Global Anglican Future Conference

Same as it ever was: In religion news, sex wars about doctrine remain the story in 2024

Same as it ever was: In religion news, sex wars about doctrine remain the story in 2024

Looking ahead at 2024, The Guy seems to recall hearing that there’s a U.S. presidential election going on.

If so, that will inspire ample chatter about the religion factor. There are important elections in other nations, including Taiwan last Saturday and probably Britain. Jews and their Christian allies will be closely monitoring the Israel-Hamas war.

All that said, it’s clear that debates about various angles of sexuality and gender will dominate the year’s religion news. Again.

Start with next October’s second and final session at the Vatican of Pope Francis’s Synod of Bishops concerning “Synodality,” a fuzzy buzzy word for enhancing members’ involvement in church life through a process behind closed doors.

Sidestepping synodality, Francis pre-empted his Synod with the December 18 go-ahead for Catholic priests to provide church blessings for same-sex couples plus those in as-yet-undefined “irregular” situations. Expect Catholics to agitate through the year against this historic innovation, especially in Africa (where bishops seem to believe that synodality may include listening to bishops in growing churches).

We can forget Synod action on female priests. But will there be concrete proposals to the Pope to enhance women’s church leadership otherwise, especially by ordaining them as deacons? If that includes altar duties, it will be a massive, historic change.

There’s a tiny possibility the Synod would issue a dramatic call to abolish the 885-year-old mandate that priests be celibate and unmarried (excluding Eastern Rite clergy and Protestants who convert). Or not. Did the influential adjunct secretary at the Vatican’s agency on doctrine, Archbishop Charles Scicluna, issue a Synod signal January 7?


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Global South Anglicans make big effort to start cutting Canterbury ties that bind (Part I)

Global South Anglicans make big effort to start cutting Canterbury ties that bind (Part I)

After a half-century of decline, the U.S. Episcopal Church has 1.5 million members, and its average weekly attendance was just above 500,000 before COVID-19 and 300,000 afterwards.

After decades of explosive growth, the Anglican Church of Nigeria claims about 18 million members (others say 8 million), and the Center for Global Christianity near Boston estimates it has 22 million active participants in worship.

Caught in the middle of these two trends is the Most Reverend Justin Welby, by Divine Providence the 105th Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England and the "first among equals" among bishops in the 42 churches in the Anglican Communion. While his own flock claims 26 million baptized members, about 600,000 attend weekly services.

Now, Global South church leaders -- representing about 75% of Anglicans who frequent pews -- have decided that it's time to start cutting ties between the "Canterbury Communion" and the rest of the Anglican Communion.

“We have no confidence that the Archbishop of Canterbury nor the other Instruments of Communion led by him … are able to provide a godly way forward that will be acceptable to those who are committed to the truthfulness, clarity, sufficiency and authority of Scripture," warned the Global Anglican Future Conference, which met April 17-21 in Kigali, Rwanda. GAFCON IV drew 1,302 delegates from 52 nations, including 315 bishops.

Meeting together, leaders of GAFCON and the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches said they "can no longer recognize the Archbishop of Canterbury as an Instrument of Communion, the 'first among equals' of the Primates. The Church of England has chosen to impair her relationship with the orthodox provinces in the Communion."

While this gathering in Africa drew little or no coverage from Western news organizations, Lambeth Palace released a brief response, noting that the Kigali Commitment statement echoed many previous claims about Anglican governance.


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Dangerous four-way intersection looms ahead in Christian debates about LGBTQ issues

Dangerous four-way intersection looms ahead in Christian debates about LGBTQ issues

Flying home from his February Africa pilgrimage, Pope Francis held an unprecedented three-man press conference alongside Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, leader of the Church of England and some 85 million members in the global Anglican Communion, and the Right Rev. Iain Greenshields, this year’s titular head of the Church of Scotland (equivalent of the mainline U.S. Presbyterians).

These men personify three emerging approaches to same-sex revisionism that reporters will be observing. A fourth option,of course, is strict limitation of sex to heterosexual marriage, a doctrine articulated in the Catholic Catechism and shared by all churches until recently. For example, see this summary issued last week by the Rev. J.D. Greear, a former Southern Baptist Convention president.

In the West, many “mainline” Protestant groups have shifted to option one — full-on approval of same-sex relationships, exemplified by liturgies to celebrate church weddings. The Church of Scotland joined them last May as assembly delegates gave this change 67% support. (Dissenting clergy will not be forced to perform weddings they oppose in conscience.) This followed an earlier go-ahead in America’s largest Presbyterian denomination.

With option two, Pope Francis has not proposed any alteration in the Catholic teaching that same-sex acts are sinful, but is ambiguous about how Catholic churches should welcome and potentially bless gay people (see this earlier GetReligion post on a test case in Chicago). That and his other “dialogue” initiatives rile doctrinal traditionalists. Backed by Welby and Greenshields, Francis asserted that secular law should not criminalize people for gay acts -- a striking plea in Africa, where many nations outlaw gay activity and some impose the death penalty.

Then Archbishop Welby’s church made an historic decision for option three — half-way liberalization. This approach would continue to bar same-sex weddings, while approving church “blessing” ceremonies for such couples after their civil marriages (legal in England since 2013). After six years of formal nationwide church discussion, and more than eight hours of floor debate, the General Synod voted February 9 to “welcome” that policy, which the bishops approved in January.

The motion expressed repentance over past and present “harm that LGBTQI+ people have experienced” in church. Welby and the Archbishop of York jointly stated that their church “will publicly, unreservedly and joyfully welcome same-sex couples.” This includes sexually active same-sex couples? Debate continues on that point.

This decision by no means settles matters.


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Old, nagging conflicts will continue to dominate religion news in the coming year

Old, nagging conflicts will continue to dominate religion news in the coming year

Yes, there will be a hotly contested U.S. election in 2022. And pretty much every secular and religious faction is keyed up awaiting the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on whether to revise or revoke its rulings that legalized abortion.

Big decisions like this typically land in late June.

Other lingering disputes on the news coverage agenda include the following.

* As the U.S. Senate struggles with a rewrite of the Catholic President Joe Biden's elephantine social-spending bill, the Catholic bishops' conference vehemently opposes any inclusion of abortion funding.

The bishops, along with Orthodox Judaism's synagogue union, also fear (.pdf here) this law will cripple funding for widespread religious preschools. In yet another church-state debate, Biden hopes to end religious exemption from anti-discrimination rules, which went into effect in January.

* Inside the world of Mainline Protestantism, the unending dispute over the Bible and LGBTQ+ issues may produce the biggest U.S. church split since the Civil War at the United Methodist Church's General Conference. Early in 2022, a commission must decide whether the twice-postponed conference, now scheduled for August 29-September 6 in Minneapolis, can finally occur despite two years of COVID-related snarls and, some say, stalling by the UMC establishment.

* The T in LGBTQ won new Methodist attention as just-retired Pennsylvania Bishop Peggy Johnson and her husband, a Methodist pastor, publicized the latter's gender transition while identifying publicly as a "cisgender" male.

Last March, a sizable body of U.S. conservatives announced plans to leave the denomination and unite with former mission churches overseas — primarily in Africa and Asia — to form the "Global Methodist Church," led temporarily by Virginia Pastor Keith Boyette (540-898-4960).


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