A group of conservative churches and members of the Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) have issued a manifesto calling for “amicable separation. The group known as the Assembly of Confessing Congregations (ACC) wish to be allowed to leave the UCA, allowing evangelicals and progressives to form two groups.
The confessing group addresses the UCA’s official Assembly in a publically released document called a “Declaration Of Faith And Intent.”
“We call on the Assembly of the Uniting Church in Australia and the various councils of the Church as a whole to begin formal negotiations around amicable separation in order to release both the progressive stream and the conservative evangelical stream to live out peacefully each other’s respective faith in genuine freedom and without compromising their fundamental beliefs,” the ACC declaration says.
Hedley Fihiki, the Chair of the ACC, tells The Other Cheek that he has forwarded the declaration to the President and State Moderators of the UCA.
The call for separation is based on a disagreement about whether non-celibate LGBT persons should be ministers in the church or married by the church.
The Declaration Of Faith And Intent cites two actions by the UCA that form the basis of their dissent.
• In 2003, the UCA Assembly passed Resolution 84 (R84) “that, in essence, approved two ‘mutually exclusive positions’ on sexual ethics. One holds to ‘celibacy in singleness &faithfulness in marriage (1987); the other to ‘right relationships’ (1997). The two positions are ‘irreconcilable’. R84 was a momentous change in the Church’s faith & practice.” This decision meant that the UCA could ordain partnered gay and lesbian ministers.
• In “2018, the Fifteenth Assembly of the UCA went further by making the radical move to redefine the Church’s biblical and historic understanding of marriage to include same-sex marriage.” This UCA assembly decision adopted a” two rites of marriage” position, placing a new marriage service that included lesbian and gay couples alongside the traditional marriage service.
The long-distance between these two events identifies the ACC as conservative “stayers” compared with a group of primarily charismatic believers who left the UCA following 2003.
Other evangelical believers will remain in the UCA, such as the Propel network of larger churches (including NewLife church on the Gold Coast and Brisbane and Wesley Mission in Sydney) and the Hopenet group of churches in SA.
The ACC declaration describes the UCA’s acceptance of same-gender marriage (the preferred term in the UCA) as heresy. They also regard it as a “departure from the ‘faith and unity of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church’ to which the Basis of Union (BoU) commits us.” The BoU is the foundation document of the Uniting Church.
The ACC believes that congregations (the UCA term for local churches) should be able to leave with their property. “We believe that in entering into negotiations for an amicable separation from the UCA, should include all aspects of church government and all church and ministerial assets. So, for example, a congregation that decides to separate from the UCA should be entitled to have transferred to a new trustee the property that the beneficial interest of the individual Churches have and likely brought into the Union in 1977.”
The ACC congregation in Sunnybank, Brisbane, was dissolved by the UCA, and a process considering the dissolution of the ACC congregation at Mooloolaba.is underway. Hedley Fihiki, the ACC chair, is no longer a UCA minister. The Standing Committee of the UCA Queensland Synod has removed its recognition of him as a minister and terminated his placement at Mooloolaba.
The Other Cheek will seek to report any official response from the UCA to the ACC declaration.
Image: Mooloolaba Christian Church worship Jan 23
In as few words as possible, UCA progressives who essentially deny sexual sin(s) and fidelity of one man one woman and sanctity of the marriage bed for life, and redefine biblical standards here, and end up repudiating judgement day and hell, are in fact themselves as false teachers, #Hellbound for as long as there is no repentance from SSM and anti-biblical authority thinkings.
ACC UCA conservatives believe and are convinced enough is enough.