01:00 Picture Starts
01:00 hymns singing
01:12 GRAHAM DAVIS: He's the turbulent priest of the Anglican Church, reviled by his enemies, revered by his supporters, an evangelical Christian, determined to defend the integrity of the Bible against those who want to reinterpret its moral strictures.
01:28 ARCHBISHOP PETER JENSEN, ANGLICAN DIOCESE OF SYDNEY: There's awful things in the world, aren't there, there's terrible things.
01:32 GRAHAM DAVIS: The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, is on a mission to roll back what he sees as a tide of permissiveness sweeping Australia.
01:41 PETER JENSEN: Because we human beings have rebelled against God. We've become alienated from God. We're no longer living as God wants us to.
01:51 GRAHAM DAVIS: Right now, Peter Jensen is at centre stage in a passion play without equal in the life of the modern church. The escalating row over whether the Anglican Church and other denominations should allow homosexuals to gain positions of leadership.
02:08 PETER JENSEN: The communion has fractured.
GRAHAM DAVIS: It has fractured?
PETER JENSEN: Yes, it has. Both in the United States and around the world. A crack has emerged and that crack will continue unless something radical is done about it.
02:25 GRAHAM DAVIS: As we'll see, Jensen's own church, the biggest Protestant denomination in Australia, is deeply split over the gay issue. So much so, that at the recent synod of the Sydney diocese, the archbishop was openly canvassing secession.
02:42 PETER JENSEN: We must recognise the possibility that the Anglican communion will actually divide. It is conceivable, I have to say, that two world Anglicanisms may develop. Perhaps with two mutually exclusive centres.
02:56 GRAHAM DAVIS: Those comments brought a rebuke from the Australian Church's titular head, the primate Archbishop Peter Carnley of Perth, who said talk of schism and fracture was unhelpful and misleading.
03:09 ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY, ANGLICAN PRIMITE OF AUSTRALIA: In America, there is a possibility of a group going its own way. I think that certainly is a possibility. But I don't think there's going to be that kind of division within the Anglican communion as such.
GRAHAM DAVIS: What about in Australia?
PETER CARNLEY: Oh no, I don't think we'll fall apart because of this.
03:26 PETER JENSEN (PREACHING): On the other hand, the Archbishop of Canterbury referred to his own deep foreboding about the future of the communion and he spoke of a huge crisis, quote, over homosexuality.
03:40 GRAHAM DAVIS: Today, a unique insight into the chasm of perception that already exists between Australia's two main Anglican leaders on matters both spiritual and temporal.
03:51 GRAHAM DAVIS: Were it to happen in Australia, were the Jensenites to go it alone, what sort of impact would that have on the Anglican communion here?
04:01 PETER CARNLEY: It would be disastrous. But I don't think it's very likely. I don't think the diocese of Sydney, for example, would walk away from its property and try and go it alone.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Does it mean the loss of property if they do do that?
PETER CARNLEY: I think it probably does.
04:13 GRAHAM DAVIS: Have you had legal opinion on that?
PETER CARNLEY: I haven't, but I'm sure people will have looked at the legalities.
04:21 VO -GRAHAM DAVIS: They have.
04:23 PETER JENSEN: We have our own finances which we control and the national church does not.
GRAHAM DAVIS: And you can tell them to butt out of your financial affairs?
04:30 PETER JENSEN: As they can tell us in every diocese. Yes, that's the way the Australian church runs and we already have a lot of independence and I imagine that we could become more independent by refusing to cooperate. I hope that never happens.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Right, you're leaving open the possibility though?
04:46 PETER JENSEN: Well, if it were to happen, and there's no sign of it yet, that we had the same thing as in the United States of America, then the situation would change.
05:01 GRAHAM DAVIS: The legal pencils are being sharpened and not just in the Anglican communion. For if anything, emotions on the gay issue are running even higher in the second biggest Protestant denomination the Uniting Church, formed 26 years ago through the amalgamation of Methodists, Congregationalists and some Presbyterians.
05:23 WOMAN: I do not want to be part of a church that colludes with any policy of exclusion.
05:29 GRAHAM DAVIS: Those emotions spilt over very publicly at the Uniting Church general assembly in Melbourne in July and they haven't subsided. So much so that some of its most senior clerics are now openly declaring that the Uniting Church is in fact the unravelling church.
05:47 REV DR GORDON MOYES, WESLEY MISSION: What happened was 27 years ago three denominations joined together. After about 15 years it was obvious it wasn't working. Over the last 10 years, it's became more obvious that it isn't working. What is happening here is a widening gulf, but it's not a gulf on homosexuality. It's a gulf between what you might call the liberals and the conservatives within the church.
06:13 GRAHAM DAVIS: And like a broken marriage, says Moyes, all that remains is to divvy up the assets.
06:18 DR GORDON MOYES: I think the split has actually occurred. What I'm trying to do is bring back and reconcile some of the partners in that split. The split has occurred. The property matters have not yet been worked out.
06:34 GRAHAM DAVIS: As we'll see, the Uniting Church hierarchy is engaged in a desperate attempt to save the marriage. But today, the ecclesiastical gloves come off and all because of one thing. Having stormed the other social, legal and political obstacles in the way of full acceptance, homosexuals are now storming the lofty ramparts of the Christian church. It's become a global crusade with the world's most famous gay cleric, the American bishop Gene Robinson, leading the charge.
07:11 GRAHAM DAVIS: Wouldn't it have been better for everybody, including maybe yourself, if you'd stayed in the closet?
07:16 BISHOP GENE ROBINSON, NEW HAMPSHIRE USA: Absolutely not. Which part of no don't you understand? Absolutely not.
07:24 GRAHAM DAVIS: Because as things stand, sir, you seem destined to enter history as the man who brought down a global church?
07:31 GENE ROBINSON: I'm sorry, I'm not going to take that responsibility and let me just mention to you, if you think that if I stood down there wouldn't be another gay or lesbian person nominated and elected to this office, you're just deluded. There are so many competent, faithful, Anglicans in this country who are gay and lesbian, who are many – many of whom are partnered who are going to be nominated and elected. This is – God is doing a new thing here and I believe time will show that it is a godly thing that it's happening. I know it causes a lot of pain. No-one likes change, but I do believe God is at work here.
08:16 GRAHAM DAVIS: They're sentiments echoed by Australia's most famous gay cleric, the Uniting Church's Dorothy McRae McMahon.
08:23 REV DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON, UNITING CHURCH MINISTER: This is not primarily about sex. It's about relationship, it's about love and it's also about owning and claiming that I am part of God's good creation and the sort of God that I worship and serve is not a god who would mock me, create me like this and then say, "But you may not have a loving and holistic loving experience in your life and relationship in your life."
GRAHAM DAVIS: Because that would be perverse.
08:53 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: It would, it would be cruel, truly, truly cruel and I don't believe God does that. I believe we are part of God's amazing variety.
09:01 GENE ROBINSON CONSECRATION: My brothers and sisters in Christ, greet your new bishop.
09:10 GRAHAM DAVIS: For the Anglicans, it was the recent consecration of Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire that brought matters to a head. He was once married and fathered two children. But now his partner is another man.
09:25 GENE ROBINSON: After my wife and I were separated and divorced, my wife met another man and married him and had two more children and then about two months after her marriage, I met Mark Andrew, who about a year-and-a-half later became my partner, left his career in Washington DC with the Peace Corps and moved here to New Hampshire to be with me and my two young children and we've been together for the last 14.5 years here in New Hampshire.
09:52 GRAHAM DAVIS: Now I don't want the pry but I do have to ask this question – presumably you have sex with this man.
09:57 GENE ROBINSON: You may ask me any question you want and I may refuse to answer any question and that's really none of anyone else's business, thanks.
10:06 GRAHAM DAVIS: Right, but you are an active homosexual, true?
10:08 GENE ROBINSON: I've never ever claimed to be celibate.
10:10 GRAHAM DAVIS: How did you feel when you saw the consecration ceremony for Gene Robinson?
10:16 PETER JENSEN: Well, profound sadness really. It was a very bad moment for our church. What he's doing is contradictory to God's word and is contradictory in a very significant way because ...
GRAHAM DAVIS: Sinful?
10:29 PETER JENSEN: Oh, sinful, because as a bishop, he is a representative figure and if you contradict God's word than that's to fall into sin, yes.
10:38 GRAHAM DAVIS: But the Archbishop of Sydney is now going beyond mere criticism of Bishop Robinson's lifestyle and the American church. Determined, he says, to prevent the same thing ever happening in Australia.
10:51 PETER JENSEN: The question is that he first of all was married, has two children, has been divorced from his wife and then has moved in with a man. I compare this with what the Bible teaches and I see it as inconsistent with what the Bible teaches, particularly for a Christian leaders.
