Church teaching on homosexuality 'is like justifying slavery', says evangelical leader The incoming Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is an evangelical and takes over the job at a time when the Church of England is grappling with the issue of whether to bless civil partnerships in churches. Rev Chalke, founder of the Christian charity Oasis and a Baptist minister, said he recognised he would be accused by some of fellow evangelicals as having "strayed" from the Bible but insisted he could no longer "remain silent" on the issue. He said that while verses in the Old and New Testaments had been used to condemn homosexual activity, they had to be interpreted in line with the wider message of the Bible, which he said was "radically inclusive." "Some will think that I have strayed from scripture - that I am no longer an evangelical," he wrote. I have formed my view, however, not out of any disregard for the Bible's authority, but by way of grappling with it and, through prayerful reflection, seeking to take it seriously. Rev Chalke argued that the church's traditional teaching on homosexuality as "a sin or less than God's best" had been deeply harmful and that it now had a "God given responsibility to include those who have for so long found themselves excluded." He went on: "Why am I so passionate about this issue? Because people's lives are at stake. Numerous studies show that suicide rates among gay people, especially young people, are comparatively high. Church leaders sometimes use this data to argue that homosexuality is unhealthy when tragically it is anti-gay stigma, propped up by church attitudes, which, all too often, drives these statistics. Describing how he had recently conducted his first blessing service for a civil partnership, he said he had come to view Churches" reluctance to embrace same-sex relationships as "an injustice." He said that, just as there are verses which appear to support the notion of slavery, Christians would have to interpret the Bible for the contemporary world on issues such as homosexuality. "William Wilberforce and friends were condemned by huge swathes of the Church as they fought for abolition," he wrote. "They were dismissed as liberal and unbiblical for their "deliberate abandonment of the authority of Scripture. But, on the basis of a straightforward biblical exegesis of the Bible's text, their critics were right. He added: "When Copernicus discovered that the sun, not the earth, was the centre of our solar system, scripture was used by Luther, Calvin, the Catholic Church and many others to condemn him. Here is my question: shouldn't we take the same principle that we readily apply to the role of women, slavery, and numerous other issues, and apply it our understanding of permanent, faithful, homosexual relationships? Wouldn't it be inconsistent not to?