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Category: Marriage

  • Dear Bishop Christopher… An Open Response to my Diocesan Bishop after his Address to Southwark Diocesan Synod

    Dear Bishop Christopher… An Open Response to my Diocesan Bishop after his Address to Southwark Diocesan Synod

    by Simon Butler, former member of Archbishops’ Council and member of General Synod 2005-2022

    Dear Bishop Christopher,

    First of all, I want to express my gratitude for your remarks at Diocesan Synod. I read them at a distance in New Zealand where I am currently travelling and was grateful for the clarity with which you spoke. It is important now that all bishops join the rest of the Church of England in saying exactly what they think about human sexuality. Otherwise Living in Love and Faith would be a dead letter.

    I want to thank you for the way in which you have quietly and often publicly affirmed the ministry of LGBT+ clergy and lay people in the diocese. You have, in many ways, fulfilled the call we gave you in the Diocesan Statement of Needs at your appointment in relation to sexuality. I declare an interest: the drafting was my work! Thank you for your faithfulness here.

    Being Bishop of Southwark has always been about herding cats – our clergy are outstanding in their passion and commitment, conservative and progressive alike – and you have gone as far as you possibly can – and as far as your conscience will allow – to appoint and encourage LGBT+ clergy in their ministries. You have been a pastoral bishop to us all, even if that has been frustrating for some colleagues who have wanted you to go further, and faster. After all, this is Southwark!

    Your address to the Diocesan Synod was, as ever, the words of a pastoral bishop in the best tradition of Anglican Catholicism. I was not therefore surprised by a phrase I’ve heard you use before: “I do not expect to see the marriage canons changed in my lifetime.” It is something you often say, and it has served you well in Southwark, because it avoids you having to say what you think about same sex marriage. It does have the sense of being a politician’s answer, however, but one that I have often thought was both clever and perceptive. Only recently have I come to disagree with you, and from a surprising direction.

    I have been privileged to take part in a series of – until recently – entirely confidential series of discussions called the St Hugh’s Conversations. They began between Conservative Evangelicals and some progressive bishops, but have in the past three years broadened to include some conservative bishops, and those, like me, who want to see change to the current teaching on sexuality changed (it is worth noting that the majority of members are senior members of General Synod, who have an eye to getting things through our decision-making bodies). Despite our profound differences as members, we have agreed we can now identify ourselves individually and share themes. During the Conversations, we have listened to one another with great respect and affection, particularly to the concerns of conservative colleagues who remain deeply concerned about any change to the current position, including the one you advocated in your address.

    The uniting spirit of the St Hugh’s Conversations is a desire to bring to a conclusion the battle over sexuality that has beset the Church since 1987. None of us – conservative, progressive, LGBT+ or those who prefer to identify themselves as same-sex attracted – want to see our fragile unity further fractured, or the harm we do to one another as Christians continue its toxic tone. We believe – at least tentatively – that now must be the time to find a settlement which will suit us all. I have come to agree with this position.

    To that end, I am very sorry to say that I think your proposals outlined at Diocesan Synod fall short of such a settlement. I think that to preserve the maximum amount of unity by virtue of an incremental settlement through a liturgy of blessing same sex relationships (including marriage, I assume?) is a mistaken, if understandable, episcopal desire to kick the can down the road on same sex marriage. You will expect a progressive like me to say that, but what has been a stunning development in the St Hugh’s discussions is that conservatives can see a church which accommodates such a development. There is a growing unanimity that – noting how painful it would be for conservatives in the Church to agree to such a development – a Church which allows same sex marriages to be solemnised, while at the same time making provision for those who cannot agree to such a development (which in their mind goes some way beyond the sort of conscience clause you propose), is the best way ahead. We need to make fair and just provision for both sides here if we are to reach the possibility of a settlement. Only in the St Hugh’s Conversations have such possibilities been aired and a fragile consensus sensed.

    It is easy to see what provision for progressives would look like – an inclusive version of the marriage service. But what do conservatives want? To be honest, my sense is that there is not agreement here yet among them – like women bishops’ opponents, they are an alliance between impossibilists (who baulk at any change and would prefer an even more conservative settlement than the current position of the House of Bishops), those who want a very firm and clear boundary at every level of church life and governance (as laid out by the Church of England Evangelical Council, and something akin to a new Province), and those who are somewhere in between. It is not clear to me what their settled position is, and I sense it is not clear to them either! But it is much more than a conscience clause for opting out – rightly, in my view, they want some assurance of a future honoured and secure place in the Church.

    Questions of ‘provision’ will stir strong emotions among bishops (and many women clergy too) who have to deal on a daily basis with the settlement we have made on women in the episcopate. It is not hard to see why such steps will fill episcopal hearts with dread! But, as you and I have shared with women colleagues the tortuous pain of the women in the episcopate synodical journey, I regrettably have concluded that likelihood of inadequate provision, which I firmly believe that what you propose in your Synod address offers conservatives and progressives, will lead to another round of politics, campaigning and rancour. Such an incremental approach may well appeal to some in the College of Bishops, but in the wider Church I think the College risks not reading the signs of the times adequately.

    I once agreed with your ‘politician’s answer’ and thought it clever and necessary. But I am afraid now a politician’s answer won’t do. Living in Love and Faith has taught us to be clearer, rather than avoiding the elephant in the room. I want to know whether you are able to offer your support to an extension of the doctrine of marriage to same-sex couples or not. And I think you owe it to the process to give it.

    By all means, if your answer is ‘no’ or ‘not yet’ then please make that a little more clear. But if you do, then I ask you to consider that your solution risks the very unity you wish to preserve, and condemns the Church to another round of politics, electoral games and harm. It offers nothing to conservatives and not a great deal to progressives. I think it just offers a way for bishops to avoid biting the necessary bullet rather than working to the maximum unity we can achieve where everyone – in a deeply broken Church – comes away feeling, if not happy, then secure and free to minister according to their conscience.

    My prayers are assured for your next meeting with episcopal colleagues in the College.

    Your brother in Christ,

    Simon

  • Ways and Means of Differentiation…

    by the Revd Neil Patterson, Director of Vocations & Ordinands in the Diocese of Hereford and Chair of the General Synod Gender & Sexuality Group

    The debate on sexuality in the Church of England is in a curious place as I write.  The College of Bishops has resided, and my social media coverage identifies the Charles Tyrwhitt blue check shirt as a preferred smart-casual choice. Informal reports suggest the predominant preference is for some sort of move forward, but there are many options for how, and more work is being done in readiness for a meeting in December. In the meantime, a few bishops led by Oxford have declared their hands for change, and a good deal of reaction has followed.  And some of us have continued with conversations across the divisions, to try to listen to and understand those with whom we disagree. But above all we are still waiting, and praying for an outcome which is both hopeful and does not lead to a train crash in February. This may be particularly likely if the bishops succumb to the Boris Johnson temptation of both having and eating their cake in the belief that they can choose a positive option for change and not face the division and resistance in Synod that will result.