11:11 GRAHAM DAVIS: Yet in a clear sign of the showdown to come, Australia's Anglican primate, Archbishop Carnley says that while he's opposed to gay ordinations now, he's not ruling them out some time in the future.
11:24 PETER CARNLEY: It is certainly thinkable because in the past, the church has had very strict moral positions which has changed on slavery, loaning of money for interest, all sorts of things. So it is thinkable that the church at some time in the future could change its mind.
11:39 PETER JENSEN: I disagree entirely. I think the thing itself is wrong in itself and no amount of time will ever change that and we must never concede this point.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Have you told him this personally?
PETER JENSEN: He knows my position.
11:54 GRAHAM DAVIS: But to press home the point, the Archbishop of Sydney is making a remarkable threat – to pull his diocese out of the present Anglican communion if gay ordinations occur and go it alone with other evangelical congregations around Australia.
12:11 PETER JENSEN: If the worst came to the worst, what would likely to be happen is that a network of evangelical churches, I wouldn't call them Anglican, would emerge right around Australia and the church in Sydney would be interested in fostering and helping such churches.
12:34 GRAHAM DAVIS: What's so extraordinary is the scope of Jensen's vision. His Sydney diocese, at the centre of an evangelical network, encompassing not just existing Anglican congregations but other breakaway churches too.
12:49 PETER JENSEN: Sydney is already a leadership diocese and always has been because of our strong stand on the Bible and leadership, not just amongst Anglicans, but amongst many, many Christians in Australia of all brands. I think if we were to see a very significant lapse on behalf of any of the denominations, then people would be looking to Sydney for leadership in supporting and strengthening independent evangelical churches right around Australia.
13:24 GRAHAM DAVIS: But that's not all. For Peter Jensen is now challenging the current structure of the Anglican communion not just in Australia, but worldwide. Unlike the Roman Catholic pope, the global head of that communion the Archbishop of Canterbury, doesn't have absolute power, merely moral authority. Yet according to Peter Jensen, the current Archbishop, Rowan Williams, has jeopardised that authority by not taking a harder line on same sex ordinations.
13:55 PETER JENSEN: He is against it because he doesn't like the disunity that has been caused. I'm hoping he would speak against it because it's wrong in itself.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Morally wrong?
PETER JENSEN: Yes.
14:03 GRAHAM DAVIS: Has he forfeited, in your mind, his moral authority by not taking enough authority against what you see as immoral behaviour in this instance?
PETER JENSEN: He's in danger of doing so.
14:15 GRAHAM DAVIS: Then a statement that will rock the church worldwide. The Archbishop of Sydney signalling a shift in the acknowledgment of moral authority from the first world to the third from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the head of Africa's biggest church, Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria.
14:34 PETER JENSEN: I think that that development of the two Anglicanisms is distinctly possible, though I wouldn't say it was inevitable, first point.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But it is possible?
PETER JENSEN: It is possible.
14:44 GRAHAM DAVIS: Where would you be in that realignment?
PETER JENSEN: Second point, it would depend upon what Canterbury does, but it is conceivable that Sydney would look more to Nigeria or some other place, for the chairmanship of the board. It may be that we will find more of our fellowship with the global south churches than we do with the old western churches.
15:08 GRAHAM DAVIS: Archbishop, this is pretty radical. You're saying that the moral authority currently enjoyed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, would transfer to the Archbishop of Nigeria?
PETER JENSEN: As a possibility. Now I hope that that doesn't happen and I don't think it has happened yet, but it's conceivable.
15:31 GRAHAM DAVIS: In stark contrast with many of their colleagues in the first world, Nigeria's Akinola and other Anglican leaders in Africa, Latin America and Asia, have overwhelmingly condemned the consecration of Archbishop Robinson. Many have declared themselves out of communion with the American Episcopalians, as Anglicans in the US are known. The ecclesiastical version of breaking off diplomatic relations. But why Nigeria as the new centre for Anglicanism? Well, for a start it has more church members than the rest of the world put together. Nearly 20 million. And more importantly, a conservative prelate far more acceptable to evangelicals than his liberal western counterparts.
16:18 PETER JENSEN: My friends in the Episcopal Church in the US tell me that the leadership of the church at the moment came into their own in the '60s and '70s in the height of the civil rights movement. They've always been looking for another victory in a civil rights war and they're confusing the Christian faith with their victories in achieving liberation for gays.
16:42 GRAHAM DAVIS: This is '60s permissiveness manifesting itself in the leadership of the Anglican Church.
16:47 PETER JENSEN: It's a combination between '60s permissiveness and also the belief that somehow the church was really all about civil rights for people who are disadvantaged.
17:00 GRAHAM DAVIS: Half a world away from New Hampshire, Australia's own version of Gene Robinson is beavering away on her memoirs – the remarkable story of how, as a practising lesbian, the Reverend Dorothy McRae McMahon, inhabited the upper reaches of the Uniting Church.
17:18 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: I was married for 32 years actually and I have four wonderful children and I'm glad I did. I also am in great friendship with my ex-husband. I didn't know at all clearly until at least 25 years into my marriage but I had anxieties about relating to a man, going right back to my teenage years and I just thought I was – I had problems. I mean, I'm nearly 70, that's the generation that didn't talk about these things very much.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But then you fell in love, didn't you?
17:51 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: I did, I did, and with a woman who in fact had the courage to say to me: "You must really decide who you are. You may not mess up people's lives, either your husband's life, or mine or anybody else's by simply just trying to sort of do strange and neat things to make everyone feel good."
18:13 GRAHAM DAVIS: When Dorothy McRae McMahon came out, along with a number of other clergy, at the Uniting Church's national assembly in 1997, it was the spark that lit a firestorm in the church that continues to this day. For this Sydney grandmother, it may have been personally liberating, but the response from some church-goers has been less than Christian.
18:36 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: Certainly after each bit of publicity I fear to open my mail in terms of what might be in there and how I will feel when I read it.
GRAHAM DAVIS: What, hate mail?
18:45 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: Yes, yes, that's right. They do use biblical words like 'abomination', which are biblical words sadly, but they also use things like 'slut' and 'dirty' and all sorts of things, which I think have more to do with their own anxieties about sex in general.
GRAHAM DAVIS: So these are church people calling you a slut?
19:03 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: Yes, yes, they are, but not many. No, look, let me make it quite clear, the vast majority of letters and communications I have, have been wonderful and supportive.
19:18 GRAHAM DAVIS: Ever since the Uniting Church has been grappling with the gay issue, and at this year's assembly a massive schism emerged between its largely liberal hierarchy and largely conservative grass roots.
19:32 WOMAN: This issue is not an issue for the church or for individual presbyteries, it's an issue for Australia, the moral future of our country.
19:39 GRAHAM DAVIS: The hierarchy keep saying nothing has changed. Individual presbyteries are still free to avoid choosing an openly gay minister. But what many church members want is an end to gay ordinations altogether, along with clear declarations that for Christians, an actively gay lifestyle just isn't on.
20:01 DR GORDON MOYES: People have voted with their feet and have moved into Pentecostal churches, Baptist churches, local community evangelical churches, a lot of people already have left. The Uniting Church, which once was five times larger than the Baptist, is today smaller than the Baptist, that's a sign of its decline.
20:20 GRAHAM DAVIS: But now the Uniting Church faces a fresh challenge. As the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney breaks with convention to intervene in dramatic fashion in the affairs of another denomination.
20:33 PETER JENSEN: I think that the Uniting Church has somehow or other got itself into a terrific pickle and my hope would be, my hope and prayer is that they'll be able to reverse the decision of the assembly and to come back into line with its previous position, as I understand it, but more important with the Bible. The Bible lays down very clear rules about the nature of Christian ministry and the sort of people who ought to be in Christian leadership positions and if I understand the situation correctly in the Uniting Church, there's been a departure from those rules.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Right, they've gone against the will of God?
21:13 PETER JENSEN: Yes.
21:15 GRAHAM DAVIS: In ecclesiastical circles, this is extraordinary stuff. But today, Archbishop Jensen raises the stakes even further, not only flaying the Uniting Church for its permissiveness, but offering refuge to whole congregations who want to defect.
21:32 GRAHAM DAVIS: Are you prepared now to say, with all the wealth of the Anglican diocese of Sydney, that you will give them halls to meet in? Churches to worship in?
21:42 PETER JENSEN: We will certainly do our best to help them in that sort of way. Yes, because we believe in the Bible, and we believe in God, the authority of God's word, we will support those who are suffering for the same belief.
