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How should CofE confessing Anglicans relate to bishops who ordain practising homosexuals?
By Julian Mann
Special to VIRTUEONLINE
www.virtueonline.org
March 11, 2016
This is a very real issue for biblically orthodox Anglicans in the Church of England.
Even though the CofE officially expects its clergy to be either celibate or heterosexually married, the House of Bishops' decision in 2005 to allow licensed ministers to enter into civil partnerships has undoubtedly whipped up a fog of moral uncertainty through which practising homosexuals have been able to sneak into ordained ministry.
One reputedly orthodox bishop, relatively new to an English diocese, was warned by established ministers there that he was about to ordain a known practising homosexual. He was issued with a plea for the sake of the gospel not to proceed with the ordination but reportedly went ahead.
How should confessing Anglicans relate to such a bishop? Certainly, simplistic, legalistic, Pharisaic, grandstanding solutions should be avoided like an ill-prepared exposition of the book of Zechariah. It is very easy to pontificate from the safety of a freehold incumbency or from a roving brief where a licensed minister is housed and funded independently from the diocese.
For clergy under the Common Tenure arrangement and even more so for curates with young families seeking incumbencies, declaring impaired communion with their diocesan bishop is much more personally costly and could lead to real gospel opportunities in local churches being lost.
But on the Lord Jesus' principle that from those who been given much, much will be demanded, and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked (Luke 12:48), surely viable orthodox churches and ministers in established positions should make clear to bishops the relational, practical and financial consequences of knowingly ordaining immoral clergy?
Julian Mann is vicar of the Parish Church of the Ascension, Oughtibridge, South Yorkshire, UK - www.oughtibridgechurch.org.uk
