In 2004, Lowe commented in a diocese newsletter on the patriotic hymn "
I Vow to Thee, My Country", criticising it for being "
heretical" and calling on fellow Church of England clergymen to think "long and hard" about singing the song due to (in Lowe's view) its
nationalist undertones. and the Church's planned sale of
Jacob And His Twelve Sons by
Francisco de Zurbarán. In 2008, Lowe voiced support of
Rowan Williams,
Archbishop of Canterbury, in the
media controversy over Williams' remarks on
sharia law, calling the media treatment of Williams "disgraceful" and a "knee-jerk" reaction in interviews on
Newsnight and
Radio 4 on 8 February and an appearance on
Question Time. In June 2008 a report commissioned by Lowe,
Moral, But No Compass – Church, Government and the Future of Welfare, by Francis Davis and Elizabath Paulhus was the lead story in
The Times and has subsequently been the subject of two House of Lords debates. In June 2009 his book,
What Makes a Good City? Public Theology and the Urban Church (which Lowe had co-authored with the theologian
Elaine Graham), was published by
Darton, Longman and Todd. On 11 February 2017, Lowe was one of fourteen retired bishops to sign an
open letter to the then-serving bishops of the Church of England. In an unprecedented move, they expressed their opposition to the House of Bishops' report to
General Synod on sexuality, which recommended no change to the Church's canons or practices around sexuality. By 13 February, a serving bishop (
Alan Wilson,
Bishop of Buckingham) and nine further retired bishops had added their signatures; on 15 February, the report was rejected by synod. ==References==