Gregory Jones, of King’s Bar, ruled that Archbishop Justin Welby was “plainly wrong” to fail to defend a priest who was banned from preaching for five years for telling children at a private school that it was okay to question gender ideals.
In 2021, the Rev Bernard Randall, an Anglican chaplain at Trent University, was fired and reported to the UK government’s counter-terrorism programme for telling students it was OK to question the LGBT ideas being taught at school.
June 2019 Sermon In a talk titled “Competing Ideologies”, Dr Randall, who was a chaplain at Cambridge University before taking up his post at Trent, was answering a question from students about whether Christian schools had to embrace all LGBT issues.
“Right now, in times of ideological conflict, we shouldn’t use name-calling, we should respect the beliefs of others even when we disagree,” Randall said. “Above all, we need to treat each other with respect, not personal attacks. That’s loving your neighbor as yourself.”
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“You shouldn’t be told you have to embrace LGBT ideas, just as you shouldn’t be told you have to support Brexit or be Muslim, both of which I’m sure most of you would naturally disagree with,” he asserted.
In an effort to make the school more LGBT-friendly, Trent University invited the education charity Educate and Celebrate to come to campus in 2018. Dr Ellie Barnes, director of Educate and Celebrate, has publicly stated that the charity’s aim is “to completely shatter heterocentrism, that’s what we want to do.”
Tuesday, Telegraph Dr Randall noted that he remains banned from preaching “by decision of Archbishop Libby Lane, Bishop of Derby, the church’s first woman bishop”.
Dr Randall was unable to take up other work because Bishop Lane refused to grant him a licence or permission to be a priest without a risk assessment, and Bishop Lane’s safeguarding team had deemed him a risk of harm to children because of his positions on LGBT issues.
His preaching raised concerns about how he would “talk to and support people who are struggling with their sexual orientation,” the team concluded.
Gregory Jones, who reviewed Mr Randall’s case for the Church of England’s Clergy Disciplinary Tribunal, said the incident was “extremely egregious” and the church’s treatment of the priest was “egregious”.
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Randall filed a formal complaint based on a flawed process, alleging that Bishop Lane “discriminated against me because of my orthodox beliefs regarding gender and sexual orientation.”
However, Archbishop Welby blocked the case, declaring that while there were “lessons” to be learned from the case, there was “insufficient evidence” to support a personal case against Bishop Lane.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, was “plainly wrong” to refuse to bring a misconduct claim by Dr Randall against Bishop Lane, the Crown counsel said, adding that the archbishop had “misunderstood the scope of his powers”.
Given that the sermons were not contrary to church doctrine, the judgement that Dr Randall “posed a risk of harm to young children” needed to be carefully explained, he noted.
The archbishop said he had “not identified any basis of reason and evidence to justify a conclusion that there were sufficient safeguarding concerns to justify refusing a licence.”
Dr Randall said the safeguards were being “weaponised” as a political tool against a theological position that is entirely consistent with church doctrine.
“The issues are much deeper than my case,” he said. Telegraph“A church that rebels against its own teachings is extremely unhealthy.”
“The archbishop’s knee-jerk reaction appears to have been to protect his senior colleague, rather than to seek justice or reconciliation,” Randall said.
