Step One: Welcome but not affirm those who hold to a heterodox (anything goes) teaching on marriage.
Step Two: Welcome AND affirm those who hold to a heterodox teaching on marriage.
Step Three: Welcome but not affirm those who hold to a heterodox practice on marriage.
Step Four: Welcome AND affirm those who hold to a heterodox practice on marriage.
And while that traffic is heading in one direction, here's what heading in the other:
Step One: Publicly affirm that the orthodox view of marriage is the only valid, biblical viewpoint.
Step Two: Silently assume that the orthodox view of marriage is the only valid, biblical viewpoint.
Step Three: Raise the suggestion that other views may also be biblical.
Step Four: Raise the suggestion that a commitment to the orthodox view of marriage alone may not be biblical -- or loving.
Step Five: Affirm heterodox views of sexual relationships that do not call themselves marriage as loving and biblically covenantal.
Step Six: Assure those that hold the orthodox viewpoint (who are protesting at this point), that they too have a place in the church life.
(That's the step Welby has just taken. And then that's when it starts to get interesting).
Step Seven: Ask if those who hold out on the heterodox view are really interested in the mission of the church in the 21st century. (or all that loving).
Step Eight: Affirm the heterodox view of marriage.
Step Nine: Perform heterodox marriages (and simultaneously approve of those in the clergy living in such arrangements).
Step Ten: Scold orthodox views of marriage.
Step Eleven: Take actions -- both material and legal -- against those who hold to the orthodox view and push back against the heterodox view on word and deed."

The final step played out with the passage of Resolution B012 in the Episcopal Church allowing homosexual marriage, and any opposition to it would be considered spiritual treason.

This resulted in Albany Episcopal Bishop Bill Love getting the heave-ho and later former Bishop of Central Florida John C. Howe tossing in his orders. Both men joined the Anglican Church in North America.

In the Church of England, homosexual people and priests have been and continue to be promoted to senior positions in the church.

The new Dean of Canterbury Cathedral the Very Rev. David Monteith, is in a same-sex civil partnership. The Archbishop of Canterbury's Secretary for Appointments Stephen Knott in 2021 entered a same-sex marriage with Alastair Bruce, the Governor of Edinburgh Castle. This person has considerable power as he oversees the appointment of bishops in the Church of England. Can you imagine someone of orthodox persuasion ever again getting a senior appointment now in the CofE! Dream on.

Evil comes in many disguises. It can boldly take Jesus to a high mountain and tempt him. Or it can slither snake-like in a garden and tempt two vulnerable humans.

It is profoundly ironic that outgoing Presiding Bishop Michael Curry spent most of his tenure talking about love, (at general conventions, weddings, and revivals), but there was no love for the dwindling orthodox wing of his church that disagreed with his church's stance on homosexuality, that not only alienated his conservatives, but alienated Global South leaders who made it clear they would not go along with the West's sexual zeitgeist.

"Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made..." (Gen. 3:1) ESV and he continues to this day undermining the church from within. Whether with brazenness or subtlety, Satan has divided people, churches, and whole denominations.

This is without doubt the best strategy of Satan's in the 20th and 21st Century to undermine 'the faith once for all delivered to the saints.'

END