Celibate Anglican pastor with same-sex attraction stands up for natural marriage at synod [LifeSite

Mon Feb 20, 2017 - 12:45 pm EST
Celibate Anglican pastor with same-sex attraction stands up for natural marriage at synod

LONDON, England, February 20, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – Faced with the growing prospect the Anglican Church’s Synod would reject the Christian doctrine on heterosexual marriage, the Rev. Sam Allberry challenged the assembly.

His words are captured on a short video. “My question … is not ‘Do you affirm this doctrine,’ but ‘Do you really believe in it. Is it good news for the world?’”

What made Allberry’s question so poignant is that he himself is attracted to men. Yet here he was denying this attraction was good for him and the church.

A long-awaited report by a committee of Anglican bishops on homosexuality affirmed that Christianity recognized only heterosexual marriage. However, it stated that homosexual relationships had positive qualities. It urged the church to explore ways to affirm them, even with special liturgies.

This led Allberry to express his concern that, after affirming heterosexual marriage in principle, in practice, “We are already preparing to pastorally undermine it.”

Hence his question: “Not ‘Do you affirm this doctrine,’ but ‘Do you really believe in it. Is it good news for the world? Many of us [homosexually attracted but celibate] find it to be life-giving.”

Allberry knew he was swimming against the tide at the synod. During the debate over whether to bless same-sex “marriages,” many homosexual Anglicans made emotional pleas to abandon 2,000 years of teaching in the name of compassion, equality, and tolerance.

However, Allberry rejected their arguments even though “I am same-sex attracted and have been my entire life. I have sexual, romantic, and deep emotional attractions to people of the same sex.”

Allberry, associate pastor of a parish in Maidstone with a growing ministry to celibate Christians like himself, went on to say he personally knew hundreds, and was aware of thousands, of Christians beset by homosexual desires. Nonetheless, they “joyfully affirm” Christ’s teachings that marriage is exclusively a heterosexual institution.


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It's insightful people like Allberry that are essential for the survival of Anglo Catholicism