There seems to be two issues here; firstly the suggestion that I'm merely parroting the ideas of other people on this issue and secondly that 'obeying the higher authorities' is never justified. I am frustrated at your suggestion that I haven't done my own study on this area; admittedly I probably haven't engaged with the gay issue on the board as much as I might as it bores, but my own rejection of its legitimacy lies in a high view of God as creator and the logic that follows from that - not just a few proof texts. But I really don't want to go there now...

Obeying higher authority in the church is a far more interesting topic to me. The past 50 years have seen a rejection in the world of almost any authority that can't convince the listener that its instructions are right. But ultimately this is to gut obedience of any reality - instead we have rule by consent. But this isn't the way of Christianity; we are faced by a God who calls us to obedience because He is God. Sometimes we understand why He commands something, but at others, as in the suffering of the innocent, we are left struggling.

The result of the unwillingness has been a steady erosion in civic values as the traditions are disdained because they no longer fashionable. Given the fact that humans have almost infinite capacity to convince themselves that what they want is what they deserve, the consequence, amongst other things, has been a prevalence of divorce and a collapse of family life that is leading to feral young people and an epidemic of self-harm amongst teenagers amongst other things.

Another symptom is the growth of organisations that gut words of all their meaning because the true meaning doesn't appeal to them, but they don't want to follow the logic of their position to its proper conclusion. This is perfectly exemplified by the claim that ecumenical churches can have catholic and protestant members. To be a protestant is to reject the authority of the pope; to be a Catholic is to be committed to being in membership of a church that ultimately owes obedience to the Pope, and specifically to his local 'representative' (to grossly simplify - let's not go there), the bishop. It's cute and cuddly, but is theologically incoherent. Of course these days we don't worry about things like that, but to me that is to abandon any attempt to apply logic to things of the spirit. And once we do that, we must logically join Don Cupitt and conclude that we can know nothing of the spiritual realm.

Which brings us to the use of the term 'church'. For me a church is more than just a gathering of Christians; it is an organisation that has a God given authority over its members to challenge and ultimately discipline. I was fascinated to note that even you could see that ' if an ecumenical church community became so open about sexual matters that it became an institution that destabilized peoples' marriages... then the offenders would need to be shown the door.' This shows me that we agree that boundaries are necessary; the only debate between us is where the boundaries are!

And it's on that basis - along with the fact that CJAT won't be celebrating the sacraments - I find its use of the term 'church' inaccurate. The fact that its view on man-boy sex are wholly unacceptable is a separate debate.