THE decision not to invite same-sex spouses of bishops to the Lambeth Conference in July is a “plain injustice”, the Bishop of Argyll & The Isles, Dr Keith Riglin, has said. He was speaking last Friday during the General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church (SEC) in Edinburgh.

In an interview with the Church Times on Saturday, the Primus of the SEC, the Most Revd Mark Strange, said that “it’s not right . . . but that has to be the conversation between the Archbishop of Canterbury and a conversation I know he’s been having. My prayer is that we can get beyond this as soon as possible. We shouldn’t be judging people’s attendance at something based upon the love they show for someone else.”

At the end of May, the Archbishop encouraged the Primates of Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda to attend the conference this July (News, 7 June). The Primates have previously described “the recognition of homosexual relations” as the main cause of contention. In 2017, the Scottish Episcopal Church voted to allow its clergy to solemnise marriages for same-sex couples in church (News, 16 June 2017).

Last Friday, at this year’s Synod meeting, Bishop Strange said that he would have felt quite uncomfortable at the Lambeth Conference had it been five years ago, but more recently had the sense that Scottish Episcopalians were “honoured members of the Communion. . . There is not a sense of us being excluded.”

Click here for more coverage of the SEC synod. The full interview with the Primus can be heard online as a Church Times Podcast.