CHURCH OF ENGLAND APPROVES OF SAME-SEX BLESSINGS IN CHURCH

Thursday, 9 February, 6:35 a.m. CST.     The General Synod of the Church of England has just voted to approve of the bishops' report, Living in Love and Faith. The vote by house:

Bishops:  yes 36;  no 4;  abstain 2

Clergy:  yes 111;  no 85;  abstain 3

Laity:  yes 103;  no 92;  abstain 5

The motion on LLF was carried with one amendment.

This means that clergy of the Church will have the option of offering blessings in local churches for same-sex couples. However, LLF also holds that the church definition of marriage remains a union of one man and one woman. Gay couples may now have the right to blessings but not marriage in the Church of England. This was meant to be a compromise. 

The discussions leading up to the vote were a model of reason and civility. Nevertheless, the speakers rarely addressed the core issue involved in all of this, whether homosexual relations are inherently sinful. Still, the unspoken outcome of the vote is the Church's tacit rejection of homosexual acts as sin and adoption of the attitude of moral neutrality. The Church would not be approving of the blessings in church of arrangements it considered inherently sinful. This is the model that the American Episcopal Church provided.

Now that the C of E has silently moved to reject the position of the innate sinfulness of homosexual relations, it is only a matter of time before it adopts same-sex marriage in the church. This is the real significance of what the C of E has done today.