By Hilary White
WINNIPEG, Manitoba, June 25, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – At their General Synod in Winnipeg this week, the Canadian branch of the Worldwide Anglican Communion has unexpectedly voted against blessing same-sex unions by the thinnest possible margin, despite strong support for the move among the laity and clergy and many bishops.
Twenty-one members of the House of Bishops voted against the motion to bless homosexual partnerings, ensuring that the motion failed by a slim majority of 21-19. The proposal had to pass all three governing Houses, including the laity and clergy, to be accepted by the Church in general.
An earlier vote Sunday at the Synod agreed that same-sex blessings “do not conflict with the church’s core doctrine”. Clergy and the laity combined and voted 152-92 in favour of the earlier motion, with the bishops voting 21-19 in favour. The second motion proposed to give individual dioceses the option of letting their priests perform blessing ceremonies.
“We now have theological agreement that same-sex unions are not in opposition to doctrine and that’s a big deal,” Chris Ambidge, president of the Toronto chapter of gay advocacy group Integrity told the Associated Press.
A group of retired bishops pleaded last week for the delegates to approve the blessings and then move forward to more critical matters such as poverty and global warming. Failure to do so, they said, “will only continue to draw us away from issues which are gradually destroying God’s creation.”
Rev. Charlie Masters, however, director of Anglican Essentials, a group of conservative Anglicans, disagreed with the notion that whether or not to permit same-sex blessings is a petty issue. He told CanWest News Service, “The debate around the blessing of same-sex unions really is a discussion on whether the Bible is the word of God still today or not.”
“This is why the (global leaders) of the Anglican Communion have been so strong in their dealing with both the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church of the United States.”
The 77-million member Anglican Church still officially adheres to Christian doctrines on sexual purity, continence and natural marriage, but a shift in practice since the 1960’s has led to the abandonment of these teachings by large portions of the laity and clergy alike. Since the election of the openly active homosexual Gene Robinson as Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire in the US, what had been an unspoken drift away from Christian teaching has threatened to create an open schism.
Much hangs on the decision of the Archbishop of Canterbury and titular head of the Communion, Rowan Williams, about whom to invite to the Lambeth Conference upcoming in 2008. Last week, a spokesman for Williams said that the Archbishop had no intention of banning the Canadian branch from Lambeth, no matter what decisions came out of the Winnipeg Synod.
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Canadian Anglicans Will Not Be Excluded from World-Wide Communion Because of Same Sex Blessings
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jun/07062202.html