Senior Anglican leaders have responded to a move by the Presbyterian Church in NSW to consider ministers handing back their marriage licences if marriage is redefined to include same-sex couples.
Kevin Murray, the moderator of the NSW Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Australia, wrote to churches about debate at the annual assembly in Sydney last week.
“The Assembly considered what the church should do if marriage is redefined in Australia. It decided to ask the General Assembly of Australia to withdraw the whole church from the Marriage Act, so that our ministers could no longer solemnise marriages under the Marriage Act.” Mr Murray said. “The report which recommended this decision argued that if the Federal Government were to redefine marriage to include same-sex marriage then it would corrupt a good gift of God into a wrong. That would mean that ministers would then be acting for the government in a system which did not reflect the biblical view of marriage. In this case the positive reason for our co-operation with the Marriage Act would have been removed, and we would be better to avoid association with evil by no longer acting as celebrants.”
I think the separation of the civil and religious traditions of marriage is
the best answer to the Supreme Court’s decision. That is the way it is done in many countries that do not have an established church. Just because we inherited the established Church of England’s way of doing things does not mean we have to continue. When we were a colony, the Church vestries were in charge of many things, that have since been handed off to local governments, like collecting tithes/taxes, settling fence disputes, recording births, caring for widows and orphans, etc.
Leaving the legal act of civil marriages to local government authorized officials and only performing the religious Holy Matrimony ceremony for those couples that meet the canon conditions required, would enable the priests to avoid violating their consciences and/or lawsuits for refusing services.