Radical inclusion after Synod: a briefing
from Gafcon UK:
The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have said, in a statement from 16th February:
we need a radical new Christian inclusion in the Church. This must be founded in scripture, in reason, in tradition, in theology; it must be based on good, healthy, flourishing relationships, and in a proper 21st century understanding of being human and of being sexual.
Responses from Bishops
The Bishop of Manchester complains about the argument of conservatives, which “asserts that until the law and the canons change, wider teaching is fixed”. He calls this “the logic of logjam.” Instead, he proposes “much more than ‘maximum freedom’”, and “the possibility of exploring our prayers, our discipline, our outreach, our ministry and our teaching, and doing so with the expectation that things are going to look significantly different afterwards.”
The Diocese of Hereford included the following motion for its Synod meeting of 4th March (subsequently withdrawn):
‘That this Synod requests the House of Bishops to commend under Canon B4 an Order of Prayer and Dedication after a Civil Partnership or Same-Sex Marriage, indicative of no departure from the doctrine of the Church of England on any essential matter, and furnished with ample safeguards that no parish should be obliged to host, nor minister conduct, such a service.’
This comes immediately after the Bishop of Hereford declared in an ad clerum, before the Synod vote,
my own position as one who wants to affirm same sex relationships while seeing marriage itself as being by definition between a man and a woman. In other words, as the Report puts it, “Interpreting the existing framework to permit maximum freedom within it, without changes to the law or the doctrine of the Church.”
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