21:58 MAN: Friends welcome to this special Synod meeting …
22:02 GRAHAM DAVIS: The continuing crisis over gay ordinations prompted this extraordinary meeting of the Queensland synod of the Uniting Church.
22:11 MAN: Uniting Church in Australia believes that all people are made in the image of God.
22:16 GRAHAM DAVIS: The mood was one of rebellion against the national assembly, delegates overwhelmingly affirmed that a practising homosexual lifestyle is incompatible with Christian principles and that homosexual practice is one sign of many of a disordered creation.
22:33 WOMAN: We are recommending that apart from this current session, that we have no electronic media in the house.
22:42 GRAHAM DAVIS: It's a sign of the acute sensitivity of the issue that our cameras were barred from the discussion and that the Queensland moderator, the Reverend Allan Kuchler, couldn't or wouldn't tell us what it all meant.
22:55 GRAHAM DAVIS: [Question in conference] What is a "disordered creation"?
22:57 REV ALLAN KUCHLER, QUEENSLAND MODERATOR, UNITING CHURCH: That's an interesting question but it's a theological question that needs further to be debated within the councils of our church and understood within the context of who we are as the church, and so I believe I cannot respond any further than that on that matter.
23:12 GRAHAM DAVIS: So you have, in a resolution, the term "disordered creation", but you can't explain what you mean?
23:17 ALLAN KUCHLER: I'm saying that is a theological statement which was not debated on the floor of our synod.
23:23 GRAHAM DAVIS: So in the absence of any explanation, we went to the lesbian cleric who started it all.
23:29 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: It would be the synod who said it not the mediator and he's got the responsibility of then explaining what the synod did and I feel for him in that because you can't always explain what your colleagues and peers voted for.
GRAHAM DAVIS: I'm blowed if I know what it means.
23:43 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: Well, I think probably they do mean that it is a sign of sin. I think that is what they're saying.
23:51 GRAHAM DAVIS: Sinners in Queensland, saintly enough to be clergy down south. Such is the contorted position of the Uniting Church.
24:00 GRAHAM DAVIS: How can you be a sinner if you're a homosexual in Queensland and if you're living in NSW or Victoria, be like you, an ordained member of the church?
24:11 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: Well, this is one of the glorious things about the Uniting Church, and I say that most genuinely.
24:18 GRAHAM DAVIS: Glorious? How can it be glorious? I mean it's homosexuality by postcode, isn't it?
DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: [Laughs]
24:24 GRAHAM DAVIS: Seriously, where does it leave homosexuals in Queensland? Do they have to move?
24:28 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: Well, it does leave them in a very bad spot and I shouldn't laugh about this. What I'm really saying is that the Uniting Church, because of the level of its democratic processes, means that it comes to different decisions in different parts of the church and it enacts those.
24:44 GRAHAM DAVIS: All of which makes the job of national president a decidedly less than glorious role. Ask the Reverend Dr Dean Drayton where he stands on gay ordination and it's clearly between a rock and a hard place.
24:58 REV DR DEAN DRAYTON, PRESIDENT UNITING CHURCH, AUSTRALIA: As the president of the Uniting Church, because we make our decisions by council, the role that one accepts in becoming president is in fact to be the voice of the assembly and I have not made and will not make my position known on this matter.
25:15 GRAHAM DAVIS: But Dr Drayton, I can go to any other church leader in Australia and get a definitive answer on their position here and from you I can't.
25:23 DEAN DRAYTON: If I did give my opinion, I would then be usurping the right of the people of the Uniting Church in the way in which we do our government, which is by councils. I'd be usurping the right and my point of view would become the issue, not what the church has decided.
25:38 GRAHAM DAVIS: Even in conservative Queensland, looking for leadership on the gay issue is a fruitless quest.
25:44 GRAHAM DAVIS: How do you feel personally when you pass a resolution like this?
25:50 WOMAN: It is not for me to respond in that way. I don't think that would be helpful.
25:26 GRAHAM DAVIS: And that lack of leadership is accompanied by clear evidence that while the church preaches democracy, behind the scenes there's a distinctly authoritarian streak. Not content with barring us from their discussions, the church leadership tried to gag synod members from speaking to us, not that it stopped some from doing so.
26:17 GRAHAM DAVIS: How comforting has been the hierarchy's statement that it's still up to individual presbyteries who they invite to be their minister?
26:26 MAN: To most people that has not been reassuring at all.
26:29 GRAHAM DAVIS: I'm told that you're one of the ministers who wants to leave the church with your congregation, is that true?
26:33 MAN: Well, our congregation hasn't made up its mind, and neither have I, but it's something we've been giving serious consideration to.
26:41 GRAHAM DAVIS: But those comments brought a strong rebuke from the Queensland moderator and even threats of discipline.
26:47 GRAHAM DAVIS: What, so that the people who talked to us are outside the protocols of church?
26:53 ALLAN KUCHLER: They have not exercised the fulfilment of the understanding that it is the moderator who speaks on behalf of the church.
27:03 DR GORDON MOYES: The Uniting Church operates very largely by threat. There are Ministers within the Uniting Church who have been called up before disciplinary committees. You will never read the results of these, by the way. They are always done in secret. But to local ministers, that's a huge threat. The Uniting Church lives under a dark cloud of fear and ministers will not speak out.
27:31 GRAHAM DAVIS: So small wonder, say the critics, that the grass roots is rebelling against a church they say has been hijacked by a pro-gay lobby. As Gordon Moyes tells it, if the old saying about the Church of England was true, that it was the Tory party at prayer, then the Uniting Church has become the democrats at prayer, permissive, woolly headed, left leaning.
27:56 DR GORDON MOYES: They have the political philosophy and the leadership abilities of the Australian Democrats.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Right, can you elaborate on that?
28:04 DR GORDON MOYES: Yes, well the Australian Democrats don't have any leaders and their policies are extreme left wing.
GRAHAM DAVIS: And these people are specially Australian Democrats of the cloth?
DR GORDON MOYES: Indeed.
28:16 GRAHAM DAVIS: Of course, for those who've benefited from the small ‘l' liberal, largesse, being dubbed a sinner by the Queenslanders is a little local difficulty at best.
28:27 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: The synod of Queensland is, I'm sorry to say, out of order at this point because it is the assembly that has the overarching responsibility for the doctrinal life of the church.
28:37 REV DR DEAN DRAYTON: (At conference) Those in favour of proposal 84 please indicate..
28:41 GRAHAM DAVIS: As we've seen, the national assembly's position is that individual presbyteries are free to invite practising homosexuals to be ministers, a stance reinforced with the passage of what's known as resolution 84 at its most recent meeting last May.
28:58 REV DR DEAN DRAYTON: (At conference) It is clearly carried..
29:00 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: On most issues we are very strongly united. We really are. We're quite united.
GRAHAM DAVIS: You're not on the homosexual issue.
29:06 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: On this issue we're not and that's a healthy thing. It's like in a family where you've just got to work things out over a period of time. I think there'll always be people on the edges, on the extreme ends of it who will not even contemplate listening or shifting. But there is a huge middle ground of people who really want to explore it.
29:30 DR GORDON MOYES: All over Australia there has been a sense of people being appalled and of churches just feeling that what they had to say was totally disregarded. There are Uniting churches in Queensland and Canberra and other places who have actually left the Uniting Church, mostly they become independent congregations. Some have affiliated with other denominations. I'm aware of one in Sydney here who have made a Uniting Church, who's made a connection with another denomination.
30:05 GRAHAM DAVIS: But now the stakes have been raised, as Uniting Church defectors are offered succour at the ample bosom of the richest arm of the Protestant church, evangelicals of Sydney's Anglican diocese taking literally that old biblical text, knock and the door shall be open to you.
30:24 GRAHAM DAVIS: So in unrealised asset term, how much is the diocese worth?
30:29 PETER JENSEN: Well, I suppose if you put all our churches together and sold them all off you might realise $2 billion or $3 billion I suppose.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Two or three billion?
PETER JENSEN: I imagine so.
30:37 GRAHAM DAVIS: From his magnificent gothic seat, Bishop's court in Sydney's Darling Point, Archbishop Peter Jensen unveils a battle plan that will raise a storm across the denominations.
30:49 PETER JENSEN: We have just brought in some legislation into our synod for other reasons which enables us to welcome congregations that are not originally Anglican into our structures.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Right, so you've already got the structure in place to enable this to happen?
31:01 PETER JENSEN: We do, yeah, so something like that could happen.
31:04 GRAHAM DAVIS: Refuge within the Sydney diocese or if that doesn't suit, financial and moral support to become independent.
31:12 PETER JENSEN: I do think that there will be Uniting Church congregations who leave the Uniting Church over this. That certainly seems possible, and if so, they will probably set themselves up in some sort of network of independent churches and in that way, we will do what we can to help them.
