News & Information
Freedom to Decide on Marriage
The 15th Assembly has agreed to hold two equal and distinct views on marriage
to honour the diversity of Christian belief among its members.
Meeting for the first time since last year’s change to Australian marriage laws,
members of the Church’s national decision-making body, the Assembly,
resolved to allow its ministers the freedom to conduct or to refuse to conduct
same-gender marriages.
Recognition of First Peoples’ Sovereignty
The Uniting Church has affirmed that the First Peoples of Australia, the
Aboriginal and Islander Peoples, are sovereign peoples in Australia.
On 13 July, the 15th Assembly meeting approved the statement affirming
sovereignty by consensus.
After consultation with working groups an earlier proposal was amended to give
an expanded definition of sovereignty as the “way in which First Peoples
understand themselves to be the traditional owners and custodians” of the land.
Referring to the Statement from the Heart at Uluru, the Uniting Church
recognises that Sovereignty is understood by the First Peoples as “a spiritual
notion, reflecting the ancestral tie between the land and the First Peoples.”
Ordained Woman is President-Elect
Rev. Sharon Hollis was announced as the Uniting Church in Australia President-
elect. Rev. Hollis, who is Moderator of the Synod of Victoria and Tasmania, will
be the third woman to be National Assembly President and first who has been
ordained. “I am humbled and I am grateful,” Rev. Hollis said after the announce-
ment was met with a standing ovation in the Box Hill Town Hall. “I love this
church.”
Call for fresh expressions of faith
Rev. Dr Ken Carter has called the UCA into fresh expressions of faith through
prayerful listening and service in his Cato Lecture. Rev. Dr Carter reminded the
Assembly that the church needed to take time with its prayerful discernment. “If
we are spiritual leaders in positions of oversight, we are called to undertake the
integrative work of diagnosis and discernment with great seriousness,” he said.
St Margaret’s News
9
July 2018