The Queen's Chaplain Resigns

On Epiphany, a verse from the Koran was read in the Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow, as Christianity Today explains:

The congregation at St Mary's cathedral heard the Muslim version of the Virgin Mary's conception of Jesus, from the Koran's Sura 19, sung by Madinah Javed. The passage explains how Mary gave birth after an angel told her God would give her a child.

Muslims believe Jesus was a prophet, and that He was a precursor to Mohammed rather than the Son of God.

Sura 19 states that Mary was "ashamed" after she gave birth, and that the infant Jesus miraculously spoke to her from his crib and claimed he was "a servant of God".

It denies Jesus was the Son of God.

One of Queen Elizabeth II's chaplains, The Reverend Gavin Ashenden, said that he thought that was terribly out of place at a service on Epiphany, the manifestation of the Savior and Son of God to the Gentiles. Denying the Incarnation of Jesus is a great betrayal of the Christian faith and I agree with Ashenden that it has no place in a Christian church.

He has since resigned, not wanting to draw Her Majesty into a controversy. He describes his situation in this interview:

The C of E is a rich mixture of the spiritual and the political. If you make political enemies, or your face does not fit, or you fail to adopt increasingly secular values, options that might have otherwise been open are closed down. One senior bishop invited me to tea in the House of Lords to tell me that I was finished in the C of E as an organisation because what he described as my ‘critics’ were too determined.

His final comment is this:

Demographically and financially it [the Church of England] is dying. Spiritually it appears to be on its last legs too. I’m not sure I see much point in a church that just wants to be accepted as a sort of not too irritating chaplain to a secular and hedonistic culture, which is what it seems to be becoming. I want to remain a faithful Anglican, but increasingly it looks like that is only possible outside the C of E. It has opted for a kind of spiritualised socialism and feminism in opposition to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. You get new life when you repent. But there is no sign that it is ready to take that path.

God bless him!