The Sunday Mail
Conservative Anglican churches in developing countries will meet this week to consider radical action over the Church of England’s decision to bless same-sex couples in civil marriages, saying they question the archbishop of Canterbury’s “fitness to lead” the global church.
The Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA), which represents churches in 24 countries and provinces including Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, said the Church of England’s new stance “goes against the overwhelming mind of the Anglican Communion”.
The “reality” of the Church of England’s decision was a rejection of the doctrine that marriage is the lifelong union of a man and a woman, it added.
On Monday a dozen key church leaders from the global south are expected to consider moves to take a dominant position in the Anglican Communion, relegating Justin Welby, who as archbishop of Canterbury heads up the global church of 85 million people, to a marginal role.
In an effort to prevent an irreparable breakdown, Welby has said he personally will not bless same-sex marriages.
But conservative church leaders have warned of profound repercussions after the historic vote by the Church of England’s governing body, the General Synod, on Thursday.
Samy Fawzy Shehata, the archbishop of Alexandria in Egypt, told the synod that “crossing this line of blessing same-sex unions will alienate 75 percent of the Anglican Communion” and “lead eventually to impaired and broken communion”.
He urged the Church of England to not “surrender your unique position as the mother church of the Anglican Communion.”
Stephen Kaziimba, the archbishop of Uganda, said in a statement on Friday: “God cannot bless what he calls sin. The Church of England has departed from the Anglican faith and are now false teachers.”
Ahead of the synod vote, archbishop Justin Badi Arama, the head of the Anglican church in South Sudan, said Welby was “failing to defend biblical truth”, and his role as moral leader of the global church had been “severely jeopardised”.
Henry Ndukuba, the primate of the massive Nigerian church, was due to meet his bishops on Friday to discuss their response.
Gafcon, a coalition of conservative churches, said the Church of England had “authorised the blessing of sin” and was “moving a step at a time to fully accept the practice of homosexuality as part of the life and the practice of the English church”.
The GSFA, which claims to represent 75 percent of the global Anglican church, said it would take “decisive steps towards resetting the Anglican Communion”.
Its members would not leave the global church but “with great sadness must recognise that the Church of England has now joined those provinces with which communion is impaired”.
Conservative churches have already broken off relations with churches in the US, Canada, Brazil, New Zealand, Scotland and Wales, which offer church weddings to same-sex couples or bless their civil marriages. – theguardian
