Anglican moderates hit back in same-sex spat

Progressive Anglicans have hit back at church conservatives, deepening tensions over same-sex marriage and gay priests at a national assembly.

A bitter clash among Anglicans is poised to erupt on Monday at the General Synod, the first to be convened since Australians voted to legalise gay marriage in 2017.

Progressive Anglicans have hit back at church conservatives vying to seize control of the moral agenda, deepening tensions over same-sex marriage and gay priests at a showpiece national assembly of clergy and elders.

The so-called General Synod 18 Network of moderates has ambushed the conservative faction, led by the powerful Sydney Diocese, by tabling provocative countermotions to resolutions con­demning the blessing of same-sex unions and enforcing chastity rules for priests.

This sets the scene for a bitter clash at the parliament-like General Synod from Monday, the first to be convened since Australians voted to legalise gay marriage in 2017. Covid forced the normally-triennial conference to be postponed in 2020 and again last year.

A co-chair of the progressive network, Adelaide priest and academic Matthew Anstey, said they would “call to account” the conservatives and enable “truth telling” when the leaders gathered.

On the late inclusion of the countermotions on the order of business, he said: “The words we have used are anathema to some of our opponents. Some of them would no doubt say we are not even Christian in putting forward these views, especially in relation to supporting same-sex marriage.

“So we expect some very strong rebuttal to that at the General Synod … it will be pretty brutal.”

The Sydney-led conservatives have been accused of stacking the numbers among the 249 voting delegates who range from archbishops to base-level deacons, rank-and-file parishioners and grandees of the church laity.

Rejecting this, the conservatives say their representation reflects the strength of the evan­gelical movement seated in the Sydney Diocese.

They go into the five-day conference on the Gold Coast commanding an estimated 60 per cent of the floor, putting them in the box seat to ram through the “statements” sponsored by the Archbishop of Sydney, Kanishka Raffel, and Bishop of Sydney ­Michael Stead.

On marriage, Archbishop Raffel will move that it be affirmed as the union of a man and woman, and denounce blessing ceremonies for gay newlyweds as contrary to the teaching of Christ.

Dr Stead’s statement will uphold the “historic view that unchastity means sexual activity” outside of heterosexual marriage, capturing clergy involved in same-sex relationships.

The countermotion to be moved by Reverend Anstey and seconded by Professor Peter Sherlock, vice-chancellor of the University of Divinity in Melbourne, says civil same-sex marriage is a “moral good and a gift to be celebrated”.

In contrast to the conservative view that the issue is fundamental to Christian values and faith, they will ask the General Synod to recognise “marriage is not considered a matter pertaining to salvation in this church … that doctrine was changed in response to different understandings of scripture, changed perceptions about the respective roles of men and women and the need to accommodate the law of the land”.

Reverend Anstey said the progressive network would muster more than 80 votes across the three “houses” making up the assembly – those of Clergy, Laity and Bishops. “Both sides will have a ticket to vote on every motion, amendments,” he said, referring to the rival blocs of conservatives and progressives.

Underlining the split, Reverend Anstey said: “We don’t know what they are going to do, and they don’t know what we are going to do. What we have been saying is that we want to use this as a catalyst to advocate the vision of Anglicanism … using words like generous, inclusive and open-hearted.”

However, the conservatives purport to have drawn a “line in the sand” on same-sex marriage after losing other ideological battles in the church over the ordination of women priests in the 1990s, consecration of female bishops and the remarriage of ­divorced people.

“This is quite a different issue to anything we have faced in the past because of very different views on the authority of the scriptures,” Dr Stead said. “The issue is not that you can look at the same scriptures and say, ‘we read them differently’. On this particular issue, if you say that marriage is other than the marriage of a man with a woman, you have to say that what Jesus says and what the rest of the Bible says is wrong.”

Anglican Primate Geoff Smith, who will chair the General Synod, said he still hoped a compromise could be found to avert the zero sum outcome of voting on the contentious statements.

One option was to pause the formal debate and break into a “conference” format, the original plan for the assembly in 2020 before the virus intervened. “I am kind of disappointed really with the way things have worked out because I was one of those promoting the conference approach a couple of years ago to enable people to speak to each other and particularly to listen to each other,” the Archbishop of Adelaide said.

“But I completely get that people want some kind of certainty about this.”

Asked whether he would support such a compromise, he said: “I am keeping a very neutral position … I don’t think me saying what I might or might not do will actually help that process. I will just play it by ear and see what seems to be the right thing.”