Sex divides the Australian Church

The answer to the question “Is sexuality dividing the church in Australia?” is a decided “yes!” for Mark Durie, a Senior Research Fellow at the Melbourne School of Theology. He makes the case in his new book Double Minded: How Sex is Dividing the Australian Church.

He uses the example of the late Cardinal George Pell and the emerging Gafcon (Global Anglican Future Conference) movement to argue that sex and sexuality have become a significant marker of Christian beliefs.

“It is clear from the juxtaposition of the views of Gafcon with those of Cardinal George Pell that the battle within Christianity over Biblical Authority transcends age-old Christian sectarian divisions. At its base, it is about a worldview conflict between secular Western culture and Biblical Christian culture.”

Durie builds on the work of Carl Trueman and others to see a division between a traditional view of humankind made to serve and worship God and “expressive individualism”, the ideal of finding fulfilment “in living one’s own life and no one else’s”. Durie notes, “Crucially, human identity has come to be understood as inherently sexual.”

The emergence of expressive individualism and sexual freedom has given the church – always – the task of working out how it will be influenced by the culture. As Durie puts it, “The question is not whether Christianity should be influenced by the surrounding culture, for that is inevitable. The question is where a line is to be drawn between reasonable cultural accommodation and the subversion of church doctrine and ethics.”

This plays out through the councils of each church – including the teaching colleges.

Durie’s division can be seen in the education of ministers in the Australian scene. On the conservative side are the stand-alone self-accrediting colleges, Moore Theological College, the Pentecostal Alphacrucis, and the consortium the Australian College of Theology, which includes many traditional Bible Colleges and the Presbyterians. (All have been granted University College status.) On the more progressive side, the University of Divinity, although not uniformly progressive, includes liberal faculty in its member colleges.

Durie, who writes as an Anglican Minister, details the rise of the conservative movement, Gafcon and the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans, which represent 85 per cent of the World’s Anglicans, defying the white progressives of North America and the United Kingdom. As Durie points out, “Australia is the only Western Anglosphere country whose Anglican church has a majority of conservatives.”

This became apparent at the 2022 General Synod, where strong conservative majorities emerged in the Clergy and Laity houses of the tricameral church parliament. A motion to endorse a conservative view of marriage failed due to a 10-12 vote in the House of Bishops. (The clergy voted 70-39 and the laity 63-47, indicating a robust conservative turn in the General Synod, which had a progressive majority previously.)

It would take only one Bishop to be replaced to see a total conservative voice for the Australian church. Conservatives have taken over crucial national committees.

Durie says of the key Melbourne Diocese: “I attended Melbourne Anglican Synods for more than 20 years, and during that time, my impression was that the proportion of conservatives was slowly growing.”

A counter-reformation of sorts for “comprehensive Anglicanism” has been mounted. It was started in a speech by the outgoing Archbishop of Brisbane, Phillip Aspinall, and is now led by another retired Bishop, Stephen Pickard.

The argument for comprehensive Anglicanism was somewhat undermined by a progressive delegate, Matthew Anstey, who moved a motion to endorse same-sex marriage, which, while defeated decisively, tightened the division.

Durie does not detail that movement – but concludes, “Despite efforts to keep the Australian Anglican Church together, at some point, there will be a parting of the ways. It will be gradual, incremental and piecemeal … The time will come. And is already approaching when these two views will no longer be contained in the same church.”

Durie predicts that with entrenched views, conservative and progressive, in the dioceses, they will form a natural division.

Perhaps he means a virtual rather than literal legal divide into two churches. He points to the Gafcon group, with its breakaway Diocese of the Southern Cross, which is picking up conservative churches in the progressive dioceses of the Anglican Church.

Durie’s description of division in the Uniting Church focuses on the demise of the Assembly of Confessing Congregations (ACC), a conservative campaigning group, and drawing on The Other Cheek’s coverage among other sources, the departure of some remnant congregations to the Anglican breakaway The Diocese of the Southern Cross.

But the UCA picture is more complex. In common with other progressive churches, such as The Episcopal Church in the United States, it is arguable that more evangelicals remain within the UCA than have left it. This applies to the latest round of departures after the UCA’s acceptance of same-sex marriage alongside traditional marriage. (It may not have been the case with the earlier wave of departures from the UCA following the acceptance of gay ministers. The charismatic wing of the UCA melted away.)

Many UCA stayers belong to the avowedly evangelical Propel network, which was once called EL250, a descriptor for Evangelical leaders of larger churches – hence the 250. As distinct from the ACC, the Propel churches were able to maintain a vision of flourishing in the UCA.

The UCA has the greatest rate of decline among the top 5 Australian Churches, and this will affect the viability of its large number of small churches – a church of 20 or 30 aged people is affected by the loss of even a handful. However, the Propel evangelicals with larger churches may become proportionately more influential in a smaller UCA. That’s one possibility, and the evidence is that they see themselves flourishing in the UCA at present.

Recently, a reader of The Other Cheek with an ACC connection commented on our Facebook feed that, in his view, there was a “war” in the Sydney Presbytery region on progressive conservative sides. Stu Cameron, CEO of Wesley Mission, a Propel leader, and Presbytery representatives quickly and decisively refuted him. It was clear that the first commenter was out of date.

This minor skirmish makes it clear that the UCA is determined not to be divided.

A more recent division is taking place in the NSW/ACT Baptist Association, which has adopted a conservative “position statement” on same-sex marriage, and a system requiring churches and ministers to assent to it is being developed. The Other Cheek has reported that three affirming churches have been told they must leave. A parallel Open Baptist network has been formed, attracting support appealing to liberty of conscience, which is regarded as a Baptist distinctive. (Conservatives who strike a different balance also value freedom of conscience.)

In Baptist discussions, liberty of conscience arguments, as distinct from pro-same-sex marriage discussions, were the main order of the day.

This was different from the UCA, where marriage formed the main discussion. That UCA model may also be true of the Anglicans, with the liberty of conscience or comprehensive Anglicanism emerging post-General Synod.

Changes to the law affecting discrimination and religious freedom may be a key driver of what happens next. The law, which is undergoing changes, will be a key driver of whatever division happens.

“An increasingly challenging social and legal environment for Christians is leading some churches to protect themselves by ensuring they have formally articulated doctrinal matters on sexual ethics,” Durie comments.

This push towards a need to have a consistent position will increase division, with Durie using the example of a church worker denied a position taking an anti-discrimination action, being able to point to a denomination’s open stance to challenge their dismissal. He notes the opposite pressure – that a church or denomination that openly articulates a conservative position on LGBTQIA will achieve the Thorburn effect – Andrew Thorburn, a former CEO of NAB, had to step down as CEC of the Essendon Football Club due to his holding a committee position with City on a hill Church.

Thorburn was appointed CEO of HammondCare, an Independent Christian Charity, this month.

Double-Minded: How Sex is Dividing the Australian Church
Mark Durie, Deror Books 2023

Available at Reformers Bookshop, $21:24