Why sex is welcome in Derby Cathedral, but the Holy Bible isn’t

Nic Roeg’s art-house thriller from 1973 Don’t Look Now was most famous, or infamous, for its lengthy and explicit sex scene. I think it’s fair to say that the lugubrious (and in 1973 near ubiquitous) Donald Sutherland gave Julie Christie a very thorough seeing-to, involving the first act of cunnilingus in a mainstream movie.

Even after being trimmed a little it still received an X rating, but did well enough at the box office. It was shown again quite recently — in Derby Cathedral, for reasons which quite elude me. In its unedited form. The dean of the cathedral, Stephen Hance, observed that the film would not be showing God ‘anything that He had not seen before’, thus perhaps implying that He had caught the film first time around, on its double-bill release with The Wicker Man — which was also shown in the cathedral.

Hance did not comment on the possibility that God may have seen more than enough of Donald Sutherland in the 1970s, regardless of what the actor might have been munching at the time. He did, however, add that the cathedral was for everyone and it needed to serve a wide range of people — including those who aren’t religious. Well indeed, how very true that is, Rev.

You might be wondering, then, if there is anything at all Dean Hance would shirk from displaying in his cathedral, and luckily I have the answer for you. This week he has banned the University of Derby Christian Union from having a preacher at its carol concert for students. The union had hoped to hear the Reverend Melvin Tinker, from the evangelical Anglican parish of St John Newland, Hull, address the throng.

Not a chance, said the cathedral bosses. Neither would they accept any other preacher from St John Newland because, according to the sub-dean: ‘What is preached in the cathedral will be taken as being preached by the cathedral.’