Ruth Gledhill - Times Online - WBLG

Gays condemn openly-Christian leader

Renewed demands for Dr Joel Edwards, director general of the Evangelical Alliance, to resign as a member of the Equality and Human Rights Commission will be made tomorrow by the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement. You can read Sunday's online news story on this. LGCM has compiled a dossier, to be published on its website, detailing comments made by Dr Edwards which the movement says make him unsuitable for membership on an equal rights body. Dr Edwards says in response that it is a shame that his belief system is considered 'less equal' than any other. LGCM and its members are being true to what they are. Dr Edwards is being true to what he believes. Just a few hours before Dr Williams' launches the Lambeth Conference at Lambeth Palace tomorrow, this dichotomy represents the fault line which makes a split in the Anglican Communion almost inevitable. Read on for the Evangelical Alliance's full response.

Dow, Decadence and the Deluge

I had a little fun yesterday revisiting the past to write about the Bishop of Carlisle, Graham Dow, who has been making headlines by linking the recent floods in Britain to the moral decadence of our society. In my piece I referred to a booklet, Explaining Deliverance, which was sent to me in 1992 by a friend after he became Bishop of Willesden. However, when I looked through my dusty book collection here, some barely touched in my 20 years at the paper, I dug up all kinds of extraordinary eschatological fossils but not the Bishop's booklet. So a hat-tip is owed here to Andrew Brown for a piece he wrote about it in 2003 and which I was able to access online.

Surge in Pentecostalism

Pentecostalism is the fastest growing branch of Christianity, we report today. There are now more Pentecostals in Britain than Methodists, who are sliding fast. It is a moot point which will come first, unity with what remains of the Anglican Church after all its schisms, or extinction. Among Anglican and Catholics, decades of decline has not ceased but appears to be bottoming out. Certainly, Christmas attendances are soaring. In our feature pages, Carol Midgely examines new scientific data on speaking in tongues. I've reproduced my own little testimony for T2 below. There is also an excellent leader in the paper today.