Dear colleagues,
Many thanks to all those who responded to my email about the Alpha
course. I thought I would follow up with a couple of reflections.
Firstly, to clarify, the reason I was looking into this was because
someone here had raised concerns about an alleged "healing" approach to
homosexuality.
I have received a range of comments about the Alpha course (both
positive and negative) but nothing has been said about specific
attitudes to homosexuality within the course.
As a result of what colleagues have said, I think the main issue for us
at CCCU is that the Alpha course is accurate in the way it promotes
itself - so that people signing up to a discussion on "the meaning of
life" for example, are aware that the discussion will be from a
particular Christian perspective.
As a Church of England Foundation, CCCU has given quite a lot of thought
in the past to the interface between religion and belief and sexuality -
for anyone interested the Anglican approach to human sexuality is
addressed in our 2009 Sexual Orientation position paper at:
http://www.canterbury.ac.uk/about/equal-opportunities/reports-and-papers
.asp
Thanks again to all who got in touch,
Moira
Moira Mitchell
Equality and Diversity Manager, Canterbury Christ Church University
tel: 01227 782795
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