    The process of listening to conservatives need not happen only in person. The Church of England Evangelical Council have been impressively open with their position and arguments, and you can find it all on their website. In particular, I found myself recently reading their Visibly Different, a briefing paper setting out the case for separate structures (‘visible differentiation’) for those on either side in the sexuality debate. It is not an agreed statement, but is closely allied to others that are. Aside from the expected reiteration of the general conservative position on sexuality, with which you would expect me to disagree, there is a great deal in it that is problematic. The core argument for differentiation (at 5.3.2-6) is based on a seemingly thin understanding of the Church as merely an association for mutual support among Christians, rather than a gift from God in redemption into which we are all incorporated by baptism, whether we choose it or not. Perhaps because it was first written for internal consumption there also feels to be much that amounts to ‘keeping our end up’ in future debate. And the proposals for provincial arrangements appear to be based on a weak and confused understanding of the history of the provinces within the polity of the Church of England.

    Having said all that, however, I want to recognise that the call for visible differentiation comes from brothers and sisters in Christ who are deeply concerned for their future place in the Church, especially as it now seems likely that a majority of the bishops favour a more supportive position on same-sex relationships, and perhaps even marriage. That concern is amplified, as I hear it, by the experience of the somewhat limited structure offered by the See of Ebbsfleet (formerly Maidstone) and the way in which senior appointments appear to be closed to complementarian evangelicals. There may also be a sense that although the Five Guiding Principles are in place and the traditional Catholic movement shows no signs of fading away (a recent New Directions proudly carried interviews with ordinands and curates born since the women priests vote of 1992), their honoured place is undoubtedly in something of a small corner.

    Proposals for differentiation do, however, tend to meet instinctive hostility from many, including bishops, because they seem to offer a pick-and-mix ecclesiology, and to undermine the Church of England’s catholic (in the sense of universal) understanding of its mission – a Christian Presence in Every Place by means of the parish system under dioceses. So, because I am also an enthusiast for ecclesiastical law, I found myself wondering if I could suggest to all concerned another format for differentiation. Are there ways we work as a church across historic boundaries for particular purposes? Yes. There are Bishop’s Mission Orders.

    BMOs, introduced in the Mission and Pastoral Measure 2011, allow for ministries to be created on a cross-parish, and even cross-diocese basis, with a particular remit for mission. There is an (elaborate) process for consultation, but parishes and local clergy cannot necessarily prevent their being formed, and there is provision in existing law for them to have financial arrangements, enable licensing of ministry and synodical representation. It does not seem legally impossible to me for further provision about the reason for the ministry, such as theological conviction, to be added. I should stress that I am not proposing simply using BMOs as presently constituted – but looking to them as the germ of a model that may help us if we face irreconcilable division. It may also be compatible with the suggestion I have heard from one conservative bishop that border-crossing between existing bishops would be preferable to creating new sees.

    An example may help, so let us think of a city in central England with a diversity of church views which I know enough to describe but from which I am distant enough to be forgiven (please!) for simplifying here: Oxford. In that city the diocesan bishop, Steven Croft, has declared his support, in principle, for same-sex marriage. One parish priest in the city, Vaughan Roberts of St Ebbe’s, has responded in disagreement (see both essays here). It seems very possible that, especially if some actual national change does happen, Mr Roberts will be supported by his PCC in finding it impossible to remain under the authority of his bishop. But because +Steven is gracious and generous, he will want to find a way for Vaughan to flourish all the same. So it would be possible to imagine an Order declaring that St Ebbe’s, whose geographical parish is tiny and not particularly relevant to their ministry, is to have a ministry to all in the city of Oxford who cannot receive the oversight of the Bishop of Oxford, and will instead receive ministry from a nearby bishop acceptable to them, perhaps the Bishop of Guildford, who is known to have ‘sound’ views.

    However, let us be even-handed. It may be that the national decision is one of strict opt-in by individual parishes for (say) blessing same-sex couples, with the bishops all collectively standing aloof, so +Steven remains acceptable to St Ebbe’s. It might be that in Oxford only one parish, perhaps the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, wishes to bless same-sex couples. As I can recall from picturesquely beating the bounds as an undergraduate, their parish is also tiny, and not related to the congregation. So that could result in an Order of the opposite nature, declaring them to be the one parish in the city to which same-sex couples are allowed to resort, and placing them under the oversight of a specially identified liberal bishop, perhaps Alan Wilson of Buckingham.

    I hope it is obvious that I am to some extent thinking aloud, and that in reality much more detail would need to be worked out in every place concerned. In particular, the decisions on where Orders might need to be made and who could make them would need to be very carefully assigned, and it is doubtful that anyone would be happy leaving the sort of absolute power in the hands of diocesan bishops that is conferred by a BMO.  Perhaps a carefully constituted national Commission would be needed. But this might, perhaps, be a way to define the rights and positions of churches and people of different convictions that would have legal security without an ecclesiology that looks like schism in all but name.

  • EvangelicAlly

    by the Revd Jody Stowell, Vicar of St Michael and All Angels, Harrow Weald and member of General Synod

    I became a Christian in the proper evangelical ‘prayed the prayer’ type way when I was 14. And although, looking back, I know that God was not absent for the first 13 years of my life (I always believed in a God, always prayed), that moment was really important in my life with God. In recalling it, I have often said that the story I was told on that night, about salvation and sacrifice and choosing to follow Jesus, was one that I already knew, that resonated with the story already within my soul, and so I said ‘Yes!’

    I didn’t know then that I was not just a Christian, but an Evangelical Christian. Only in my twenties did I start to become aware of the tribal nature of the Church of England, and to meet some Liberal Christians. Contrary to what I’d been led to expect, I discovered that they were, in fact, Christian! I also began my theology degree at Spurgeon’s College as an independent student, with tutors from many denominations. One of my modules was on Spirituality, and it was here that I discovered the wonderful length and breadth of Christian Tradition. Within this tradition, it was clear that I was an Evangelical and that this was part of a whole multi-faceted history.

    Obviously within my Evangelical roots was the idea that ‘homosexuality was wrong.’ I wanted to be a good Christian so, whilst slightly uncomfortable with this idea, I admit that I simply went with it. It didn’t seem to make much of a difference to my own life, so I didn’t have to think about it. As I grew up and as my world expanded, that changed. I needed to connect my theology with my knowledge of who God is and what God is like, and the reality that this affected real people.

    However, at that time exploring the theology of men and women was my priority, as it affected me personally, in my own call to ordination. I found it painful to be ousted from my clan, to be told I wasn’t an Evangelical, to find myself without a home and to feel like I didn’t belong. This still hurts, although with much less sting than it used to, but the experience helps me to understand the emotional processes that are going on, for those who are in the Evangelical tribe, when they even begin to think about standing out for Same-Sex Marriage.  Yes, it is an excuse, but if we do not accept that this is a strong attachment, then we will never be able to have the conversations that encourage and enable people to publicly change their mind.

    It was my exploration of the biblical arguments regarding men and women which took me to places where the conversation was about humanity and our relationships more broadly. There were those in the Evangelical world who closed themselves to the conversation on the ordination of women because they said it was the ‘thin end of the wedge’, calling into question the place of headship in marriage, which is for them, absolute in Scripture. If this could be questioned, then the next thing on the table would be … homosexuality.

