Uniting dissidents to split (4/9/2003)
Conservative members of the Australian Uniting Church will meet in Sydney this month to discuss forming a new denomination.
The move was made following last week’s refusal by the Uniting Church Assembly Standing Committee (ASC) to reverse the decision permitting local presbyteries to approve openly gay or lesbian clergy. The ASC did, however, apologise to members that the recent decision had caused suffering, hurt, pain [and] confusion.
The apology was in response  to a petition presented by the conservative Evangelical Members of the Uniting Church (EMU), whose members will meet in Sydney later this month. The meeting is likely to be the first step towards a new network of churches, according to the Age.
The church did not have a sexual ethic written down because its ethic was perfectly clear, and had been for centuries, Mary Hawkes, EMU national spokesperson wrote on the the EMU website. They no more felt the need to write that homosexual acts by its leaders were not acceptable, than to write that greed and murder were not acceptable.
