A former minister of the Church in Wales has urged marriage supporters to be “absolutely resolute” in the face of LGBT activists’ attempts to push the country into “a state of total gender confusion and sexual confusion”.
In an interview with Dr Tony Rucinski of Coalition for Marriage, Bishop Stuart Bell said the Church in Wales’ 2021 decision to bless same-sex partnerships was hugely significant.
After serving as a Minister in the denomination for 51 years, he was ordained as an Assistant Bishop in The Anglican Convocation in Europe in March. The convocation says it “exists to provide a home for all historic orthodox biblical confessional Anglicans”.
‘Unchanging’
Bishop Bell told Dr Rucinski that “substantial” numbers have left the Church in Wales, following its decision to turn its “back on the Bible and go with contemporary culture”.
He rebuffed claims the Church’s move was compassionate, saying: “Justice and compassion are not rootless, they are rooted within truth and they are rooted within Christ and they are rooted within an authority that is completely unchanging.”
The Bishop warned that “we are being seriously misled by people whose hearts are set on anarchy and nihilism” and that “voice is growing stronger by the day and it’s being promoted at government level and it’s being promoted by the media”.
In response, he urged Christians and those who share biblical sexual ethics to be “absolutely resolute” in taking “the stand that we do”.
Same-sex weddings
In the US, more than 6,000 churches are expected to leave the United Methodist Church (UMC) over its drift from biblical sexual ethics.
In 2019, the UMC gave congregations a four-year window to depart as pressure grew to allow homosexual clergy and same-sex weddings.
Although church law still officially forbids the weddings or ordinations of “self-avowed, practicing homosexuals”, the denomination appointed its first bishop in a same-sex marriage in 2016 and more recently appointed Bishop Cedrick Bridgeforth, who is also in a same-sex marriage.
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