It was also in The Telegraph yesterday: 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9243141/Anglican-preacher-barred-from-pulpit-over-opposition-to-gay-marriage.html

The Diocese of Southwark does not come out well.

Again. 

I find it extraordinarily cynical that someone thinks this was somehow contrived.

That a lay reader would seek to get barred.

No, it is just providential, if one wants to use such a word.

The word I would use though is more 'typical' - it is typical of response in the Diocese of Southwark,

that favours order over doctrine.

The lay reader  is asked to stand aside, however temporarily. 

Yet the Dean who gave an flagwaving revisionist sermon at the consecration of the two Area Bishops

described by Stephen Kuhrt as 'the most appalling use of a consecration sermon ever' is still in post. 

There is a more detailed account of what has happened in this instance here:

http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/anglican-lay-reader-suspended-for.html

A good example of what Stephen Kuhrt was saying in his recent comment in the Church Times, about a recent meeting with the Bp of Southwark, namely that:  “A great deal of concern was expressed at how out of touch Southwark diocese has become with Evangelicals, and particularly with the promo­tion of so many who are working to revise the Church’s traditional position on sexuality. . ."

Bizarre. Extraordinary. Shocking. Disturbing.

A good example of the 'tolerance' of liberalism?

Virtue not known for reliable reporting and a calm head - now is he ?

A dream story for the FoCAs and soo well timed.  Providential or conived ?

Does one smell a rat here ?

Well it may not be true, or it may be not quite so clear, but if it is true then it suggets to me that lgbt elements in the church are out to oust believers. And of course when I say believers I mean including homosexual believers as well.

Any thoughts on this folks?  Another Southwark story here: 

LONDON: Southwark Lay Reader Sacked for upholding Traditonal Marriage
Rev. Paul Perkin, Vicar of St. Mark's made the announcement at FCA celebration

By Julian Mann
Special to virtueonline.org
www.virtueonline.org
April 29, 2012

One of the big stories at the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans' (FCA) gathering in London last week was a local one. At an evening event celebrating orthdox Anglicanism in Westminister on Thursday, the chairman of the FCA (UK and Ireland), the Rev. Paul Perkin, announced that a volunteer lay reader in Southwark Diocese had had his permission to officiate withdrawn by an Archdeacon for defending traditional marriage.

Mr Perkin, whose church, St Mark's Battersea Rise in Southwark diocese, hosted the five-day international FCA conference, said the reader's licence had been withdrawn after the Archdeacon received complaints.

One major UK national Sunday newspaper sniffed at the story last week but so far nothing has appeared.

If true, it is hugely significant. With clergy becoming more thinly spread due to dwindling finances, the Church of England is becoming increasingly reliant on volunteer lay ministers.

Being volunteers, they are easier to sack than paid licensed clergy. But for a reader to lose his licence for upholding traditional marriage against the currently politically-correct drive to redefine it would be astonishing, even by the standards of disorder that liberal revisionists are capable of plumbing.

The training a reader undergoes is time-consuming and many of them are hugely committed servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. Their vocation is to teach God's Word in local churches and lead services.

The story needs verifying. If the national press are not going to follow it up, the UK church press certainly have a moral responsibility to do so.