30:28 GRAHAM DAVIS: What do you think the Uniting Church is going to think about this, you being prepared to give refuge to their defectors en masse?
31:36 PETER JENSEN: The Uniting Church, if it's listening to this broadcast, will know that I have already said that I will be greatly grieved at this and would not be looking for it. But if it does happen, I feel sure that the Uniting Church members will recognise therefore the very grave difficulties that they've put themselves into by the assembly passing motion 84.
31:58 GRAHAM DAVIS: But for Dean Drayton, the Uniting Church president, it's the declaration of a turf war and his annoyance is palpable.
32:06 DEAN DRAYTON: He what?
32:09 GRAHAM DAVIS: He offers refuge to your congregations, Uniting Church congregations who might want to leave.
32:19 DEAN DRAYTON: Well, that is a terrible unwanted intrusion into the life of the Uniting Church.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Unacceptable?
32:25 DEAN DRAYTON: Unacceptable. My responsibility as a church leader is to say I don't believe this is on and I believe it's a high-handed act in fact of attempting to speak beyond the responsibilities for which he was consecrated, which is as a leader of the Anglican Church in the Sydney diocese.
GRAHAM DAVIS: You'll be getting in touch with him, then?
DEAN DRAYTON: Certainly.
GRAHAM DAVIS: A meeting?
DEAN DRAYTON: Yes.
32:48 PETER JENSEN: Well, I don't regard what I've just said as an intervention in their internal affairs. However, this whole business is a very significant problem for Australian Christianity and we must do what we can to support those who want to be biblical in their approach.
GRAHAM DAVIS: You're signalling here a realignment of the denominations as well, aren't you?
33:10 PETER JENSEN: Yes, it's possible. I'm talking about independent evangelical churches around Australia.
33:17 PETER JENSEN: (Speaking at conference) Intrinsic in this idea of the sacrament is the idea of objectivity, if you like, the fatness of things.
33:24 GRAHAM DAVIS: The seeds of that realignment have already been sown at the intellectual power house of the Sydney diocese, Moore Theological College where Baptists and others, already trained for the ministry, alongside Anglican evangelicals.
33:40 PETER JENSEN (AT CONFERENCE): Many evangelicals then go to the extreme almost of rejecting the sacraments altogether.
33:46 GRAHAM DAVIS: Archbishop Jensen describes himself as closer to the Baptists than to any liberal in his own church, and his great hero is John Wesley, the Anglican evangelical who broke away in the 18th century to form the Methodists. Even the Anglican primate concedes that whatever Jensen's true allegiance, it doesn't include Anglican unity above all else.
34:11 GRAHAM DAVIS: You've said the communion is more important to us all than any one diocese or province, that's clearly not Peter Jensen's view, is it?
34:19 PETER CARNLEY: No, but that certainly is my view. I think the unity of the Anglican communion worldwide is hugely important, particularly in a world that is fractured and divided and at risk of terrorist attack all the time. I think we've got to be a sign of unity and peace and harmony.
34:35 GRAHAM DAVIS: And now the head of the Australian Anglican Church draws his own line in the sand, making it plain that differences of opinion are one thing, talk of succession quite another.
34:47 PETER CARNLEY: I think there would be quite a lot of people in the diocese of Sydney who would be very upset and disturbed and so there would be a fracture within the diocese of Sydney.
34:52 DEAN PHILIP CARNLEY:(reading from church pulpit) Now at this time we are walking in what psalm 23 calls the valley of the shadow of death ..
35:01 GRAHAM DAVIS: To a very real degree, the Sydney diocese is already divided. The evangelicals on one side, Anglo Catholics and liberals on the other. The evangelical stronghold is St Andrews Cathedral, on national view during the recent funeral for Slim Dusty where the Dean, Peter Jensen's brother Philip, presides over a relatively informal style of worship.
35:26 DEAN PHILIP CARNLEY: (SINGING) Ohh it’s a lonesome away from your kindred and all …
35:32 GRAHAM DAVIS: This kind of thing is anathema to high church Anglicans as is the Jensen's literal interpretation of the Bible. (SINGING) A few city blocks away is St James, a temple of Anglo Catholicism where the style of worship may be more formal, but where social attitudes tend to be more liberal. Professor Michael Horsborough is the intellectual force behind a group called Anglicans Together, the formal opposition to the Jensenites within the Sydney diocese. He's someone who has no problem with a practising homosexual being consecrated as bishop.
36:15 PROF MICHAEL HORSBURGH, ANGLICANS TOGETHER: My minimum requirement would be that if such a person was in a homosexual relationship, that that be a committed and dedicated relationship.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But you would have no objection to him having sex with his male partner?
MICHAEL HORSBURGH: Not in principle, no.
36:33 GRAHAM DAVIS: How many people would share your view in the diocese of Sydney?
MICHAEL HORSBURGH: I've no idea.
GRAHAM DAVIS: It would be very few though, wouldn't it?
MICHAEL HORSBURGH: This is a minority view.
36:42 GRAHAM DAVIS: As successive votes at the recent synod showed… (VOTING) .. The truth is Jensenites have the numbers and not just on synod votes, as the latest Anglican attendance figures, leaked to Sunday, clearly show. Across Australia, the total number of Anglicans going to church has fallen 7% in the past decade. But in the Sydney diocese, there's been an 11% rise. There's a message in that and not just for Anglicans, says the Uniting Church's Gordon Moyes.
37:20 DR GORDON MOYES: Within the Uniting Church there are pockets of great growth but they all happen to be the same kind of churches, they happen to be evangelical, they happen to be conservative, they happen to be Bible believing.
37:31 GRAHAM DAVIS: Right, so if you stay evangelical, you stick to the scriptures you'll grow, but the leadership of the Uniting Church opposes this movement.
DR GORDON MOYES: That's right.
GRAHAM DAVIS: And is dying?
37:44 DR GORDON MOYES: That's right. And not only are they dying, but they say there you are, that just shows how right we are because we're dying. It's an interesting mindset. I just wonder who is going to turn out the lights.
38:00 GRAHAM DAVIS: Suddenly though, a concession this week from the Uniting Church leadership to quell the grass roots rebellion, a promise to consult and perhaps even revise church policy on gay ordinations at the next assembly in three years time.
38:15 DEAN DRAYTON: We have now worked out a roadmap to in fact engage and involve the whole church as it moves towards looking at in 2006 addressing what's the doctrinal position of the Uniting Church.
38:29 GRAHAM DAVIS: Will we see in 2006 a roll back on the current position which allows active homosexuals to be ordained?
DEAN DRAYTON: I don't know.
GRAHAM DAVIS: It's leaving open the possibility?
38:41 DEAN DRAYTON: There is the possibility that that could occur. There may be, in fact, an underlining of what can already happen. I don't know.
38:53 GRAHAM DAVIS: By then, it seems, there'll be a fresh crisis, for having secured the ordination of homosexuals, the next shibboleth being challenged by the renegade Reverend Dorothy McRae McMahon is the church's condemnation of de facto heterosexual relationships.
39:09 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: I mean one of my children is not married and in a most beautiful relationship and I'm so thankful to God for that relationship.
GRAHAM DAVIS: And yet the Archbishop of Sydney, for instance, would say that that child of yours is a sinner?
39:22 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: That's right, he would, he would and I'm not prepared to say it. I'm prepared to explore, to look at their relationship and see if it is a good and true and beautiful relationship.
39:33 PETER JENSEN: Now logically she's taken the next step, which is to say well if it's OK for two men or two women to live together without marriage, it must be OK for a man and woman to live together without marriage.
GRAHAM DAVIS: What do you think about that?
39:45 PETER JENSEN: Well, I would regard it as sinful activity, but I think it is not as sinful on the list of sins, if you like, as homosexual activity because it doesn't go against the nature of human beings.
40:01 GRAHAM DAVIS: But suddenly the Archbishop gets the scent of yet another crusade.
40:06 PETER JENSEN: The enormous growth in de facto marriages has not been good for people and I want to challenge this and I want to talk to our society about it. What people don't realise is that de facto marriages, or people living together, as we say, does not actually help long-term relationships. It's bad for them.
40:26 GRAHAM DAVIS: I mean you are the turbulent priest, aren't you, at the moment?
PETER JENSEN: I certainly don't think so.
40:33 GRAHAM DAVIS: But in the classic sense of the word that you're causing a lot of turbulence?
40:37 PETER JENSEN: Well, what's happened is that there's been innovations, massive innovations in the United States of America, Canada and in Australia. We've got to see these as innovations. I am simply saying what the church has always said for 2,000 years and what the Bible says. If this creates turbulence, I'm sorry.
