Talkback: The future of the Uniting Church in Australia

A cross-post from http://www.abc.net.au/sundaynights/stories/s1686322.htm

Talkback: The future of the Uniting Church in Australia
16/07/2006

Is one of Australia’s largest denominations about to crumble? Last week’s decision of the Assembly of the Uniting Church to allow local bodies to decide on the issue of Homosexual ministry, has brought the Uniting Church to the edge of dissolution. But is it just about bed-room morality, or part of a wider debate, not about religion but politics, the rejection of seventies liberalism and all that has followed.

Tonight, around Australia, thousands of worshipping members of the Uniting Church will have spent at least some part of the day contemplating the fact that their church, created less than thirty years ago in an amalgamation of the Methodist, Congregational and Presbyterian churches, may be on the verge of splintering.

The immediate cause is the same issue that is threatening to tear the much older Anglican church asunder, sexuality, in particular the ordination of practising homosexual clergy. It’s a many layered debate, about the nature of revealed truth, about democracy versus authority, about the nature of the church - as local congregations or the universal body of Christ.

All of which seem somewhat arcane and theological. There is another sense however in which this is a battle reflective of what’s charicatured as the culture wars. Liberals and relativists, versus religious social conservatives.

Guests in this story:
Max Champion Representative of the soon to be "Assembly of Confessing congregations"
Terence Corkin General Secretary of the Assmbly of the Uniting Church of Australia