Anglican Church on brink of revolt, says Primate

Fallout from internal same-sex marriage vote deepens, with church Primate issuing dire warning.

Anglican Primate Geoff Smith. Picture: Roy Van Der Vegt

The “green light” for same-sex marriages to be blessed by Anglican priests could cause boycotts of national church meetings and parishes to split, Primate Geoff Smith warned, as the fallout from this week’s General Synod showdown deepened.

The failure of church conservatives led by the powerful Sydney Diocese to have the conference affirm orthodox doctrine that marriage was between a man and woman as well as condemn the blessing of same-sex civil unions has opened the way for these ceremonies to resume.

In the lead-up to the General Synod – the first since gay marriage was legalised in 2017 – Archbishop Smith appealed for restraint after the Anglicans’ peak dispute resolutions body, the Appellate Tribunal, ruled in 2020 that a blessing conducted by the progressive Wangaratta Diocese in Victoria was allowed under the church constitution. Only one other such ceremony is known to have happened since then, also in Wangaratta.

“It is generally understood that the Appellate Tribunal decision effectively gave the green light for dioceses to pass regulations allowing or authorising liturgies for people who are married under the Marriage Act,” Adelaide-based archbishop said.

“I think it is the case it is reasonably understood the green light is already there for dioceses to proceed. Dioceses have been, in response to my request for restraint, holding off. So it may be the case that dioceses move ahead with this in the future.”

Bishop of Wangaratta Clarence Bester was noncommittal on whether further blessings were in the offing. “For us in Wangaratta … we will continue to celebrate our God-given gifts and we will continue to spread the love of Jesus to all whom we encounter within life’s journey,” he said in a statement.

But Archbishop Smith warned any move by progressives in the church to provide gay marriage blessings on the back of Wednesday’s tight General Synod vote would widen divisions. “If dioceses choose to move ahead on this, as Wangaratta already has, there will be increased tensions and we might find some of our national expressions of the church like General Synod are weakened,” he said, as the week-long conference wound up on Friday. “With national meetings of the bishops, we might find some bishops not attending. We might find some people leaving the Anglican Church in the areas where the dioceses move ahead, we might even find some parishes choosing to leave.”

Asked how he felt about this, Archbishop Smith said: “This is not the first time we have had diminishments in relationships. This happened over the ordination of women and particularly over the ordination of women as bishops. So there is already a diminishing of our relationships across the church nationally. But I do feel sad and I hope and pray we can work to … some sort of agreement about this.”

Church conservatives are furious that the marriage motion sponsored by Archbishop of Sydney Kanishka Raffel was backed by a sizeable majority of the 249 synod delegates, only to be vetoed when a panel of 24 archbishops and senior diocesan bishops narrowly voted it down, 12-10, with two apparent abstentions.

Archbishop Smith, who as Primate is titular leader of the Australian church, but in reality has few powers because of its federated structure, declined to say if or how he voted. However, he rejected the notion that the will of the majority had been denied.

“You can read it as a small number of people subverting the wishes of, if you like, the majority. But another way to read it is, well, we agreed to the rules and we played by the rules and we got the result we got according to the rules,” Archbishop Smith said.

Chair of the Australian arm of the conservative Global Anglican Future Conference, Bishop of Tasmania Richard Condie, predicts the dioceses of the 12 House of Bishops members who blocked the marriage statement would be the first hit by defections. Potentially, entire congregations and clergy would jump to the “lifeboat” of the Diocese of the Southern Cross, incorporated under Gafcon’s auspices. But Tasmania would stay put in the Anglican Church of Australia, he insisted.