Word: synods
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Literally. The Lutheran Church has thrown its considerable weight behind the antimissile protest and so, in a more muted fashion, has the Roman Catholic Church. Protests sponsored by churches have played a major role in arousing public opinion. Earlier this month, the Evangelical Synod, which is the governing body of the Lutheran Church, approved a "peace memorandum" that was tougher on the U.S. than on the Soviet Union...
Meeting last week in York, the Synod of the Church of England voted to change the rules. In a historic step, it decided by an overwhelming vote of 296 to 114 that divorced Anglicans could remarry in church. The key sentence declared that the synod "considers that there are circumstances in which a person may be married in church during the lifetime of the former partner." The meaning of "circumstances" was left undefined, pending further discussion...
...making the change, the synod was facing up to statistics and popular pressure. Great Britain now has the highest divorce rate in Western Europe: two for every five marriages (a 1979 total of 163,000 in England and Wales). Even the church hierarchy has been affected. Last month Suffragan Bishop Stephen Verney of Repton was married to a divorcee, setting off an untidy flap among conservative churchmen. At present, many Anglicans are remarried in civil ceremonies and are then blessed privately by a priest. Other couples resort to Methodist marriages, lie to Anglican clergy about previous marriages, or simply live...
Officially, the Church of England does not yet permit its remarried members to receive Communion, though it does authorize the bishop in charge of a diocese to make exceptions. Last February's synod meeting voted in principle to rescind that prohibition. However, a committee headed by the popular new Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, must prepare regulations on both remarriage ceremonies and Communion, and the synod must pass them, before the liberalization is final. That will take at least two years. But most priests are expected to liberalize their practices immediately. Even before the vote, many parish priests...
...London Times earlier that morning. It quickly set all England rejoicing. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told a cheering House of Commons that the engagement gave the government "great pleasure." Bishops of the Church of England, who happened to be discussing marriage at a general synod that day, rose in a standing ovation. "It's super," said Jane Ogden, a housewife in the crowd that quickly materialized at the palace gates. "People really like her. She's so friendly, and she hasn't lost her head...