chidiebere
The first Church of England priest to defy the House of Bishops and enter a gay marriage has been elected to the General Synod.
Revd Andrew Foreshew-Cain said he was “feeling daunted, elated and ready”, after the results for the Diocese of London were announced.
He was the first serving vicar to reject the Church’s rules and marry his same sex partner in 2014, after the House of Bishops ordered Anglican clergy in England not to enter gay marriages.
At the time officials said it would not be “appropriate conduct”.
In a tweet announcing his election he said there was “hope for a kinder more compassionate Church”.
Revd Foreshew-Cain is the vicar at St Mary with All Souls church in Kilburn, and St James in West Hampstead.
The General Synod is generally considered the parliament of the Church of England.
It makes major decisions within the Church, including, recently, allowing women to become bishops.
Other dioceses will announce their members of the Synod later in the year.
“Andrew Cain’s ongoing activism should no longer be tolerated. His actions are designed to undermine the Church and her teaching on marriage. His election to General Synod cannot be allowed to stand and he should be swiftly removed from church leadership.”
Meanwhile, Canon Jeremy Pemberton, another priest who entered a gay marriage, was unsuccessful in his bid to be elected in the Diocese of Lincoln.
There has been some reactions to this story
“David Cameron took things one stage further, without a mandate from the populace at large he created a legal framework for same sex marriage, and in so doing created a dichotomy between Biblical teaching and civil statute, never a good idea and especially when the Head of State and the Head of the Church of England are united in one and the same person. Very sensibly the Jews and Muslims have ignored the matter and the Church of Rome states it will never bless a same-sex marriage. Those clergy who have entered into a same-sex marriage in defiance of their Bishops now wish to force the Church of England into deviating from scripture to accept and include them in their new civil status. The all inclusive Church of England needs to draw a line somewhere and Andrew Cain, how appropriate a name, should not be allowed to sit in, nor manipulate, The General Synod”.