    That emotional response to having to think about a possible change in mindset over LGBT+ inclusion sometimes lay at the root of saying ‘no’ to a change of mind on women’s ordination. The argument for women as bishops was often regressed to the question about women’s ordination in its entirety. And, in a way, I understood this anxiety. As I listened to ordained women argue for their place, I often wondered how we could ever be closed to the question of LGBT+ inclusion. It would always be possible for a biblical perspective to be presented that was persuasive. The possibility would never be closed. And this is, of course, the posture of the Christian faith – we are people of revelation and it is really uncomfortable!  In every generation, we must do the wrestling of working out what is good and true and of God and what is ephemera.  But to choose not to wrestle is, I’m afraid, not an option.

    It wasn’t just the reality of revelation and the possibility of persuasive biblical argument that I discovered in exploring a theology of men and women; it was a different reading of an actual biblical story about human relationships, Genesis 2.  My understanding of this story was fundamentally changed by, for example, Phyllis Trible’s God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (1978).

    Where previously this had been delivered as a story of difference, I began to see the meaning as lying in the expression of shared humanity: ‘bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh’. The focus here is on the sameness. Of course, there is also difference. The Human who lies down to sleep is not the same as the human who wakes up: the Dustling (ha’adam) lies down and becomes the man (iysh) and the other human, the woman (ishshah).

    But this particular difference only frames the focus of the story, which is that men and women have the same humanity. It is understandable that the story uses men and women to illustrate the ultimate difference, but this is about making the point about shared humanity more powerful. It does not necessarily create a defining doctrine regarding who can be in relationship with each other in marriage. We are all ‘bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.’ When I stare into the eyes of another human, I must be able to say this; to see in them, myself, and to recognise the image of God in the other. Every other human being is different to me, not just those who are not my biological sex; every human being is, in some sense, ‘other’ to me. This story tells me that I must see myself in the woman in the hijab, the boy with the braids, the enby wheelchair user.

    This story has reframed for me all the other stories in Scripture in which the relationship between men and women is at the forefront. It has given me a basis on which to stand in anyone’s company and be their equal, and them, mine.

    It has meant that, in terms of my own humanity, I am assured of my value and my place. And it has given me the lens through which I see my LGBT+ siblings and niblings: ‘bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.’

     

     

  • Toxic Theology, the Bible and LLF (Living in Love and Faith)*

    by Johanna Stiebert, Professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Leeds; co-director of The Shiloh Project, which explores topics of rape culture, religion and the Bible; co-investigator of the Abuse in Religious Contexts project

    My research focuses on topics of gender and gender-based violence, and on how these intersect with lived religion and the Bible. Much of the abuse variously called spiritual abuse, abusive theology, religious abuse, or abuse in religious contexts, has gender-based dimensions. Adrian Thatcher aptly speaks of “authoritarian masculinism” behind church abuse crises. Child sexual abuse by clergy has been shown to be of colossal dimensions, but while the 2020 publication of LLF contains a highlighted box, or infographic, on the Church of England (CofE) and IICSA (the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse), it recommends that theological reflection on IICSA should be carried out “separately” from LLF, “after the full published findings of IICSA have been carefully assessed” (p. 87). This does not really cut it, given how woefully inadequate CofE response to disclosures of abuse has been and continues to be.

    As for gender-based abuse, the likelihood is that the number of women abused by clergy is considerably higher still than that of children. Spiritual abuse is very frequently linked to gender-based abuse; and cases of religiously-based gender discrimination amount to spiritual abuse, whether or not that label is used.

    What LLF says about gender-based abuse is bound up with its approach to the Bible, identified as the ultimate source of the Church’s inspiration and authority, because “The life of the Church is soaked in the Bible”. Yet it notes that “every word of the Bible has a human history” shaped by “the contexts in which it was first produced and received”. The section “Power and pain” reviews abuse in scripture, identifying Samson and David as both heroes and abusers of their power, while “The sons of Eli abuse their position as priests and sleep with women serving in the tent of meeting (1 Samuel 2.22), in a chilling echo of abuse scandals in the church today”. Narratives of the rape of women and of the threatened rape of men are mentioned: “These stories matter deeply: they speak the truth about a violent world”. This, in turn, “invite[s] us to tell the truth … about the world in which we live and about our experiences within it, about the things we do and the things that are done to us”.

    This sounds like a positive intention – but does it go far enough? I don’t think so. When the Bible is brought into discussions on human sexuality or marriage, LLF ignores the problems of toxic theologies that come with reading some biblical texts at face value.

    Actually, the Bible has curiously little to say on marriage, and what is there is murky. There is no word for “marriage” in the Hebrew Bible; Hebrew does not distinguish between “woman” and “wife,” or “man” and “husband.” There are few clues in the Bible regarding marriage rites, and nothing on such matters as the age at which someone can or should be married. Despite this, a great deal has been said and asserted about “biblical marriage” – that it is monogamous, for life, aimed at procreation, between one man and one woman, and so forth.

    Numbers 5:11-31 is one of a few sustained biblical texts about a married couple and it is a prescriptive text of Torah, or Pentateuch. It sets out what to do when “a spirit of jealousy” (5:14) overcomes a man concerning his wife who may, or may not, have “gone astray” (5:12), which is expanded on as involving another man lying with her for “the lying of seed” (the expression for penetrative sexual intercourse and seminal emission) and this being kept secret, with no witnesses present (5:13). The husband is to take his wife to the priest, bringing offerings. The priest then performs an elaborate ritual to which, seemingly, the woman can only submit. All she says throughout the lengthy description is, “Amen. Amen” (5:22).

    The woman is said to be brought before God in the sanctuary, her hair dishevelled (5:18), and she is bound by an oath before drinking a potion; waters of bitterness with curses dissolved in them, which will either punish her with physical agonies, possibly a miscarriage, or infertility if she has been – in the terms of this passage – “defiled,” or it will declare her “clean” and able to conceive. Towards the close of the passage the woman is described as “under” her husband’s authority. The account closes with the statement that the husband in any case is clear of iniquity, whereas the wife must bear her iniquity. In other words, his “spirit of jealousy” along with the ritual – elaborate, exposing and highly likely to cause psychological distress – is excused, whether the woman has done anything or not. The woman, on the other hand, “must bear her iniquity” whether she has done anything to legitimate her husband’s jealousy or not.

    This is not a text widely cited in the literature expounding how the Bible can inform on matters of marriage – and yet it is one of the longer passages about a married couple. It seems to indicate a high degree of anxiety around women’s sexual continence. There is no more than passing reference to the adulterous man; no preoccupation with who he might be, or with finding him, and no insistence on either his guilt or punishment. All this, along with the absence of a ritual where roles are reversed, where a woman suspects her husband of infidelity, is very telling.

    The potential of this passage for encouraging and legitimating men’s jealousy and the policing of women, as well as its potential for what we nowadays call coercive control, is glaring. What is missing for me, however, is acknowledgement of and outcry at just how toxic this text is – especially in the midst of skyrocketing rates of domestic and intimate partner violence. And it does not help that the impetus for the man’s violence is a “spirit of jealousy” (ruach-qen’ah, with qen’ah sometimes translated “zeal”). “Spirit” and “zeal” or “jealousy” are widely associated with God. God’s ruach hovers over the deep in the creation story (Gen. 1:2) and God’s evil ruach afflicts Saul (1 Sam. 16:16). God’s zeal, meanwhile, motivates him to protect his people, especially in battle (e.g. Isa. 42:13). Not only is the husband guiltless whether his emotion has basis or not, but he is being associated with the deity, putting his authority and control beyond reproach.

