We've always known that the Anglican church has a lot of wokesters in its clergy but it was an eye-opener to read an interview with the new archbishop of Wales, who had bigger priorities than practicing Christianity.

According to The Times of London:

The new Archbishop of Wales has a complicated relationship with the Anglican Church. Several times during our conversation in the chancel of Newport Cathedral in south Wales last week, Cherry Vann criticises an institution she says is “full of human beings who are flawed and failing”.

“I think the church can so often get in the way of God,” says Vann, 66, who was elected primate of Wales last month. Although she was ordained into the Church of England in 1994, becoming one of the first female priests, and spent 11 years as Archdeacon of Rochdale in Manchester, she knew her career would not last there.

Why? “Because I’m gay and in a civil partnership,” she says, matter-of-factly. For almost 30 years, Vann was forced to keep secret her relationship with Wendy Diamond, a retired council employee. “It was an appalling state of affairs,” says Vann. “It felt as though I was being dishonest but I didn’t feel at the time that I had any choice. I was living in fear.”

Wendy was forced to “hide upstairs” when visitors came to their home. It was only five years ago, when Vann was appointed Bishop of Monmouth, that she felt comfortable enough to be open about her sexuality. 

Seems her main religion is the lesbian lifestyle and her career, around which everything else, including God, revolves.

After all, she had been living a double life.

She could have been a lesbian but refrained from lesbian relationships which would have been to put God first, perhaps as an act of self-sacrifice to demonstrate her commitment to the faith.

Or, she could have not hidden her lesbian lifestyle as she described doing, did what she wanted, perhaps defiantly or perhaps in resignation that it wasn't the orthodox model for Christian life, and quit calculating how it would impact her career promotion prospects.

Not being willing to make either of those choices and wanting it both ways, no wonder she was resentful. 

Now that alternative lifestyles are considered normal for Anglican clergy, she openly promotes it.

In most contexts, being a lesbian isn't a big deal one way or another and we all know nice people who are gay or lesbian. But for someone to lead a church in an entire country as a lesbian whose main priority is lesbianism seems, as the lefties like to say, unsustainable, even among the freewheeling Anglicans. Unconventional relationships don't work in the long run and to practice them as the leader of a church that has traditionally promoted family life is to take for granted family life, which even Protestant churches historically do, in favor of an anything-goes system of family life. That isn't much different from a fully secular life, which doesn't make any demands at all.

No wonder she sees the church as full of flawed people.

But there is nuance to this -- Vann's career ascent came on the back of one seamy scandal after another in the Wales church.

According to the Times:

In June, the former Archbishop of Wales, Andy John, stepped down after an investigation found cases of bullying and financial and sexual misconduct at his diocese, Bangor Cathedral. Among the allegations, one young woman told the BBC she was sexually assaulted in 2022 at the cathedral’s Oktoberfest by a man who wanted to become a priest.

John was not accused of any wrongdoing, but his resignation was not the only scandal to hit Wales. Vann’s predecessor as Bishop of Monmouth, Richard Pain, retired in 2019 from ill health a year after being accused of bullying his staff. In March, the former Bishop of Swansea and Brecon, Anthony Pierce, was jailed for child sexual abuse. Last month, new investigations were opened into historical sex abuse allegations against Pierce and another former vicar.

What a loathesome load of doings. Now they have her, who, as the story indicated, some of the locals see as an improvement.

But it won't being the dwindling church back. The Times reported that church attendence was in freefall:

Two decades ago, about 42,000 Anglicans were regularly attending a Sunday service in Wales. Provisional figures this year show that has dropped to 29,000. Over ten years, baptisms have dropped by almost 40 per cent. 

The African branches of the Anglican church, in contrast, are booming, and they do take seriously the promotion of classical family life, rejecting alternative lifestyles as antibiblical. The bane of the African churches (among Catholics at least and probably Protestants) is priests who have a mistress on the side. They condemn it when it is discovered, just as they condemn gay and lesbian lifestyles on the same logic. African priests are required to be celebate, which in Anglicanism means faithful to married life or else single with chastity. What would happen if they just went open about the mistress on the side as a lifestyle choice? They never do that because there wouldn't be much of a church left. That explains why they can never accept a leader who openly practices lesbian acts. So it's not surprising that they are strongly opposed to Vann's promotion as contradictory to traditional church teaching as well as biblical teaching. The Times reports that the Nigerian branch even cut ties with the Wales church as a result of Vann's appointment.

That's the direction of the living. growing church. With Vann running the church in Wales, and condeming all the flawed Christians out there, it won't be surprising if she reveals more contempt for Christianity and the church there continues to shrivel.

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