from Anglican Futures
On the 15th April, the Governing Body of the Church in Wales will vote on a “Bill to incorporate into the Book of Common Prayer an Order of Service of Blessing following a Civil Partnership or Marriage between two people of the same-sex”.
If it passes, the fractures in the Anglican Communion will further deepen.
If it is rejected, it will be a miracle.
Up until now, every stage of this process has been driven forward by those determined to see change and weighted against those who seek to uphold the traditional teaching of the Church. Time and again, the language of ‘unity’, ‘discernment’ and ‘respect’ has been used by those seeking change as a poor disguise for the utter contempt with which hold the concerns of faithful Anglicans in Wales and the wider Anglican Communion.
In 2019, the Rt Revd Cherry Vann was elected to be the next Bishop of Monmouth. Having secured preferment she, “publicly disclosed her civil partnership with Wendy Diamond. Rather than apologise for not having being open about her relationship, she complained about the stress of keeping it a “secret” for more than twenty years in the Church of England.
Then in 2021, the Governing Body were tassured that they were only “experimenting” with a service of blessing and that no firm decisions were being made. Unsurprisingly, by 2025, the ‘experiment’ had been recast by the Dean of Newport as something which would be, “pastorally and missionally unthinkable to end.”
Last year, the Bishops held a listening exercise supposedly to determine whether, or not, to make this ‘experiment’ permanent. The Most Revd Cherry Vann, who by then had been elected Primate, told the Governing Body that, “if people are going to be able to contribute what they want to contribute, they really do need to feel that they are being listened to and heard, whatever their views, and that those views are respected and held in grace.”
Here are just a few of the public contributions that were made on that day: