Opinions
He has attracted note for some of his more outspoken opinions. His Christmas Day sermon of 2001 was titled "This Terror Is a Judgment upon Us". In it, he called the 11 September 2001 attacks "cruelly evil as they were" a judgment upon the developed nations' promotion of their own standard of living at the expense of the global poor, and condemned the Middle East policies of the Western nations. He was also one of 52 UK bishops who signed a letter in 2003 calling for reform of arms export laws.
He chaired a Church of England committee in 2000, which urged a lifting of the ban on remarriage of divorcees whose former spouse was still living. The report insisted that the Church of England was not abandoning its position that marriage is for life, but rather acknowledging the situation of many within society whose former marriages had long ceased to have any real existence. However, he insisted at the time that this would not necessarily open the way for Prince Charles to marry Camilla Parker Bowles. In the event, the wedding of Prince Charles and Parker Bowles took the form of a civil marriage which was immediately followed by a service of blessing in St George's Chapel, Windsor.
In 2003, he was (unexpectedly at the time) signatory to an open letter from 17 Church of England bishops opposing the nomination of Jeffrey John, an openly gay priest in a long-term relationship, as suffragan bishop-designate of Reading. The other nine diocesan bishop signatories (referred to, were: Michael Langrish (Exeter), Michael Nazir-Ali (Rochester), Peter Forster (Chester), James Jones (Liverpool), George Cassidy (Southwell & Nottingham), Graham Dow (Carlisle), John Hind (Chichester) and David James (Bradford).
Scott-Joynt is one of the Church of England's most prominent supporters of traditional sexual morality, for example voting against the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations in the House of Lords because there was no provision for religious conscience. He also argued that the introduction of civil partnership legislation in the UK threatened the uniqueness of marriage and declared he would closely question clergy in his diocese who entered a civil partnership. In 2008, he said, in relation to the exclusion of Christians in same-sex relationships from positions of leadership (such as bishoprics like his own): "I see no future for the Anglican Communion as we know it, or for the Church of England as we know it, if either deserts this teaching."
Read more about this topic: Michael Scott-Joynt
Famous quotes containing the word opinions:
“The men who carry their points do not need to inquire of their constituents what they should say, but are themselves the country which they represent: nowhere are its emotions or opinions so instant and so true as in them; nowhere so pure from a selfish infusion.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)