    This text from Numbers is not mentioned in LLF, but it constitutes an unambiguous example of a toxic text. If it were to be utilised as a proof-text (which I am certainly not advocating!) then it could justify wives’ submission to their husbands and husbands’ jealousy, coercive control, and violent punishment of their wives. It could justify wives’ submission far more powerfully than Ephesians 5, mentioned in LLF and highlighted in The Peoples’ Bible with a subject box saying, “Professional social-work literature on women suffering domestic abuse showed that one of the anecdotally established indications that a woman was in imminent danger of suffering physical violence was that the man with whom she lived was quoting Paul’s command that women be subject to their husbands.”

    How must Numbers 5 sound to a survivor of domestic abuse and coercive control, given that the abused woman in this text is publicly exposed, and accused, while rendered passive, whereas the man is exonerated and protected by the religious authorities and God himself?

    Yet LLF does not empower such survivors by calling out and explicitly rejecting such toxic texts as harmful. We cannot shy away from the worst the Bible contains and must resist knee-jerk deference to the Bible. Casting out fear and speaking into the silence must be preceded by conscious effort to include and listen to those who do not feel safe and who find scripture and tradition condemns, hurts or silences them. Paying attention to power demands more sensitivity to the damage done by leaders and hierarchies but also more attention to who is named, or active, or vocal in biblical texts. To recall Phyllis Trible’s call for action from over four decades ago, we need insight, repentance and change, because if a dreadful story is alive then “all is not well.”

     

    *This post focuses on one aspect of a presentation to the annual conference of Modern Church.

     

    References/further reading

    Christy Cobb and Eric Vanden Eykel (eds.) (2020) Sex, Violence, and Early Christian Texts (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books).

    Helen Paynter (2020) Telling Terror in Judges 19: Rape and Reparation for the Levite’s Wife (London, New York: Routledge).

    Phyllis Trible (1984) Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Philadelphia: Fortress).

    Curtiss Paul DeYoung, Wilda C. Gafney, Leticia A. Guardiola-Sáenz, George “Tink” Tinker and Frank M. Yamada (eds) (2009) The Peoples’ Bible – NRSV (Minneapolis: Fortress).

     

     

     

  • Marry Me a Little?

    by Helen King, Professor Emerita in Classical Studies at The Open University, member of General Synod and vice-chair of its Gender & Sexuality Group

    A confession: I find the ‘Church as the bride of Christ’ image deeply unhelpful. Yes, it’s in the Bible and yes, it’s part of the tradition, but… really? I’ve been a bride, and had a very happy day, but this imagery doesn’t help me think about God at all. The idea that Jesus, who as far as we know (Da Vinci Code aside) never married while living among us, is somehow marrying, or going to marry, the Church? What is that about? It doesn’t help that I am very much aware of the long history of arranged marriages, of payment of dowries or bride-price, of a woman being used as a pawn in a game of thrones or as a means of cementing an alliance between families lower down the social order. Brides, historically, haven’t been in a freely-chosen relationship. And the bride of Christ imagery can be highly circular, somehow moving back from the cosmic marriage of Christ and the Church to the individual marriages of human beings, where the gendering of the image can then be used to support the idea that that marriages can only be between people of opposite sexes. I also know that the bride of Christ image can be embraced enthusiastically by men; there’s a long history of men seeing themselves as the ‘brides’, and I wrote about that here.

    For me, a far more helpful image of marriage as a deep form of commitment between two people comes from what may sound an improbable source: Stephen Sondheim’s musical Company (1970). For many decades now, theatre has been my main hobby. My tastes are eclectic: Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, new plays… and musicals. Sondheim’s lyrics are perfection, his rhymes clever and his insights into the human condition profound: he wrote that “Nobody goes through life unscathed, and I think if you write about those things, you’re going to touch people.”

    Company is about marriage. I saw the recent gender-swapped production, which made the lead character into a woman (Bobbie) rather than a man (Bobby) and changed one couple into a gay couple (opening number here). The changes worked very well, not least in raising the question of whether being a single woman is still more difficult than being a single man; the ticking of the biological clock featured several times. Last week I watched the 2006 revival, available in full on YouTube here.

    The basic plot? It’s Bobby’s 35th birthday. He’s at the age when all his friends are married or planning to marry, but he isn’t. Why not? He comes to realise that his friends spend time with him to project the failings of their own relationships on to him. He’s the catalyst in their relationships, and they ‘perform’ their marriages when he is with them. Even in that opening number it’s clear that his friends don’t really know him for himself, as they all use different names for him. His relationships with his girlfriends are no deeper.

    Sondheim has explained that it was difficult for him, as a gay man, to write about marriage; in his book Finishing the Hat (2010) he wrote about “The unknown Kingdom of Marriage”. He did in fact marry Jeff Romley, but not until 2017, when Sondheim was in his late 80s. For Company, he found out what marriage was like by asking the songwriter Mary Rodgers. His relationship with her was unusual. In her memoirs, she described how Sondheim’s psychotherapist thought he should have a ‘normal’ relationship, and so Sondheim invited her to move into his New York house as a sort of experimental marriage, but one in which the ‘M’ word was never used. She wrote that they shared a bed and “just lay there… the whole thing was wildly uncomfortable… and yet it kept happening”. The relationship had “All the guilt of sinning with none of the pleasure”. Before this time with Sondheim, Rodgers wrote of relationships that “I was 29. I could hear the party-game music winding down, and all I wanted was a good-enough chair.” And, by the time Sondheim wrote Company, about Bobby reaching 35, Rodgers – with experience of two heterosexual marriages – was a good guide to that unknown kingdom.

    In ‘Marry me a little’, which closes the first half of Company, Bobby announces that “I’m ready! I’m ready now!” But the lyrics make it very clear that he isn’t. For example,

    Marry me a little,

    Do it with a will.

    Make a few demands

    I’m able to fulfill.

    Want me more than others,

    Not exclusively.

    That’s the way it ought to be…

    We’ll look not too deep,

    We’ll go not too far.

    We won’t have to give up a thing,

    We’ll stay who we are.

    In the song ‘Getting married today’, delivered at breakneck speed, Bobby’s friend Amy goes into a blind panic on the morning of her wedding:

    Remember Paul? You know, the man I’m going to marry

    But I’m not, because I wouldn’t ruin anyone

    As wonderful as he is.

    A wedding. What’s a wedding? It’s a prehistoric ritual

    Where everybody promises fidelity forever,

    Which is maybe the most horrifying word I ever heard of,

    Which is followed by a honeymoon, where suddenly he’ll realize

    He’s saddled with a nut, and want to kill me, which he should.

    It’s clear here that the problem is Amy’s self-image: she thinks she can never deserve Paul. Each of these songs is a valuable reflection on marriage, commitment and the sense of worth; on the need to be happy with oneself before committing to another person.

    While the first half closes with ‘Marry me a little’, the final number of the musical sees Bobby commit much further in the song ‘Being alive’. Here, “what starts as a complaint becomes a prayer” as Bobby ‘gets’ what marriage is really about.

    Somebody hold me too close

    Somebody hurt me too deep

    Somebody sit in my chair

    And ruin my sleep

    And make me aware

    Of being alive

    Being alive

    Somebody crowd me with love

    Somebody force me to care

    Somebody make me come through

    I’ll always be there

    As frightened as you

    To help us survive

    Being alive

    His friends comment throughout the song, telling him for instance that “You’ve got so many reasons for not being with someone, but you haven’t one good reason for being alone” and encouraging him:“Come on, you’re on to something, you’re on to something”.

