ANGLICAN CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA CHRIST CHURCH SOUTH YARRA Worship, Ministry, Mission Committee Secretary The Revd Dr Richard Treloar Select Committee on the Exposure Draft of the Vicar, Christ Church South Yarra Marriage Amendment (Same Sex Marriage) Bill President, Christ Church Grammar School Department of the Senate Honorary Research Associate, PO Box 6100 The University of Divinity Canberra ACT 2600 12 January 2017 Dear Sir/Madam, I am an Anglican Priest of 27 years in Holy Orders, currently serving in the Diocese of Melbourne with the License of His Grace the Archbishop and Primate, The Most Revd Dr Philip Freier. I am the Vicar of a busy inner-city Parish, which has an independent Anglican co-educational Primary School at the heart of its ministry and mission. I Chair the Board of Christ Church Grammar School, and have recently served on the Boards of Melbourne Grammar School and The Brotherhood of St Laurence. I am an appointed member of the Liturgy Commission of the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia, and (before being called to Christ Church ten years ago) was for nine years Stewart Lecturer in Theology at Trinity College Theological School, which is now a College of the University of Divinity, of which I am an Honorary Research Associate. Among over 40 academic publications and conference papers, I have contributed chapters in three edited volumes addressing the Scriptures and human sexuality, and an article in an international peer reviewed journal on the subject, as well as presenting a paper at the Society of Biblical Literature in Philadelphia, USA, on the same topic (see select reference list at the end of this submission). As the Vicar of a Parish which has many GLBTIQ people who worship regularly among the 700 people who attend services (on average) each week, the issue of ‘marriage equality’ has great pastoral, professional, and personal relevance. I was surprised to receive a standing ovation at the end of a sermon I preached on the subject last August – not a gesture to which Anglicans are typically given! Over the years I have worked with countless gay and lesbian clergy and lay people, who have suffered on account of the Church’s active discrimination (exempt, of course, from any legal recourse), and from the more ‘passive’ cultural inequality that persists with respect to full recognition of their relationship status. Of the 25 marriages we perform annually at Christ Church (one every fortnight on average), well over 50% involve at least one divorced person – something that would have been impossible and unthinkable within living memory. ANGLICAN CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA CHRIST CHURCH SOUTH YARRA Worship, Ministry, Mission As an Authorised Marriage Celebrant, auspiced by my ordaining Church, I am not required to ‘remarry’ divorced persons; it is a matter of conscience. Were the law of the land to change such that ‘same sex marriage’ became permissible, I would not be eligible to officiate at such marriages as a Registered Minister of Religion unless my ordaining Church empowered me to do so and provided a liturgy for that purpose, reflecting changes to the Marriage Act. Even were that to happen – as with persons who have been divorced – I would free to marry, or not to marry, same sex couples. It would be a matter of individual conscience. That said, I would expect the number of weddings at Christ Church in the year following any such legislative and ecclesial amendments to double, and I would rejoice in the privilege of solemnising the marriages of dozens of same-sex couples whose relationships we have celebrated in other ways over the last decade. There would be no coercion for me to officiate at, or for parishioners to attend, such ceremonies. Any suggestion to that effect demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the Anglican ethos, and of religious freedoms in Australia more generally. In this regard I must aver to the misleading campaigning of bodies such as the ‘Australian Christian Lobby’, which – of course – represents a very small fraction of Australian Christians (the vast majority of whom are Roman Catholic, Anglican, or Orthodox), who preach a doctrine of fear as to what might happen were the law to provide for ‘gay marriage’. The simple and obvious reality is that Churches, and individual ministers within those Churches, will be free to respond according to their formularies and doctrines, and consciences, respectively. At our Parish School, comprising over 400 children and their families, we have – naturally – several same- sex sets of parents, and gay or lesbian staff members. My four-year-old son’s best friend – in an explicitly Anglican School – has two dads. This is normal for him, as for them. Our faith-community would rejoice in the capacity to acknowledge these relationships for what they are. I recommend that a law which recognises marriage irrespective of gender retain and not exceed the powers of existing legislation with respect to the freedom of Registered Ministers of Religion to act in accordance with the authority of their ordaining and licensing bodies, which includes the dictates of the individual conscience of the minister concerned. Sincerely and with best wishes, ANGLICAN CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA CHRIST CHURCH SOUTH YARRA Worship, Ministry, Mission Relevant Publications and Conference Papers “‘Come Out and Stay Out’: Homosexuality, Hermeneutics, and Schism in Anglicanism.” Society of Biblical Literature Annual Congress, Marriott Hotel Philadelphia, USA (19 November 2005). ‘“How Do You Read?”: The Anglican Church of Australia As A Hermeneutical Community.’ Pages 47-79 in ‘Wonderful and Confessedly Strange: Australian Essays in Anglican Ecclesiology. Edited by Bruce Kaye. Adelaide: ATF Press, 2006. “‘Come Out and Stay Out!’: Hermeneutics, Homosexuality, and Schism in Anglicanism.” The Anglican Theological Review 90.1 (Winter 2008): 47-63. ‘On “not putting new wine into old wineskins”, or “taking the Bible fully seriously”: An Anglican Reading of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13.’ Pages 13-30 in Five Uneasy Pieces: Essays on Scripture and Sexuality. Adelaide: ATF Press, 2011. ‘Esther’s “Coming Out” as Costly Redemption: Living Through and Beyond the Violence of “Othering”.’ Pages 53-69 in Pieces of Ease and Grace. Edited by Alan H Cadwallader. Adelaide: ATF Press (Theology), 2013. .