The Church of England has published a new set of resources called Living in Love & Faith (LLF) looking at marriage, sexuality and transgender issues.
Andrew Goddard reports:
For the last three years I’ve joined over 40 others from across the spectrum of the Church of England, including a good number of fellow evangelicals, to produce newly-released resources on identity, sexuality, marriage, and relationships. This Living in Love & Faith project makes no formal recommendations and doesn’t change Church of England teaching or practice. What it does is set out that teaching and practice, and also the views of those who wish to change it. It does this in an important book, podcasts, films, and a course, all on the CofE website. Its aim is to help the whole church discern how best to understand God’s will and respond to our differences in these contentious areas. In doing so it also helpfully explores the deeper theological differences that often underlie these. That discernment and decision-making process will not be easy or comfortable for us as evangelicals, or indeed for anyone. It does, though, offer us a great opportunity to commend Scripture’s beautiful vision of God’s purposes across the whole church.
A Response to Living in Love & Faith from Wallace Benn (pictured):
The church should be a welcoming place for all to hear the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ without prejudice or judgement. But the Lord Jesus calls us to ‘repent and believe in the gospel’ (Mark 1:15). If we therefore change what the New Testament apostles call us to repent of, we have changed the gospel. The church of Jesus Christ welcomes all but it calls us, having received Jesus as Saviour and Lord, to live within the boundaries set by Holy Scripture. God our Creator knows the best way for us to live, and wisdom requires that we accept that, and repent of our own selfish attitudes.
The issue for the church is as old as that in the Garden of Eden – will we obey the word of God or will we decide for ourselves the way we think is best? There is a battle taking place for the soul of the church. While understanding between different viewpoints is important, liberals love to keep talking and wear down any opposition to their views. The pressure is on the church to accommodate different and opposing views as if all are equally valid. To obey the word of God is the calling of any authentic church of Jesus Christ.
Evangelicals need to play their part in this period of discussion and fight for the truth with conviction, love and clarity. But make no mistake, if we lose this battle and especially the decisions that will soon inevitably be made in General Synod as a result of these discussions, the Church of England will not be a safe or desirable place for Bible-believing Christians to shelter! We will need to distance ourselves from a church departing from ‘the faith once for all delivered to the saints’. We will need an orthodox Province to belong to, or failing that, a new effort to provide an Evangelical Church witness to the nation.
Free Church folk, pray for us that we might be faithful, and that God may have mercy on us!
A helpful challenge – but I don’t recognise those views
This article was written in response to the article "Same-sex attraction and identity: Are evangelicals on the right track?" …