The Anglican Church in Australia is set to split in two after divisions resurfaced over same-sex marriage.
This year’s Synod’s division was triggered by a debate about the practice of blessing same-sex “marriage.”
The conflict breaks a 2018 ‘cease-fire,’ where gay activists and Christian purists agreed that ‘change could only be made through the General Synod.’
Quoting a warning from Canberra’s David McLennan (Rector of Canberra’s St. John the Baptist Anglican Church) The Australian noted that the ‘Anglican Church in Australia could rupture’ if compromises, such as allowing same-sex attracted, but chaste priests, weren’t made.
The rift over same-sex marriage has been simmering for years and can be simplified as intrusive LGBTQ+ activists within the church warring against Christians who maintain the biological science behind the Biblical affirmation of man for woman, woman for man – in particular Jesus Christ’s myth-busting words in Matthew 19:1-12.
Opposing the internal political activism led by Brisbane Bishop, Jonathon Holland, Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Kanishka Raffel, stated in the first Anglican General Synod (i.e.: Parliament) since 2017:
“The blessing of same-sex marriage was inconsistent with God’s purpose for marriage, and desperately misleads, and imperils those following Christ.”
The Australian recalled:
“Conservatives led by Raffel are pushing the assembly to affirm the Orthodox Churches’ Biblical views on sexuality, and sexual unions.”
Kanishka Raffel’s proposals have since been ‘thwarted’ (to quote the SMH) with bishops voting 12-10, vetoing Raffel’s support for the Anglican Church to reaffirm the science-backed Biblical teaching on marriage and sex.
Bishop Holland appears to have won this round. His view, which is shared by others in the Anglican communion, holds to the belief that if, “Love is reciprocal, intimate and nurturing – in the context of permanency, and exclusiveness – who are we to say that the same-sex relationship is not fulfilling the teaching of Jesus and his ruling principle of love?”
To understand the power struggle is to understand the distinction between those who seek to live free under the Kingship of Christ, and those who choose instead to elevate themselves over Christ, as though they were Christ.
On one side sits the Gospel purists who see merging Christianity with the LGBTQ+ political religion for the anti-christ (alternative gospel) compromise that it is.
The other side demands the Church adopt the LGBTQ+ political religion, citing “Jesus loves you” as their “inclusive,” “guiding principle.”
In-kind, “love is love, coddle the sin,” replaces the holistic God is love, “Jesus loves you, and hates your sin.”
A similar war is being waged in Anglican schools over a clause in the Sydney Anglican’s updated Statement of Faith reaffirming the Church’s support for traditional marriage.
Some educators and parents want the update scrapped saying it ‘has no place in their schools.’
This led writer, James Macpherson to quip, “In what sense is an Anglican school that rejects Anglican teaching in order to keep non-Anglican families happy still an Anglican school?”
The power struggle isn’t new. A battle between a theology of glory and the theology of the cross has always been present in Church history.
This is because the self-centred theology of glory is antithetical to the selfless transformative power of grace only found in the theology of the cross.
Why are these details important?
They help frame the conflict within the Anglican Church, its broader soma-spiritual context, and the far-reaching consequences of watering down Biblical theology to appease any cultural urges of the day.
You can’t have “Jesus loves you,” without, “Jesus hates your sin.”
Golgotha was a package deal.
Violence is done to the Gospel if Christian teaching switches from the transformative power of the cross, to selling feel-good false doctrines which translate freedom from sin to mean freedom to sin.
Sin (self-centredness; rejection of grace) isn’t saved, the sinner is. Christ pulls the sinner out of sin’s crushing orbit.
Either Jesus Christ rules the Church, or sin does. There is no middle ground where sin, instead of the sinner, gets a free pass.
The original defence of SSM was a lie.
Churches were told in the same-sex “marriage” debates that what a person did in their own bedroom was none of their business.
Enter 2022, and those who asserted this are now, not only telling the church to affirm what goes on in their bedrooms, but demand the kids join in as well.
Archbishop, Kanishka Raffel’s rebuttal, and refusal to transfuse LGBTQ+ism into the life blood of the Anglican Church, was an attempt to apply the scalpel of truth to the cancer of falsehood.
“Our silence,” wrote Erik Reed (lead pastor of Journey Church in the U.S), “only speeds up our descent into the abyss.”
Reed added,
“Our society may be the Titanic at this point. The damage inflicted on our culture by the sexual revolution may be irreversible. Even so, let’s be those on the bow warning of the iceberg ahead, not the band playing music to comfort passengers as we sink.”
Raffel may have lost the vote. He hasn’t lost the war.
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