Tag Archives: Primates’meeting

Scottish Episcopal Church sanctioned for one same-sex wedding while Anglican Church of Canada gets away with eight

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The Scottish Episcopal Church was rapped on knuckles with a limp noodle at the recent Primates’ Meeting for voting to allow and performing a same-sex wedding. The imposed “consequences” are so laughably meaningless that it’s a wonder that Justin Welby could keep a straight face while announcing them.

To add to the farce, the Anglican Church of Canada voted to allow same-sex weddings in 2016 (to be finalised in 2019) and has now performed eight same-sex weddings (see article below) and no-one seems to care. Even the GAFCON Primates fail to mention it, referring instead to the ACoC “bless[ing] gay relationships”.

From here:

The Primus of Scottish Episcopal Church, Mark Strange, said he recognised the vote in June to permit clerics who wanted to conduct gay weddings to do so had caused ‘some hurt and anger’ among fellow Anglicans around the world.

He accepted the ‘consequences’ – which Lambeth Palace officials insisted did not amount to sanctions – would restrict the SEC’s involvement in the worldwide Anglican Communion.

[….]

A spokesman for the conservative grouping GAFCON, which largely includes African primates, insisted the Scottish Episcopal Church as well as the US Episcopal Church, which has legalised gay marriage, and the Anglican Church in Canada, which blesses gay relationships, must ‘repent’.

The Anglican Church of Canada has performed eight same-sex marriages since July 2016. Read here:

Eight same-sex couples have been married in three Anglican Church of Canada dioceses, ahead of General Synod 2019, when a resolution to allow same-sex marriages will be presented for second reading.

Since General Synod 2016 approved – on first reading – a proposed change in the marriage canon (church law) to allow same-sex marriages, four weddings of same-sex couples have taken place in the diocese of Niagara, three in the diocese of Toronto and one in the diocese of Ottawa, according to the offices of the respective diocesan bishops. Several other same-sex couples in the dioceses of Toronto and Ottawa are also preparing to walk down the aisle.

Fred Hiltz speaks power to Truth

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One of the things that I find comical about extemporaneous prayer is that the person praying sometimes yields to the temptation of telling an apparently absent-minded God what he is like, who he is, what he thinks, what he likes, what he dislikes and what he should do, rather than humbly laying petitions before him.

It could be worse, though, and in Primate Fred Hiltz’s case, it is.

In the case of the soon to be held Primates’ Meeting which has filled Justin Welby with an excitement exceeded  only by that of teenage girls attending a Justin Bieber concert, Hiltz has somehow contrived to leave God’s will out of his prayers entirely.

Rather than, for example, praying for insight into whether or not it’s in God’s plan for two marry to men, he asks for “patience with one another in continuing conversations about same sex marriage”, as if patience for an incorrect view is the guiding principle for theological understanding.

Similarly, the rest of the prayers are largely given over to nudging God into Correct Thinking on the fashionable preoccupations of the day: a shameless attempt to co-opt God’s support for the leftist, intolerant, power-hungry juggernaut that replaced the Anglican Church of Canada some years ago, a speaking of power to Truth, delivered in the pious trappings of prayer. The good news is nobody cares what Anglican leaders think. Including God, I suspect.

From here:

Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, offers his prayer for next month’s Oct. 2-6 Primates’ Meeting in Canterbury.

Please pray…

Pray that we have patience with one another in continuing conversations about same sex marriage.

Pray for perseverance in our commitment to honor the Calls to Action from Canada’s Truth & Reconciliation Commission. These calls revealed the horrible suffering endured by Indigenous People through the Residential Schools System established to enforce a colonialist policy of assimilation.

Pray for God’s continuing guidance as we work together in supporting the emergence of a truly Indigenous Church.

Pray for our commitment to eradicating the crime of human trafficking.

Pray for our Church’s response to the Communion Wide Call to a Season of Intentional Discipleship.

Pray for the Primates that at our gathering we have a heart not only for the unity of the Church but for the peace of the world. Pray that we be humbled and graced to be a prophetic voice speaking into the suffering of the poor, the enslaved, and those forced to flee from their homelands.