The Anglican Communion News Service reports on the Anglican Church in Aorateara, New Zealand and Polynesia Synod which passed a resolution to study the nature of marriage:
Church: We Need to Talk About Marriage.
That’s what the General Synod decided in Fiji this afternoon.Without dissent, and after a debate that at times included displays of raw emotion, the synod passed a resolution that “asks Episcopal Units to hold conversations in our church and with the wider community about the nature of marriage.”
It’s clear that the mover of the resolution, the Rev Glynn Cardy, of St Matthew-in-the-City, in Auckland, hopes this will lead, eventually, to the possibility of gay and lesbian couples getting married in Anglican churches.
The resolution includes the request that dioceses and hui amorangi “explore how the Church might theologically and liturgically respond to gay and lesbian Anglican couples who request this rite.”
Much of Glynn’s speech turned on his claim that “marriage in the Bible is not restricted to one man and one woman – or in fact to any one model.”