The new year could be climactic for two aspects of LGBTQ issues, first, the rights of religious and conservative dissenters within liberalized western culture, and second, the ongoing conflicts within church groups.
What should journalists be prepared to cover?
By June, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide the 303 Creative case, in which a website designer — based on First Amendment claims — seeks exemption from Colorado’s anti-discrimination law to avoid work on postings that celebrate same-sex weddings (background here). The Court might broadly define what rights various forms of religious traditionalists have in a host of legal conflicts facing e.g. U.S. religious colleges, social-service agencies and individual businesses now that same-sex marriage is legalized.
Inside a specific religion brand, this could be a pivotal year for the global Anglican Communion with its 46 national branches and some 85 million baptized members. A mid-January meeting of bishops in the “mother” Church of England may well decide dioceses can permit same-sex weddings. That historic change would then need approval from clergy and lay delegates at the February 6–9 General Synod.
Such a move would add explosive potential to the April 17-21 meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (“GAFCON”), long vexed by liberal moves in England, the United States and elsewhere in declining First World churches. GAFCON unites the heads of 10 Anglican branches, three of which alone (Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda) encompass half the world’s Anglicans. GAFCON’s chairman, Archbishop Foley Beach (admin@anglicanchurch.net and 724-266-9400), heads a church of conservatives who’ve left the U.S. Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada.
Already, key archbishops have boycotted global Anglican confabs, continuing a slow-motion breakup that began decades ago. Will the maneuvers in England and elsewhere provoke a huge, definitive break from the London-based Anglican Communion by churches in GAFCON and the related Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches?
The United Methodist Church could be on the brink of the biggest U.S. Protestant split since the Civil War. That’s a huge story at the local, regional, national and global levels.
