In homosexuality debate, out of touch means out of favour

If there is one issue that threatens to destroy what remains of Europe’s Protestant ecclesiastial communities from within, it is homosexuality. Few Christian communities have kept up with the advance in homosexuals’ civil rights. Perhaps they do not understand how advances in education mean that young people coming out of schools today find opposition to homosexuality in the churches incredible. The Anglican Communion, possibly even the Church of England, might not survive the debate in their present form. At a crucial meeting of its central executive body in Jamaica last week, leaders of the Anglican Communion effectively kicked a new “covenant”, into touch. This was a document designed to hold together the member provinces under a banner of agreed orthodoxy.
Some believe it could never have worked, as wealthiest of these provinces, The Episcopal Church of the US, has already embraced gay rights and has no plans to relinquish them. The Anglicans are the most publicly divided over this issue, and are now staring schism in the face, but in the Church of Scotland the divisions also run deep, as they do in most churches. The Methodists and the Quakers, adopting their gently liberal gospels of inclusiveness, are among the few who seem to have managed this issue with true Christian charity. In the Roman Catholic Church, homosexuality is unlikely in the immediate future to lead to the kind of traumas convulsing the post-Reformation communities simply because theologians who dare to dissent are silenced or sacked. To many churchgoers, the cry of “love the sinner, hate the sin” reeks of hypocrisy. Communities will find it increasingly difficult to sustain a demand for celibacy by gay clergy while quietly acceding to homosexual practice among the laity, such as is the official policy of bishops of the Church of England. This community now finds itself in the absurd position of having to pay out pensions to the partners of gay clergy who have had a civil partnership ceremony, and at the same time insisting these clergy remain celibate, while refusing to sanction officially gay partnerships by blessing them in church, even though the Church of England is the state church which boasts that its baptisms, marriages and funerals are open to all. According to a survey published yesterday at the Christian Resources Exhibition in Esher, Surrey, few of those affected by the recession are turning to church to seek help. But of those who did, none returned. And given what preachers such as Mr Watson are spouting from their pulpits, it is no wonder.
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