Pray to be gay?
So The Very Reverend Kelvin Holdsworth, provost of St Mary’s Cathedral in Glasgow, has urged people to pray for Prince George ‘to be blessed one day with the love of a fine young gentleman’. This, he thinks, would eventually help move the Church of England into a position where it would allow gay couples to marry (which his own church – the Scottish Episcopal Church – voted in favour of earlier this year).
The Church of England has excused itself from commenting, since Mr Holdsworth is not a member of the C of E. Rt Rev Dr Gregor Duncan, Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway has stated that he will be ‘discussing’ the matter with Mr Holdsworth. So that’s alright then.
More robust is the criticism by Gavin Ashendown, a former chaplain to the Queen and a Christian Episcopal Church missionary bishop. He told the BBC:-
“It doesn’t have the prince’s best interests at heart, but uses him as a gender-political football to please 1.7% of the population.
“What is especially odd and incongruous is the fact that it is suddenly OK to pray for someone to be gay, but totally unacceptable to pray for them to be free from being gay and to resume a sexuality that was in tune with their biology.
“This seems not only contradictory but hypocritical.”
Susie Leafe, the director of the conservative evangelical group Reform, suggests that it would be better to pray for Prince George (and everyone else) to come to know the love of Christ, rather than the love of ‘a fine young gentleman’. Quite so.