by Rebecca Paveley, Church Times:
THE US Episcopal Church has been presented with proposals to protect clerics who hold the view that marriage is intended to be a covenant made only between a man and a woman.
Five proposals have been put forward by a taskforce, Communion Across Difference. Half the group’s members hold a traditional view of marriage, half hold the view that marriage is between two people regardless of gender. It has published a “blue book report” with resolutions for the 81st General Convention of the Episcopal Church, which is due to meet in Kentucky in late June.
The five proposed resolutions in the report, which have not yet been accepted by the convention committee, are “attempts to ensure that the Episcopal Church remains the ‘big tent’ community that it has always been,” the Bishop of Tennessee, the Rt Revd John Bauerschmidt, who co-chaired the taskforce, said. “In the face of our differences, we need to make room for each other.”
The 2018 General Convention agreed that marriage rites would be available to same-sex couples in all dioceses in which same-sex marriage was legal under civil law. The taskforce was set up at the same time to bring together those with different views on marriage to reflect on a way forward.
One of the taskforce’s proposals is that the Church should explicitly permit the use of the version of the Book of Common Prayer authorised in 1979, which refers to marriage as between a male and female.
The taskforce says that a further resolution defining the 1979 Prayer Book as an accepted statement of the Church’s doctrine would protect clergy from allegations that they are violating their ordination vows by using the 45-year-old marriage rite.
Another resolution attempts to protect diocesan employees or clergy whose view on marriage differs to that held by their diocese or bishop.
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