Road Map Confusion

This is not a blog as such - instead Anglican Futures has been asked to share this open letter to the Bench of Bishops of the Church in Wales. We hope it will be read widely.

In the 1970s when the protests over English-only road signs were at their height in Wales many of those signs were defaced or torn down creating confusion for lots of drivers. It is distressing to see that similar confusion is being caused amongst many church people today as a result of the most recent road map for the future of ceremonies for same-sex couples in the Church in Wales.

In the new road map we are told that "advocates for equal marriage argue from the inclusive love of Jesus, while others highlight faithfulness to the traditional reading of Biblical texts and cannot embrace such new understandings." Such polarisation of the debate suggests that we are either for Jesus or we are for the Bible. That is a caricature of the truth. Those who are for the Bible are also for Jesus, and those who are for Jesus should also be for the Bible.

Jesus himself quoted from the Old Testament Scriptures between eighty and one hundred times. He believed those Scriptures, preached from them, commended them and fulfilled them. He repeated approvingly the foundational statement on relationships from Genesis that ‘a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh.’ Public, exclusive, intimate and heterosexual.

Another misleading statement in the road map is the use of that excellent saying, “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty, and in all things charity.”​ The statement itself is a good rule of thumb for discussion and disagreement, but including it in the road map suggests that this debate over same-sex sexual relationships is ‘non-essential’. It would be ‘non-essential’ if the Bible had nothing to say about it, but unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) it speaks on the subject at least six times and every time it is negative.

While the Bench of Bishops does not think that this should be a ‘church-dividing issue’ nonetheless it has put itself at odds with 85% of Anglicans world-wide which is one of the reasons for the Anglican Convocation in Europe and the issuing of the most recent Martyrs Day statement from the Global Anglican Communion. In the last four years there has been an alternative orthodox Anglican church in Wales. We are both for Jesus and his inclusive love, and for Jesus’ Bible and its clear teaching.

+Andy Lines (Presiding Bishop of the Anglican Network in Europe)

+ Stuart Bell (Assistant Bishop in the Anglican Convocation Europe)

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