Where there was a blessing of homosexual couples, there was a division.

Anglicans. In the Anglican Church, they began to bless same sex couples only a day before the release of the Vatican document Fiducia supplicans , which Pope Francis allowed to bless irregular and homosexual couples. That is, December 17, 2023.

It is interesting that the General Synod of the Church of England used a similar argumentation as the Disaster for the Doctrine of the Faith in justifying this decision: marriage is only a union between a man and a woman, but the good that is found in the couple can be enhanced with a blessing.

Even the restrained attitude of the spiritual head of the Anglicans, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who declared that he would not personally bless homosexual couples, did not prevent the bishops from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific, associated in the conservative network GAFCON (Global Anglican Future Conference), from declaring breaking away from the Church of England.

“What we have proposed as a way forward is not nearly enough for many, while for others it is already too much,” responded the Bishop of London Sarah Mullally for the AP.

Professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University Ryan Burge, who is also a pastor of the American Baptist Church, added that African bishops across Christian churches have powerful ammunition in their hands: “They are telling the West: We are the ones who grow.” You may have money, but we have numbers.”

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.

Methodists. Even more dramatic is the situation in the United Methodist Church, which with six million members is the third largest church in the USA (after the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention).

I mean, she was until recently. During the past five years, a quarter of the congregations left it (approximately 7,700 out of 30,500). The church has another seven million believers outside the USA, mainly in Africa, but many of them have already left and others are leaving. This also applies to the Evangelical Methodist Church in Slovakia, which left the United Methodist Church in 2022 and subsequently transferred to the newly founded conservative Global Methodist Church. We wrote more about it in this place .

A similar decision was made by many other Methodist churches, provinces, or congregations that no longer felt at home in the United Methodist Church.

The reason for this is that although the general conference of the church in 2019 rejected the liberalization of the Bible’s teaching on sexuality by a majority of 53 percent, many, especially American progressive churches, ignore this decision. An example is the consecration of the first lesbian bishop, although current norms do not allow it.

And what else. A similar division in the USA also occurred in the Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Evangelical Lutheran churches. On the contrary, the Southern Baptist Convention or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) still adhere to traditional doctrine.

Of the three largest Christian denominations – Catholics, Orthodox, and Anglicans – currently, access to homosexual couples does not cause internal tension only among the Orthodox. On the contrary, when at the end of last year the Greek government announced its intention to promote same-sex marriages (registered partnerships have been valid there since 2015), the local Orthodox Church responded with a clear “no” .