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Church

Pastoral Statement on Same-Sex Relationships and Marriage

Written by: Stephen Hale

EFAC Australia Pastoral Statement on Same-Sex Relationships and Marriage

  1. We acknowledge that offering a theological and pastoral response related to human sexuality and sexual practice in our cultural setting is complex, contentious and challenging. We also acknowledge that it is one of the major challenges facing us as a church at this time, especially in seeking to witness to the hope of the gospel.
  2. We offer our full assurance for all who are same sex attracted that they are loved, valued and welcome in our church. Our identity as believers is founded in the new life we live as God’s children. We are all one in Christ Jesus regardless of ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation.
  3. We uphold the formularies of the Anglican Church of Australia, which are grounded in the Bible’s teaching. The Christian rite of marriage is between a man and a woman. Both Jesus in Matthew 19:4-5, and St Paul affirm what God has instituted across all ages in the words of Genesis 2:24
“For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”

The introduction to the Anglican Marriage Service (APBA Order 2) upholds this unbroken conviction in this way.

Scripture teaches that marriage is a lifelong partnership uniting a woman and a man in heart, mind and body.
In the joy of their union, husband and wife enrich and respond to each other, growing in tenderness and understanding.
Through marriage a new family is formed, where children may be born and grow in secure and loving care.

Read more: Pastoral Statement on Same-Sex Relationships and Marriage

From Anglo-Catholicism to Evangelicalism - a Response

Written by: Frances Cook

Frances Cook offers a response to Jack Lindsays excellent article in Essentials, Summer 2021, "Being Anglo-Catholic in Australia, What does it mean and why on earth do it?" 

Jack Lindsay’s recent article describing the joy and satisfaction he found in Anglo-Catholicism after a start in Anglican Evangelicalism led me to reflect on my own journey - discovering Anglican Evangelicalism after a High Church upbringing.

Firstly, I am not confident to draw the fuzzy but existent line between High Church and Anglo-Catholic. Nevertheless, there are things in Jack’s article which he seems to identify as Anglo-Catholic, which in fact can be shown to be Anglican from the sixteenth century Anglican formularies and others which belong in the realm of High Church and not exclusively within nineteenth century Anglo-Catholicism.

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Anglicanism keeps muddling on — thank God

Written by: Theo Hobson

A new survey of UK Anglican clergy has been published.

Its findings are reassuringly unsurprising. For example, almost one-third of the clergy identify as evangelical; exactly one-third as Catholic; and just over one-third as something in the middle. In a different question, a quarter identify as conservative. Just over half want to keep the established Church in its current form; the rest want some sort of reform. Most call for the Anglican Communion to be more accepting of diversity, rather than seek stricter uniformity. Same in relation to the national Church. Sensible middle-way muddling-through remains the dominant approach: half the clergy think that Christians are discriminated against in some way by our secular society; half oppose same-sex marriage. (39 per cent are in favour of it, which I suppose is a strong body of dissent from Church teaching, but hardly surprising.)

George Carey: Christians, stand up for your beliefs

Written by: George Carey

The Prince of Wales’s powerful intervention last week on the persecution of Christians is a reminder that ancient Christian communities, pre-dating Islam, are on the verge of disappearing from their homelands in the Middle East.

 After years of bringing together Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders in dialogue, Prince Charles admitted that in spite of many such efforts, “fundamentalist Islamist militants” were “deliberately” targeting Christians.

Five Completely Effective Ways to Avoid Boredom in Expository Preaching

Written by: Peter Adam

Revised 2008

I wrote recently on Fourteen Incontrovertible Arguments in Favour of Expository Preaching. Those who oppose Expository Preaching often do so because they think it must breed boredom. And those who practise Expository Preaching sometimes intentionally or unintentionally im¬pose boredom on their hearers, perhaps as a kind of spiritual discipline! In my chapter in the book The Anglican Evangelical Crisis [ed. by Melvin Tinker, Christian Focus Publications, 1995], I appealed for ‘passionately applied expository Biblical Preaching’, and in this article I want to show five ways to avoid boredom in Expository Preaching.
We can be Expository in theological method without being rigidly and predictably expository in style.

Read more: Five Completely Effective Ways to Avoid Boredom in Expository Preaching

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