“Moral Guardians” Sound Indistinct Call
HOW strong a lead are the churches taking in their traditional role as “moral guardians” of the people? In some major denominations, events during recent months indicate that Biblical standards of morality are increasingly under attack, not just from outside, but from within. Here are some examples:
● A United Church of Canada Task Force on Sexuality released a report in the spring advocating that the church take a “contextual” approach to morality. Among other things, the 100-page report suggests that intercourse for unmarried persons may be all right in certain circumstances, that an “honest and strong intention to faithfulness” in marriage should be stressed rather than the “sexual exclusivity” that marital fidelity now implies, and that “mature, self-accepting homosexuals” should be allowed to become ministers.
What, then, makes a sexual relationship all right? According to the panel, it must be ‘creative and liberating, mutually supportive, socially responsible and joyous’—things which, in the minds of participants, are achieved during almost any sexual act. A spokesman for the report argued that “sexual morality has to keep up with the social sciences” because “God speaks to us through them as well as through the Bible.” Many United Church members felt betrayed. In letters to the task force, church members wrote of being “greatly disturbed,” “disgusted,” or “devastated and ashamed.” One woman wrote: “The devil must be laughing. I for one will be leaving.”
● Similarly, Canada’s Anglican Church, which had authorized ordination of homosexuals as priests in 1979, also issued a report suggesting that “conventional prissiness” about unmarried couples living together should be dropped. The report says that if the relationship involves “free consent and sexual consummation” in a context of life commitment, then a marriage already exists “in substance.” Arguing for church acknowledgment of this arrangement, the report says: “We must be prepared to marvel in silence when we see that [God] can make ‘common-law marriage’ on occasion a means of grace.”
When this report recently was considered at the Church’s general synod, advocates urged the assembled clerics to “face this reality.” And clergyman Garry Patterson said: “In the last three years I haven’t prepared anyone for marriage who hadn’t already been living together.” On the other hand, Donald Masters of Guelph University declared: “I find it absolutely incredible in a day of slipping morals that the church should approve of something which a good many moral heathen wouldn’t accept.”
● Over in Great Britain, a panel for the Church of England issued a 34,000-word report saying that in some circumstances “a homosexual relationship involving the physical expression of free love” can be justified. The report also recommended that homosexuals not be barred from priesthood.
● A panel commissioned by England’s Methodist Church issued a report saying that homosexual relationships are not wrong and that this “obviously removes the grounds for denying any person membership of the Church or holding office within it solely because of his or her sexual orientation.”
Though such reports are not always accepted as official church policy, the trend is clear: Rather than sounding a clarion call for godly righteousness, the major churches shuffle toward endorsing the trendy morals of their times. Thus it flies in the face of what the inspired apostle Paul clearly states in 1 Corinthians 6:9, 10. It does not display the spirit of Lot who was grieved by the Sodomites.—2 Pet. 2:6, 7.