Christians urged to welcome civil partnerships.
The Anglican organisation Affirming Catholicism has published today a booklet calling on the Church to welcome civil partnerships as a pastoral opportunity and a means of listening to the experience of lesbian and gay Christians. Civil partnerships are being flagged as a way out of the ‘catch 22’ which faces many gay Christians whose relationships are criticised for being unstable while - at the same time - the Church fails to offer any support which might help couples stay together.
In a foreword to the booklet, the Very Reverend Dr Jeffrey John, the Dean of St Albans, thanks God for the legislation which came into effect in England and Wales on 21 December 2005. He says that same-sex couples who commit their lives to each other ‘are expressing the deepest and most godlike instinct in human nature’. Acknowledging that many in the Church have yet to recognise this, he nonetheless believes that civil partnerships will help to change attitudes.
"We know that the road to full and equal acceptance of gay relationships throughout the world will be long and hard, but we can rejoice that in this country the partnership law is a very big step along it" he said. Another booklet by Dr Jeffrey John’s booklet entitled ‘Permanent, Faithful, Stable: Christian Same-Sex partnerships’ was published by Affirming Catholicism in 1993 and updated in 2001. It placed biblical teaching on homosexuality in its historical context and called for contemporary Church practice to develop and accord loving, committed and sexually faithful same-sex relationships the same value and significance as Christian marriage.
Canon Nerissa Jones, MBE, the Chair of Trustees for Affirming Catholicism said: "The period of listening and reception to which Anglicans are committed can’t happen on a purely theoretical level. It must also be about the lived experience of lesbian and gay Christians who need to feel safe enough to tell their stories. We believe that civil partnership can help give that security and that local clergy should offer prayer and support for couples."
The policy of the Church of England, as stated by the House of Bishops is that, while there could be no authorised liturgy to bless same-sex couples until there was consensus on Church teaching, parish priests should nonetheless respond sensitively and pastorally to gay couples seeking blessings. The publication calls for an end to the perceived double standard at the heart of current Church teaching which accepts gay relationships between lay people but bans sexually active homosexual women and men from the priesthood.
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4 comments:
"....means of listening to the experience of lesbian and gay Christians."
Of course, the evangelicals will say that lesbian/gay and christian are contradictions in terms!
Whereas it sounds good that the church is getting more tolerant/up to date, maybe it would actually be better (in the atheists sense) if they weren't. They have specified their change of heart is purely to do with the fact that an average congregation in England is about 4 people. If they antagonise those 4, then eventually the church would just be a total anachronism & (hopefully) disappear.
Bit of a catch 22 eh? What we need is the hierarchy to be tolerant (and so set an example to society), but for each individual vicar to preach fire & damnation for every litle "sin", causing people to stop attending church. Sorted:-)
GWB said: Of course, the evangelicals will say that lesbian/gay and christian are contradictions in terms!
Saddly true. But thankfully such people are still in the minority - at least Globally. Though strangely a lot seem to live in the USA and Africa... Go figure.
I really like your idea Mrs A. But not to worry - church attendence is STILL dropping in the UK and has been for 50 years....
GWB said:
Of course, the evangelicals will say that lesbian/gay and christian are contradictions in terms!
CyberKitten said...
Saddly true. But thankfully such people are still in the minority - at least Globally. Though strangely a lot seem to live in the USA and Africa...
I'd argue that most Christians, evangelicals or not, and most of the "western" religions with a concept of "sin" taken as a group would say that being homosexual or, "worse", being transsexual whether in a relationship or not, comprises a sin. In general, even when it was more widespread and more tolerated than it is today, homosexuality has been historically considered either immoral or distasteful by a majority of the population.
Of course, given that homosexuality is at least influenced by genetics, homosexuals will tend to let themselves be bred out of the population whenever homosexuality gains wider acceptability. The more oppressive the society against homosexuality, the more likely that homosexual genetic heritage will be introduced into the population. Not that it's a negative such as Catch-22 normally connotes, but it is recursively deterministic based on societal standards.
Here's a question with thorns in it... However you feel about homosexuality or transgender self-identification, these are inarguably not genes that lend themselves to self-perpetuation from a "selfish gene" perspective. Bisexuality does not necessarily reduce the odds of its self-perpetuation. There will likely come a time, if we do not first extinguish civilization as a 10,000 year experiment gone wrong, that a person's behavioral characteristics of religiosity, sexual identity and aggression (among a plethora of other traits) can be selected before fertilization occurs. When this happens, will it ever be appropriate for a republic to establish standards on sexual identity and orientation? Is anything other than "bisexuality" acceptable from a perspective of genetic engineering for a peaceful and accepting populace?
On an unrelated note, yesterday I posted a response I'd like to have read on one of your old blog page comment threads (the one about explaining why you [Cyberkitten] were atheist). As a matter of fact, it was so good that I posted the same comment three times (NOT! It was an accident. Mea maxima culpa. Please delete the first two postings). I'd stumbled upon it from a sideways direction and presumed that it was the current topic.
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