Jim from North Carolina asks:
"You mentioned in a recent column that some of the Archbishops of Canterbury have been gay. Do you know who they were?"
Dear Jim,
The two best-known Archbishops of Canterbury who were gay males were LanFranc and Anselm. However if you want to go into this study in more detail I commend to your attention John Boswell's monumental work: Christianity, Social Tradition and Homosexuality, published in 1980 by the University of Chicago Press. Boswell, now deceased, was a Yale historian and the youngest Yale professor ever to be made a department chair by that university. His research for this book was extensive and I might add quite disturbing to the ecclesiastical hierarchy of his own Roman Catholic Church and to many other prejudiced Church leaders as well.
-- John Shelby Spong
"You mentioned in a recent column that some of the Archbishops of Canterbury have been gay. Do you know who they were?"
Dear Jim,
The two best-known Archbishops of Canterbury who were gay males were LanFranc and Anselm. However if you want to go into this study in more detail I commend to your attention John Boswell's monumental work: Christianity, Social Tradition and Homosexuality, published in 1980 by the University of Chicago Press. Boswell, now deceased, was a Yale historian and the youngest Yale professor ever to be made a department chair by that university. His research for this book was extensive and I might add quite disturbing to the ecclesiastical hierarchy of his own Roman Catholic Church and to many other prejudiced Church leaders as well.
-- John Shelby Spong