Church of Scotland Ministers Forced Out Over Gay Clergy
After the continued push by the Church of Scotland to ordain both lesbian and gay ministers, those in the ministry are being alienated to the point of removing themselves entirely from the church.
The Church of Scotland's General Assembly lifted the moratorium over the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy in May of last year, and since then, they have been called enablers of the "dismantling of the true gospel" over the issue of homosexual ministers.
One of those individuals that was forced to leave the ministry was Reverend Paul Gibson, who claimed he left because of the Church of Scotland's insistence on adopting an "erroneous liberal agenda" while at the same time putting many of the Church's members "in an impossible position."
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Gibson is now a member of the Free Church of Scotland, and said leaving the Church that he had grown up in was hard, but stated that a liberal agenda and political shenanigans have put the Church in this state.
"I was baptized in the Church of Scotland, I grew up in the Kirk and continue to have many dear friends who remain in the church, so I think I speak for those who have left in recent years that it is with great pain and upset that we've felt the need to withdraw and move on," Gibson told The Scotsman during an interview.
"It's not with any sense of bravado or anything like that. But it's sadly the case that after many years of liberalism and political-style maneuvering, the Church of Scotland has reached a point where the only thing that's not tolerated is Biblical orthodoxy," he added.
The Church of Scotland's General Assembly's decision to permit openly homosexual men and women to serve as ministers applied only to those members of the clergy that had declared their homosexuality and were ordained before May 2009.
The matter concerned with the future ordination and training of openly homosexual and lesbian clergy will be decided in 2013 after a theological commission publishes their report on the issue.
