What does Justin Welby think about same-sex marriage?
by Stephen Noll, Anglican Ink:
What does Justin Welby think about same-sex marriage? The answer seems to be, in the words of Herman Melville’s fictional character Bartleby the Scrivener: “I would prefer not to…”
Am I being unfair? Read for yourself the following interview which Archbishop Welby gave in GQ magazine:
GQ: Is gay sex sinful?
JW: You know very well that is a question I can’t give a straight answer to….
GQ: Why can’t you?
JW: Because I don’t do blanket condemnation and I haven’t got a good answer to the question. I’ll be really honest about that. I know I haven’t got a good answer to the question. Inherently, within myself, the things that seem to me to be absolutely central are around faithfulness, stability of relationships and loving relationships.
GQ: But that could be a man and a man or a woman and a woman?
JW: I know it could be. I am also aware – a view deeply held by tradition since long before Christianity, within the Jewish tradition – that marriage is understood invariably as being between a man and a woman. Or, in various times, a man and several women, if you go back to the Old Testament. I know that the Church around the world is deeply divided on this in some places, including the Anglicans and other Churches, not just us, and we are – the vast majority of the Church is – deeply against gay sex.
GQ: So this is where you are having to be a politician.
JW: Yes. I am having to struggle to be faithful to the tradition, faithful to the scripture, to understand what the call and will of God is in the 21st century and to respond appropriately with an answer for all people – not condemning them, whether I agree with them or not – that covers both sides of the argument. And I haven’t got a good answer, and I am not doing that bit of work as well as I would like.
To be sure, Archbishop Welby wasn’t being asked about same-sex marriage, but about “gay sex.” But isn’t that precisely the point, that sex and marriage are, according to God’s plan, indivisible (Genesis 2:24-25)? Dennis Prager stated this truth in a compelling way:
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