CHURCH OF ENGLAND PRIESTS WANT LGBTQ POLICY CHANGED

Fri 01 September 2023:

The Church of England clergy want the Anglican teachings on homosexuality changed at an upcoming General Synod, as well as making it possible for priests to marry gay couples and gay priests to get married, according to a study by The Times.

The majority of the nearly 1,200 respondents agreed that Britain is no longer a Christian nation and that they would welcome a female leader, according to a study by The Times,

The study, which was released on Tuesday, is the first of its sort since the United Kingdom approved same-sex civil unions in 2014. Same-sex marriage was deemed “wrong” by 51% of Anglican clergy at the time, while 39% supported it.

Less than a decade later, 59% would bless same-sex couples, 32% would not, and 63% believe the Church of England should allow homosexual clergy to enter same-sex civil unions. According to The New York Times, 53.4% of priests support amending the legislation to allow them to marry gay couples, while 36.5% oppose it. However, just 49.2% of respondents said they would be willing to officiate at same-sex weddings, while 41% said they would not.

EXCLUSIVE:

The Times has surveyed 1,200 Church of England priests

Hears views of front-line clergy in unprecedented detail

– Majority back same-sex marriage + want church to accept premarital and gay sex for first time

Plus four other major findings:https://t.co/5yhFW5DRNr

— Kaya Burgess (@kayaburgess) August 29, 2023

Almost two thirds of the clergy surveyed support changing the current Anglican doctrine that “homosexual practice is incompatible with scripture,” while only 29.7% favor keeping it. The church is nominally opposed to any sex outside of marriage, but 37.2% of respondents would accept it in “committed” same-sex relationships and 27.3% want to see the opposition dropped outright.

The Times extrapolated the results to mean that “more than 10,600 of the church’s 20,000 priests” would back same-sex marriage within the church. However, the survey was based on the responses of 1,185 serving clergy, after The Times reached out to 5,000 priests with addresses in England, randomly selected from the Crockford’s Clerical Directory of Anglican clergy.

The survey sample amounted to 6% of active clergy, defined as vicars, rectors, curates, chaplains, and retired priests who can still celebrate sacraments such as Holy Communion.

In addition to the sea change on the LGBTQ issue, the survey also showed 80% of the clergy in favor of having a female Archbishop of Canterbury. Likewise, 64.2% said Britain could be described as a Christian country “only historically, not currently,” 9.2% said no outright, and only 24.2% said yes.

“This is absolutely huge,” the Reverend Andrew Foreshew-Cain, who runs the Campaign for Equal Marriage in the Church, told The Times. The survey showed “really clear evidence of the direction of change the church needs to pursue,” said Foreshew-Cain, who married his partner in defiance of church rules.

“The church is the church, and, as such, not a club. It has a distinct vocation that does not include seeking popularity,” said the Bishop of Leeds, the Right Reverend Nick Baines, speaking on behalf of the C of E. “Repentance means being open to changing our mind in order that society should encounter both love and justice. And this means sometimes going against the flow of popular culture, however uncomfortable that might be.”

The Church of England is a Protestant denomination created in 1534, when King Henry VIII rejected the authority of the Roman Catholic Pope in a divorce dispute. Its titular head is the British monarch, while the Archbishop of Canterbury acts as its primate.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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