The division within the Anglican church is a result of the church’s failure to make a firm stance on same-sex marriage and decades of disagreements on homosexuality, an Australian commentator says.
It comes after conservatives in August formed a breakaway diocese, which they described as a “lifeboat” for faithful Anglicans who are distressed by the church’s refusal to uphold traditional marriage and sexual ethics.
Peter Kurti, Director of the Culture, Prosperity and Civil Society Program of the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), told The Epoch Times that the church “wanted to have a bit of a fudge in order to make living with compromise easier.”
However, this, in turn, has forced conservatives, who consider this “an issue of great moral importance,” to make a response.
“It’s reached the point where the conservative leaders who are behind this breakaway say we’re not prepared to live with that kind of ambiguity anymore,” he said.
Kurti noted that the split is “not a surprise” but “the result of tensions that have been brewing for a long time.”
Peter Kurti, Director of Culture, Prosperity & Civil Society program at the Centre for Independent Studies. CIS
Conservative vs. Progressive Anglican Bishops
The Diocese of the Southern Cross was announced at the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Canberra on Sunday. GAFCON is an international coalition of conservative church leaders, which Tasmania’s Anglican Bishop Richard Condie chairs.Condie told the recent Lambeth Conference, a decennial assembly of bishops of the Anglican Communion, that “as disciples, we are not told in Scripture to mould Jesus into ‘our’ image.”
“To us in our provinces, this is not primarily about gay sexual practices and unions, but rather that Anglicans look first and foremost to be guided in their faith and order by Scripture, and not by the passing cultural waves of Western society,” he said.
Meanwhile, an Anglican priest in the Diocese of Adelaide, Matthew Anstey, argued that the “progressive vision” of the church “is one of a broad, comprehensive, open-hearted Anglican church, a community where diversity is welcome and embraced — in theology, liturgy, and importantly, human sexuality.”
“And we contend that the conservative vision is narrow, exclusive, hegemonic,” he wrote in a commentary for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on June 1.
‘Revisionist’ Understanding of the Bible
Kurti told The Epoch Times that progressive Anglicans’ understanding of marriage stems from the “revisionist” interpretation of love in the Bible’s teaching. Some would consider the revisionist bishops as standing up for justice; there are those who will think “that actually it’s a sign that the church is modernizing,” he added.“The revisionists insist that they’re right because they say … that God is love. And so they cite the biblical theology and Christian teachings that they think supports their point of view.”
“The conservatives will say God also requires of us a certain standard of living, and we have to abide by certain practices and certain codes, and they can quote all kinds of scriptural references for that case.”
“While there can be different views within the Anglican church about the status of homosexual relationships, the traditional view of marriage is that it is between a man and a woman, and that to depart from that teaching on marriage is not only to break with a very important Anglican tradition, but it’s also to condone some forms of human behavior.”
Kurti said the split is “not a surprise” but “the result of tensions that have been brewing for a long time,” which can be traced back to the 60s and 70s with the progressive gay liberation movement.
“The issues of human sexuality are the most explosive that is blowing things out of the water (among Anglicans),” he noted.
“So this is behind the same sex marriage debate, which is quite a recent one; this whole issue is about whether or not homosexuality is consistent with Christian teaching.”