ENDS
01:00 hymns singing
01:12 GRAHAM DAVIS: He's the turbulent priest of the Anglican Church, reviled by his enemies, revered by his supporters, an evangelical Christian, determined to defend the integrity of the Bible against those who want to reinterpret its moral strictures.
01:28 ARCHBISHOP PETER JENSEN, ANGLICAN DIOCESE OF SYDNEY: There's awful things in the world, aren't there, there's terrible things.
01:32 GRAHAM DAVIS: The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, is on a mission to roll back what he sees as a tide of permissiveness sweeping Australia.
01:41 PETER JENSEN: Because we human beings have rebelled against God. We've become alienated from God. We're no longer living as God wants us to.
01:51 GRAHAM DAVIS: Right now, Peter Jensen is at centre stage in a passion play without equal in the life of the modern church. The escalating row over whether the Anglican Church and other denominations should allow homosexuals to gain positions of leadership.
02:08 PETER JENSEN: The communion has fractured.
GRAHAM DAVIS: It has fractured?
PETER JENSEN: Yes, it has. Both in the United States and around the world. A crack has emerged and that crack will continue unless something radical is done about it.
02:25 GRAHAM DAVIS: As we'll see, Jensen's own church, the biggest Protestant denomination in Australia, is deeply split over the gay issue. So much so, that at the recent synod of the Sydney diocese, the archbishop was openly canvassing secession.
02:42 PETER JENSEN: We must recognise the possibility that the Anglican communion will actually divide. It is conceivable, I have to say, that two world Anglicanisms may develop. Perhaps with two mutually exclusive centres.
02:56 GRAHAM DAVIS: Those comments brought a rebuke from the Australian Church's titular head, the primate Archbishop Peter Carnley of Perth, who said talk of schism and fracture was unhelpful and misleading.
03:09 ARCHBISHOP PETER CARNLEY, ANGLICAN PRIMITE OF AUSTRALIA: In America, there is a possibility of a group going its own way. I think that certainly is a possibility. But I don't think there's going to be that kind of division within the Anglican communion as such.
GRAHAM DAVIS: What about in Australia?
PETER CARNLEY: Oh no, I don't think we'll fall apart because of this.
03:26 PETER JENSEN (PREACHING): On the other hand, the Archbishop of Canterbury referred to his own deep foreboding about the future of the communion and he spoke of a huge crisis, quote, over homosexuality.
03:40 GRAHAM DAVIS: Today, a unique insight into the chasm of perception that already exists between Australia's two main Anglican leaders on matters both spiritual and temporal.
03:51 GRAHAM DAVIS: Were it to happen in Australia, were the Jensenites to go it alone, what sort of impact would that have on the Anglican communion here?
04:01 PETER CARNLEY: It would be disastrous. But I don't think it's very likely. I don't think the diocese of Sydney, for example, would walk away from its property and try and go it alone.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Does it mean the loss of property if they do do that?
PETER CARNLEY: I think it probably does.
04:13 GRAHAM DAVIS: Have you had legal opinion on that?
PETER CARNLEY: I haven't, but I'm sure people will have looked at the legalities.
04:21 VO -GRAHAM DAVIS: They have.
04:23 PETER JENSEN: We have our own finances which we control and the national church does not.
GRAHAM DAVIS: And you can tell them to butt out of your financial affairs?
04:30 PETER JENSEN: As they can tell us in every diocese. Yes, that's the way the Australian church runs and we already have a lot of independence and I imagine that we could become more independent by refusing to cooperate. I hope that never happens.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Right, you're leaving open the possibility though?
04:46 PETER JENSEN: Well, if it were to happen, and there's no sign of it yet, that we had the same thing as in the United States of America, then the situation would change.
05:01 GRAHAM DAVIS: The legal pencils are being sharpened and not just in the Anglican communion. For if anything, emotions on the gay issue are running even higher in the second biggest Protestant denomination the Uniting Church, formed 26 years ago through the amalgamation of Methodists, Congregationalists and some Presbyterians.
05:23 WOMAN: I do not want to be part of a church that colludes with any policy of exclusion.
05:29 GRAHAM DAVIS: Those emotions spilt over very publicly at the Uniting Church general assembly in Melbourne in July and they haven't subsided. So much so that some of its most senior clerics are now openly declaring that the Uniting Church is in fact the unravelling church.
05:47 REV DR GORDON MOYES, WESLEY MISSION: What happened was 27 years ago three denominations joined together. After about 15 years it was obvious it wasn't working. Over the last 10 years, it's became more obvious that it isn't working. What is happening here is a widening gulf, but it's not a gulf on homosexuality. It's a gulf between what you might call the liberals and the conservatives within the church.
06:13 GRAHAM DAVIS: And like a broken marriage, says Moyes, all that remains is to divvy up the assets.
06:18 DR GORDON MOYES: I think the split has actually occurred. What I'm trying to do is bring back and reconcile some of the partners in that split. The split has occurred. The property matters have not yet been worked out.
06:34 GRAHAM DAVIS: As we'll see, the Uniting Church hierarchy is engaged in a desperate attempt to save the marriage. But today, the ecclesiastical gloves come off and all because of one thing. Having stormed the other social, legal and political obstacles in the way of full acceptance, homosexuals are now storming the lofty ramparts of the Christian church. It's become a global crusade with the world's most famous gay cleric, the American bishop Gene Robinson, leading the charge.
07:11 GRAHAM DAVIS: Wouldn't it have been better for everybody, including maybe yourself, if you'd stayed in the closet?
07:16 BISHOP GENE ROBINSON, NEW HAMPSHIRE USA: Absolutely not. Which part of no don't you understand? Absolutely not.
07:24 GRAHAM DAVIS: Because as things stand, sir, you seem destined to enter history as the man who brought down a global church?
07:31 GENE ROBINSON: I'm sorry, I'm not going to take that responsibility and let me just mention to you, if you think that if I stood down there wouldn't be another gay or lesbian person nominated and elected to this office, you're just deluded. There are so many competent, faithful, Anglicans in this country who are gay and lesbian, who are many – many of whom are partnered who are going to be nominated and elected. This is – God is doing a new thing here and I believe time will show that it is a godly thing that it's happening. I know it causes a lot of pain. No-one likes change, but I do believe God is at work here.
08:16 GRAHAM DAVIS: They're sentiments echoed by Australia's most famous gay cleric, the Uniting Church's Dorothy McRae McMahon.
08:23 REV DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON, UNITING CHURCH MINISTER: This is not primarily about sex. It's about relationship, it's about love and it's also about owning and claiming that I am part of God's good creation and the sort of God that I worship and serve is not a god who would mock me, create me like this and then say, "But you may not have a loving and holistic loving experience in your life and relationship in your life."
GRAHAM DAVIS: Because that would be perverse.
08:53 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: It would, it would be cruel, truly, truly cruel and I don't believe God does that. I believe we are part of God's amazing variety.
09:01 GENE ROBINSON CONSECRATION: My brothers and sisters in Christ, greet your new bishop.
09:10 GRAHAM DAVIS: For the Anglicans, it was the recent consecration of Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire that brought matters to a head. He was once married and fathered two children. But now his partner is another man.
09:25 GENE ROBINSON: After my wife and I were separated and divorced, my wife met another man and married him and had two more children and then about two months after her marriage, I met Mark Andrew, who about a year-and-a-half later became my partner, left his career in Washington DC with the Peace Corps and moved here to New Hampshire to be with me and my two young children and we've been together for the last 14.5 years here in New Hampshire.
09:52 GRAHAM DAVIS: Now I don't want the pry but I do have to ask this question – presumably you have sex with this man.
09:57 GENE ROBINSON: You may ask me any question you want and I may refuse to answer any question and that's really none of anyone else's business, thanks.
10:06 GRAHAM DAVIS: Right, but you are an active homosexual, true?
10:08 GENE ROBINSON: I've never ever claimed to be celibate.
10:10 GRAHAM DAVIS: How did you feel when you saw the consecration ceremony for Gene Robinson?
10:16 PETER JENSEN: Well, profound sadness really. It was a very bad moment for our church. What he's doing is contradictory to God's word and is contradictory in a very significant way because ...
GRAHAM DAVIS: Sinful?
10:29 PETER JENSEN: Oh, sinful, because as a bishop, he is a representative figure and if you contradict God's word than that's to fall into sin, yes.
10:38 GRAHAM DAVIS: But the Archbishop of Sydney is now going beyond mere criticism of Bishop Robinson's lifestyle and the American church. Determined, he says, to prevent the same thing ever happening in Australia.
10:51 PETER JENSEN: The question is that he first of all was married, has two children, has been divorced from his wife and then has moved in with a man. I compare this with what the Bible teaches and I see it as inconsistent with what the Bible teaches, particularly for a Christian leaders.
