A petition to the Archbishop of Canterbury

I noticed in my email inbox this morning an email from someone called Jeff Martinhauk, a person I had never heard of before, but his email seemed not to be 'spam' so I took a chance and opened it; I am glad I did. In his blog he describes himself as an aspirant to the priesthood in the Anglican Communion; he attends an Episcopal Seminary in Austin, Texas. He adds that he is a single parent of two children which he and his former partner were able to parent as the result of a generous surrogate mother. He is gay.

He has had the idea of petitioning the Archbishop of Canterbury ahead of the forthcoming meeting of Primates of the Church of England in Tanzania. The object of the petition is to seek to have the Archbishop of Canterbury re-examine his actions in the light of it being one of the founding principles of the Church to 'work for the marginalized, to work to bring the "least of these" to the center of society'. This certainly seems to me to encapsulate a large part of what Jesus preached. I have therefore signed the petition - you can sign it too by clicking here (please do so as quickly as possible as the petition will close on 10th February so it may be sent to Lambeth Palace prior to the Archbishop's departure for Tanzania).

You can read Jeff Martinhauk's open letter to the Archbishop here, a post in his blog for which the main link is here.

As regular readers of my blog will be aware I am not a member of the Church of England or of any other church; my own background is in the Church of Scotland tradition. However I have often written here about the attitudes of various major religious faith groupings (Christian, Jewish and Islamic) toward homosexuals and matters of sexual orientation in general, urging them to adopt inclusive practices toward ALL human beings, whatever their race, creed, gender, nationality or sexual orientation. I have therefore been glad to show my support for this wothwhile initiative.