Mark Strange acknowledges anger in parts of Anglicanism but says his Episcopal church has made its decision

The Scottish Episcopal church has responded defiantly to de facto sanctions imposed on it by the global Anglican communion over its decision to allow same-sex marriages, saying “love means love”.

Anglican primates meeting in Canterbury agreed the Scottish church should be barred from representational bodies and excluded from decisions on policy for three years after it voted in favour of permitting same-sex marriages in church earlier this summer.



Responding to the move, Mark Strange, the bishop of Moray, Ross and Caithness and primus of the Scottish Episcopal church, said he recognised that the decision to allow same-sex marriage was “one that has caused some hurt and anger in parts of the Anglican communion”.



But he was unrepentant, adding: “I will do all I can to rebuild relationships, but that will be done from the position our church has now reached in accordance with its synodical processes and in the belief that love means love.”



The punitive measures are in line with those imposed on the US church last year, although conservative elements within the communion have complained that those “consequences” have not been properly enacted.

Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the Anglican communion, said the primates’ meeting had heard “expressions of disappointment and strong feelings from many of the provinces” during the hour-long discussion, but there had been no need for a formal vote on the issue.

Despite the decision by the primates of Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda to boycott the meeting over the issue of sexuality, Welby said others present expressed themselves forcefully and “the communion continues with profound struggles”.

The archbishop likened the Anglican Communion to “a family that’s having to face the fact that something’s happened that is causing grief [rather] than a club that doesn’t like one of its members.”

Even so, he repeated his assertion in a recent interview in GQ magazine that differences between Anglican conservatives and liberals were irreconcilable. “That’s a fact, and it’s no use pretending it isn’t,” he told a press conference in Canterbury. But a split was not inevitable, he insisted.

Asked if he stood by comments broadcast at the weekend, in which he claimed the BBC had not shown the same integrity over accusations of child sexual abuse as the Catholic and Anglican churches, he said: “I may not have put it very well but none of us can ever afford to say ‘we’ve done that, that’s behind us’.”

When he was appointed as archbishop more than four years ago, he had not been aware of the extent of the legacy of abuse. “I feel the church – and it’s widely accepted in the church that we have a long history of significant failure – should be held to a higher standard because we’re the church.

“But it’s also clear that the issue of abuse goes right through our society. Almost all our major national institutions have failed. My profound sense of shame at what the church has done remains … To survivors I’d say we know we did wrong, and we’re trying as hard as we can to get things right.”

Survivors of sexual abuse in the church are planning a protest in Canterbury on Friday, the final day of the primates’ gathering.