11:11 GRAHAM DAVIS: Yet in a clear sign of the showdown to come, Australia's Anglican primate, Archbishop Carnley says that while he's opposed to gay ordinations now, he's not ruling them out some time in the future.
11:24 PETER CARNLEY: It is certainly thinkable because in the past, the church has had very strict moral positions which has changed on slavery, loaning of money for interest, all sorts of things. So it is thinkable that the church at some time in the future could change its mind.
11:39 PETER JENSEN: I disagree entirely. I think the thing itself is wrong in itself and no amount of time will ever change that and we must never concede this point.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Have you told him this personally?
PETER JENSEN: He knows my position.
11:54 GRAHAM DAVIS: But to press home the point, the Archbishop of Sydney is making a remarkable threat – to pull his diocese out of the present Anglican communion if gay ordinations occur and go it alone with other evangelical congregations around Australia.
12:11 PETER JENSEN: If the worst came to the worst, what would likely to be happen is that a network of evangelical churches, I wouldn't call them Anglican, would emerge right around Australia and the church in Sydney would be interested in fostering and helping such churches.
12:34 GRAHAM DAVIS: What's so extraordinary is the scope of Jensen's vision. His Sydney diocese, at the centre of an evangelical network, encompassing not just existing Anglican congregations but other breakaway churches too.
12:49 PETER JENSEN: Sydney is already a leadership diocese and always has been because of our strong stand on the Bible and leadership, not just amongst Anglicans, but amongst many, many Christians in Australia of all brands. I think if we were to see a very significant lapse on behalf of any of the denominations, then people would be looking to Sydney for leadership in supporting and strengthening independent evangelical churches right around Australia.
13:24 GRAHAM DAVIS: But that's not all. For Peter Jensen is now challenging the current structure of the Anglican communion not just in Australia, but worldwide. Unlike the Roman Catholic pope, the global head of that communion the Archbishop of Canterbury, doesn't have absolute power, merely moral authority. Yet according to Peter Jensen, the current Archbishop, Rowan Williams, has jeopardised that authority by not taking a harder line on same sex ordinations.
13:55 PETER JENSEN: He is against it because he doesn't like the disunity that has been caused. I'm hoping he would speak against it because it's wrong in itself.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Morally wrong?
PETER JENSEN: Yes.
14:03 GRAHAM DAVIS: Has he forfeited, in your mind, his moral authority by not taking enough authority against what you see as immoral behaviour in this instance?
PETER JENSEN: He's in danger of doing so.
14:15 GRAHAM DAVIS: Then a statement that will rock the church worldwide. The Archbishop of Sydney signalling a shift in the acknowledgment of moral authority from the first world to the third from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the head of Africa's biggest church, Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria.
14:34 PETER JENSEN: I think that that development of the two Anglicanisms is distinctly possible, though I wouldn't say it was inevitable, first point.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But it is possible?
PETER JENSEN: It is possible.
14:44 GRAHAM DAVIS: Where would you be in that realignment?
PETER JENSEN: Second point, it would depend upon what Canterbury does, but it is conceivable that Sydney would look more to Nigeria or some other place, for the chairmanship of the board. It may be that we will find more of our fellowship with the global south churches than we do with the old western churches.
15:08 GRAHAM DAVIS: Archbishop, this is pretty radical. You're saying that the moral authority currently enjoyed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, would transfer to the Archbishop of Nigeria?
PETER JENSEN: As a possibility. Now I hope that that doesn't happen and I don't think it has happened yet, but it's conceivable.
15:31 GRAHAM DAVIS: In stark contrast with many of their colleagues in the first world, Nigeria's Akinola and other Anglican leaders in Africa, Latin America and Asia, have overwhelmingly condemned the consecration of Archbishop Robinson. Many have declared themselves out of communion with the American Episcopalians, as Anglicans in the US are known. The ecclesiastical version of breaking off diplomatic relations. But why Nigeria as the new centre for Anglicanism? Well, for a start it has more church members than the rest of the world put together. Nearly 20 million. And more importantly, a conservative prelate far more acceptable to evangelicals than his liberal western counterparts.
16:18 PETER JENSEN: My friends in the Episcopal Church in the US tell me that the leadership of the church at the moment came into their own in the '60s and '70s in the height of the civil rights movement. They've always been looking for another victory in a civil rights war and they're confusing the Christian faith with their victories in achieving liberation for gays.
16:42 GRAHAM DAVIS: This is '60s permissiveness manifesting itself in the leadership of the Anglican Church.
16:47 PETER JENSEN: It's a combination between '60s permissiveness and also the belief that somehow the church was really all about civil rights for people who are disadvantaged.
17:00 GRAHAM DAVIS: Half a world away from New Hampshire, Australia's own version of Gene Robinson is beavering away on her memoirs – the remarkable story of how, as a practising lesbian, the Reverend Dorothy McRae McMahon, inhabited the upper reaches of the Uniting Church.
17:18 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: I was married for 32 years actually and I have four wonderful children and I'm glad I did. I also am in great friendship with my ex-husband. I didn't know at all clearly until at least 25 years into my marriage but I had anxieties about relating to a man, going right back to my teenage years and I just thought I was – I had problems. I mean, I'm nearly 70, that's the generation that didn't talk about these things very much.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But then you fell in love, didn't you?
17:51 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: I did, I did, and with a woman who in fact had the courage to say to me: "You must really decide who you are. You may not mess up people's lives, either your husband's life, or mine or anybody else's by simply just trying to sort of do strange and neat things to make everyone feel good."
18:13 GRAHAM DAVIS: When Dorothy McRae McMahon came out, along with a number of other clergy, at the Uniting Church's national assembly in 1997, it was the spark that lit a firestorm in the church that continues to this day. For this Sydney grandmother, it may have been personally liberating, but the response from some church-goers has been less than Christian.
18:36 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: Certainly after each bit of publicity I fear to open my mail in terms of what might be in there and how I will feel when I read it.
GRAHAM DAVIS: What, hate mail?
18:45 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: Yes, yes, that's right. They do use biblical words like 'abomination', which are biblical words sadly, but they also use things like 'slut' and 'dirty' and all sorts of things, which I think have more to do with their own anxieties about sex in general.
GRAHAM DAVIS: So these are church people calling you a slut?
19:03 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: Yes, yes, they are, but not many. No, look, let me make it quite clear, the vast majority of letters and communications I have, have been wonderful and supportive.
19:18 GRAHAM DAVIS: Ever since the Uniting Church has been grappling with the gay issue, and at this year's assembly a massive schism emerged between its largely liberal hierarchy and largely conservative grass roots.
19:32 WOMAN: This issue is not an issue for the church or for individual presbyteries, it's an issue for Australia, the moral future of our country.
19:39 GRAHAM DAVIS: The hierarchy keep saying nothing has changed. Individual presbyteries are still free to avoid choosing an openly gay minister. But what many church members want is an end to gay ordinations altogether, along with clear declarations that for Christians, an actively gay lifestyle just isn't on.
20:01 DR GORDON MOYES: People have voted with their feet and have moved into Pentecostal churches, Baptist churches, local community evangelical churches, a lot of people already have left. The Uniting Church, which once was five times larger than the Baptist, is today smaller than the Baptist, that's a sign of its decline.
20:20 GRAHAM DAVIS: But now the Uniting Church faces a fresh challenge. As the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney breaks with convention to intervene in dramatic fashion in the affairs of another denomination.
20:33 PETER JENSEN: I think that the Uniting Church has somehow or other got itself into a terrific pickle and my hope would be, my hope and prayer is that they'll be able to reverse the decision of the assembly and to come back into line with its previous position, as I understand it, but more important with the Bible. The Bible lays down very clear rules about the nature of Christian ministry and the sort of people who ought to be in Christian leadership positions and if I understand the situation correctly in the Uniting Church, there's been a departure from those rules.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Right, they've gone against the will of God?
21:13 PETER JENSEN: Yes.
21:15 GRAHAM DAVIS: In ecclesiastical circles, this is extraordinary stuff. But today, Archbishop Jensen raises the stakes even further, not only flaying the Uniting Church for its permissiveness, but offering refuge to whole congregations who want to defect.
21:32 GRAHAM DAVIS: Are you prepared now to say, with all the wealth of the Anglican diocese of Sydney, that you will give them halls to meet in? Churches to worship in?
21:42 PETER JENSEN: We will certainly do our best to help them in that sort of way. Yes, because we believe in the Bible, and we believe in God, the authority of God's word, we will support those who are suffering for the same belief.
21:58 MAN: Friends welcome to this special Synod meeting …
22:02 GRAHAM DAVIS: The continuing crisis over gay ordinations prompted this extraordinary meeting of the Queensland synod of the Uniting Church.
