The U.S. Presbyterian Church yesterday, Tuesday 17th March amended her church constitution to include same sex marriage. This decision was reached after majority of the local leadership bodies of the church voted in its favour. The marriage institution was re-defined to be “between two people, traditionally a man and a woman.”
“Finally, the church in its constitutional documents fully recognizes that the love of gays and lesbian couples is worth celebrating in the faith community,” said the Rev. Brian D. Ellison, executive director of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, which advocates gay inclusion in the church. “There is still disagreement, and I don’t mean to minimize that, but I think we are learning that we can disagree and still be church together.”
The Presbyterian Church is the most recent of mainline denominations making room for same sex marriage in their midst. others are the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the Quakers, the Unitarian Universalist Association of Churches and, in Judaism, the Reform and Conservative movements.
While the church may suffer the loss of conservatives, one of its clergy, Rev William Blake Spencer thinks it’s liberation day.
“Some of us are calling it liberation day,” said the Rev. William Blake Spencer, pastor of Ocean Heights Presbyterian Church in Egg Harbor Township, N.J., who is gay and voted with his presbytery on Tuesday. “It will be the last L.G.B.T.Q. issue that we debate and fight about, and finally our welcome comes without a ‘but’ or an ‘if.’”
Photo-Credit: https://dailytimes.com.ng