Gay men and women will finally be allowed to marry in churches after the House of Lords dramatically voted in favour of lifting the ban on religious premises holding same-sex partnerships.
The amendment to the Equality Bill, which was tabled as a free vote by gay Muslim peer Waheed Alli, received overwhelming backing in the Lords, including from a number of prominent Anglican bishops.
I hope this event will finally free Anglicans around the world from the fantasy that communion with Canterbury is either necessary or useful any more as part of being a faithful Christian and Anglican.
More and more, it is becoming clearly evident that we do not have to go through Canterbury in order to be Anglican Christians, as Archbishop Akinola of Nigeria so aptly stated no long ago. I hope that Archbishop Duncan and the rest of our ACNA leadership consider what course to follow in light of this development. And the same goes for the Global South and GAFCON.
This also raises the question of how it will affect the Church of England’s relationship with those provinces of the Communion which forbid same-sex “marriages.”