Читать книгу Living in Love and Faith - Bishops of the Church of England - Страница 8

So this book is intended to nourish the people of God. It is not a comprehensive account of all that can be known about identity, sexuality and relationships and is, in that sense, inadequate, as were the five loaves and two fish. However, we offer it to the church in hope.

We hope that engaging with the book will deepen our sense of being a church that is a learning community – or a community of learning communities. We hope that the book will draw together people with different views and experiences, so that we do our learning in the unity of the body of the church, not in factions or silos. We hope that we will hold each other’s pain as we touch on matters that are deeply personal. We hope that we will honour each other as beloved disciples of Christ.

We hope that together we will be led to deeper understanding from Scripture and the church’s tradition. We hope that we will be enlightened by exploring new areas of knowledge. We hope that we will be transformed into greater Christlikeness by our attentiveness to and involvement with each other and the communities we serve.

We dare to hope that as together we study this book and its accompanying resources we will become a church that has good news to bring to society on matters of identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage.