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Uniting Church in Australia votes to allow homosexual clergy
Evangelical members of the Uniting Church in Australia, made up of the country's Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregational churches, say they are "horribly close" to leaving after today's vote to allow the ordination of homosexual clergy.

"It looks to me…that there is a real risk that some elements of the church will just say, 'Well, that's it,' and pack their bags and go," Mary Hawkes, spokeswoman for the Evangelical Members within the Uniting Church (EMU), told the AAP. "I'm not sure that the church is ready for that."

In one Australian state, Hawkes told reporters, about 3,000 evangelicals were planning to leave the church—Australia's third-largest, after Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism—because of the vote. But Hawkes promised to try her "very best to persuade everybody to do absolutely nothing this year except pray and talk and find a way forward."

Still, she said, "If there's going to be an exodus, my hope is it will be a mass exodus—I don't want people going in dribs and drabs."

EMU, which represents 300,000 active members (among the 1.2 million Australians affiliated with the denomination), opposed the move, as did the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress. But about 85 percent of the denomination supported the policy, which says individual presbyteries may "accept people for ordination, candidature for ministry or placement in ministry on a case-by-case basis."

The vote "clarified the situation in the church and sought to maintain the unity of the church, by acknowledging our diversity of understanding and interpretation," Uniting Church President Dean Drayton said in a press release. "The Assembly has decided that we are a diverse church, we have great and genuinely held differences, but instead of allowing these differences to divide us, we will hold together in something greater—our love of God and our love of the Uniting Church itself."

But there's more to being a church leader than loving God and the denomination, said Anglican Bishop Peter Tasker in a statement released by the Diocese of Sydney (he's standing in for Archbishop Peter Jensen, who is traveling overseas). "Leaders in our churches should be above reproach and be those whose lives exemplify the very biblical and Christian teaching that they are duty-bound to give," he said. "It is painful to us now to have to point out to the Uniting Church that today's decision raises important questions for biblically minded Anglicans, such as those in our diocese, over the future recognition of the ministries of any Uniting Church ministers who are partners in a homosexual relationship."

(Tired of the millions of links to stories of church battles about homosexuality? Click here to skip past 'em all. —Ted)

Archbishop of Canterbury tries to mend Church of England homosexuality rift:

• Archbishop renews calls for unity | Rowan Williams called for more tolerance in his first speech as Anglican leader to the Church's General Synod, its governing body (BBC, video)
  
  
• Also: Standing ovation as Williams sees off schism threat | Archbishop of Canterburyurged both sides in the dispute over homosexuality in the Church to stop talking to each other through megaphones and to stop behaving as if they were a "persecuted minority" (The Times, London)
  
  
• Also: Unity is default option, Archbishop tells synod gripped by gay debate | The archbishop of Canterbury tried again yesterday to draw a line under the damaging rows that have rocked the Church of England by making a plea for a unity that went beyond an "appearance of meaningless unanimity" (The Independent, London)
  
  

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July (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47