Church rule changes encourage ‘adulterers and fornicators’, former Anglican archbishop claims

The Anglican Church split over same-sex marriage deepens as former archbishop of Sydney Glenn Davies takes aim at his Brisbane counterpart.

Archbishop of Brisbane Jeremy Greaves at St John's Cathedral. Picture: Glenn Hunt/The Australian

Anglican priests and church workers were free to be “adulterers and fornicators” after a chastity rule was axed at the instigation of new Archbishop of Brisbane Jeremy Greaves, one of the church’s most senior figures has claimed.

Former Anglican archbishop of Sydney and head of the breakaway Diocese of the Southern Cross Glenn Davies attacked Archbishop Greaves over his pledge reported in The Weekend Australian to allow same-sex marriage blessings and ordination of gay clergy.

Dr Davies accused the freshly minted archbishop of co-sponsoring a successful motion last year to drop from the professional standards regulations of the sprawling Brisbane Diocese the requirement for clergy and other employees to be “chaste”.

“The question of chastity has always been a scriptural requirement as well as an ecclesiastical requirement - in fact it is in the constitution of the church,” Dr Davies said.

“By removing chastity in Brisbane, it means their clergy can now be adulterous, they can be fornicators, they can be in same-sex relationships and the Diocese of Brisbane will not prosecute them. That I think is appalling.”

Archbishop Greaves declined to comment when contacted on Sunday.

In a candid interview ahead of his installation on Saturday, he revealed that he had been sexually assaulted by a boy scouts leader in Adelaide in the early 1980s when he was aged 14 or 15.

It had taken him decades to come to terms with the abuse, and he did not confide in his family nor go to the police until seven or eight years ago.

Archbishop Greaves said he had received a financial settlement from Scouts SA under the National Redress Scheme for survivors of institutional sex abuse.

Dr Davies said he had been deeply moved by Archbishop Greaves’s account, and applauded him for speaking out on the trauma he had endured. “I’m glad he has been able to resolve that, as far as any survivor can,” Dr Davies told The Australian.

His embrace of gay marriage and same-sex attraction more generally was contrary to the Bible’s teachings, and represented the “broad way” that accommodated “comprehensiveness” and “leads to destruction”, Dr Davies said.

The proof was in church attendance. While progressive parishes struggled to fill pews, the evangelical Sydney Diocese was booming, Dr Davies said. “It’s the narrow pathway that we need to take. The angel in Revelation says, ‘Fear God and keep his commandments’. Well, if we don’t keep the commandments of God, we’re not properly fearing them.”

Former Anglican archbishop of Sydney Glenn Davies.

Dr Davies quit the Anglican Church to become bishop of the Diocese of the Southern Cross, effectively a new denomination, after a showdown of clergy and elders at last year’s General Synod failed to bridge the schism over same-sex marriage.

Ten chapters of the breakaway church are now in operation, eight of them in the Brisbane Diocese and a ninth in Cairns.

Archbishop Greaves said at the weekend that this seemed to be no accident, and accused church conservatives aligned with the Diocese of the Southern Cross of targeting the liberal Brisbane parishes.

Rejecting this, Dr Davies said: “We don’t need to target the Diocese of Brisbane, because the Diocese of Brisbane has become its own target.”