22:11 MAN: Uniting Church in Australia believes that all people are made in the image of God.
22:16 GRAHAM DAVIS: The mood was one of rebellion against the national assembly, delegates overwhelmingly affirmed that a practising homosexual lifestyle is incompatible with Christian principles and that homosexual practice is one sign of many of a disordered creation.
22:33 WOMAN: We are recommending that apart from this current session, that we have no electronic media in the house.
22:42 GRAHAM DAVIS: It's a sign of the acute sensitivity of the issue that our cameras were barred from the discussion and that the Queensland moderator, the Reverend Allan Kuchler, couldn't or wouldn't tell us what it all meant.
22:55 GRAHAM DAVIS: [Question in conference] What is a "disordered creation"?
22:57 REV ALLAN KUCHLER, QUEENSLAND MODERATOR, UNITING CHURCH: That's an interesting question but it's a theological question that needs further to be debated within the councils of our church and understood within the context of who we are as the church, and so I believe I cannot respond any further than that on that matter.
23:12 GRAHAM DAVIS: So you have, in a resolution, the term "disordered creation", but you can't explain what you mean?
23:17 ALLAN KUCHLER: I'm saying that is a theological statement which was not debated on the floor of our synod.
23:23 GRAHAM DAVIS: So in the absence of any explanation, we went to the lesbian cleric who started it all.
23:29 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: It would be the synod who said it not the mediator and he's got the responsibility of then explaining what the synod did and I feel for him in that because you can't always explain what your colleagues and peers voted for.
GRAHAM DAVIS: I'm blowed if I know what it means.
23:43 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: Well, I think probably they do mean that it is a sign of sin. I think that is what they're saying.
23:51 GRAHAM DAVIS: Sinners in Queensland, saintly enough to be clergy down south. Such is the contorted position of the Uniting Church.
24:00 GRAHAM DAVIS: How can you be a sinner if you're a homosexual in Queensland and if you're living in NSW or Victoria, be like you, an ordained member of the church?
24:11 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: Well, this is one of the glorious things about the Uniting Church, and I say that most genuinely.
24:18 GRAHAM DAVIS: Glorious? How can it be glorious? I mean it's homosexuality by postcode, isn't it?
DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: [Laughs]
24:24 GRAHAM DAVIS: Seriously, where does it leave homosexuals in Queensland? Do they have to move?
24:28 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: Well, it does leave them in a very bad spot and I shouldn't laugh about this. What I'm really saying is that the Uniting Church, because of the level of its democratic processes, means that it comes to different decisions in different parts of the church and it enacts those.
24:44 GRAHAM DAVIS: All of which makes the job of national president a decidedly less than glorious role. Ask the Reverend Dr Dean Drayton where he stands on gay ordination and it's clearly between a rock and a hard place.
24:58 REV DR DEAN DRAYTON, PRESIDENT UNITING CHURCH, AUSTRALIA: As the president of the Uniting Church, because we make our decisions by council, the role that one accepts in becoming president is in fact to be the voice of the assembly and I have not made and will not make my position known on this matter.
25:15 GRAHAM DAVIS: But Dr Drayton, I can go to any other church leader in Australia and get a definitive answer on their position here and from you I can't.
25:23 DEAN DRAYTON: If I did give my opinion, I would then be usurping the right of the people of the Uniting Church in the way in which we do our government, which is by councils. I'd be usurping the right and my point of view would become the issue, not what the church has decided.
25:38 GRAHAM DAVIS: Even in conservative Queensland, looking for leadership on the gay issue is a fruitless quest.
25:44 GRAHAM DAVIS: How do you feel personally when you pass a resolution like this?
25:50 WOMAN: It is not for me to respond in that way. I don't think that would be helpful.
25:26 GRAHAM DAVIS: And that lack of leadership is accompanied by clear evidence that while the church preaches democracy, behind the scenes there's a distinctly authoritarian streak. Not content with barring us from their discussions, the church leadership tried to gag synod members from speaking to us, not that it stopped some from doing so.
26:17 GRAHAM DAVIS: How comforting has been the hierarchy's statement that it's still up to individual presbyteries who they invite to be their minister?
26:26 MAN: To most people that has not been reassuring at all.
26:29 GRAHAM DAVIS: I'm told that you're one of the ministers who wants to leave the church with your congregation, is that true?
26:33 MAN: Well, our congregation hasn't made up its mind, and neither have I, but it's something we've been giving serious consideration to.
26:41 GRAHAM DAVIS: But those comments brought a strong rebuke from the Queensland moderator and even threats of discipline.
26:47 GRAHAM DAVIS: What, so that the people who talked to us are outside the protocols of church?
26:53 ALLAN KUCHLER: They have not exercised the fulfilment of the understanding that it is the moderator who speaks on behalf of the church.
27:03 DR GORDON MOYES: The Uniting Church operates very largely by threat. There are Ministers within the Uniting Church who have been called up before disciplinary committees. You will never read the results of these, by the way. They are always done in secret. But to local ministers, that's a huge threat. The Uniting Church lives under a dark cloud of fear and ministers will not speak out.
27:31 GRAHAM DAVIS: So small wonder, say the critics, that the grass roots is rebelling against a church they say has been hijacked by a pro-gay lobby. As Gordon Moyes tells it, if the old saying about the Church of England was true, that it was the Tory party at prayer, then the Uniting Church has become the democrats at prayer, permissive, woolly headed, left leaning.
27:56 DR GORDON MOYES: They have the political philosophy and the leadership abilities of the Australian Democrats.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Right, can you elaborate on that?
28:04 DR GORDON MOYES: Yes, well the Australian Democrats don't have any leaders and their policies are extreme left wing.
GRAHAM DAVIS: And these people are specially Australian Democrats of the cloth?
DR GORDON MOYES: Indeed.
28:16 GRAHAM DAVIS: Of course, for those who've benefited from the small ‘l' liberal, largesse, being dubbed a sinner by the Queenslanders is a little local difficulty at best.
28:27 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: The synod of Queensland is, I'm sorry to say, out of order at this point because it is the assembly that has the overarching responsibility for the doctrinal life of the church.
28:37 REV DR DEAN DRAYTON: (At conference) Those in favour of proposal 84 please indicate..
28:41 GRAHAM DAVIS: As we've seen, the national assembly's position is that individual presbyteries are free to invite practising homosexuals to be ministers, a stance reinforced with the passage of what's known as resolution 84 at its most recent meeting last May.
28:58 REV DR DEAN DRAYTON: (At conference) It is clearly carried..
29:00 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: On most issues we are very strongly united. We really are. We're quite united.
GRAHAM DAVIS: You're not on the homosexual issue.
29:06 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: On this issue we're not and that's a healthy thing. It's like in a family where you've just got to work things out over a period of time. I think there'll always be people on the edges, on the extreme ends of it who will not even contemplate listening or shifting. But there is a huge middle ground of people who really want to explore it.
29:30 DR GORDON MOYES: All over Australia there has been a sense of people being appalled and of churches just feeling that what they had to say was totally disregarded. There are Uniting churches in Queensland and Canberra and other places who have actually left the Uniting Church, mostly they become independent congregations. Some have affiliated with other denominations. I'm aware of one in Sydney here who have made a Uniting Church, who's made a connection with another denomination.
30:05 GRAHAM DAVIS: But now the stakes have been raised, as Uniting Church defectors are offered succour at the ample bosom of the richest arm of the Protestant church, evangelicals of Sydney's Anglican diocese taking literally that old biblical text, knock and the door shall be open to you.
30:24 GRAHAM DAVIS: So in unrealised asset term, how much is the diocese worth?
30:29 PETER JENSEN: Well, I suppose if you put all our churches together and sold them all off you might realise $2 billion or $3 billion I suppose.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Two or three billion?
PETER JENSEN: I imagine so.
30:37 GRAHAM DAVIS: From his magnificent gothic seat, Bishop's court in Sydney's Darling Point, Archbishop Peter Jensen unveils a battle plan that will raise a storm across the denominations.
30:49 PETER JENSEN: We have just brought in some legislation into our synod for other reasons which enables us to welcome congregations that are not originally Anglican into our structures.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Right, so you've already got the structure in place to enable this to happen?
31:01 PETER JENSEN: We do, yeah, so something like that could happen.
31:04 GRAHAM DAVIS: Refuge within the Sydney diocese or if that doesn't suit, financial and moral support to become independent.
31:12 PETER JENSEN: I do think that there will be Uniting Church congregations who leave the Uniting Church over this. That certainly seems possible, and if so, they will probably set themselves up in some sort of network of independent churches and in that way, we will do what we can to help them.
