Gay vote to split church

Paul Gray

August 14, 2006 12:00am

A FORMAL split within the Uniting Church looms because of growing divisions over the church leadership’s push to allow gay clergy.

Through its governing body, the National Assembly, the Uniting Church has voted twice in three years to reject the debarring of practising homosexuals from ministry.

Church dissidents see this as a de facto policy of allowing gay ordination, which they say violates basic biblical teachings.

Now, dissidents say they have legal advice that shows the National Assembly has acted illegally over the issue.

The dissidents believe the Bible says homosexuality is a sin and have called the Uniting Church’s National Assembly apostate and setting up a breakaway church nucleus, the Assembly of Confessing Congregations.

If the “confessing” assembly splits formally from the Uniting Church, it is likely to spark legal fights over church property and finances.

The dissidents include up to 200 Uniting Church congregations and many ministers.

The Assembly of Confessing Congregations is openly identifying itself with past revolutionary church reform movements.

In a letter posted online, the group says the pro-gay position of the Uniting Church’s leadership has “legal implications which will affect the use of church property, the making of appointments, the holding of trust funds and other financial arrangements”.

The Uniting Church, Australia’s third-biggest Christian denomination behind the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, has been deeply divided over the gay clergy issue for the past three years.

The dissident group formed after last month’s meeting of the National Assembly, which meets every three years.

“This is an adversarial situation,” said one member of the seven-member steering committee, the Rev Stephen Estherby from NSW.

The dissident assembly has already adopted a proposed charter that includes plans to establish links with the National Council of Churches, build new congregations, train new leaders and lay people and “assist in the placement of suitable ministry agents in Confessing Congregations”.

Uniting Church congregations around Australia are being actively recruited.

One minister who is supporting the new assembly predicted all 200 or so congregations who had joined the earlier opposition alliance would join the confessing assembly.

Mr Estherby said supporters of gay ordination within the church were now effectively reinterpreting the Bible.

He said this was the biggest challenge to face the Uniting Church in its 29-year history.

“We’ve tried to do everything that we can to reform within the due processes and procedures of the church, but we’ve been thwarted at every angle,” he said.

“Now we’re in the position to say in order to lead the church effectively we’re going to change some things, with or without the due processes of the church.

“It’s a fairly radical step.”

The move is being strongly supported by many of the church’s ethnic congregations.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,20113620-662,00.html

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