2 thoughts on “Marriage task force calls for gender-neutral language in marriage canon – Episcopal Church”

1. This is the first report of the twenty-first century. Unlike their counterparts in the Church of Scotland and the Church of England, members of the Episcopal Church’s Task Force on the Study of Marriage have similar views on same-sex marriage (SSM). Because of this, their collective energies have gone, not to exploring a complex conflict among themselves,* nor to acquainting themselves with what homosexuality is like, but to preparing for a church-wide conversation on the meaning and future of ‘marriage’ as SSM fast becomes the law of the land.** According to the Task Force’s essays, that conversation can include the biblical and theological rationale for marriage grounded in love rather than biology, but it should also consider further change to achieve the full purpose of companionship in Christ. Indeed, the Task Force requests reauthorisation and funding to finish the job.

   The dots drawn in their several essays connect around the idea that, insofar as ‘marriage’ is Christian,*** it is a discipline of the Church that has assumed varied forms down the centuries (Essay 3) and can be evaluated in any given time by its actual success in supporting life in Christ (Essay 1). By that criterion, the Task Force finds the present American practice inadequate on several counts, even where SSM is both licit and blessed. Precisely because they have seen marriage as a primordial force of nature, churches have not recently taken responsibility to construct appropriate local forms (Essay 3). The spiritual discipline appropriate to a personal ‘vocation’ of sacrificial love across differences is not widely taught, and churches have offered little companionship to those not so called **** (Essay 2). Brief weddings are not experienced as the ‘liminal’ rites that should mark a change of life-state grounded in baptism (Essay 4). The marriage canon has not enjoyed consensus support in living memory (Essay 5). The propriety of clergy acting as agents of the state when administering a discipline of the Church has been questioned (Essay 6). The prevalence and respect for marriage in American society is declining, perhaps because it ill-fits contemporary life (Essay 7). Anglicans on both sides of the pond are set to begin some conversations on marriage in the near future, but the agendas being set for them seem rather different.

   Reading these essays, I often wondered how experts close to the village would reply to them, or even make use of them from a different perspective. It is hard to imagine Tom Wright agreeing to a distinction between ‘marriage’ and ‘matrimony’ imposed on the NT, but what concrete argument would he make against it? Would Oliver O’Donovan agree that marriage is a vocation and therefore not a presumptive norm for Christians? How would he advise clergy with scruples against marrying Christians as agents of the state? How might Alistair McGrath both confirm and correct the panel’s rather good history of marriage from late antiquity to the present? I confess that I have no idea who the present evangelical experts on ritual process, canon law, or the sociology of marriage might be. Were evangelicals to give themselves a like scope to draw dots and discuss them, we might then connect them in a better practise. As it is, experimentation with alternative norms for courtship and marriage has been bubbling among American evangelicals for a generation, and emerging Anglicans here have stressed pastoral support for important life decisions in a way that anticipates some of the Task Force’s concerns.

   My mentor in neuroscience once pointed out that many small problems in science evade solution until we know enough to turn them into the big problems that lead us to discover big principles. The Task Force has not figured out how to give pastoral care to same-sex couples whilst reminding them about the Six Texts. Instead, it has proposed a deep redefinition of marriage itself that is meant to address more than the present vogue for SSM. In so doing, it has implicitly argued that the status quo that the ‘conserving’ seek to conserve exists mainly in our own minds, and that a credible reply to their own plan is not nostalgia for what we have lost but a superior counterplan for the future. Albeit from a very different perspective, such a counterplan might someday be offered.

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   * Thus far, a footnote acknowledging the Pilling Report is the only reference that I have found to ‘conserving’ Anglicans anywhere who oppose church blessings of SSM.

   ** The vast majority of Americans live in the 36 states that presently register SSM. This summer, the US Supreme Court is widely expected to rule against the constitutionality of bans on SSM in the constitutions of the other states.

   *** The use of scripture in this report is matter for another post, but one hermeneutical implication of the Task Force’s constructivist view of relationships is worth noting. Distinguishing ‘marriage’ as a life committed to a companion in Christ from ‘matrimony’ as a biological institution ubiquitous among human beings generally, the Task Force tends to read such NT passages as Ephesians 5 as witnesses to ‘marriage.’

   **** On this, the Task Force quote David Runcorn’s appendix to the Pilling Report with warm approval.

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2. Skipping the eight legislative pages, one finds an introduction and seven essays on these topics–

   (1) A Biblical and Theological Framework for Thinking about Marriage. p 13.
   (2) Christian Marriage as Vocation. p 32.
   (3) A History of Christian Marriage. p 45.
   (4) Marriage as a Rite of Passage. p 64.
   (5) The Marriage Canon: History and Critique. p 70.
   (6) Agents of the State: A Question for Discernment. p 85.
   (7) Changing Trends and Norms in Marriages. p 88.

   With respect to SSM, Essay 1 draws four conclusions–

   “The first is that when our criteria for a holy marriage are based upon the moral values of self-offering love, our conclusion is that same-sex couples are as capable of a holy marriage as are different-sex couples. Second, the essential quality of marital unity in difference outlined previously can be present for same-sex couples in ways other than the often-cited “complementarity” of different-sex couples. Third, ‘it is not in the sex difference, or in sex itself (whether understood as the sex of the bodies involved or the sexual act) that moral value lies,’ since moral value is determined by ‘the context and relationship of the actors,’ rather than by actions alone. And last, the clear expectations that General Convention resolution 2000-D039 set forth for any committed lifelong relationship, including same-sex couples, are seen as central to our understanding of the very nature of marriage and its vows.”

   But the report as a whole is a rationale, not so much for SSM, as for a contemporary redefinition of all marriage that has SSM as one of its features. One must read all seven of the essays to understand the report’s case for that adventure of redefinition. And so I shall.

   https://extranet.generalconvention.org/staff/files/download/12485

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