Anglicans to debate same-sex marriage

‘‘Churches are threatening that they might leave, but we don’t know if they will or not.’’ Vicar Helen Jacobi

Same-sex couples may be able to have their marriages blessed in New Zealand Anglican churches under a divisive new proposal being debated by Canterbury diocese members.

Christchurch Anglicans are meeting today to discuss whether to allow same-sex blessings in a debate that could split the church. A final decision on whether to adopt the proposal will be voted on by the national Anglican Synod, the church’s governing body, at a meeting in New Plymouth in May.

The proposal would allow each Anglican bishop to decide if samesex blessings were allowed in their diocese. In 2014, the New Zealand Anglican Church defined marriage as being ‘‘between a man and a woman’’. The decision meant same-sex couples could not marry in Anglican churches. The new proposal would allow only for blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples who were married elsewhere.

The proposal would also give each diocese’s bishop and clergy immunity from complaint if they refused to conduct blessings of same-sex couples.

Conservative churches have threatened to split from the Anglican diocese if the proposal is adopted.

A submission on the proposal from the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans New Zealand (FCANZ), a conservative group within the church that opposes same-sex blessings, argues the church could split over the issue.

‘‘We continue to doubt that it is truly possible to include all theological positions on this issue within one structure (because the two opposite convictions each see the other as inappropriate and untenable) and so still see the establishment of an Extra Provincial Diocese as the most honest, gracious, generous and kind way for Anglicans of all convictions to move forward in the mission and ministry they believe God is calling them to,’’ the group’s submission states.

FCANZ chair and Christchurch vicar Jay Behan said the stakes were high.

‘‘The issue we are discussing is difficult and potentially divisive and any time you are discussing divisive topics the consequences can be serious and we need to be sure that what we are doing is done as carefully as we can.

‘‘Whenever the issues are this difficult the stakes are always high.’’

Vicar Helen Jacobi of St Matthew-in-the-City in Auckland said the same- sex blessing proposal was ‘‘very watered down’’.

‘‘I think it is probably all that is possible to get through the church system at the moment,’’ she said.

‘‘Churches are threatening that they might leave, but we don’t know if they will or not . . . That is a difficult way to come to a decision.

‘‘We want to stay together, but we are not prepared to do that at any cost. The cost at the moment is being borne by same-sex couples who would like to be married in the church. They are the ones that are bearing the cost.’’

She said homosexual people had already left the Anglican church over the issue.

‘‘By the time we get around to it, we will have kept the conservative churches and the people we are talking about will have left the church,’’ she said.

‘‘People already have left and that is understandable. It astounds me that people stay. Why would you if your church is saying you are not acceptable?’’

The proposal was drawn up as a compromise option to keep the Anglican Church unified. A working group paper on the proposal states they were tasked to find ‘‘structural solutions which would hold our church together’’.

Civil unions for same-sex couples were made legal in New Zealand in 2004 and marriage in 2013.