Hatred, Sexual Orientation, Free Speech and Religious Liberty

2008 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Leigh
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Employment Discrimination ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Church ◽  
Partial Success

In recent years, the clash between supporters of religious liberty and sexual orientation equality legislation has led to repeated battles both in Parliament and the courts. First came the clashes over the scope of exemptions in employment discrimination legislation for religious groups. The UK Regulations dealing with employment discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation give a limited exception for ‘employment for purposes of an organised religion’, which allows an employer to apply a requirement related to sexual orientation to comply with the doctrines of the religion, or to avoid conflicting with the strongly held religious convictions of a significant number of the religion's followers. A legal challenge brought to the scope of this exception was unsuccessful but, despite that, the exemption has not averted damaging findings of discrimination against the Church of England. The Bishop of Hereford was held to have discriminated unlawfully in blocking the appointment of a practising homosexual to a youth-officer post within the Church of England. The partial success of religious groups in achieving exemption was followed by defeat in the equivalent regulations dealing with discrimination in goods and services, made under the Equality Act 2006, despite the claims of Catholic adoption agencies that they would rather close than place children with same-sex couples.

4. Discrimination in Employment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Smith ◽  
Aaron Baker ◽  
Owen Warnock
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Employment Discrimination ◽  
Orientation Discrimination ◽  
Religious Discrimination ◽  
Sexual Orientation Discrimination ◽  
Indirect Discrimination ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Discrimination In Employment ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Uk

This chapter discusses anti-discrimination law in the UK in the employment sphere. After providing a brief history of the development of UK discrimination law, it introduces the Equality Act 2010, explaining the forms of discrimination it covers and how it works. Key concepts of equality law are then discussed, such as direct and indirect discrimination and unique mechanisms for proving a discrimination claim. After outlining the remedies available in discrimination actions, the chapter then explores issues specific to discrete grounds of discrimination. This analysis tackles sex-discriminatory dress codes, the problem of what counts as an ‘ethnicity’, and the apparent clash between protections against sexual orientation discrimination and religious discrimination. Finally, the specialized approaches to disability and age discrimination under the Equality Act are explained, rounding out a comprehensive and up-to-date coverage of UK employment discrimination law.

General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (01) ◽  
pp. 80-84
Author(s):  
John F Stuart
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Episcopal Church ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Church ◽  
National Borders

The General Synod met at St Paul's and St George's Church in Edinburgh from 9 to 11 June 2016. In his charge to Synod, the Primus, the Most Revd David Chillingworth, reflected on the injunction of St Paul to ‘please God, who tests our hearts’. As the Synod prepared to consider canonical change in relation to marriage, he asked how the Church was to continue to express the love and unity to which it was called by God. During the preceding year, deep pain in relationships had been experienced both in the Anglican Communion and with the Church of Scotland and Church of England – and there was a need to explore whether the Scottish Episcopal Church itself might have contributed to that distress and to shape a response that ‘pleased God, who tests our hearts'. In the light of the (then) forthcoming referendum on the European Union, the Primus suggested that it was not the wish of many in Scotland to use national borders to protect economic privilege. If the referendum took the UK out of the European Union, it could have profound effects on the unfolding story of the new Scotland and of the UK as a whole.

Discrimination and the Church of England: To What Extent does the Equality Act 2010 Adequately Protect Church of England Clergy?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Grout*
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Final Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Eligibility Criteria ◽  
Sensitive Question ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church

Abstract The extent to which members of the clergy are considered ‘employees’ for the purposes of secular employment and equality legislation has been the subject of much discussion, but essentially remains a fact sensitive question. The Equality Act 2010 (‘the 2010 Act’) seeks to prevent discrimination on the basis of nine ‘protected characteristics’. While recognizing that the application of the 2010 Act to the variety of clergy offices is ‘not straightforward’, the Church of England (‘the Church’) has opined that an equitable approach to clergy appointments is to proceed as if they were subject to the provisions of the 2010 Act. What follows is in`tended to be a thorough review of the eligibility criteria for clergy appointment in the Church to assess their compatibility with the requirements of the 2010 Act. In addition, particular consideration will be given to Schedule 9(2) to the 2010 Act which makes specific provision relating to religious requirements concerning the protected characteristics of sex, sexual orientation, and marriage and civil partnership. In short, where the employment is for the purposes of an organized religion, such as the Church, requirements which relate to these protected characteristics will not constitute discrimination where they engage the ‘compliance or non-conflict principle’. What these principles mean and how they might operate in practice is discussed below, taking into account the likely canonical and theological justifications for discriminating against certain individuals. Whether the law strikes the right balance between, on the one hand protecting clergy and, on the other, providing the Church with the autonomy to act in accordance with its established doctrine, will be explored in the final analysis.

