Jesus’ presence at a wedding party initially seems unremarkable - he simply responded to an invitation. When the celebration was about to be cut short by the lack of wine, he was at first reluctant to help, saying “My time has not yet come”. But before long, an unfeasible amount of washing-water had been turned into fine drink in an act of generous, almost reckless liberality. An unplanned moment revealed him as an agent of his Father’s blessing.
In our parish tonight, almost on our doorstep, there’s going to be another wedding party. Peter McGraith and David Cabreza will begin one of the country’s first same-sex marriages in the Council Chamber at Islington Town Hall.
I don’t know Peter or David and I haven’t been invited to their wedding. But human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has issued an invitation on his website, for people to celebrate outside in Upper Street from 11pm, with rainbow flags, streamers, whistles, sparklers, vuvuzelas and flowers. It sounds like it’s going to be a huge party.
This nicely illustrates the predicament that vicars like me find ourselves in.
The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 comes into force tomorrow and soon same-sex marriages won’t be a novelty, they’ll simply be facts of public life. The Act itself prevents the celebration of same-sex marriages in the Church of England. The House of Bishops has made it clear that clergy may not provide services of blessing, since the Christian understanding of marriage remains that it is between one man and one woman.
I take the discipline of the Church seriously. After all, my parish ministry isn’t mine alone. It belongs to Jesus Christ, to the worldwide Church and to the Church of England. It also belongs to my bishop, with whom it is shared and by whom it is licensed. Like all licensed clergy, I have taken an oath of obedience. I will abide by the rules as they are and I won't be conducting blessings of same-sex marriages.
But still the question remains. What should I do tonight, when the streets of our parish are teeming with people celebrating the momentous introduction of equal marriage?
I have read the recent Pilling Report, and many of the other studies on homosexuality, which describe the wide range of views in the Church of England. We won’t ever find a clever theoretical settlement on this issue that finally resolves all debate.
Things change at midnight. The Church held out for the conventional understanding of marriage. It put its case, and lost. There is absolutely no prospect of reversing the law. So the manner of our theology must change. Instead of analysis in the abstract, we are required to do theology in the moment, in the local context with all its complexity.
This is always the best place for theology and it’s one reason that the parish system is a treasure of the Church of England. The parish system means that we vicars can’t pretend about the world as it is. We can’t lock the doors of our buildings and do our theology in laboratory conditions. We can’t be content to think in the abstract about idealized lives. Nor can we settle for recruiting a congregation with narrow interests or to build a community in our own image. God calls us out, into the world, among it all and to seek him and his Kingdom there.
We must seek to understand scripture and to apply our faith among the lives that are lived in the streets outside the church. Our theology and our pastoral practice must always be adequate for the parish. Or else they're not adequate at all.
Throughout Jesus' itinerant ministry in the years that followed that rather awkward moment at the wedding in Cana, he was confronted with more real-life situations. So the parish clergy of the Church of England find ourselves regularly in moments where some kind of pastoral response is required of us. The reality is that our ministries will now take place in a society which includes the fact of same-sex marriage. We'll need to work out responses that are, at the very least, welcoming and accepting.
For me tonight with a party on our doorstep it's rather challenging. Should I respond by staying in and going to bed early, or by going out and seeing what’s happening outside?
I've decided to go outside. I can't pray God's blessing on Peter and David as they begin their marriage. But I can show my support for their commitment and wish them well.
My personal preference has always been to do theology from the ground up, working with both context and scripture, meeting real people who live real lives and making a space for hope, knowledge of God, mercy and peace, grace and truth. So I’m relieved that the phase of campaigning and theorising is over. Christianity is much better at dealing with facts, rather than hypotheses. And now the facts include equal marriage.
I’m open to more learning in this and I've been glad to learn from people with whom I disagree, as well as those who share my thoughts. My personal views began to change long ago to be more inclusive and accepting. I’m certain that our church will remain open to all people, regardless of their sexuality and lifestyle. We will do our best to be non-judgemental and to be generous in our invitations. We will remain an “open evangelical” church. Open to God in his life-giving word and open to the real lives of those around us.
The Revd Simon Harvey is Vicar of St Mary, Islington, in the Diocese of London. His interests include the development of evangelical parochial ministry that is responsive to context.
A deep question is– what will evangelicals in the Church of England conclude that relationships registered under the Marriage Acts mean to those in them and to God? Some do seem anxious to accept ‘fidelity’ as the sole scriptural basis for all of them; others think that the ‘union of a man and a woman’ have further significance; a few see still further significance in relationships ‘open to procreation.’ We don’t know the numbers– perhaps a survey would be enlightening? More importantly, we may not know what the actual states of life behind these three phrases require of clergy.
Andrew Goddard (and an associate I don’t recall; sorry) developed a fairly logical protocol for evangelical vicars in the Evangelical Alliance. I admired the craftsmanship that produced it, and imagine that it could help some clergy to think through their own views, but thought that it had an ‘antiseptic’ motivation that might not help a vicar to understand or help fallible people stumbling over all three of the understandings above. (Perhaps there has been noteworthy experience with it in the past year?)
For example, nothing prevents Alice from marrying Beth with a strong, unspoken, and unilateral expectation of having a child. To Alice, “that’s what marriage is obviously for,” and Beth should work with her to achieve this desire. To Beth, lesbian identity means “precisely” love in freedom from all that, and Alice’s longing raises doubts about the stability of her attraction, if not her fidelity. I have seen that basic scenario unfold here in the States in these ways–
(a) Alice had an affair with a man and left Beth. She did have a child. She did not marry the father.
