LGBT Christian group describe Archbishops’ condemnation as “indefensible”

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The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM) has said it supports last week’s blessing of a same sex couple in church.

In a strongly-worded statement the group compared the Archbishops’ “prejudiced” stance to those who refused to end the slave trade.

Yesterday the Archbishops of York and Canterbury condemned the ceremony.

The LGCM said:

“The disregarding of manifestly unjust official Church teaching has a long and honourable tradition of its own.

“It has encompassed, for instance, campaigns against slavery, the use of unauthorised liturgies, remarriage of divorcees, and the ordination of women.

“All have come to pass and are now considered integral to the life of the Church, and all suffered a great deal of opposition form the Archbishops of the day.”

Yesterday the The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York condemned the recent partnership ceremony of two bishops held over the weekend:

“We have heard the reports of the recent service in St Bartholomew the Great with very great concern.

“On the general issue, however, the various reference points for the Church of England’s approach to human sexuality (1987 Synod motion, 1991 Bishops’ Statement- Issues in Human Sexuality- , Lambeth motion 1:10, House of Bishops’ 2005 statement on civil partnerships) are well known and remain current.

“Those clergy who disagree with the Church’s teaching are at liberty to seek to persuade others within the Church of the reasons why they believe, in the light of Scripture, tradition and reason that it should be changed. But they are not at liberty simply to disregard it.”

The LGCM disagrees:

“No number of Resolutions, arguing for the status quo, whose effect is to entrench and defend the indefensible, can alter the fact the Church of England is ‘rent asunder’ and unwilling to live out a gospel that treats all people as equals.

“That Church’s like St Bartholomew The Great in London are willing to act on principle rather than out of prejudice shows up how much of a chasm exists at the very heart of the Church.”

One of the gay priests who caused controversy over the weekend for marrying his partner, also a member of the clergy in what was in effect the first gay marriage in a British church has resigned. The Bishop of London is to investigate the incident.

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