THE SCOTTISH EPISCOPAL CHURCH HAS OPTED TO DELETE ITS DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE AS BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN FROM ITS CANONS
[Twitter and Livestream here when in session]
Judah’s leaders are like those
who move boundary stones.
I will pour out my wrath on them
like a flood of water. Hosea 5:10
To some people’s surprise, an amendment was put that would have allowed people who wanted to marry two people of the same sex to do so, but we’d keep the doctrine of marriage as being between a man and a woman. This would have put us in a similar situation to that of the Church of Scotland.
However, this gracious compromise was roundly rejected by around two thirds of the Synod.
I don’t know that people understood just how costly this amendment would have been if it had been accepted..
Read it all and for background read here
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Update latest from GadgetVicar on Twitter and SEC:
General Synod 2015: Motion passed to proceed to debate the options for canonical change in relation to Marriage. Vote was 92 for, 35 against
Synod now discussing the options for change to Canon 31 relating to Marriage. Motion passed to proceed to vote on its preferred options. voting on Motion 20B to include a conscience clause in the options before Synod.
Synod Members now voting on options for change to Canon 31 relating to Marriage.
Motion passed to include a conscience clause in the option before Synod.
Option A has been passed by Synod. [Votes: Option A 88 out of 125 voting including 6 abstentions]
[Option A: Removal of section 1 of Canon 31
This option would remove section 1 from Canon 31 in its entirety so that the Canon was silent on the question of a doctrine of marriage. Page 46
The SEC’s official teaching on marriage is enshrined in Canon 31:1.
”˜The Doctrine of the Church is that Marriage is a physical, spiritual and mystical
union of one man and one woman created by their mutual consent of heart,
mind and will thereto, and is a holy and lifelong estate instituted of God.’ – page 50 of above link]
Motion 23 instructing Canonical Committee to prepare the necessary canonical changes to effect this deletion passed on ballot 110 to 9
Motion 24 on religious registration of civil partnerships in church failed 30 to 82
Further Update: Report on SEC vote to leave the Anglican Faith
Even Further Update: GadgetVicar – The General Synod Votes For Equal Marriage
I know the author well and read this line with irony, given TEC.
“It does seem that this is a situation where the winner must take it all, and those who are holding to what the majority of the two billion Christians around the world would understand marriage is about will be the new minority, who might have a conscience clause to protect them, and that will be it.”
One may seriously doubt if TEC allows any conscience clause whatsoever. The anti-discrimination clause is winner take all. And the office of bishop is now regional manager of GC.
Prayers for the Scottish Episcopal Church and for faithful witness to its Lord, and with grateful thanks for GadgetVicar and all those who testify to the Truth from above in that church.
PM
When I lived in the SEC context the number of conservative clergy were down to about a dozen or so. David McCarthy was doing a superb job at St Silas in Glasgow. He’s now at St Thomas Corstorphine in Edinburgh. Prayers indeed for them all.
As an outsider, I am incredulous that anybody could agree with this move, not least because along with the gender specific words being removed, so too is the beautiful language about marriage as a ‘physical, spiritual and mystical union … lifelong.’ In case you think RCs are indifferent to what happens elsewhere, believe me, we feel the chill wind whistle ever louder around us every time another denomination keels over on the front line.
These reports leave me a bit confused as to whether a “conscience” clause for conservative clergy is in place. I have little reliance on such clauses, but I’m not clear on whether there even is one.
I suppose firstly, in terms of the Scottish position, the decline in figures of the Scottish Episcopal Church has been remarkable, even before this sad decision – a decline in membership of 20% in only eight years or 4.45% per annum down to 32,634. It is now approaching parity with the single Diocese of South Carolina or half the size of a reasonable English diocese.
Yet it maintains 7 diocesan bishops, umpteen cathedrals, and the entire superstructure of a synodical bureaucracy on modest resources.
With a Sunday attendance of 13,611, the SEC is looking increasingly Lilliputian and seems to be making little impact upon the 5.3 million or so Scots. It is in that that one has to ask whether this decision will assist those SEC churches who are healthy and seeking to evangelise? It looks like this synod has made that task next to impossible, even though it is those mainly evangelical churches who are the hope of this church for the future and presumably the main source of funds keeping this huge edifice in place. They have my thoughts and prayers tonight.
But the larger impact to be considered is to the witness of the Anglican Communion. The decline in the SEC’s figures manage to outstrip even the 25% decline in TEC achieved in not seven, but 12 years since 2003. It appears that this vote is in part political in that it comes within a fortnight of TEC’s general convention when it too wishes to bring in same sex marriage using the same method of changing its definitions rather than its liturgy, much the same method as was used by the Presbyterians in the US.
