Love over rules — it’s time for disobedience in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa

Once again the Anglican Church of Southern Africa has told the world that only certain people are God’s children; that only certain types of people are welcome in their midst; that “difference” isn’t to be tolerated and that, in this instance, if you’re a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, you’re not welcome in the Anglican Church.

Over the past 20 years, the Anglican Church of Southern Africa has been debating how to provide care to the LGBTQIA+ community. And nothing has changed. It continues to reject and oppose any attempt to provide pastoral care and ministry to this part of its membership.

The last debacle has just taken place, with the Provincial Synod (the highest authority in the church) rejecting the smallest morsel of inclusion and reconciliation offered in the form of a proposal by the church’s own bench of bishops, no less, to allow Anglican clergy to pray for gay and lesbian couples married in civil unions using a limited set of prayers designed and approved by the bishops themselves.

But even this tiniest olive branch has been turned into yet another whip of rejection!

Just to clarify the situation. Many clergy and laity within ACSA have for years been trying to get the Anglican Church to adopt pastoral guidelines which would welcome all people regardless of their sexual orientation into its midst. Such a welcome would include the blessing of marriages between people of the same sex.

The “advocates of inclusion” base their position on the supposition that there should be NO discrimination against anyone on the basis of race, gender or sexual orientation.

It’s a position held by Anglicans around the world, including by Desmond Tutu during his ministry as Archbishop of the southern African Anglican Church, and more recently, as the proposal to the synod notes, the Pope himself has called on his clergy to provide pastoral care to couples within same-sex unions by permitting prayers of blessing to be offered.

The position is supported by volumes of well-reasoned theological theses and deliberations.

It’s a position Jesus himself took, welcoming everyone to be part of his fledgling community of faith, if they wanted it. His message was clear and precise – no one is outside the circle of God’s love and embrace.

While there may be certain standards set by the church in terms of how its members should behave, rejecting someone on the basis of their race, gender, sexual orientation or any other socially created construct is clearly at odds with the way Jesus treated those who sought his help.

Quite frankly, the rejection of the bishop’s proposal by the body of the synod is an outrage.

For how long will the church’s ministry be defined and determined by synod delegates whose homophobia is at odds with scripture, with the very example of Jesus, with the position of those like Archbishop Tutu, Pope Francis and many others, and, in the case of South Africa, at odds with the constitutional rights afforded to all citizens?

Read more: Anglican Church must embrace the modern world and reject discrimination in all its manifestations

It’s time for Anglican clergy in southern Africa to follow their conscience and walk alongside the LGBTQIA+ community, providing ministry to everyone in need, blessing marriages, conducting ceremonies and affirming relationships, regardless of what the rules say.

It’s time for a form of “civil disobedience” within the church – call it “ecclesiastical disobedience” – by clergy of conscience.

It’s time for Anglican clergy to disobey the synod ruling, follow the lead provided by the bishops and, at a minimum, use the prayers they’ve crafted for pastoral care.

It’s time for caring clerics to stand up and boldly proclaim to the church structures, to the LGBTQIA+ community and to the world, that love overrules the small mindedness of homophobia and of sexist, patriarchal exclusion.

It’s time to demonstrate in loving acts of inclusion that all people matter to God and that all are welcome in the community of those who affirm love over rules. DM