Posted on 12/15/2022 6:26:32 PM PST by marshmallow
In the next few months, the Church of England's long-running debate on marriage for same-sex couples may come to a head.
LONDON (RNS) — It’s a headline that could have run at any time in the past three decades: The Archbishop of Canterbury, the primate of the Church of England and the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, attempts to balance conservative and progressive views on LGBTQ affirmation in the name of church unity.
For years, archbishops have sublimated their own views, knowing that challenging traditional teaching would threaten the church’s and the Communion’s existence. Not challenging it, however, has made for problems among churches in liberal democracies.
Now, this long-running story might be coming to an end.
This week, the bishops of the Church of England are meeting to finalize proposals to be submitted to a meeting in February of the governing body of the church, the General Synod, about marriage for same-sex couples. The document they will be discussing, “Living in Love and Faith,” focuses on many topics under the rubric of love and marriage, but it is same-sex relationships that are the most neuralgic.
The meeting comes as support for marriage for gay couples is growing within the church, most notably among evangelical members of the episcopate who have long opposed it. But if the bishops choose to recommend changing doctrine, they know that it will have consequences far beyond England’s shores in the broader Anglican Communion.
This summer, at the Anglican Communion’s all-bishops meeting known as the Lambeth Conference, the current archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, tried to mollify conservative bishops by reaffirming a 1998 declaration that gay sex is a sin, while reassuring liberals by saying he would not punish national churches in the Communion that allow priests to marry same-sex couples. Conservative bishops from........
(Excerpt) Read more at pres-outlook.org ...
The saved and the damned cannot have unity.
Look for the trend of former Anglican bishops to convert to Roman Catholicism once retired continuing and most likely accelerating.
I’m Roman Catholic, former Episcopalian. They lost me years ago. Now it seems Francis is doing his best to drive me away.
If Paul were alive, he would be writing a letter to the Church of England, and the Christian Churches of the USA about their refusal to keep God as the focus and head of the Church.
Game over in the West, Russia wins, at least culturally. Should have fought for values when we could.
Yup. Welby’s a loser and he will lose this one.
John of Patmos would cc his letter to the church in Laodicea.
The West may very well lose unless the cultural decline is reversed, which would require a concerted effort by the churches that still consider orthodoxy important, but Russia won’t win. Russian society is completely dependent on the state. There’s hardly any room for private iniciative and personal responsibility. The Russian Orthodox Church is the state’s whore. If Putin told the Russian Orthodox Church to bless homo “marriages”, most of them would agree. By the way, many Freepers don’t know that evangelical churches are persecuted in Russia.
Someone else will win. Maybe Brazil?
It doesn’t seem to matter to them that queers can’t make their own children, they have to steal yours. What does God have to say about that?
You are not alone.
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