As Australia’s politicians again teeter on the edge of deciding to decide about marriage equality, there are those who will want to give the impression that Christians are all (or mostly) singing from the same hymn sheet on this. We are not.

The hymn sheet itself has undergone major rewrites, and is still being rewritten. There was a time when Christians were singing in unison – to a script that was ancient. Christianity’s most highly esteemed theologians, from Augustine to Aquinas, through to Martin Luther and beyond, were unequivocal in their distaste for those we now identify as gay, describing their passions as disordered, abominable and responsible for the worst of all sins.

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Mercifully, we now rarely hear Christians arguing in such terms. What I have noticed, even over the past few months, is that there is emerging a gentler, more respectful tone in conversations I am having with people of faith, along with a welcome willingness to listen and learn.

There has also been something of a renaissance of biblical scholarship on this issue, as theologians struggle to better understand the ancient biblical texts, and to sensibly and relevantly apply them. Older ways of approaching the bible, including Martin Luther’s plain sense literalism, are rightly being discarded.

Most heartening of all, I think, is that Christians are coming to recognise that our first and most urgent moral duty (regardless of what we think about marriage equality) is to apologise for the terrible mistreatment of LGBTIQ+ people, which still darkly reaches into the present. It is thrilling for me, as an Anglican Christian, to report that a motion of apology for this past and present harm will be debated and hopefully passed at this year’s triennial Anglican general synod in September.

In our slow learning process, Christians are increasingly asking, “Why shouldn’t our LGBTIQ+ sons and daughters, siblings and neighbours be included in one of our society’s most treasured institutions? What good reason is there to not do this?”

What people are finding is that the reasons being offered are not strong. Having rightly jettisoned older and harsher understandings of homosexuality, conservative Christians are left with much weaker arguments, such as: “One shouldn’t change the definition of marriage” or “this will violate longstanding church doctrine” or “society will unravel and children will be harmed” – or, most weakly and irrelevantly, “our religious freedoms will be threatened”.

These essentially backward-looking and defensive arguments don’t appear to be changing many minds, except in the other direction perhaps as support for marriage equality continues to rise, even among conservative Christians. In the US, for example, two years after the legalising of same-sex marriage, 62% of Americans now say they favour civil marriage equality, with a mere 32% opposed. That compares with 48% in favour and 42% opposed in 2010. What is remarkable is that these rapidly changing attitudes are happening right across social and religious spectrums. Republicans are now almost evenly divided. Sixty-seven per cent of Roman Catholics are in favour, 68% of white mainline Protestants are in favour. Even among white evangelical Protestants, support has grown from 14% a decade ago to 35% now.

Here in Australia we are witnessing similarly rapid changes of attitude and belief, as highlighted by the recently released Hilda survey. A recent Galaxy poll of 1,000 Australian Christians found 54% in favour of marriage equality. Among Roman Catholics the figure is 65%, possibly higher.

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One of the strongest indications that Christian opposition to marriage equality is on the wane is that efforts to stem the tide of support have become increasingly frantic, and, dare I say it, ugly. Sadly, a culture of fear has been maintained and even strengthened in many of our more conservative churches. People are afraid to speak up because they risk being shunned, reviled and even fired if they say what they really think. Dialogue is discouraged, censorship is applied, and the impression is deceptively given that there is only one acceptable Christian position on this issue.

The Dean of St Andrews Anglican Cathedral in Sydney, Kanishka Raffel, recently claimed in an open letter that the doctrine of marriage “cannot be considered a subject on which faithful Christians can ‘agree and disagree’”. This is an extraordinary statement and amounts to an accusation that Christians (even the many within his own diocese) who think differently are “unfaithful”. The statement is highly offensive. It reeks of arrogance and implies a threat to any who might change their mind on this, or come out publicly in favour of same-sex marriage.

The good news is that people are losing patience with strong-arm and authoritarian tactics such as this. They are saying to their pastors, priest and bishops, “You don’t speak for me.” Sixty-one percent of Australian Christians surveyed by the recent Galaxy poll objected to conservative groups such as the Australian Christian Lobby speaking for them. They don’t.

Christians are beginning to sing from new hymn sheets. Speaking for myself, I like the sound of what I am hearing.