Response by former UCA President to Uniting Church Same-Sex Marriage Proposal

Posted on June 1, 2018 
Filed under Culture wars, Other denominations

In July, the Assembly of the Uniting Church in Australia will vote on a proposal, brought by the Assembly Standing Committee, to change the doctrine of marriage and understanding of marriage within the UCA to be for any ‘two people’. Many see this as a ‘make or break’ moment for the UCA.

Dr. James Haire, ninth President of the Uniting Church in Australia, has published his response to the proposals. Quite apart from Biblical reasons to oppose them, he believes they would make it impossible for the Uniting Church in Australia to continue to exist according to its founding documents:

“The final sentence of Paragraph 2 of the Basis of Union (Of the Whole Church) states: ‘The Uniting Church declares its desire to enter more deeply into the faith and mission of the Church in Australia, by working together and seeking union with other Churches’ …

proposals (b), (c)(ii) and (d).1 are likely to cause further fracturing of relations between the UCA and other Churches in Australia, and certainly are likely to go against any moves to seek ‘union with other Churches’.”

Read it all here. (PDF file.)

And, from Peter Bentley, National Director of the Assembly of Confessing Congregations within the Uniting Church in Australia:

“In a nutshell, my view is that the adoption of the proposals would make the Uniting Church cease to be the Uniting Church as we know it, even it still has the legal name. … The grand experiment of ‘Uniting’ that was begun in 1977 as a church movement that was not ‘its own denomination’, but part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church would simply be no more.”

– Read this, and related articles, in the June 2018 edition (PDF file) of Confessing Congregations’ magazine “ACCatalyst”. (Photo: ACC.)