Half the size of an English diocese, and a fraction of the size of an African one, yet in the Anglican Communion the SEC has the status of a province. Its primus sits on the so called Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion and unsurprisingly claims that he is Archbishop Welby’s Chair of the Reference Group for the Continuing Indaba movement. His position seems to come from the Anglican equivalent of a rotton borough.
Tiny as it is, by putting in place drafting of legislation to enable same sex marriage in church, the SEC has become the first province to thumb its nose at the teaching on marriage of the Anglican Communion in Lambeth Resolution 1:10. It has acted without consultation of the other members of the Communion who by that communion grant recognition and interchangeability to its bishops and orders, share holy communion and liturgical recognition with it, and recognise a common doctrine. It has in short, by this act broken communion with the other members of the Anglican Communion.
Even more serious than that, the leadership of the SEC have now: 1. Made a statement that undermines the teaching of the Communion and refuted its doctrine
2. Undermined the faith which the other 37 provinces seek to share with their churches and their communities, ignoring all appeals, and in fact taking no account of the impact of its decisions on those other Anglicans.
3. Exposed Anglicans in particularly the Global South to ostracism from other Christian denominations and persecution from other faiths for what will be perceived as the immorality of their faith.
Primus Chillingworth’s weasily statement after the event does nothing to mitigate the impact which he, his fellow bishops and synod will have on others, and it raises the valid questions for other Anglicans: whether association with this ‘province’ is more trouble than it is worth; whether they do in fact share common doctrine, orders and liturgical communion; and whether they will take a similar action with the SEC as they did with the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada when they took actions which fell short of same sex marriage.
In short, is the Scottish Episcopal Church fit for purpose or is it the ecclesiastical equivalent of a failed state: a failed church. Is it wise to keep borders open with the leadership of the SEC, any more than it is with Libya or Somalia? If the Scottish Episcopal Church leadership cares nothing for other Anglicans, why should the remainder of the Communion care anything for the SEC leadership?
The question is what is necessary to protect the rest of the body from this out of control leadership. None of that belies what I believe to be the need to continue to recognise and support those faithful churches and people caught within the SEC, much as it is with those in and outside TEC and ACoC.
But my overriding feeling today is of sadness to see a fine church, much as TEC and ACoC were, commit hara kiri.
There is a conscience clause as a way of protecting clergy. It’s in there in the hope that it will keep people on board. The difficulty is that we now have no doctrine of marriage. The original canon made no reference to man and woman because it was unimaginable that anyone other than that would get married. When the church allowed for divorce and marriage after divorce, the canon was strengthened to emphasise life-long significance.
There are all sorts of problems to come – why shouldn’t same-sex siblings marry for instance, given that the biological reasons for them not doing so are no longer significant. How can we reasonably argue against this?
We’ve been patient, kind, loving, supportive and gracious over the last ten years. It’s not held back this tide and now some of us have to step back for our own safety and that of the people we serve. Prayers valued.
David, you are in our prayers. The real issue now is where do conservatives go? You have your version in the SEC and we have ours. What percentage of the entire 12K ASA attend parishes like St Thomas? I’d wager it is as high as 40%. So this ‘province’ doesn’t seem to me as viable. TEC is close by on analogy.
Thanks, Chris. Obviously, I’m not going to talk tactics on T19. One never knows who will be reading! We’ll wait, pray, listen, and plan with partners around the Communion. The key thing is that it’s a clear decision after all these years – we offered a costly (to us) compromise, which was soundly knocked back. When we look back, that’s likely to have been a good thing, as we haven’t had to compromise in reality! I’m anticipating a trip to the U.S. early in 2016 and hope to be in S.C. at some point. Old friends and perhaps making some new ones.
David, you have a solid fellowship in the SEC. God will bless that certainly and show you the way.
I see that Chillingworth is headed to GC 2015 to applaud TEC’s version of your work today.
Be assured of our prayers. We covet yours as well.
and mine also for you both, from England. God bless you, your witness and your ministry, He who uses all things for good. Be encouraged.
Well, well, this is interesting from David Chillingworth last week:
Sounds pretty much as though the SEC has been put through the same process of manipulated Facilitated Conversations as Welby and Porter have designed for the Church of England, and Chillingworth is a central member of Welby’s Continuing Indaba schemes for the Communion and made no secret of what he wanted:
It didn’t take much digging to find that we are being lined up by Welby and Porter for the same methods of manipulating change as was used in the Church of Scotland [and whose materials Welby and Porter have been stipulated must be used by us], and now by Chillingworth and his bishops in the Scottish Episcopal Church.
We have seen today the results in the Scottish Episcopal Church which will be killing of mission, failure to witness the Good News to Scots, accelerated decline, undermining of Anglicans and most likely division but most importantly failure to follow the leadership of our Lord Jesus Christ on the road to salvation.
I am going to say what I think: Welby, Porter, Chillingworth – you are a bunch of manipulative schemers.
