Dr Hope, leading a Bible study seminar at the summer meeting of the General Synod in York, said that the Church was “in danger of being overwhelmed in respect of the single issue of sex and sexuality to the extent that we are almost wholly diverted and distracted from the fundamental priority of the mission entrusted to us by Christ”.

Dr Hope was speaking shortly before the synod threw out proposals to introduce heresy trials for clergy who step out of line on orthodox church teachings. If the proposal had been passed, clergy or bishops who knowingly ordained a practising homosexual or who promoted or preached in favour of a gay lifestyle could have found themselves in the doctrinal dock and removed from their post, or unfrocked.

Dr Hope, speaking at York University, compared the present turmoil in the Anglican Communion and the wider world with the traumas of the early Church and the first Christians.

He said: “You and I may not yet be called to witness to Christ to the point of bloodshedding, but that does not mean to say that we are not called to martyrdom.”

Arguing that “witness” was a key feature of trying to follow the Christian path, he said that many synod members, as churchgoers and as people living in the world, had the feeling of being “overwhelmed” by events around them.

Referring directly to the Church, Dr Hope continued: “As you might just have noticed we have not been without our squalls, seismic and otherwise.”

He urged church members to study and learn from the history of Christianity, in particular the first five centuries, when arguments “raged” about the nature of Christ and of the Trinity, threatening “the very existence and continuance of the Church”.

Dr Hope’s Bible exposition came as the Lambeth Commission — set up to find a way through the difficulties caused by homosexual ordinations and same-sex blessing rites — prepares to report back in October. Church leaders fear that there will be no way forward without some “realignment” between the episcopal churches of the West and of the Global South, if not a complete breach of communion amounting to a schism between conservative evangelicals and liberals.

Drawing a comparison between the present disputes and controversies in the early Church, Dr Hope pleaded for a more Christian tenor to “the tone of the way we both handle and debate deeply disputed issues”.

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