A bishop announcing that he believes in the virgin birth and the physical resurrection of Christ would stretch my credulity; a lesbian priest married to another woman would merely be par for the course.
From here:
Football star’s mom, a lesbian priest, no big deal in Anglicanism.
Sports reporters preparing for the Grey Cup game on Sunday could hardly believe it this week when Calgary Stampeders star Jon Cornish revealed his mother, a veteran Anglican priest, has a “wife.”
But stories like that of Rev. Margaret Cornish, who has been vicar of St. Alban’s Church in Richmond for almost seven years, are becoming commonplace in liberal Christian churches in Canada and the United States.
There are hundreds of women in the ministry in the Anglican Church and United Church of Canada who have either always been in lesbian relationships or have moved into them in their middle years.
As of this writing, St. Alban’s website is down, but the cached version of its welcome page contains the words “inclusive” and “diversity” – enough to confirm a lingering suspicion that the fictitious bishop of the first paragraph would not feel at home there.
I’ll just confirm, this news story is correct. But two things, I wouldn’t describe Margaret Cornish as “a veteran Anglican priest”. She graduated from theology school, then went to the Vancouver Cathedral as a Curate for two, maybe three years, then went to St. Alban’s Richmond. So, she has earned her income off the Anglican Church for about 10 years. And secondily, she “married” only a year or so ago. Douglas Todd, the newspaper writer with the Vancouver Sun, is himself a member of the United Church. So, he lets his bias influence his writing.While he tries to be objective, he is obviously liberal, and he supports gay rights, etc. But, he uses “liberal” “conservative” in his writings, and shows no understanding that in the Church, we might have other issues, and we might have nuanced understandings, like accepting a person, but rejecting their behaviours, etc. His statement “stories like this…are becoming commonplace in liberal Christian Churches”…may mean he has heard quite a few such stories going on in the United Church of Canada, as well as a few in other Churches.