Rusty Benson
AFA Journal associate editor
August 2010 – High profile Anglican leaders have recently exchanged public words over the issue. United Methodist Church elite in the U.S. have schemed, unsuccessfully so far, to minimize the influence of their fellow church members in Africa about the controversy. And proposals about it in the Presbyterian Church (USA), if passed, could undermine the denomination’s clearly worded doctrinal standards.
The issue is, of course, whether homosexuality should be celebrated or repudiated among Christians. Ironically, denominational leaders are often the ones tugging the laity away from traditional biblical teaching.
While the homosexual issue is the most public flashpoint in the mainlines, below the surface, an even more basic issue remains unreconciled, according to Jeff Walton of the Institute for Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. IRD (www.theird.org) is an organization that works to reaffirm the biblical and historical teaching in several mainline denominations.
“The acceptance of homosexuality may be the issue that gets the most attention at this point,” Walton said, “but the real issue is one of authority – the authority of the Scripture to speak truth to the church and the authority of the church to shepherd the lives of Christians in light of that truth.”
That issue of authority surfaced in the worldwide Anglican Communion in May when Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, used his Pentecost letter to scold the Episcopal Church for consecrating lesbian Mary Glasspool as an assistant bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles. Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori issued her own pastoral letter in which she defended the denomination’s embrace of same-sex blessings and partnered homosexual bishops.
Walton said that while Schori’s letter accuses the archbishop of attempting to centralize authority in the Anglican Communion, in reality, she is the one attempting to assume unparalleled powers as presiding bishop.
Other Anglican voices in the homosexual debates include African bishops, who are overwhelmingly conservative in their theological views. They have regularly encouraged the global Anglican Communion to sanction the Episcopal Church in the U.S.
Likewise, United Methodists in Africa have also been a major factor in staving off the pro-homosexual onslaught in their denomination. Africans make up about one-third of United Methodists worldwide. By their next General Conference in 2012, about 40% of delegates will come from outside the U.S. Their growing numbers threaten the liberal agenda of the denominational establishment in the U.S.
UMC liberals have responded by portraying the Africans as pawns of conservative Christians in the U.S., according to an article by IRD president Mark Tooley in The American Spectator on May 21. Tooley explained:
Condescension toward African Christianity guided a recent United Methodist attempt to sideline growing African churches by creating a new, U.S.-only regional conference that would potentially create its own rules while excluding the Africans. Ostensibly this exclusion would empower the Africans by releasing them from concerns about the U.S. church. Endorsed by the church’s Council of Bishops and a two-thirds vote at the denomination’s governing General Conference in 2008, the restructuring required ratification by two thirds of the voters at local annual conferences last year. Mournfully, the bishops released the voting results early this month. Almost without precedent, over 60% of the nearly 50,000 United Methodist voters at conferences around the world rejected the bishops’ plan. Most revealingly, over 94% of African voters, evidently not wanting this kind of “empowerment” by exclusion, voted no.
The same issue of homosexual acceptance may also dominate the upcoming PCUSA General Assembly to be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 3-10.
This year delegates will deal with a range of opposing resolutions and reports that could either move the denomination back toward the church’s confessional understanding of marriage as the lifelong union of one man and one woman, or propel the PCUSA into full acceptance of same sex marriage.
The contentious topic may arise over a report from the Special Committee to Study Issues of Civil Union and Christian Marriage. Walton said although the report does not change the denomination’s constitutional text regarding marriage and same sex relationships, confirmation of the report would leave the impression that the PCUSA has no binding policy on these matters.
The result would amount to a local option in which local or regional church leaders would decide policy concerning same sex unions.
A minority report from the same committee upholds the biblical definition of marriage. 
