Marriage is under threat, we hear from some church leaders.
Not
by heterosexuals with an ever-increasing divorce rate, but by gay and
lesbian people who want to express their religious faith in their civil
partnership ceremonies.
Some leaders in my own church, the Church
of England, as well as the Roman Catholic church have described this as
an assault on religious liberty – and no doubt there is an aggressive
secularist agenda to embarrass the churches, though aggressive
secularists should note that we are pretty good at doing that ourselves
without their help.
Indeed, the religious liberty defence has a
patronising and hollow ring to it when Quakers and Reform Jews are asking precisely for the liberty to register and bless civil partnerships
in their own places of worship.
They do not need Anglican or Roman
Catholic bishops to "save them from themselves" – especially since both
our churches have a shameful history of persecuting these very same
faith groups.
So why does the liberty to introduce God into civil
partnership ceremonies devalue marriage?
It would appear that there just
isn't enough of God to go around.
One cannot, apparently, honour and
bless one pattern of living a faithful and committed life, without
somehow devaluing another.
It is the theological equivalent of printing
too much money.
Western Christianity
has been here before. Prior to the Reformation, marriage was the option
for the spiritual "also rans": serious Christians showed just how
serious they were by committing to various forms of monasticism, or the
"religious life" (the term itself is very revealing).
Aspects of the
ceremonies of profession to the religious life had, and have, parallels
with the marriage service; for example, women religious wear a ring to
show they are married to Christ.
This is why Martin Luther came so to
despise it – with all the zeal of an ex-monk married to an ex-nun who
discovered sex and marriage in middle age.
The "lifestyle" of these
religious, according to Luther, undermined marriage by providing another
form of commitment which "devalued" it.
"Married couples used to think that their being tied to each other was more a custom than an ordinance of God," claimed Luther in his Table Talk
– that is until he had sent packing marriage's great rival, the
religious life.
When the religious life in the Church of England,
pulverised at the Reformation, came back into its corporate life in the
middle of the 19th century, many Victorian Anglicans saw it precisely in
the same way: as a rival to marriage because it offered another
sanctified, or blessed, way of Christian living.
It introduced an
element of "competition" into a spiritual monopoly.
The revival of
the religious life in Anglicanism, and the honoured place it now has,
goes to show how we can as a church change our mind and rectify our
mistakes.
It also goes to show that there really is enough of God to go
around; that different ways of faithful living do not compete with each
other but add to the enrichment of the whole.
Gay and lesbian people of
faith actually want God's blessing at an important time of public
commitment.
So much for aggressive secularism.
Stability, love,
faithfulness, commitment: these are the things in human relating that
matter and the things the Church of England should be doing its best not
to disparage or demonise but to foster and celebrate – in short, to
bless.
There really is enough of God to go around.