According to a Times poll, there is broad support for changing the current Anglican doctrine.
According to a study by The Times, the Church of England clergy want the Anglican beliefs on homosexuality modified at an upcoming General Synod, as well as the ability for priests to marry gay couples and gay priests to get married. The majority of the nearly 1,200 respondents agreed that Britain is no longer a Christian nation and that they would welcome a female leader.
The study, which was released on Tuesday, is the first of its sort since the UK approved same-sex civil unions in 2014. Same-sex marriage was then viewed as “wrong” by 51% of Anglican clergy, while 39% supported it.
Less than ten years later, 63% of respondents believe the Church of England should permit homosexual clergy to enter same-sex civil unions, compared to 32% who do not. The Times reports that while 36.5% of priests oppose amending the legislation to permit them to marry gay couples, 53.4% support it. However, only 49.2% of celebrants say they’d be open to performing same-sex weddings, while 41% say they wouldn’t.
Only 29.7% of the clergy who were polled are in favour of maintaining the current Anglican doctrine that “homosexual practise is incompatible with scripture,” while nearly two thirds (63%) support changing it. Although 37.2% of respondents would allow it in “committed” same-sex partnerships and 27.3% would like to see the church’s official opposition to all extramarital sex removed, the church is ostensibly against it.
According to extrapolation by The Times, “more than 10,600 of the church’s 20,000 priests” would support same-sex marriage inside the church. The survey, however, was based on the responses of 1,185 active clergy members who were contacted by The Times after randomly selecting 5,000 priests with addresses in England from the Crockford’s Clerical Directory of Anglican clergy.
The survey included 6% of the clergy who are still able to perform sacraments like Holy Communion, including vicars, rectors, curates, chaplains, and retired priests.
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A woman serving as Archbishop of Canterbury would be supported by 80% of the clergy, according to a survey that also revealed a sea change in attitudes towards the LGBTQ community. Similarly, 9.2% categorically rejected the idea that Britain is a Christian nation, while 64.2% felt it could be classified as such “only historically, not currently.” Only 24.2% agreed.
The Campaign for Equal Marriage in the Church’s director, the Reverend Andrew Foreshew-Cain, told The Times that “this is absolutely huge.” The results of the study provided “really clear evidence of the direction of change the church needs to pursue,” according to Foreshew-Cain, who married his partner in defiance of church doctrine.
“The church is the church and is not a club because of this. Speaking on behalf of the C of E, the Right Reverend Nick Baines, Bishop of Leeds, stated that the organisation has a particular vocation that excludes pursuing popularity. “To change our minds in order for society to experience both love and justice, we must practise repentance. And doing so occasionally requires going against the grain of culture, however painful that may be.
King Henry VIII rejected the authority of the Roman Catholic Pope in a divorce dispute, leading to the formation of the Church of England in 1534, a Protestant church. The British monarch serves as its nominal head, and the Archbishop of Canterbury serves as its primate.
