Despite significant Anglican disagreements over the topic in Britain and elsewhere, the Church of England will debate controversial plans enabling priests to administer blessings to same-sex couples on Wednesday.
Hundreds of people who are part of the General Synod, the church’s elected governing body, which meets twice or three times a year, will discuss and vote on the proposals bishops presented last month.
There are no changes to the rules that say Anglican priests can’t marry same-sex couples. The plans would allow churches to provide a “God’s blessing” for civil marriages and partnerships.
In an open letter last month, bishops also apologised directly to LGBTQ people for the “hostile and homophobic response” they have sometimes gotten in parishes. This was the first time bishops had done something like this.
The steps come after almost six years of internal debate, but they have been criticised by both those who support same-sex marriage and those who don’t. This shows that Anglicanism is breaking up all over the world.
Jayne Ozanne, a member of the Synod and an activist for LGBTQ rights, harshly criticised the late apology.
“We’ve had years of apologies from our bishops but no action,” she told AFP before Wednesday’s five-hour debate.
“It’s like an abusive relationship where someone keeps hitting you and then says, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’.
“Until the discrimination and the abuse stop, we don’t want to hear more empty words. We need action first.”
But the Church of England’s conservative Evangelical Council has spoken out against the changes.
It says they will cause “further division and broken fellowship” in the church and “a greater tearing of the fabric of the worldwide Anglican Communion.”
Last month, the Church of England said, “We believe that it is the Church of England’s responsibility to serve the nation by proclaiming the gospel, not by compromising with the prevailing culture.”
Since same-sex marriage became legal in England in 2013, the government has pressured the Church of England to change how it deals with it.
Even though dozens of other countries have made same-sex marriages legal, being gay is still illegal in many places worldwide.
That includes countries in sub-Saharan Africa that are very religious and conservative. These countries are part of the Anglican Communion, which consists of 43 Churches in 165 countries.
It has about 85 million members and is the third-largest Christian church after the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and some of these Anglican churches seem to have grown apart. This is because these churches often want to put more restrictions on the LGBTQ community instead of changing their doctrine.
As he opened the four-day Synod on Monday, Welby said, “We have deep and passionately held differences.”
“But let us not fall into caricaturing those among us who don’t agree with us as being those who are trying to construct their lives away from God. The evidence is far from that.”
Welby said that “too many people have heard the words of rejection that human tongues create,” especially regarding sexuality.
Even though the plans discussed Wednesday afternoon don’t change Church of England law and don’t need formal Synod approval, members will vote on a motion of support and any proposed changes.
If the ideas are turned down, they might be unable to move forward.
The Catholic Church is also very divided on this issue, so the Church of England is not the only sizeable Christian group with big problems.
Many conservative Catholics disagree with Pope Francis’s views on sexual orientation, which are more open-minded. This has caused a lot of controversies.
But the pope also has upset modernists by sticking to Catholic teaching that marriage is between a man and a woman.