StAG/Bashing

It's a lot broader than that, to do with his understanding of Scripture - his position on homosexuality is merely the most publicised consequence of his view.  I think also that the drasticness of the action StAG are taken has become exaggerated, too - they're very keen to stress that they are definitely staying in the CoE?, even though they are very unhappy with Williams' appointment.  HTH. --MikeJeggo

I'd suggest that a single service isn't really enough to make such judgements on (hence my current attendance for some successive weeks at the morning service at StBarnabas).  I realise that the MysteryWorshippers? probably don't have the time to go to each church more than once, but many of the comments there refer to one particular occasion, especially talking about the preacher - there is wide variation between different preachers both in style and in content.  Regarding the welcome, that is a known problem, though it isn't universally the case that new folk get missed.  Partly it's that in such a large church, one doesn't know whether any given people really are new, but partly it is a genuine problem that those who wear said little badges have been encouraged to work on.  That the service 'reinforced some unfortunate stereotypes of conservative evangelicalism' is an unhelpful comment because it says nothing about what those stereotypes are, especially as it doesn't say anything either about where the MysteryWorshippers? are coming from and therefore which evangelical stereotypes they are likely to have, or to regard as unfortunate.  And given that, I can't really say whether anything has changed since 2000, or whether I think it ought to have done.  Those stereotypes could be genuinely problems, which all would agree ought to be changed but if they were rather to do with StAG's doctrine (that I would require more comment than that to persuade me was wrong) or style (since you can't please everyone so what should one do?).  It's just rather unhelpful not to specify.  And opens the way for anyone who has any 'unfortunate stereotypes' of conservative evangelicalism to tag theirs on, even if they are different to those the MysteryWorshippers? saw.  This has two problems which are a) the reader's stereotype(s) may fall into a different category (of those above) than those of the MysteryWorshippers? and be less valid, but be validated by it.  More seriously b) it may erroneously deter those who haven't been to StAG as they place their own stereotypes into their thoughts which may or may not actually exist.  Hmm... I wasn't planning to spend quite that long writing this!  MJ