The cascade process was designed to soften us up. As if conservatives have no gay friends or family members. I heard nothing new, experience was king and we were afraid to call any sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman as sin. Having submitted to and participated in the process, I now feel free to say that its purpose is to facilitate the change we witnessed in Scotland over the last two days. We were played. And we were way too nice!
#13 GadgetVicar – thank you, that is very helpful. It might not save the situation in the SEC, but it might help us to understand what happened to you and just how it is being used against us. My suspicion is that if you look at what is happening to Church of Scotland, SEC and CofE, it all comes from the same playbook, elements of which I recognise from how change was brought into the Episcopal Church.
It should be noted too – there can be no twin track approach or two integrities. This was explicitly stated a number of times in meetings with Bishops and at General Synod. This was always going to be a winner takes it all solution with the losers (the biblically orthodox) simply having to suck it up.
Pageantmaster,
“It is my hope that here too we shall think and act as one Church. That doesn’t mean that we must,or that we shall, all agree. We are considering an issue which in our times is profoundly challenging for all churches.†Isn’t that what ++Welby would call, “Good disagreement”? Maybe TEc called it, “Living into the tension.”
#16 You have nailed it Fr Dale.
My recollection is that there is was a process in TEC a while back whereby selected materials were distributed to groups in dioceses, and ‘conversations’ took place in small groups, and then ‘facilitators’ collected them up and reported back to the church, aka variants of the Delphi Technique
http://www.seanet.com/~barkonwd/school/DELPHI.HTM
http://www.vlrc.org/articles/110.html
Gadget Vicar, you have my prayers.
“Cascade Process?” Good grief. One of the saddest reflections I have on what happened to ECUSA is that conservatives were generous and “nice.”
Isn’t a cascade where everything comes tumbling down?
David, if you want to see Kelvin Holdsworth’s counterparts in TEC, check out Episcopal Café. You try to point out the obvious there and are edited out. I made the simple point that big conservative parishes will not go along with this in a church whose ASA is about 13K total. Now Kelvin tells everyone that this view of SEC is not true to conservatives he knows…etc.
That will be the official TEC account of what has happened in the SEC.
I suppose the courts are too unsympathetic to argue [i]Bannatyne v Overtoun[/i]. And you would need to constitute yourself as the true (continuing) Scottish Episcopal Church. But if you win you get the whole thing, lock stock and barrel, cathedrals and all.
Chris, There will be a lot of spin from certain quarters about how evangelicals will evolve into the new knowledge. A little gnosticism, perhaps? They have to believe and promote this, but folk are brighter than that! I heard today of a young man who attends one of our larger evangelical churches (and one that is probably more diverse than most) – he stated that, if the SEC goes down the line of same-sex marriage and his congregation doesn’t stand firm, he’d leave for another denomination. I don’t think that sounds like he’s evolving, do you?
The folk who will take a biblical view on this here come from a broad spectrum, with people at the traditional catholic end of the spectrum also being deeply concerned by these decisions.
I do have to correct you, however. We reckon if all the word/spirit congregations are totalled up, we might be 20-25% of the active numbers. I think the key thing is annual quota (money given to Diocesan and General Synod). In Edinburgh and Aberdeen, it’s quite a lot of money!
Now be careful what you say. You never know who might be reading……
David, you will know best how to keep the proper reality in front of the public.
June 14, 2015
Responding to the Decisions on Marriage made by General Synod
At its meeting in Edinburgh from 11-13 June, the General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church chose to delete any reference to marriage as being between a man and a woman in order to facilitate its clergy in marrying two people of the same sex.
In contrast to that decision, we reaffirm the doctrine of marriage as given in the Old Testament in Genesis 2:24, reaffirmed by Jesus in Matthew 19:5 and by Paul in Ephesians 5:31 – ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’
We are committed to loving and supporting all the people in our congregations, including many gay people, and in particular at this time those who are left confused and distressed by the decisions of the General Synod.
We will take some time to pray and reflect on what the General Synod has committed to, before we discern what must be done to support people in congregations all over Scotland who will be unable to support this innovation.
Signed by:
Rev Canon Ian Ferguson, Westhill Community Church, Aberdeenshire
Rev Canon Dr Douglas Kornahrens, Holy Cross, Davidsons Mains, Edinburgh
Rev Alistair MacDonald, St Drostan’s, Insch & All Saints, Woodhead of Fyvie
Rev Dr Iain MacRobert, The Priory Church of St Mary of Mount Carmel, South Queensferry
Rev Dave McCarthy, St Thomas’, Corstorphine, Edinburgh
Rev Dr Philip Noble (Retired)
Rev Canon Dave Richards, St Paul’s & St George’s, Edinburgh
Rev Canon Malcolm Round, St Mungo’s, Balerno
Rev Paul Watson, St Devenick’s, Bieldside, Aberdeen