In July 2018, six months after the Commonwealth Parliament redefined marriage as a relationship between 'two people' rather than 'a man and a woman', the national Assembly of the Uniting Church in Australia gave its ministers and marriage celebrants the 'freedom to decide whether the minister's or celebrant's religious beliefs allow the minister or celebrant to accept requests to celebrate marriages as authorised under the Marriage Act'.
Support for marriage equality might seem an obvious consequence of the Uniting Church's commitment to human rights, social justice, and the full equality of men and women. But those very commitments made the decision difficult.
In the 21st century the issues that divide churches are less those of theology, the nature of God, than of ecclesiology, the nature of the church. Unlike the other mainstream churches in Australia the Uniting Church is neither congregational nor episcopal. Instead it organises itself in a series of inter-related councils of which the Assembly, the national body, has determining responsibility for matters of doctrine, worship, government and discipline.
All councils seek to include men and women, ordained and lay people, members of the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress (UAICC), members from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds, and young people, as equal participants, each with a voice and a vote.
When questions of the membership, ministry, and marriage of people in same-gender relationships have been raised, LGBTIQ people have been part of the discussion. The church has never been able to pretend that it can discuss issues of sexuality in the absence of the people most immediately affected.
While the membership of LGBTIQ people in church councils prompted issues of sexuality to be raised, the membership of UAICC and CALD people complicated the discussion. At its 1997 meeting the Assembly was asked to affirm the full membership of gay and lesbian people in the church, and to authorise the blessing of same-gender relationships and the ordination of gay and lesbian people. For a few exciting, or terrifying, days it seemed that the Assembly would accept those proposals. Then the UAICC spoke.
The leadership of the UAICC told the Assembly that the very discussion of homosexuality was contributing to the continuing destruction of Indigenous culture. Rev. Djinyini Gondarra, the UAICC Chairperson, told the Assembly: 'It is another hurt to our spirituality. It is another invasion of our life as original people of this land'. The UAICC called on the Assembly to stop talking about homosexuality, and said that if the Assembly accepted the proposals on homosexuality the UAICC would reconsider its place in the Church.
"It is probably no coincidence that most of the CALD members of the Assembly who spoke in favour of the proposal were women."
This intervention of the UAICC was decisive. The discussion of sexuality stopped; the proposals were not voted on; and over the subsequent 21 years the church's folk wisdom has been that in matters of sexuality it is divided between its LGBTIQ members, and its UAICC and CALD members.
At the recent Assembly that story was challenged. The UAICC acknowledged that its members were not all of one mind on the question of same-gender marriage. It said that any member of the UAICC who spoke on the issue would be speaking as an individual.
CALD members of the Assembly spoke both for and against the proposal, showing that attitudes to issues of sexuality among culturally and linguistically diverse members are as diverse as attitudes among the church's culturally-dominant Anglo-Celts.
It is probably no coincidence that most of the CALD members of the Assembly who spoke in favour of the proposal were women. Usually the UAICC and CALD communities have spoken to the Assembly through male leaders. When CALD and UAICC women spoke they challenged the Church's dominant narratives and embraced LGBTIQ members.
The final vote was held by secret ballot. According to the president the results 'clearly exceeded' the necessary two-thirds majority. The Church now holds two different understandings of marriage: that it is between a man and a woman; and that it is between two people. Ministers and celebrants, and the church councils that determine what happens in church buildings, may act on either of those definitions.
Just as important for the life of the church, the narrative that the sexuality debate pits LGBTIQ members of the church against UAICC and CALD members has been revealed for the 'fake news' that it has always been.
Avril Hannah-Jones' PhD was on 'The Sexuality Debate in the Uniting Church, 1977-2000'. This article is her personal opinion and does not reflect the view of the Uniting Church.