Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is facing backlash for answering a question about “gay sex” by saying “all sexual activity should be within a committed relationship.” Welby is the top church leader in the Church of England and made his comments on the “Leading” podcast on Oct. 21.
“What the Archbishop of York and I and the bishops by a majority—by no means unanimous, and the church is deeply split over this,” said Welby, “where we’ve come to is to say that all sexual activity should be within a committed relationship, and whether it’s straight or gay—in other words…we’re not giving up on the idea that sex is within marriage or civil partnership or whether marriage is civil or religious.”
Justin Welby Says ‘Answer Does Not Indicate a Changing of Teaching’
Welby made these comments after he and podcast hosts Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart were discussing the coronation of King Charles III (Welby officiated the ceremony and crowned the monarch). “Let’s now turn to gay sex,” Campbell said.
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Campbell is former spokesman, press secretary and director of communications and strategy for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Stewart is a former Member of Parliament. Campbell and Stewart launched “The Rest Is Politics” podcast in 2022 and the sister podcast “Leading” in 2023.
Welby appeared on “Leading” for a wide-ranging conversation that Premier Christianity’s Peter Lynas said was mostly “a helpful modelling of Christian engagement in the public square.” Lynas made that assessment in an opinion piece titled, “Justin Welby has abandoned his own church’s teaching on sexuality.” Notably, the Oct. 21 interview was not the first time Campbell had asked Welby’s views on gay sex.
In a 2017 interview in GQ, Campbell, who is an atheist and said he doesn’t “do God,” asked Welby, “Is gay sex sinful?”
Welby replied at the time that he could not “give a straight answer,” going on to say, “I don’t do blanket condemnation and I haven’t got a good answer to the question. I’ll be really honest about that. I know I haven’t got a good answer to the question.”
“Inherently, within myself, the things that seem to me to be absolutely central are around faithfulness, stability of relationships and loving relationships,” said the archbishop.
“But that could be a man and a man or a woman and a woman?” Campbell asked.
“I know it could be. I am also aware—a view deeply held by tradition since long before Christianity, within the Jewish tradition—that marriage is understood invariably as being between a man and a woman,” Welby answered. “Or, in various times, a man and several women, if you go back to the Old Testament.”
“I know that the Church around the world is deeply divided on this in some places,” he continued, “including the Anglicans and other Churches, not just us, and we are—the vast majority of the Church is—deeply against gay sex.”