    The profundity of union with another person; the transformation we experience when we prioritise someone else over ourselves. Knowing ourselves as we are known. Why does the Church of England still act as if this can’t be something experienced by people who are of the same sex?

    The equal basis of marriage, with neither partner somehow ‘in charge’ by virtue of their sex, has so many advantages over a model in which a bride is traded for her purity and always at her husband’s command. As PCR2 has just reminded us, some theologies of marriage make it difficult to report abuse within the relationship, leading to “a culture of minimising the seriousness of domestic abuse”, because “the attitude towards domestic abuse [is] linked to the belief around the sanctity of marriage”. Of course, abuse can happen in same-sex marriages too, and there may be other reasons for not wanting to report it, but it’s worth stopping to reflect on whether an equal model of marriage is healthier here.

    The equal model also says something less obvious to our current debates. If we start to think about the relationship between those of us in the Church of England who believe marriage can only be between people of different sexes, and those of us who believe that it can exist for people who are the same sex, and as we wait for the bishops to decide what to bring to the February 2023 General Synod, are we thinking that We won’t have to give up a thing/ We’ll stay who we are?

    Or can we say to each other I’ll always be there/As frightened as you? Perfect love casts out fear: are we capable of dwelling in that love? Can we find a way to be fully alive … together?

  • A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life: A Reprise

    by Revd Dr William Lamb, Vicar of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, an Associate Member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Harris Manchester College

    In 2005, Marilyn McCord Adams, the then Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford, preached a University Sermon at St Mary’s entitled A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.

    Taking as her text Leviticus 19.2, ‘You shall be holy, because I the Lord your God am holy’, Adams lamented the Church of England’s ‘record of foot-dragging equivocation’ in its treatment of LGBTQ+ persons: ‘in my judgment, the stubborn refusal of our Church to engage in imaginative thinking about human sexuality has not only cemented some illogical ideas and bad theology. It has produced patterns of institutional abuse towards gay and lesbian Christian generally and coupled homosexual clergy in particular’.

    Adams was writing in the context of the introduction of civil partnerships for same-sex couples and the decision of the House of Bishops that ‘clergy of the Church of England should not provide services of blessing for those who register a civil partnership’.

    She drew some intriguing parallels with a significant innovation in the Western church at the time of the English Reformation when clergy were allowed to marry. She pointed out that when clerical marriage was introduced in the sixteenth century, this innovation proceeded slowly. Henry VIII was particularly resistant to the idea of clerical marriage. He ordered bishops to conduct secret investigations to identify married clergy to deprive them of their benefices. In 1539, clerical marriage was criminalized. Only gradually did it become more accepted in the Church of England. Adams observed: ‘Given its dicey theological and legal history, you might expect present-day champions of heterosexual marriage to show more sympathy for those whose partnerships now face like challenges.’

    With the introduction of equal marriage in 2013, the House of Bishops issued guidance (which was rather insensitively published on Valentine’s Day 2014), stating that ‘it would not be appropriate conduct for someone in Holy Orders to enter into a same sex marriage, given the need for clergy to model the Church’s teaching in their lives’. A number of clergy, who have married, have faced various forms of disciplinary action – many have been deprived of a licence or permission to officiate. Recent press coverage of the plight of the Revd Mpho Tutu, who was refused permission to officiate at her godfather’s funeral, provides a ready example of the kind of intimidation and harassment suffered by LGBTQ+ clergy.

    In the course of recent decades, the Bishops have continued to adopt a strategy of ‘foot-dragging equivocation’. Noting that the subject of sexuality, with its deeply entrenched views, would best be addressed by a series of Shared Conversations, these discussions led to the publication of a report in January 2017 which recommended no change in the Church’s policy. General Synod refused to take note of this report. In response, the Archbishop of Canterbury spoke of a need for a ‘radical new Christian inclusion’ and suggested a new teaching document about marriage and sexuality. This led to an extended process of further discussion under the title of Living in Love and Faith.

    A substantial report was published, but it made no recommendations at all. While the previous report recommended no change, this report set out to make no recommendations. Of course, the real question is whether there has been any real movement in generating a consensus about where the Spirit of God might be leading the church at this time, but a significant consequence of this detailed and extensive work is that the House of Bishops can no longer claim that there is a need for ‘further study’. That has happened, and now the problem for them is that they have nowhere left to hide.

    My own view is that three things need to happen in the course of the next twelve months: first, the House of Bishops need to accept that their 1991 report, Issues in Human Sexuality, no longer expresses the mind of the church. Although this ‘study document’, produced by the House of Bishops, was quickly advertised as ‘the Church’s teaching’, it was never approved by the General Synod. More recently, Synod has invited the House of Bishops to reflect on the fact that this report alludes positively to forms of conversion therapy, even though Synod has explicitly rejected conversion therapy. The document was drafted before the development of civil partnerships and equal marriage – about which it therefore has absolutely nothing to say. One can no longer take seriously the demand of the House of Bishops that those presented for ordination in the Church of England should abide by Issues. More importantly, casuistical interpretations of this text, sometimes with the encouragement of DDOs and the collusion of Bishops, have not served to create healthy and open discussions around sexuality and ministry. In my view, based on 20 years of working in theological education, this has not served the task of formation well. It has generated a culture of fear and anxiety for LGBTQ+ clergy and lay ministers. We can do better than this.

    Secondly, it is now evident that the Bishops’ current policy of disciplining clergy who have married their same-sex partners is received with a combination of puzzlement and increasing alarm by the general public, including Members of Parliament. At the recent Lambeth Conference, the Archbishop of Canterbury recognised that there were profoundly different perspectives within the Anglican Communion about equal marriage, each the fruit of patient and faithful wrestling with scripture:

    For the large majority of the Anglican Communion the traditional understanding of marriage is something that is understood, accepted and without question, not only by Bishops but their entire Church, and the societies in which they live. For them, to question this teaching is unthinkable, and in many countries would make the church a victim of derision, contempt and even attack. For many churches to change traditional teaching challenges their very existence

    For a minority, we can say almost the same. They have not arrived lightly at their ideas that traditional teaching needs to change. They are not careless about scripture. They do not reject Christ. But they have come to a different view on sexuality after long prayer, deep study and reflection on understandings of human nature. For them, to question this different teaching is unthinkable, and in many countries is making the church a victim of derision, contempt and even attack. For these churches not to change traditional teaching challenges their very existence.

    The Archbishop underlined that all had an honoured place in the life of the Communion. Nevertheless, the measured tone of these words is hard to reconcile with the way in which clergy who have married their same-sex partners have been treated. There is a more general principle at stake here. We need to address the fact that the number of marriages in church has declined significantly over the last fifty years. At a time when more children are born outside marriage than within it in the United Kingdom, how might we reverse that decline? It seems extraordinary that the Bishops believe that they can promote the gift of marriage by investing time and energy in an undignified campaign against a small number of clergy simply for getting married to their same sex partner. The Bishops’ policy is unedifying, unjust and completely counter-productive.

