by Revd Canon Neil Patterson, Vice-Dean of Bristol Cathedral and Chair of Together for the Church of England
As readers are probably aware, a set of liturgical resources known as the Prayers of Love & Faith (PLF) were commended by the House of Bishops for use in the Church of England in December last year and are available here. Whatever the shortcomings of the texts felt by some, these are important as the first official encouragement to pray with same-sex couples for the flourishing of our relationships. Inasmuch as the Church of England’s doctrine is defined by liturgical texts rather than dogmatic statements, they constitute the decisive point on the Living in Love & Faith journey where the Church has acknowledged that same-sex couples exist and are a good thing, even if we are still corporately a bit unsure what sort of thing that is.
So it was a delight to recently attend a service where the Prayers were used for two friends of ours at a regular service at a cathedral. It was not quite ‘regular’ to the extent that the congregation was swelled by a substantial number of family and friends, close relatives read the lessons, and the music was provided by a superb choir assembled from friends for the occasion. But liturgically, it conformed entirely to the rubrics for the Prayers – it was a joyful service of Evensong, with the couple sitting in ordinary seats with everyone else, and the short prayers for and by them taking place alongside the intercessions towards the end.
I do still hope for a Church of England in which same-sex marriage in church happens and, in the short term, for ‘standalone’ services, i.e. for the use of the PLF to be accepted for a free-standing service devised for a particular couple (though it is already unclear how adding hymns, Scripture readings and other prayers – all of them already permitted in other services – to the commended PLF would render them unauthorised). This is especially important if we are to welcome those for whom a regular liturgy like Evensong would be inaccessible, as well as for the practicalities of time and date. But I reflected that the service I attended felt like a more mature Christian celebration of what was happening than many church weddings I took in my parish ministry.
What I mean is that my friends were not at the beginning of their relationship – they remembered that, as a very new couple, they had attended my own civil partnership in 2017 – and have shared a house for some time. Their own legal partnership was in fact a little while ago, but this was the occasion when they felt ready to celebrate publicly, with family and friends, and to seek God’s blessing for the years ahead, as devout and serious Christians. And for that the modest prayers, within a service which was chiefly an act of praise to God, seemed thoroughly appropriate.
But is this not usually the situation for those marrying in church? I can only recall a single wedding I have taken where the couple were not already cohabiting, and that was because the groom was in the RAF and so (as I understood) not provided with married accommodation. And after marriage there is limited change in legal identity – as far as I can tell there is no pressure from conservative Anglicans to revert to the situation before the Married Women’s Property Acts of 1870 and 1882, when all property was held in common (but controlled by the husband) or before the case of R v. R in 1991 when a wife’s body was held to belong to her husband (following 1 Corinthians 7) and so he was immune from any charge of rape. Yet we still purport to undertake some sort of existential change in a church wedding, taking two ‘single’ people and making them into something else, but I am not sure that we know what.
Living in Love & Faith has focussed the attention of the Church with painful rigour on those of us in same-sex relationships, scrutinised as never before and now held by some to be responsible for many ills including, apparently, the decline in vocations to ordained ministry. But I wonder if in fact we may be pointing the way to a more mature, less fairytale, understanding of all committed relationships. There have been official CofE documents on marriage occasioned by accepting the reality of divorce in 1999, or resisting same-sex marriage in 2013, and both are skewed by their contexts. The LLF book treats it more widely, but evades the messy reality of forming relationships that leads to marriage. Until we can talk about this more honestly, we will have little credibility on the subject at all.
Any thoughts?