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Anglican pastor Sam Allberry

LONDON, England, February 20, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – Faced with the growing prospect the Anglican Church’s Synod would reject the Christian doctrine on heterosexual marriage, the Rev. Sam Allberry challenged the assembly.

His words are captured on a short video. “My question … is not ‘Do you affirm this doctrine,’ but ‘Do you really believe in it. Is it good news for the world?’”

What made Allberry’s question so poignant is that he himself is attracted to men. Yet here he was denying this attraction was good for him and the church.

A long-awaited report by a committee of Anglican bishops on homosexuality affirmed that Christianity recognized only heterosexual marriage. However, it stated that homosexual relationships had positive qualities. It urged the church to explore ways to affirm them, even with special liturgies.

This led Allberry to express his concern that, after affirming heterosexual marriage in principle, in practice, “We are already preparing to pastorally undermine it.”

Hence his question: “Not ‘Do you affirm this doctrine,’ but ‘Do you really believe in it. Is it good news for the world? Many of us [homosexually attracted but celibate] find it to be life-giving.”

Allberry knew he was swimming against the tide at the synod. During the debate over whether to bless same-sex “marriages,” many homosexual Anglicans made emotional pleas to abandon 2,000 years of teaching in the name of compassion, equality, and tolerance.

However, Allberry rejected their arguments even though “I am same-sex attracted and have been my entire life. I have sexual, romantic, and deep emotional attractions to people of the same sex.”

Allberry, associate pastor of a parish in Maidstone with a growing ministry to celibate Christians like himself, went on to say he personally knew hundreds, and was aware of thousands, of Christians beset by homosexual desires. Nonetheless, they “joyfully affirm” Christ’s teachings that marriage is exclusively a heterosexual institution.

If very few of those thousands were willing to speak up, it was because their view was so unpopular, he said.

“It’s very hard to stand up and describe ourselves in this way,” he said.

Just as he was bullied for being gay when he was in school, “I now feel I am being bullied in Synod for being same-sex attracted and faithful to the teaching of Jesus on marriage.”

Despite Allberry's misgiving, he voted to adopt the bishops' report. However, the LGBT lobby opposed it, because it did not recommend full acceptance of homosexual unions. Voting in three “houses,” the laity and the bishops approved the report, the clergy did not, and it failed.

The report’s rejection is seen as a defeat for Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who hoped for a typical Anglican compromise. During the debate, he declared the Church needed “a radical new Christian inclusion in the Church. This must be founded in Scripture, in reason, in tradition, in theology; it must be based on good, healthy, flourishing relationships, and in a proper 21st century understanding of being human and of being sexual.”

The defeat was also seen as a victory for LGBT forces. However, Andrea Williams, the director of Christian Concern, argued that report’s failure offered the Church of England a chance to return to Christ’s teaching.

“Jesus Christ dealt with all people, regardless of their sin, but He always moved to call us to repent of our sin. … This is the real ‘radical inclusion’ of Jesus Christ's message,” she said.

Williams called on the church to weed out those promoting homosexuality from positions of power.

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