    Finally, although some of its members tell me that the numbers in General Synod will not add up in order to change the marriage canons of the Church of England at this stage, it may be possible to chart a way forward by offering prayers of dedication after a civil marriage. A change in the marriage canons would require legislation and the consent not only of General Synod but also Parliament. The existing form of prayers of dedication after a civil marriage are commended for use by the House of Bishops.

    The Bishops might issue a revised form of prayers. They might even choose to test the mind of Synod in February (although the risk of another public and rancorous argument will hardly be edifying). Personally, I believe in equal marriage, not because I am a liberal, but because I take seriously the traditional teaching of the Church. I believe that faithfulness and commitment matter. They make a difference. In learning to love in the context of a faithful and committed relationship, we learn to love as God loves us: ‘for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health….’

    In the course of the twentieth century, questions of sexual ethics in the life of the Church were dominated by the issue of divorce and remarriage. The Church has made some accommodation for the remarriage of divorcees in recent decades, initially producing An Order of Prayer and Dedication after a Civil Marriage. At the same time, the Bishops insisted that there was no change to the Church’s official teaching that marriage was a lifelong union between a man and a woman. Although this provision has been characterised by a gentle, if untidy, pastoral pragmatism, I suspect that the Bishops might fruitfully adopt a similar strategy within the next twelve months to acknowledge the recent changes to civil marriage.

    This would be a relatively modest development and I am conscious that the overwhelming majority of people in my congregation would expect much more. Practically speaking, so long as the process was freed from the shackles of ecclesiastical lawyers (who occasionally need to be reminded that they are the servants of the church and not its masters), this could probably be achieved with a commendation from the House of Bishops. Such a development has already been adopted in the Church in Wales (in this case with the approval of its Governing Body) without generating much controversy.

    Just as ‘conscience’ clauses exist for ministers and parishes who might object to the remarriage of divorcees, similar clauses could be introduced for ministers and parishes who might object to equal marriage. As the Bishops discern the way forward, I have little doubt that ‘conscience’ will play a vital role in the process of discernment. One of my predecessors as Vicar of the University Church, John Henry Newman (1801-1890), wrote extensively about the importance of conscience. He regarded conscience as the voice of God speaking in the depths of our soul. Famously, in his later years, in a letter to the Duke of Norfolk, he wrote about those ‘extreme cases in which Conscience may come into collision with the word of a Pope’. Newman wrote, ‘if I am obliged to bring religion into after dinner social toasts, I shall drink – to the Pope, if you please – still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards’. Whatever his views about same-sex relationships might have been (and I have no doubt that they would have differed from mine), Newman understood that the conscience imposes an obligation – that personal integrity dictates a fundamental human duty to hear the interior voice of our conscience and to follow its demands. He learned this insight from one of the great moral theologians of the Anglican tradition, Bishop Butler (1692-1752). As the Church finds a way of negotiating the pastoral provision for the blessing of same sex relationships, it will be important for us to keep in view the role of conscience (on both sides of the argument) and to ensure that no-one is made to act against their conscience.

    The Bishops have an unenviable task as they meet over the next few months – and I shall certainly keep them in my prayers. But I will pray that they might begin to show a little courage. At some stage, the Church of England needs to stop talking and start making some decisions. When Professor Adams ended her sermon at St Mary’s almost twenty years ago, she made no bones about her Christian commitment or her love of the Church. My hope is that we can continue to recognise the commitment and faithfulness of one another, even though at times we may disagree:

    I voice these challenges as an insider, who loves the Church because Jesus loves her, because she is the home of the sacraments, and because she is one of the few remaining institutions devoted to rearing people in the knowledge and love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. I intend my critique to be constructive, pressed in the conviction that repentance and reform are good for the body politic as well as the individual soul. I do it also with thanksgiving for those gay and lesbian Christians whose courage, love and commitment is already shaping – without much help and with considerable institutional hindrance – patterns of holy living. Like truth in all its forms, the witness of their integrity will eventually prevail (Marilyn McCord Adams, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life).

     

  • A Peek under the Episcopal Carpet – Past Cases Review 2 and its Blind Spots

    by the Revd. Dr. Brenda Wallace, a former member of General Synod, an active member of Broken Rites, and part of the organising group of the Campaign for Equal Marriage

    Last week, without much fanfare, the Church of England published the Past Cases Review 2. This summarises the thorough investigation into past cases of abuse which have been “swept under the carpet” by church authorities across the country. Time and time again, the need to protect the ‘integrity’ of the organisation has been prioritised over the need to protect the individual victims of abuse.

    The report notes that: ‘The review of the 75,253 files within the scope of PCR2 was conducted by independent reviewers across the dioceses and other church bodies between July 2019 and April 2022. […]  The independent reviewers identified 383 new safeguarding cases relating to children and vulnerable adults’ (p. 11).

    The continued scandal of the sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults in the Church of England has – rightly – received much attention in recent years, as the Church has been forced by IICSA to wash its dirty linen in public and admit to its persistent failures to protect its most vulnerable members. Despite much handwringing by Bishops and Archbishops, and in General Synod, there is still a long way to go, both to address and redress the past failings, and to create a safer church.

    I don’t want to minimise this appalling record of cover-up of the abuse of children and young people within the church. But I want to draw out two areas of abuse which continue to receive little or no acknowledgement in discussions about safeguarding.

    The first is around the whole issue of human sexuality. Sexual orientation is a protected characteristic under equality legislation. Yet the Church has continued to allow discrimination against LGBTIQA+ members. In over 400 pages, the Living in Love and Faith book only mentions safeguarding twice, briefly, and in both cases, in relation to children. There is no comment on the constant abuse, marginalisation, and exclusion that many gay people receive in their churches and in social media. Pressure by some individuals and organisations for churches to be exempt from proposed government legislation to ban conversion therapy highlights the safeguarding issues and the danger that young people are in within certain church traditions, where attempts to ‘cure’ them of their supposedly aberrant sexuality continue to be practised.

    When the LLF discussions were taking place last year, the Campaign for Equal Marriage ran a series of workshops where those sympathetic to our aims could have a conversation within a safe space about the LLF Report. We heard numerous stories of individuals who had not felt that discussions within their Diocese or local church were a safe space for them to be, and that the Pastoral Principles which were supposed to provide protection were frequently ignored. While taking part in the national Safeguarding training required regularly for all licensed clergy, I raised the question of safeguarding for LGBTIQA+ people within church contexts. Those delivering the course looked puzzled that I even raised the question, and quickly replied that it was not part of the training. Of course, all young people and vulnerable adults need to be protected within the church, but an awareness of the particular vulnerability of young LGBTIQA+ people in our churches appears not to feature.

    The PCR2 report briefly mentions bullying (p. 107), quoting from a case of a priest who was persistently bullied by a member of the congregation and was forced out of post, which the church authorities dealt with inadequately. But there is no mention of numerous recent cases where gay, partnered priests were forced by Bishops to relinquish their licences and their posts because of their desire to marry their partners, the alternative being to live in enforced celibacy. The lack of pastoral care for clergy in many such cases, and the attempts of church authorities to suppress complaints, is well documented. This is yet another area where safeguarding is inadequate, and the institution is protected in preference to the individual.