(b) Alice and Beth used sperm from a donor to fertilise an egg from Alice that was implanted in Beth who carried the baby to term. Then Alice left Beth alone with the baby.
(c) Alice carried Beth’s fertilised and implanted egg to term. They are still together.
(d) Alice and Beth debated the issue from time to time, and finally split on friendly terms.
(e) Alice had already had a baby with Chris, and married Beth, who resents Chris’s priority.
Other things might have happened instead, of course. In all five cases, ideas of ‘marriage’ seem to have shaped the relationship after the ceremony. All Alices and Beths were acting from what they took to be stable convictions at the times they had them. How might a vicar minister to relationships like these?
Please note that the vicar’s ‘conserving’ or ‘including’ stance was probably not a factor in the life decisions of Alice, Beth, or Chris. It may possibly have affected their willingness to talk to clergy.
Thinking of David Gilette’s excellent point about ordinands, what scriptural teaching about scenarios like this are they offering at Wycliffe House, Oak Hill, St Johns, etc?
Indeed, if any ordinands are reading this, what do you think about them?
One of the comments in Newwatch expressed the opinion that Fulcrum should retain a wholly conservative view on same sex relationships and equal marriage and that the present leadership of Fiulcrum are all of the more conservative position.
If this is so then Fulcrum no longer represents the breadth of evangelical opinion on this issue. There are clearly a good number who, in the last decade or so have looked at the scriptures afresh in the light of faithful gay relationships and have come to a different understanding. There is clearly no accurate way at the moment of quantifying how great has been the change in evangelical opinion on this issue but my best guess would be that, amongst clergy – between 10 and 20% and higher among today’s ordinands. Among evangelical young people in general the evidence suggests that the figure may even be in the majority. I readily admit that I cannot substantiate these figures but they certainly reflect the opinions among those I know well. However, my only reason for travelling down this silly road of guessing numbers is to suggest that if Fulcrum continues to acknowledge only the conservative view as the evangelical view it will not be reflecting anything like a diverse enough position for evangelicalism as a whole.
Two comments, one from myself and one from Roger Hurding, posted today in the comments on the “Where are we and where are we going?” thread, pick up and endorse the point made by David above.
David, your ‘silly game of numbers’ is actually an important one, and not only for the question how closely Fulcrum represents evangelical opinion on SSM. Graham Kings’s delightful typology of river, canal, and rapids seems ripe for quantification. George Day’s question about the composition and strength of the support for older evangelical organisations requires quantitative data. And speaking of ‘younger evangelicals,’ Roger Hurding has on past occasions discussed important differences between the generations that should be gauged with care. So it is not just ‘how many think what?’ that matters, but the way answers to that change with age, background, location, etc. Information on that that would extend the usefulness of the data already gathered by the Church of England.
Such numbers are not just facts for debaters, but are tools for the evangelical community’s life and work. Now that Surveymonkey and other tools automate data collection, useful data sets should not be as scarce as they seem to be. Thank you for your foray into ‘data journalism.’ I hope that others follow your lead.
We have to work out and do the will of God, as it is written in His Word, which is our standard to live and preach by.
God’s glory has to be ‘more’ than the desires of the flesh for the sake of the whole body in Christ, which priests must protect. He is our ‘incorruptible God’ and that is how He must remain. It’s a challenge to come up against the laws of the land, but the church has to remain a holy place that’s governed by Christ’s standard.
Marriage between a man and woman is proscriptive and good for the whole of society, regardless of who the individual is. This is not the ‘ victory ‘ gay activists think they have, they have lashed out at Christ’s flesh in the name of justice. The same activists hold Gay Pride rallies, encourage promiscuity and convince people that they are ‘victims’ and that their persecutor is the church or even God Himself.
Marriage between a man and woman is a divine institution. Its foundations have not been rooted in bureaucratic rules, regulations and individual rights. Its roots are in God’s heart for His people and their children’s well-being.
The further people distance themselves from God the more likely priests will come into conflict with the ways of the world and have to stand firm. Hence, priests who sit on the fence on this issue will become a part of their own problem in the end. The activists have not finished, now they have been handed the whip and blessed by the arm of the law, they ‘will’ seek out a victim.(imho)
Esteemed editors– Thank you for promoting Simon’s refreshingly concrete post to full article-hood.
Peter– Thank you for posting. George is right. Fulcrum do favour dialogue, sometimes edgy dialogue, and have a strong sense of fair play, but they appear to have been personally active only on the ‘conserving’ side of this question.
George– Thank you for your replies. Case-wise thinking like Simon’s may help o identify concerns that slip past the embattled ideologies. There are not only devils but angels in details. The next consensus (or more tractable dissensus) will be built around them. Digital media such as this can play a role in that.
Personally, I do not begrudge conservatives their certitudes; I have a few most conservative certitudes of my own. And as the questions change, so may the alliances among those answering them. But defending (or opposing) what has been is not discerning what can and should be.
Humanly speaking, these tense lib-con standoffs often come down to a sort of trade of comfort for joy. What can positively be done to advance, not just protect, some concern of the losing side?
My guess– it is no more than that– is that any team would find it difficult to find persons with the right balance of principle and pragmatism in a matter about which opinion is so polarised into campaigning sides. Moreover, you are looking on the winning side, and alas, winners are less reflective than losers. For now, those who support SSM are mainly waiting for everyone to give in to them, which turns everything into a test of wills, which understandably inspires posts like Peter’s, which, with charity for all, leaves us nowhere.
For now, those caught in the middle like Simon are most interesting. Thank you for flagging his post with your comments.
It may be worth pointing out that this article first appeared on the Newswatch page and has gained several comments there.