CANADIAN ANGLICAN BISHOPS WANT TO AFFIRM HOMOSEXUALS

CANADIAN ANGLICAN BISHOPS WANT TO AFFIRM HOMOSEXUALS

[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist News Service. Copyright 1997. These articles cannot be stored on BBS or Internet sites without permission from the author. Any articles which are redistributed by e-mail must be left intact and nothing must be removed or changed, including these informational headers. This is a listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. Our primary purpose is to provide information to assist preachers in the protection of the churches in this apostate hour. If you desire to receive this type of material on a regular basis, e-mail us, tell us who you are and where you are located, and request to be placed on the list. Also include your postal address and the name of the church of which you are a member. Some of these articles are from the "Digging in the Walls" section of O Timothy magazine. David W. Cloud, Editor. O Timothy is a monthly magazine in its 14th year of publication. Subscription is $20/yr. The Way of Life web site is http://www.wayoflife.org.]

June 3, 1997 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, fbns@wayoflife.org) - According to a survey published in April by the Anglican Church of Canada, two-thirds of Canada's Anglican bishops want the denomination's guidelines on the ordination of homosexuals loosened. The existing guidelines, authorized in 1979, state that all people are equal before God, but add: "Our acceptance of persons with homosexual orientation is not an acceptance of homosexual activity" (Ecumenical News International, April 30, 1997). The guidelines state that a gay man or lesbian woman can be ordained "if there has been a commitment to the bishop to abstain from sexual acts with persons of the same sex."

The majority of bishops who completed the survey "said the guidelines should be revised to retain their 'original intention' but in a way that expressed 'a wider context of theological understanding and pastoral sensitivity'" (Ibid.). More than half of the bishops believed the denomination should apologize to the homosexual community for "insensitivity and hostility originating in the church."

The results of the survey will be examined by a task force which will draft a message to the Anglican denomination in Canada about relationships, to be made public later this year.