    The second area which I would like to highlight is the issue of domestic abuse within clergy marriages. This does indeed get a mention in the PCR2 report – three whole pages (pp. 102 ff.)! It wryly notes that ‘The number of domestic abuse cases seems low for the size of the organisation and where allegations are made there is an inconsistent approach to investigating and identifying risks. There were cases where no final outcome was recorded, which could suggest that risks were left unmanaged, and no safeguarding was put in place’ (p. 103).

    In this context, I am writing as a member of Broken Rites, a charity providing mutual support when clergy marriages fall apart, founded in 1983 at the initiative of Frank Field MP. We are an ecumenical organisation with members from other UK Church denominations; it’s obvious that this is not just an Anglican issue. Our broken and bruised members, victims of failed clergy marriages, tell time and time again of the way in which the circumstances of their breakdown have been swept under the carpet by church authorities. These spouses, the majority of whom are women, have often suffered decades of physical or emotional abuse, coercive control, or narcissistic behaviour. Others have seen their marriage ripped apart by adulterous relationships by their priest partner. While marriage breakdown is always painful, it is particularly so for clergy spouses who have to leave their home in the vicarage, their own role within the church and its supportive network, and fight for financial support for themselves and any children. Some have to find paid employment for the first time, after many years of faithfully supporting their clergy partner’s parish work. Whatever their situation, they face being forced out of most of their familiar settings to make a fresh start, while recovering from the trauma of an abusive or broken relationship.

    The Church does now make some practical support and financial provision for separated clergy spouses, but the support is patchy and poorly signposted, and inconsistent across the country. In many cases, the offending priest gets to stay in post and in the clergy house, whilst the spouse is the one to move out. Even more patchy is the pastoral and emotional support for the departing spouse. Once again, the Church protects its own and has prioritised the safeguarding of the Church’s reputation rather than the individual. This is not the space to tell my own story, simply to note that I talk from personal experience.

    The stories we hear through Broken Rites are only a few – the stories of women and men who have had the courage to break away, despite the emotional and financial cost. We have no idea how many more continue to suffer because of the pressure to hold on to their marriage vows no matter what, and because of the lack of awareness of the problems by church authorities. Allegations of abuse by their partners have been repeatedly ignored or downplayed.

    PCR2 has taken a peek under the carpet and found a massive pile of debris. But, if you will excuse the mixed metaphor, there’s still an awful lot of muck left in the Augean stable under the episcopal floor-covering.

  • Ordained, Commissioned, Faithful and Eternally Hopeful

    by Revd Andi Chapman, Chaplain in the Royal Air Force, serving in the south of England

    My name is Andi. I am an ordained Church of England (CofE) priest who is currently serving in His Majesty’s Royal Air Force (RAF) and is also in a same-sex Civil Partnership. Some years ago, when I began the journey towards ordination, the person responsible for my academic reference for the Bishops’ Advisory Panel (BAP) wrote: “Andi will be good for the church, but the church won’t be good for him”. At the time, I thought that my university lecturer was having a downer on the church, yet over the past 17 years since that time, what she wrote has in the latter part sadly came true.

    From the time of first receiving ‘the call’ to ordained ministry, I knew the journey would be far from easy.  I expected to encounter some views that could make me uncomfortable. Yet, throughout, from my diocese to the BAP and on to theological college, people were welcoming and promoted inclusion. I was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a rainbow flag-waving gay person, yet if you scratch my surface there would be a rainbow there. I have always been circumspect about ‘coming out’ to people on first encounter, so have applied cautious judgement when meeting new people.

    After three years at Cranmer Hall, I went on to the Lincoln Diocese where again I was welcomed with inclusion and love by the bishops and training incumbent. While not being ‘overtly out’ with the Parish, I did meet my now-husband there and entered a civil partnership which ultimately looked like a scene from the BBC comedy The Vicar of Dibley where the registry office was half clergy from various denominations and half Lincolnshire farm workers! There were a few people in the parish who did struggle with my same-sex relationship, yet for the most part I was supported. That does not mean there was not the pain of rejection from those who did not support us; indeed, some refused to receive communion from me while others left the church building when they saw me. It is important to note that these people were in the minority, and they had been perfectly happy with me being their curate before they knew my situation.

    Then the commissioning came along. I joined the RAF as a chaplain and began my travels around the different stations within the service. It has also taken me to other parts of the world. My aim has always been serving others and showing God’s love through the wonderful, yet maybe apocryphal, saying of St Francis: ‘Preach the gospel always, use words if you must’.

    Yet there is one constant in my story that has remained: that I live in a tri-tension between Church, ministry and love. The Church has remained clear, with Lambeth Resolution 1.10 and Issues in Human Sexuality and its standpoint on same-sex attraction. While I have entered a Civil Partnership, that is as far as I can go. Some years ago, I would have been keen to marry my other half, yet in the interim my views towards marriage have adjusted, and say to me that love does not need to be measured by marriage. Paradoxically, it has been from Christians that I have experienced some of the most disappointing and painful behaviours. Overt homophobic opinions have peppered many of my interactions during my ordained life.

    When I first meet LGBTQ+ church members they often seem surprised that I have found a home within the RAF, as many assume that the Armed Forces would be intolerant towards varying sexualities and gender differences. I can say with confidence that the RAF has given me the space to exercise God’s calling, which primarily involves me living within the community in which I serve. It has given me the securities, inclusion, and scope to work without fear of homophobic attitudes. My role is based around offering pastoral and welfare support to those who serve their country, their families, civil servants, and contractors. The work is predominately diaconal in its output.

    While the RAF has offered me a safe environment to do this role, that does not mean I have been immune from homophobia. On Easter Sunday this year, after the service, one person asked me how my husband was and I answered openly and honestly. I was aware of one retired service person’s reaction to this. I recognised the hostility and tried to prevent any negativity. However, by the following week I had noted that the church numbers were halved. I was not surprised by this, but deep down I did feel a sense of anguish and frustration.

    I am who I am and have to accept the tensions within the doctrine of ‘Church, ministry and love’ for the rest of my life. Yet that is where the need for an unshakeable faith comes into play. Although I know that change is slow, I believe that in my own way I can help precipitate that change, and that I can have value to those in the church, the RAF and my partner.

    Thank you for taking the time to read a little bit about my story. Peace and all good to you!

     

  • Getting Hot under the Collar about Sex

    by Mother Fiona Jack, curate at St.Barnabas, Ealing and member of General Synod

    A motion to urge the government to take action to limit children’s access to pornography was passed with an overwhelming majority at the July sessions of General Synod. There was also a recommendation for programmes to increase awareness of its pernicious influence on the young. There’s currently an Online Safety Bill at Committee stage in Parliament; if passed, it will go some way to bringing in legislation to address the problem. No-one, I imagine, would take issue with this; we heard evidence from professionals, parents and confessors attesting to the damage done when children access age-inappropriate material.

    I have a particular interest in this as, in my other life, I run a qualitative research business. Recently, we conducted a study for a major platform provider on the same topic. We discovered that not only do children access 18+ sites, but they are often more tech-savvy than their parents and can circumvent parental controls because they know their parent’s login and password details. The issue is much broader, however, than pornography. Equally harmful for children is violent content or horror. I remember my own daughter (despite warnings from me) watching a horror film with a 15 rating when she was about 12. She discovered, to her regret, why such films are not recommended for younger children. As well as horror and violence, online gambling and other online purchases can present problems: not only can children manipulate their parents’ email accounts, but they sometimes have their bank and credit card details and can run up large bills through online purchases of – for example – computer games, which also sometimes have violent or other adult content.

