Loonies that would Run the Asylum

Update

Bishop Benn has removed his endoresment. Good, though he obviously didn't read it sufficiently before endorsing and adds no apology now.

Original Blog Entry

No bellweather bishop, he, but one nevertheless, who gives support to special training of male only presbyters and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, Bishop Wallace Benn, has given general support to a book that accuses the Queen of breaking her Coronation Oath by signing into legislation bills passed by Parliament that apparently break the Ten Commandments. Bishop Benn says:

“This makes interesting and disturbing reading. We desparately need to understand, as a nation, that our Creator knows what is best for us, and to return to His way as the best way to live.”
Rt Rev Wallace Benn, Bishop of Lewes

The book is by Stephen Green, the one well known for public ranting and dominating over a, well, strict household (to put it mildly). People committed to the ways of respect, peace and spirituality might want to keep their distance, but Wallace Benn obviously does not. Here is a choice piece from the book:

2 The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.

See: Gen 18:12; Is 59:1-15; Matt 19:5; 1 Cor 7:2-5; Eph 5:21-33, 1 Pet 3:6.

This Act reduced the minimum age for homosexual activity to 18, redefined enforced sodomy as "rape," in order to equate buggery with sexual intercourse, and legalised buggery on women. It also introduced an offence of "marital rape," drafted by the Law Commission, unknown in the Law of God, and in conflict with the marriage service of the Book of Common Prayer, where the promises given by a man and woman to each other establish a binding consent to sexual intercourse. The right to petition the Court for the restoration of conjugal rights was abolished by the Matrimonial Proceedings and Property Act 1970 at the instigation of the Law Commission. (Law Commission Report 23, 1969)

In other words, he is a supporter of marital rape by denying that it exists as a concept. A fundamental principle of contemporary life is the consent of the individual, the individual who feels, thinks, worries and hopes. If you break that consent by unintended error, then apologies and restoration are needed, but to break that consent deliberately is simply criminal. Such a stance of consent must surely have superior value over what appears in a myth bearing book, whatever one believes about it.

We do not want Puritan rule again. It was good when that went. But nor do we want rule by the Book of Common Prayer. The other side of the Restoration, and then tolerance extended, and then humanism, was that people had fun again, had variety, and could be valued for who they were as themselves in their dealings with others.