I have just issued the following statement:
“I am delighted to hear that the Anglican Church in Brazil has just changed its marriage canon to allow same-sex couples to get married. As we have rejoiced in St Mary’s Cathedral Glasgow in recent months with couples who have waited years to be married in church, so we rejoice with couples doing the same thing in Brazil.
“All God’s children are equally beloved. We rejoice as greater equality comes to another part of the Anglican Communion”
A timely post, with diocesan synod coming up. May well print out. (There is virtually no signal for online devices to be used usefully in the Highland Gathering Halls in Oban. Who knew?)
Anglican Covenant: reports and reactions…
The Church Times reports this week on the progress of voting in English dioceses on the Anglican Covenant: Covenant tastes defeat in diocesan voting. ALMOST a quarter of C of E dioceses have now voted against the Anglican Covenant. It……
“. . .if there is any truth in that thesis, its days are numbered. . .”
As we say in my home state, ‘your lips to God’s ears.’
Excellent post Kelvin.
If the Covenant does get rejected in England, we’ll certainly need a period of time asking ourselves what really went wrong and how we could do things better. And Scotland will be well placed to set the ball rolling.
Thanks Jonathan – and thanks for your article on alternatives to the Covenant which we are looking at next week at our Diocesan Synod next week to balance the stuff from the Anglican Communion Office.
“Some have worried that we might be the first province to declare ourselves out of sorts with the Anglican Covenant.”
They need not worry. The Philippines have already voted against it.
It also seems probable that New Zealand will vote against.
The Irish voted for it but with the caveat that it would not supplant the existing governing documents – though it’s not clear whether they would be able to sustain this.
Thanks for this, Kelvin!
What really amazes me is that the Covenant has done so well with virtually no attempt to put forward an argument (with reference to the actual text) as to why it is an unalloyed Good Thing. Proponents claim it will save the Communion without explaining just how it will do that. Those voting for it are voting for a black box.
I was intrigued by the statement made to the Equal Opportunities Committee of the Scottish Parliament of someone representing the Church of Scotland. They seemed to suggest that if they don’t get their way in stopping same-sex marriage then they might stop conducting marriages altogether. BBC report here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-24063468 I think that it is interesting…
Here’s an interesting interview with Richard Holloway. Talks about institutional unity vs justice, the prophetic tradition and never losing Jesus. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YYoxqd8Xwc
We’ve been clearing some old documents out of the dank crypt this week and one or two interesting things have emerged. Not least a couple of photographs from 1962. We forget now that we photograph anything and everything all the time that in previous decades a photo was relatively rare. This one was taken at…
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