CONSERVATIVE Evangelicals in Australia, led by the Archbishop of Sydney, the Most Revd Kanishka Raffel, have criticised the diocese of Perth for making changes to Faithfulness in Service, the national church’s behavioural guidelines.

The recent Perth synod removed the requirement that clergy and church workers must maintain chastity in singleness and faithfulness in marriage, replacing it with a requirement to take “responsibility for their sexual conduct”. Sexual behaviour, it said, “should be characterised by faithfulness and integrity”.

Faithfulness in Service was originally adopted by the General Synod of the Anglican Church in Australia in 2004. Eight of the 23 dioceses have previously made changes over the past two decades.

Archbishop Raffel said that Faithfulness in Service reflected “a clear view of the standard required of those in Christian ministry. . . Those biblical standards have not changed and yet one more diocese has changed the guidelines to permit sexual activity outside marriage, whether in heterosexual or homosexual relationships, and other sexually permissive practices. This is neither scriptural nor Anglican teaching.”

The Archbishop of Perth, Dr Kay Goldsworthy, rejected Archbishop Raffel’s criticisms, saying that the changes did not give permission for wrongful behaviour in pastoral or personal relationships. “Faithfulness has a far wider implication than sexual fidelity,” she said. She was surprised, she said, that the Perth changes had attracted such a high level of criticism, given that similar changes had been made in other dioceses, questioning whether the fact that Perth was led by a woman bishop was a factor.