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The Primate of the Church in Australia, Peter Carnley, has suggested the church should bless such unions and concentrate on the spiritual quality of the friendship without inquiring into intimate physical matters.

In a paper prepared for the synod, Carnley, a liberal theologian who is also Archbishop of Perth, capital of the state of Western Australia, said that friendship was "essential for providing an appropriate and supportive context for working out the details of a life of moral goodness. The church's calling is to foster such friendships."

He said that for the church to "specify limits of [physical] touch" would be as inappropriate for a relationship between people of the same gender it would be in heterosexual marriage. "Does the church become involved in this, or is to do so merely an expression of the modern obsession with sex, an example of the voyeurism endemic in the modern world imported into the ecclesiastical environment?" Carnley's paper asks.

Following publication of an edited excerpt of his paper in The Bulletin, a national news magazine, two senior members of the Sydney diocese, both possible candidates for the position of archbishop of Sydney, Australia's biggest city, strongly criticized the Primate's views. Robert Forsyth, Bishop of South Sydney, told The Sydney Morning Herald that "any suggestion that the Anglican Church should bless a sexual relationship that is not fully marriage of a man and a woman is not possible if we are to remain faithful to Lord Jesus Christ and the Scriptures."

"If it means the Christian faith has nothing to say about what you do in your bedroom—about sexual behavior—he must be kidding. Sexual behavior is a crucial part of human behavior. The Christian faith has crucial things to say about work, how we earn money, how we treat other people and our sex lives."

Canon Peter Jensen, principal of Moore Theological College and another contender for the position of archbishop of Sydney, said that if Carnley "is suggesting this [blessing a committed homosexual union] is a good thing for us to do, he has gone beyond the border."

Carnley argued in his paper that the Bible had little or nothing to say about homosexual behavior. The "handful" of injunctions were aimed primarily at promiscuity. "Where the Bible is itself silent, the church may be wise to hesitate to speak," he said.

At the same time the value of friendship should be nurtured by the church as an expression of love and commitment, he said. The idea of "best friends" was common both to marriage, and to some same-sex relationships.

Archbishop Carnley rejected the term "marriage" for homosexual unions, saying that marriage had as one of its chief purposes procreation and nurture of children. But he argued that the church should support legal recognition and "next of kin" status for homosexual partners, and consider blessing commitments intended to be monogamous and lifelong. Homosexual relationships are not recognized by the Australian government.

Archbishop Carnley mentioned in support of his case the depth of the relationship between David and Jonathan in I Samuel 18:3—"Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul."

Carnley commented: "There is certainly no sense in which this same-gender relationship is denigrated in the biblical text. Indeed it is celebrated. David's love for Jonathon is said to have been "wonderful, even greater than that of a woman." Carnley also spoke of the relationship between Ruth and Naomi, recorded in the Book of Ruth, as another "exemplary same-gender relationship."

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June (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45