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Andrea Minichiello Williams

Bishop Michael Warner

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