"Hellfire rains down as gay clergy debate turns into slanging match
By Kelly Burke, Religious Affairs Reporter
September 3, 2003

Two church leaders have gone toe to toe - accusing each other of violence, bullying and intimidation - in their dispute over the rights of gay clergy.

Last night, at a meeting in a Strathfield parish church, the national head of the Uniting Church in Australia, the Reverend Dean Drayton, was called in to address the warring factions of the Sydney Presbytery.

The row over gay clergy allegedly came to push and shove in the same church on August 12, when the Reverend Bill Crews, a liberal Uniting Church minister and 2GB broadcaster, clashed with a conservative, the Reverend Doug Clements, from the Wesley Mission.

Mr Clements claims Mr Crews bullied him and prevented him from reading a verse from the Bible, shoving him away from the lectern during the Presbytery's last meeting.

Conservative evangelicals are now demanding that Mr Crews resign as chairman of the Sydney Presbytery.

A letter demanding his resignation has been forwarded to the Presbytery's secretary, Peter Bentley, on the grounds that Mr Crews contravened resolutions on violence and bullying. Moreover, Mr Clements alleges Mr Crews has proved he is incapable of acting as an impartial mediator.

But in a statutory declaration, also sent to Mr Bentley, Mr Crews denies this version of events. He says it was Mr Clements who was verbally aggressive and insulting, by insinuating - through his choice of a Bible verse - that there were Godless men among them.

"I did not threaten him in a physically, verbally aggressive and violent manner in spite of being goaded into doing so," Mr Crews said.

"I will admit to being very angry at his calling some people Godless and letting him know it . . . [but] on no occasion did I threaten him physically. I did not shove him from the lectern or microphone."

Relations between Sydney's evenly matched evangelical and liberal camps have been on a collision course since the Uniting Church's national assembly passed a resolution in July that confirmed the right of individual presbyteries and congregations to ordain and appoint practising gay clergy on a case-by-case basis.