“The debate on marriage and weddings will be held on Wednesday, 21 October, and a decision on the issue will be made on the morning of Thursday, 22 October,” the Church of Sweden said in a statement sent to Ecumenical News International in advance of the October 20-23 meeting.
Members of the synod, or main governing body, are to decide whether the church should retain its right to conduct marriage services and about church weddings for same-sex couples, the church has stated.
“It is a question of being human. One of the Bible quotations central to the Lutheran tradition is, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’,” Archbishop Anders Wejryd said in September on Swedish public service television’s Rapport news program. “This means that as Christians, we have a responsibility to think independently on the basis of what we believe is good for love, fidelity, and equality, at all times.”
The church said in September that the general synod’s doctrinal commission, which includes the church’s 14 bishops, had agreed by 12 votes to 8 that it is possible to accept marriage for same-sex couples. The commission has said that a proposed marriage service that would cover same-sex couples is in accordance with the faith, creed and doctrine of the Church of Sweden.
Still, there are dissenting voices on the doctrinal commission.
“It’s fine to put together a service for same-sex couples now, but what exactly we should do with marriage is something we need to think about more closely,” said Bishop Sven Thidevall of Sweden’s Växjö diocese.
Earlier in 2009, two bishops of the (Anglican) Church of England warned the Church of Sweden that agreeing to expand the concept of marriage to include same-sex couples risked creating “immediate and negative” consequences for ecumenical relations.
The Church of Sweden and the Church of England are both part of the Porvoo Communion, an agreement between British and Irish Anglican churches and Lutheran churches in the Nordic and Baltic countries.
The English bishops had responded to a letter by Wejryd to leaders of Porvoo churches in which he noted that the Swedish church has since 1995 offered blessings for same-sex unions in registered partnerships. From 2007, the church has had a liturgical order for this.
However, the revision of the Swedish marriage law, which came into force on May 1, abolished the concept of registered partnerships in favor of marriage.
“The church would then only have a rite for heterosexual couples,” if it maintained the status quo, wrote Wejryd. In 2008 the central board of the Swedish church had agreed to accept that a new law would cover both heterosexual and homosexual unions. The archbishop further noted that his church, “has a strict policy not to discriminate against homosexuals and the church has already taken the most important decision, that of accepting and blessing same-sex couples.”
The Porvoo agreement allows for full communion between the churches, including the acceptance of the other’s bishops, priests, and deacons without re-ordination.
An October 12-13 meeting of leaders of Porvoo churches noted that their churches are being challenged by, “issues in human sexuality and the question of the responsibilities and privileges of being in communion.”
A statement issued after the meeting of Porvoo churches said that Wejryd had spoken about the Lutheran World Federation and how it is working through potentially divisive issues.
Lutheran churches throughout the world hold different views about matters such as the acceptance of homosexuals in church life, and blessings for same-sex relationships in some Northern countries.
In 2005, leaders of the LWF removed Kenyan Bishop Walter E. Obare Omwanza as an advisor to its main governing body, the LWF Council, after he consecrated a bishop from a breakaway Lutheran grouping in Sweden, opposed to women priests and same-sex marriage.