    Given this potential broader remit, I was somewhat disturbed that the debate in Synod focussed on pornography, to the exclusion of these other risks to children’s mental health and well-being. Coupled with other debates in Synod and the subsequent furore around same-sex relationships and marriage at the Lambeth Conference, this led me to reflect on why, as a Church, we seem to have sex on the brain. The overriding narrative from the Church seems to be that sexual sin is more serious than any other. What about the many other besetting sins of our age? Why don’t we hear much about pride, greed, envy or anger?

    I would argue – and I don’t think this is particularly contentious – that the underlying message of the Gospels is love. We hear plenty about agape love, certainly, the kind of selfless love a parent has for their child or the love God has for us. In the Church, we’re all comfortable with this kind of love. Love is OK as long as it’s pure and spiritual, right?

    There’s also the eros kind of love though, as so breathtakingly portrayed in the Song of Songs. What is it about the eros kind of love that makes some people in the Church get so hot under the collar? Being embodied is part of our identity – we are not built or intended to be pure spirit either on this or the other side of the grave – have you noticed how nobody talks about the resurrection of the body these days? We interact in the world for good or ill with our bodies. In a lecture entitled “Towards a Christian Sexual ethic for the 21st century”, the Revd Dr Carla Grosch-Miller pointed out quite rightly that the only function of the female clitoris is pleasure. If we believe we are fearfully and wonderfully made by our Creator, then we can only assume that enjoyment of sex was part of God’s plan for women in the first place. And for how many centuries have women who have enjoyed sex been thought of as whores – not to mention the cultures which still practise FGM for this very reason?

    There can be no more beautiful expression of love than the joy of sexual union between two people who love each other in the context of a committed relationship – and that’s equally true for heterosexual and homosexual couples. If we theologise sex into something shameful and sinful, then we deny a fundamental part of what it is to be human, and life becomes beige not red-blooded. In the words of the Song of Songs: ‘Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it’. If we are fortunate enough to find this kind of love in our lives, we might find in it a window into the love of God which is both passionate and fervent, full of desire and longing, eros as well as agape. Sadly, we are taught not to want certain things or certain people: we don’t choose who we love – how much easier would life be if that were the case?

    Going back to our starting point, our children must be protected from all kinds of harm online, not just pornography. Over-emphasis on sexual sin can make us look like people for whom it is always Lent and never Easter (Pope Francis) or like Narnia without Aslan where it’s always winter and never Christmas. Here’s a radical thought: instead of disapproving attitudes and a tone of moral outrage towards the secular world and our fellow Christians, what if the Church were to send a message of understanding and encouragement, a message that speaks of joy and hope even in the midst of suffering? Perhaps then we’d be following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.

     

  • What is Marriage? Living in Love and Faith… and Denial

    by Rachel Starr, tutor at The Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education, Birmingham

    As someone shaped by Methodist tradition, it has been an interesting experience engaging with Living in Love and Faith (2020). As you may know, the Methodist Church in Britain has spent the past few years debating its own report on marriage and relationships, God in Love Unites Us (2019). There are some similarities, and of course many differences, between the two reports. Both in their own way seek to reflect the changing social context from which and into which they speak. And yet there is little acknowledgement of how church teaching around marriage and relationships has had a limiting and sometimes deadly impact on women and other marginalized groups throughout the centuries.

    My own study of theologies of marriage began while living in Argentina. It was there that I began to see how the everyday violence that many women (and some men) experience within the context of intimate relationships, was legitimated by dominant church teaching around marriage and gender relationships. Living and studying alongside Latin American women theologians and activists helped me to see the everyday violence that occurs in homes, on the streets, and in other contexts. Many of our interactions, structures and institutions are formed and maintained through violence. Such violence may not be obvious at first, but once seen it is difficult to ignore.

    Living in Love and Faith presents an idealized view of marriage, which fails to account for problems perpetuated by Christian teaching on marriage. As one example, the document makes reference to prophetic descriptions of the covenant as a marriage, but does not acknowledge the violence of this metaphor and how it has been used to justify domestic violence over the centuries. This despite decades-long discussion of the violence of these texts by scholars such as Renita Weems.

    To read either Living in Love and Faith or God in Love Unites Us is to be presented with a view of marriage as a vocation, over which churches are divided as to who can be called and who is able to benefit from the gift of marriage. But what if marriage was less of a gift and more of a problem? Of course, marriage can offer stability and friendship, as well as significant social and financial benefits. But some studies suggest that women who marry have a lower life expectancy than single women, whereas men who marry have a higher life expectancy than single men. Such studies suggest that for women marriage is, at a very basic level, life-limiting.

    My concern with how marriage is presented in Living in Love and Faith is that the negative impact marriage can have on women is not acknowledged. While the report does make mention of domestic violence, it seeks to contain what is an everyday reality for one in three women worldwide by literally ‘containing’ the brief discussion of domestic violence (written by myself) in a text box. As such it does not inform the wider discussion of marriage.

    In my own work, Reimagining theologies of marriage in contexts of domestic violence (2018), I explore Augustine’s notion of the good of marriage. Augustine proposed that marriage should be valued because it can generate fidelity, children and lasting union, a view which continues to shape the church’s understanding of the purpose of marriage. In contrast, I suggest that a good marriage is one that is concerned with the bodily wellbeing of both partners, and that contributes to the positive transformation of the wider community. The need for marriage to be life-giving for those both within and beyond it is reflected in Willie James Jennings’ criticism of what he sees as the church’s obsession with married couples. In his commentary on Acts, Jennings argues that for a marriage to be good, it must locate the couple in the wider community, so that there is a shared sense of purpose and distribution of resources. Jennings’ words came to mind recently when I read about the marriage of actor Sophia Bush and social entrepreneur Grant Hughes which took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 2022. The couple designed their marriage celebrations around their commitment to social justice, inviting guests to spend time with local activists and artists, all the time asking how their marriage might generate more sustainable, equal and inclusive ways of living.

    In Reimagining Marriage, I look also at two models of marriage which dominant western Christian traditions: marriage as covenant and marriage as sacrament. Both of these are present within Living in Love and Faith and God in Love Unites Us. Yet neither report critically assesses these models or acknowledges their limitations. To summarise from my own research: the covenantal model is marked by exclusion, inequality and violence; and the sacramental model encourages self-sacrifice and limits access to divorce.

    While I recognise the importance of equal access to marriage, I wonder whether it is really the goal many perceive it to be. Is marriage unavoidably problematic, a relationship built on inequality, restriction and control?

    The new Methodist service of marriage, designed for the celebration of marriage between any two people, is a hopeful sign that marriage can be reimagined in more equal ways. The marriage party enter the church together; and since the couple is non-gendered, there are no assumptions about who speaks first.

    Alongside more equal forms of marriage, I suggest that marriage should be reimagined as a place of grace, in which bodies are honoured, everyday struggles are acknowledged, and new more just and equal ways of relating are anticipated. Rather than describing marriage as a sacrament or covenant, perhaps a more helpful, inviting image for today is that proposed by the medieval English theologian Aelred of Rievaulx, who described marriage as a rickety boat, which takes constant work to keep afloat, and which, if it is to survive, must be focused on the common good.