30:28 GRAHAM DAVIS: What do you think the Uniting Church is going to think about this, you being prepared to give refuge to their defectors en masse?
31:36 PETER JENSEN: The Uniting Church, if it's listening to this broadcast, will know that I have already said that I will be greatly grieved at this and would not be looking for it. But if it does happen, I feel sure that the Uniting Church members will recognise therefore the very grave difficulties that they've put themselves into by the assembly passing motion 84.
31:58 GRAHAM DAVIS: But for Dean Drayton, the Uniting Church president, it's the declaration of a turf war and his annoyance is palpable.
32:06 DEAN DRAYTON: He what?
32:09 GRAHAM DAVIS: He offers refuge to your congregations, Uniting Church congregations who might want to leave.
32:19 DEAN DRAYTON: Well, that is a terrible unwanted intrusion into the life of the Uniting Church.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Unacceptable?
32:25 DEAN DRAYTON: Unacceptable. My responsibility as a church leader is to say I don't believe this is on and I believe it's a high-handed act in fact of attempting to speak beyond the responsibilities for which he was consecrated, which is as a leader of the Anglican Church in the Sydney diocese.
GRAHAM DAVIS: You'll be getting in touch with him, then?
DEAN DRAYTON: Certainly.
GRAHAM DAVIS: A meeting?
DEAN DRAYTON: Yes.
32:48 PETER JENSEN: Well, I don't regard what I've just said as an intervention in their internal affairs. However, this whole business is a very significant problem for Australian Christianity and we must do what we can to support those who want to be biblical in their approach.
GRAHAM DAVIS: You're signalling here a realignment of the denominations as well, aren't you?
33:10 PETER JENSEN: Yes, it's possible. I'm talking about independent evangelical churches around Australia.
33:17 PETER JENSEN: (Speaking at conference) Intrinsic in this idea of the sacrament is the idea of objectivity, if you like, the fatness of things.
33:24 GRAHAM DAVIS: The seeds of that realignment have already been sown at the intellectual power house of the Sydney diocese, Moore Theological College where Baptists and others, already trained for the ministry, alongside Anglican evangelicals.
33:40 PETER JENSEN (AT CONFERENCE): Many evangelicals then go to the extreme almost of rejecting the sacraments altogether.
33:46 GRAHAM DAVIS: Archbishop Jensen describes himself as closer to the Baptists than to any liberal in his own church, and his great hero is John Wesley, the Anglican evangelical who broke away in the 18th century to form the Methodists. Even the Anglican primate concedes that whatever Jensen's true allegiance, it doesn't include Anglican unity above all else.
34:11 GRAHAM DAVIS: You've said the communion is more important to us all than any one diocese or province, that's clearly not Peter Jensen's view, is it?
34:19 PETER CARNLEY: No, but that certainly is my view. I think the unity of the Anglican communion worldwide is hugely important, particularly in a world that is fractured and divided and at risk of terrorist attack all the time. I think we've got to be a sign of unity and peace and harmony.
34:35 GRAHAM DAVIS: And now the head of the Australian Anglican Church draws his own line in the sand, making it plain that differences of opinion are one thing, talk of succession quite another.
34:47 PETER CARNLEY: I think there would be quite a lot of people in the diocese of Sydney who would be very upset and disturbed and so there would be a fracture within the diocese of Sydney.
34:52 DEAN PHILIP CARNLEY:(reading from church pulpit) Now at this time we are walking in what psalm 23 calls the valley of the shadow of death ..
35:01 GRAHAM DAVIS: To a very real degree, the Sydney diocese is already divided. The evangelicals on one side, Anglo Catholics and liberals on the other. The evangelical stronghold is St Andrews Cathedral, on national view during the recent funeral for Slim Dusty where the Dean, Peter Jensen's brother Philip, presides over a relatively informal style of worship.
35:26 DEAN PHILIP CARNLEY: (SINGING) Ohh it’s a lonesome away from your kindred and all …
35:32 GRAHAM DAVIS: This kind of thing is anathema to high church Anglicans as is the Jensen's literal interpretation of the Bible. (SINGING) A few city blocks away is St James, a temple of Anglo Catholicism where the style of worship may be more formal, but where social attitudes tend to be more liberal. Professor Michael Horsborough is the intellectual force behind a group called Anglicans Together, the formal opposition to the Jensenites within the Sydney diocese. He's someone who has no problem with a practising homosexual being consecrated as bishop.
36:15 PROF MICHAEL HORSBURGH, ANGLICANS TOGETHER: My minimum requirement would be that if such a person was in a homosexual relationship, that that be a committed and dedicated relationship.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But you would have no objection to him having sex with his male partner?
MICHAEL HORSBURGH: Not in principle, no.
36:33 GRAHAM DAVIS: How many people would share your view in the diocese of Sydney?
MICHAEL HORSBURGH: I've no idea.
GRAHAM DAVIS: It would be very few though, wouldn't it?
MICHAEL HORSBURGH: This is a minority view.
36:42 GRAHAM DAVIS: As successive votes at the recent synod showed… (VOTING) .. The truth is Jensenites have the numbers and not just on synod votes, as the latest Anglican attendance figures, leaked to Sunday, clearly show. Across Australia, the total number of Anglicans going to church has fallen 7% in the past decade. But in the Sydney diocese, there's been an 11% rise. There's a message in that and not just for Anglicans, says the Uniting Church's Gordon Moyes.
37:20 DR GORDON MOYES: Within the Uniting Church there are pockets of great growth but they all happen to be the same kind of churches, they happen to be evangelical, they happen to be conservative, they happen to be Bible believing.
37:31 GRAHAM DAVIS: Right, so if you stay evangelical, you stick to the scriptures you'll grow, but the leadership of the Uniting Church opposes this movement.
DR GORDON MOYES: That's right.
GRAHAM DAVIS: And is dying?
37:44 DR GORDON MOYES: That's right. And not only are they dying, but they say there you are, that just shows how right we are because we're dying. It's an interesting mindset. I just wonder who is going to turn out the lights.
38:00 GRAHAM DAVIS: Suddenly though, a concession this week from the Uniting Church leadership to quell the grass roots rebellion, a promise to consult and perhaps even revise church policy on gay ordinations at the next assembly in three years time.
38:15 DEAN DRAYTON: We have now worked out a roadmap to in fact engage and involve the whole church as it moves towards looking at in 2006 addressing what's the doctrinal position of the Uniting Church.
38:29 GRAHAM DAVIS: Will we see in 2006 a roll back on the current position which allows active homosexuals to be ordained?
DEAN DRAYTON: I don't know.
GRAHAM DAVIS: It's leaving open the possibility?
38:41 DEAN DRAYTON: There is the possibility that that could occur. There may be, in fact, an underlining of what can already happen. I don't know.
38:53 GRAHAM DAVIS: By then, it seems, there'll be a fresh crisis, for having secured the ordination of homosexuals, the next shibboleth being challenged by the renegade Reverend Dorothy McRae McMahon is the church's condemnation of de facto heterosexual relationships.
39:09 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: I mean one of my children is not married and in a most beautiful relationship and I'm so thankful to God for that relationship.
GRAHAM DAVIS: And yet the Archbishop of Sydney, for instance, would say that that child of yours is a sinner?
39:22 DOROTHY MCRAE MCMAHON: That's right, he would, he would and I'm not prepared to say it. I'm prepared to explore, to look at their relationship and see if it is a good and true and beautiful relationship.
39:33 PETER JENSEN: Now logically she's taken the next step, which is to say well if it's OK for two men or two women to live together without marriage, it must be OK for a man and woman to live together without marriage.
GRAHAM DAVIS: What do you think about that?
39:45 PETER JENSEN: Well, I would regard it as sinful activity, but I think it is not as sinful on the list of sins, if you like, as homosexual activity because it doesn't go against the nature of human beings.
40:01 GRAHAM DAVIS: But suddenly the Archbishop gets the scent of yet another crusade.
40:06 PETER JENSEN: The enormous growth in de facto marriages has not been good for people and I want to challenge this and I want to talk to our society about it. What people don't realise is that de facto marriages, or people living together, as we say, does not actually help long-term relationships. It's bad for them.
40:26 GRAHAM DAVIS: I mean you are the turbulent priest, aren't you, at the moment?
PETER JENSEN: I certainly don't think so.
40:33 GRAHAM DAVIS: But in the classic sense of the word that you're causing a lot of turbulence?
40:37 PETER JENSEN: Well, what's happened is that there's been innovations, massive innovations in the United States of America, Canada and in Australia. We've got to see these as innovations. I am simply saying what the church has always said for 2,000 years and what the Bible says. If this creates turbulence, I'm sorry.
ENDS