‘What could be more Christian than to allow the Sikhs to use it?’ Church Redundancy and Minority Religion in Bedford, 1977–8

2015 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 399-411
Author(s):  
John Maiden
Keyword(s):  
Race Relations ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Religious Congregations ◽  
British Council ◽  
Minority Religion ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church ◽  
Migrant Groups

In 1985, Faith in the City, The Church of England’s report on Urban Priority Areas, commented that Christians frequently had an excess of church buildings, while ‘people of other faiths are often exceedingly short of places in which to meet and worship’. The challenge of securing sacred space has been common to migrant groups in Britain, and during the 1970s sharing of space between national historic denominations and migrant religious groups was identified by the British Council of Churches (BCC) and its Community and Race Relations Unit as a leading issue for interreligious relations. In the case of the Church of England, ancillary parish buildings were occasionally shared with non-Christian religious congregations for limited use: for example, later that decade the church halls of All Saints, Gravelly Hill, Birmingham, were being used by Muslims and Hindus for festivals and clubs.

scholarly journals The Church of England and Same-Sex Marriage: Beyond a Rights-Based Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Smith
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Institutional Response ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Same Sex Marriage ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
The Church ◽  
Apparent Conflict ◽  
Do So

Some scholars, faced with the apparent conflict between the Church of England's teaching on marriage and the idea of equal marriage embraced by the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, have focused on the implications of that Act for the constitutional relationship between Church, State and nation. More frequently, noting the position of the Church of England under that Act, academics have critiqued the legislation as an exercise in balancing competing human rights. This article by contrast, leaving behind a tendency to treat religion as a monolithic ‘other’, and leaving behind the neat binaries of rights-based analyses, interrogates the internal agonies of the Church of England as it has striven to negotiate an institutional response to the secular legalisation of same-sex marriage. It explores the struggles of the Church to do so in a manner which holds in balance a wide array of doctrinal positions and the demands of mission, pastoral care and the continued apostolic identity of the Church of England.

scholarly journals Gods and Services: Religious Groups and Sexual Orientation Discrimination

2008 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-209
Author(s):  
Russell Sandberg
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Orientation Discrimination ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Sexual Orientation Discrimination ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Religious Exemption

Exemptions for religious groups from generally applicable laws are by no means unusual, especially in the field of discrimination law. However, exemptions from laws prohibiting discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation have proved particularly controversial. The legality of exemptions in regulations prohibiting discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in the employment sphere has been the subject of judicial review and the scope of those exemptions has also been judicially examined. The extension to prohibit discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in the provision of goods and services has proved controversial, and case law on the extent of the religious exemption included in the British regulations is awaited. In the meantime, a recent judicial review of the corresponding Northern Ireland regulations, which were enacted prior to the British regulations, may be illuminating.

The Career of John Abernethy (1680–1740) Father of Nonsubscription in Ireland and Defender of Religious Liberty

1985 ◽  
Vol 78 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 399-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Barlow
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Presbyterian Church ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The University ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity

The British theological world was stirred at the beginning of the eighteenth century by what the learned and staunchly orthodox Presbyterian historian James Seaton Reid has called “latitudinarian notions on the inferiority of dogmatic belief and the nature of religious liberty.” In the 1690s John Locke had published his Reasonableness of Christianity and Letters on Toleration, followed by John Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious. In 1710 “Honest Will” Whitson, Sir Isaac Newton's successor as Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, was expelled from the University for embracing Arian views. His departure was accompanied by rumors—long since substantiated—about his great predecessor's heterodox theology. Traditional theologians were shocked next by the appearance of Dr. Samuel Clark's Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity which resulted in the author's arraignment before Convocation of the Church of England in 1714. The very same year John Simson, Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow, was first tried before the General Assembly of the Scottish Presbyterian Church for teaching Arian and Pelagian errors. In 1729, after three more trials, Simson was suspended from his professorship for denying the numerical oneness of the Trinity. Fierce doctrinal contentions also began to occupy English Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists, erupting during the famous Salters’ Hall meeting early in 1719.

Mission-shaped Methodism and Fresh Expressions

Holiness ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-218
Author(s):  
Joanne Cox-Darling
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
First Century ◽  
Holiness Movement ◽  
Methodist Church ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Church

AbstractThe Mission-Shaped Church report by the Church of England prompted the Methodist Church and the Church of England in the UK to respond to the dislocation being felt between the inherited model of church and the missiological challenges of the twenty-first century. The most significant ecumenical development arising from the report was the formation of the Fresh Expressions initiative, whose sole task was to release leaders and communities to found churches for the ‘unchurched’.Examples of Anglican fresh expressions are much researched, but Methodist contributions less so. This essay argues that Methodist people, as people of a holiness movement of mission and ministry, have much to offer to the current ecclesial debate. There is a need for fresh expressions to be denominationally distinctive before they can be distilled into something new.

The Satanic Verses and the State (II)

2020 ◽  
pp. 132-153
Author(s):  
Asha Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Common Law ◽  
The State ◽  
The Novel ◽  
British India ◽  
Legal Cases ◽  
Satanic Verses ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Church

This second chapter on The Satanic Verses considers the collision between the novel’s anti-statist energies and Rushdie’s increasing dependency on the Thatcher government after the fatwa, an unlikely custodian of literary freedom at the end of the Cold War. It then turns to the precise ways the state offered Rushdie protection, focusing on the anachronistic stipulations in English common law restricting the crime of blasphemy to the Church of England debated in the legal cases against the novel in the UK and in Europe. The second half revisits the secular foundations of the British legal system, considering the alternative stance on free expression in diverse societies adopted in British India and Bhikhu Parekh’s communitarian alternative to the individualism of British liberalism.

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