The Church of England just made a major move — but don’t expect a grand announcement. In a quiet shift, church leaders have removed a controversial clause that labeled gay sex as “falling short of God’s purpose.” And while the change didn’t come with confetti or public praise, LGBTQIA+ advocates definitely caught the update — and they’re talking.
For decades, the Church’s relationship with LGBTQIA+ people has been tense and often painful. According to the Religion Media Centre, that tension dates back to 1987, when a private member’s motion officially described homosexual acts as “falling short of God’s ideal.” The language set the tone for decades of exclusion and debate.
The 1998 Lambeth Conference cemented that stance. Bishops declared that marriage was strictly “between a man and a woman” and deemed same-sex relationships “incompatible with scripture.” That language became central to the Church’s teachings on sexuality. It cast a long and damaging shadow over queer members of the faith. For LGBTQIA+ Christians who wanted to stay grounded in their beliefs, the clause served as a constant reminder that the Church viewed them as less than.
Now, with its quiet removal, the Church has started to change that narrative.
The Church of England is taking steps towards LGBTQIA+ inclusion.
On July 15, the General Synod — a governing body made up of bishops, clergy, and lay members — overwhelmingly approved a motion to remove the requirement for ordination candidates to affirm the 1991 document “Issues in Human Sexuality.” That document branded “homosexual practice as especially dishonourable” and urged same-sex Christians to remain celibate, according to Reuters.
Advocates praised the vote as a long-overdue step toward recognizing that the Church’s past language and assumptions were prejudicial and offensive to many. The decision does not change the Church’s formal doctrine on marriage, but it removes a key barrier that leaders often used to informally exclude gay candidates from the ordination process. “Now it has gone … it opens the way for liberalisation of the church’s policy on same sex relationships and means we can stop using it as a kind of reference text,” Charles Bczyk-Bell, an openly gay Anglican priest, told Reuters.