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| Marriage! Source:church Times |
Great Britain's fourth largest Christian denomination, the
Methodist Church, has voted to change the definition of marriage, thus permitting same sex 'marriage' along with the Scottish Episcopal Church, United Reformed Church and Quakers.
The Church of England continues its convulsions as trendy Lefties push to follow fashion rather than faith.
The bench of bishops of what is becoming the
LGBT Church in Wales have made no secret of the fact that they support same sex marriage but they rarely make the headlines unless plugging the latest
LGBT news or having to apologise for offences caused as
here and
here.
A
report to be presented to the General Synod of the Church in England says that, by July, approximately 5500 people will have participated in a Living in Life and Faith (LLF) event. Each diocese has at least one LLF Advocate and 9000 people have registered on the LLF learning hub.
Foremost among those losing
the plot on this occasion is the bishop of Liverpool, the
Rt Rev Paul Bayes, who says that "the Church of England should recognise marriage between people of the same sex and allow such ceremonies in church." A move that would break with centuries of Christian teaching.
Bishop Bayes told a conference of the
neo-Marxist organisation ‘
Mosaic Anglicans‘ that he wanted a gender-neutral marriage canon such as they have in the Episcopal Church or in the Scottish Episcopal Church.
As Archbishop Cranmer puts it in his
Blog: "It is not only all gendered language which must be expunged – all mention of male and female, man and woman, husband and wife – but also every mention of children, for in a gender-neutral marriage canon there can be no presumption of or preference for procreation. The nuclear family becomes a partnership of two for mutual society; a contract to keep each other company (though why limit it it just two?): marriage ceases to be about a union to be blessed with babies for the future flourishing of society, because unions in a gender-neutral marriage canon must have a presumption of barrenness in the present. To talk of children is to presume fertility and so to discriminate against the naturally sterile union of man and man and woman and woman."
If that sounds far fetched, the
LGBT charity Stonewall has told organisations to stop using gendered terms like mother and father and to close down single-sex toilets while teachers have been told to drop the terms
'boy' and 'girl' in favour of 'learners'.
Bishop Bayes is not alone in his view of Christian marriage. Commenting on Matt Hancock's resignation as Health Secretary after he breached his own Covid regulations, the bishop of Manchester, the
Rt Rev Dr David Walker dismissed Hancock's 'lies, deception and unfaithfulness' and as 'a bit of a fling', not something to be 'unduly concerned about'.
Bishops Bayes and Walker are just two Anglican bishops who have lost the plot who happen to be in the news.
Why is the Church so woke? asked Giles Fraser following a Savanta ComRes survey which revealed that only 6% of Church of England clergy admitted to voting Tory in the December 2019 General Election, whereas 40% voted Labour.
Writing in Christian Today, former Church of England vicar Julian Mann posed the question Why the left-wing bias of so many Anglican clergy?
"The short answer would seem to be because that is the way of the world. Or at least the world of this country's institutions, from the BBC to the police, to the educational establishment, to the National Trust, since the 1960s.
"Britain's institutions, including the CofE, are now run by men and women who absorbed the left-wing doctrines that were becoming predominant in the universities they went to in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly the belief that the State is the most effective agent of human betterment."
"The watering down of the CofE's historic biblical teaching since the 1960s is arguably the reason why it has become so woke.
"Because historic Christianity stresses "the resurrection of the body, And the life everlasting" - as the Apostles' Creed concludes - the kingdom of woke, in which humanity can achieve a rainbow utopia in this world, is fundamentally opposed to the kingdom of God and of his Christ."
Exactly. They have lost the plot.
Postscript [06.07.2021]
Apology from the Bishop of Liverpool.
