Andrea Williams

As the Church of England holds its ‘shared conversations’ on the future of LGBT rights within the church, one Synod member has called for ‘Satanic’ gay priests to be expelled.

The Church this month sought to tackle a rift on teachings on homosexuality at a General Synod meeting at York University.

The process follows a years-long impasse on issues that equal marriage legislation brought to a head, including a hastily-adopted ban on gay priests getting married

Though discussions were largely progressive, anti-LGBT evangelical group Christian Concern took the opportunity to urge the Church to expel all gay priests.

Andrea Williams said in a statement: “The attempt on the church’s part to pretend that same-sex relations and LGBTI arguments have any biblically-rooted validity or might be the result of the ‘leading of the Spirit’ is not only farcical, it is disgraceful and arguably blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.”

She bemoaned: “A homosexual priest in a relationship for nineteen years and in a civil partnership addressed the whole of synod from the platform. Shouldn’t he be lovingly disciplined and removed from his position?”

“Another senior LGBTI activist with a prominent and official position on synod, who has been in a homosexual relationship for many years, dared ‘the conservatives’ to tell him to his face ‘you are not a Christian’.

“One thing that he can be told very clearly is that he is not living in obedience to Jesus and His commands. Shouldn’t he be lovingly disciplined and removed from his position?”

She cited a Biblical passage that says: “Whoever practises righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning.

“No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practise righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.”

Christian Concern added: “The habitual practice and promotion of sin in the life of the church is surely a mark of the same kind of heresy that the apostle John was addressing in this letter.

“It is time for the bishops in the church to make a clear stand with Christ and with Scripture, or a godly separation is the only course that would not grieve the Holy Spirit, for it is He who the revisionists are truly offended by.

“One vocal group in synod call what is sin, holiness. Of course, we can and we must relate to one another in our shared humanity, but we can’t stay together if the church wants to bless what is not holy.

“The fundamental question at stake is whether the church belongs to Jesus Christ or whether it belongs to the revisionists who would reshape it in the image of today’s cultural moods.

“If the church is to flourish and be a true blessing to society, she must repent and rededicate herself to Jesus Christ, trusting his teaching, example and the rescue from sin that he freely offers. “