School Chaplain the Church of England Is Trying to Cancel Again… Six Years After He Said Pupils Needn’t Accept LGBT Ideology

In the Mail, Ian Gallagher reveals that the Church of England is still hounding Reverend Dr Bernard Randall – six years after he upheld its own teachings on LGBT issues. Here’s an excerpt:

For the past six years, Dr Randall, 52, has been on a Church of England blacklist, a casualty of the culture wars – a victim, as he sees it, of a grave injustice and “a perfect storm of failings”.

As it stands, were he to try to preach at a CofE church, he could face legal sanction. His crime? As the Mail On Sunday exclusively revealed in 2021, Dr Randall, school chaplain at Trent College in Derbyshire, simply gave a sermon to pupils, telling children they did not have to accept LGBT ideology – upholding, he says, the Churc’s own teachings on marriage.

Bizarrely, the independent school, which has a long Anglican tradition, secretly referred Dr Randall to the Government’s anti-radicalisation programme Prevent following the 2019 sermon – and later sacked him. Less bizarrely, Prevent saw no reason to take any action against him. Nor did several other official bodies which later considered his case. …

As chaplain, he told pupils that “you should no more be told you have to accept LGBT ideology than you should be told you must be in favour of Brexit, or must be Muslim”. He was, in part, reacting to campaign group Educate & Celebrate, invited by the school to teach staff to “embed gender, gender identity and sexual orientation into the fabric” of what they do.

After falling into a bitter dispute with the school’s bosses, he was sacked, then reinstated, only to be made redundant during Covid.

Despite being cleared of wrongdoing, Dr Randall, who is married with a daughter, was unable to get another job in the Church.

The Right Reverend Libby Lane, the Bishop of Derby – the Church’s first female bishop – refused to grant him a licence or permission to officiate because her safeguarding team decided he could pose a risk of harm to children. It raised concerns about how Dr Randall “would speak to and support someone who came to him if they were struggling with their sexuality”. …

He complained that the proceedings were flawed and Bishop Lane “discriminated against me on the grounds of my orthodox beliefs on gender and sexual orientation”.

But Archbishop Welby refused to allow Dr Randall to bring a misconduct case against Bishop Lane, despite being told by Gregory Jones KC the decision was “plainly wrong”. Mr Jones, reviewing the case on behalf of the clergy discipline tribunal, said Archbishop Welby had “misunderstood the scope of his powers”, adding that the Church’s “error” was “gross”.

The tribunal ruled that while there were “serious errors”, Bishop Lane personally did not have a case to answer. But it was decided that the Church “should look at this matter again and that it might well be appropriate” for an independent team to start from scratch.

And so, after waiting more than a year, Dr Randall found himself at a preliminary meeting last month with CofE safeguarding adviser Lee Elliot and Bishop of Repton, Rt Revd Malcolm Macnaughton, the Bishop of Derby’s deputy.

Bishop Malcolm read a statement which claimed the chaplain remained a risk based on what he might say in future sermons. Mr Elliott referred to Dr Randall’s Christian beliefs as “your views”.

Dr Randall responded by saying that his sermon reflected official CofE doctrine, not personal opinion. Mr Elliot went on to claim that saying “things that are controversial… could significantly lead to harm”, before abruptly ending the meeting. Dr Randall later told the MoS: “This has been six years of silence, shame and spiritual exile.”

Worth reading in full.