“Enlargement”: a Biblical and Theological Case for Equal Marriage

This blog first appeared as an article on the Campaign for Equal Marriage in the Church of England website.

What is the intellectual basis of equal marriage as we campaign for its adoption in the Church of England?

As far as the law is concerned, many people are content to argue for equal marriage on the basis of human rights. Discrimination of any kind subverts the principles of justice, equality and inclusion. So in marriage as in everything else, citizens should be treated in the same way, without distinction. The same goes for civil partnerships. Both should be open to all, regardless of their sexual orientation. And this is the direction of travel across the entire nation, including Northern Ireland following this week’s welcome vote in Parliament to bring marriage law there into line with the rest of the UK.

The exemptions provided under the equal marriage legislation for religious institutions, including the Church of England, are in my view extremely unfortunate. Churches should be beacons of equality and inclusion, not obstacles to it. I do not remember that the Church of England’s governing body, the General Synod, was consulted on this point. But I did hear bishops and others comment as follows. The equal marriage legislation is established purely on secular, rights-based assumptions, not on theology or ethics. Its premise is utilitarian, “the greatest good for the greatest number” rather than any rigorous understanding of what marriage really means. The church should therefore protect the theological principles on which marriage is founded in the Christian tradition. Human rights don’t come into it.

The common idea that a rights-based ethics is sub-theological needs challenging. I want to argue that its origins lie in the Hebrew Bible, whose teaching that we must love our neighbour as ourselves is affirmed by Jesus as the second of the two great commandments. That teaching itself goes back to the equality that belongs to human beings in creation. It is the divine image in humanity that is the theological basis for treating all people equally and affirming that all have the same rights before God and one another. I think there is a good case for claiming that the emphasis in the gospels is on defending other people’s rights rather than my own. That seems to me to be the thrust of the prophets’ call for justice. But it’s telling that the Enlightenment principles of “liberty, equality and fraternity”, and of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” emerged in Christian civilisations that had been schooled in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. 

If the idea of an “inclusive church” in which equal marriage, the ordination of women and a Christianity that transcends differences of ethnicity, culture, sexuality, education and class flows out of Enlightenment principles, that is theological enough for me. At the same time, it’s important that we should examine the individual aspects of inclusive Christianity so as to understand how they sit in relation to one another and to the tradition as a whole. Let me explore equal marriage in this way. 

Those who oppose equal marriage often do so on the grounds that marriage is heterosexual by definition, the union of a man and woman. This is of course how it has traditionally been understood. The Bible does not know of same-sex marriage (though it does recognise at least one covenanted same-sex relationship, that of David and Jonathan, though the text is reticent as to the exact nature of their friendship). 

But the question of whether heterosexuality is of the essence of marriage can’t be answered by appealing to the history of the institution. It all depends on whether by definition it is intrinsically capable or incapable of being “enlarged” in its scope. At first sight, the Bible appears to rule this out according to the aetiology of marriage in the creation story where the man recognises the woman as “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” and “leaves his father and his mother, and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Genesis 2.18-25). 

But what if the point of this story is not to make a statement about gender complementarity so much as about the union of two human beings in a covenant of loyalty and fidelity? In the Hebrew Bible, “flesh of our flesh” is synonymous with the closest of relationships that it is possible to have, whether through kinship or affinity. “It is not good that the man should be alone.” The answer to his loneliness is the companionship of another. And it is to this “other” that the pledge of faithfulness is made. The complementarity of the relationship is, I believe, not, or not only, a matter of gender. It’s about reaching out across the gap that separates every human being from the “other” and recognising in that chosen “other” the deepest possible answer to his or her need of intimacy.  

I’m suggesting that the essence of marriage is the vow of covenanted fidelity. The ceremony, by being contracted before witnesses, affirms the vow and gives it a public character. That makes it the proper business of society. And since modern marriage rites affirm that the primary purpose of marriage is companionate, then enlarging it so as to see it as a union of “others”, whatever their gender, is not at all to compromise its intrinsic nature. On the contrary, it could be argued that equal marriage was always the destiny of this public institution, laying bare its essential character as a companionate publicly covenanted union in which the begetting of children, traditionally its primary purpose, may, but need not necessarily, play a part. 

Christian theology and practice are in fact familiar with this idea of “enlargement”. In the lifetimes of many of us, the Church of England has found it possible to permit the solemnisation of marriages where either or both of the parties is divorced and has a partner still living. If like me you believe that the life-vow is fundamental to the meaning of marriage, then this was actually a very big step for the church to make. This is because the remarriage of divorced people directly raises the status of the vow that lay at the heart of the previous marriage. This isn’t the place to rehearse those difficult arguments. I am simply saying that the church has found a way of acknowledging both that a vow is a vow, and that as facts on the ground, marriages break down and are dissolved. What was unthinkable only a couple of generations ago has happened. The Church of England “enlarged” its understanding of marriage – in some tension with the teaching of St Mark’s Gospel, some might say - so as to allow divorced people to solemnise second or subsequent marriages. And it did this all the while continuing to affirm the sanctity of the marriage vow, including the pledge of lifelong fidelity. 

Equal marriage, then, challenges the church to continue this process of what I’m calling “enlargement”. Indeed, because it does not call into question the character of the lifelong vow of marriage but affirms the fundamental meaning of the covenant, it is to me at least, less problematic than the remarriage of divorcees. Far from subverting the institution, equal marriage strongly affirms it. Which is why I am puzzled that the leadership of the Church of England apparently regards it as subverting marriage rather than, as I see it, placing a massive vote of confidence in it. 

What I am calling “enlargement” is simply one more example of how since earliest times the boundaries of Christian understanding have been stretched both by circumstances and by the inner logic of its own theology. The New Testament debates about circumcision are the template here. One reading of them is to say that the early expansion of the church into the gentile world of the Roman Empire urgently demanded a renegotiation of circumcision as a rite of passage into the covenant community. I conjecture that this force of circumstance came first, this pressure for the inclusion of gentiles into the church. Subsequent theological reflection led to the recognition that this was not only allowable, but required by the logic of a message that proclaimed itself to be good news for all. Where a universal gospel is proclaimed, inclusion is the only possible theological response. 

Which brings me back to where I began, with the love command in the Bible. Universalism and inclusion are ultimately about love: God’s love for all his creatures and for all humanity; and how our love as human beings for one another reflects this. So the tendency of Christian thought and practice to “enlarge” its thought and practice is, I think, a necessary consequence of working out what this truly means in contexts and circumstances so different from those in which the command to love was first given. When difficult (which usually means untested) ethical choices have to be made, situation ethics asks: what is the loving thing to do here? And while the church may often struggle to answer that question well, taking a long time and following many a false trail in the process, it is at least being true to its best self when it recognises where that question comes from. If discernment follows the theological direction of travel enshrined in its charter texts that embody the love command, then we can be hopeful of an outcome that is not only good in itself but has the integrity that comes when a genuine exploration has been undertaken. 

I’d like to think that the Church of England’s current process Living in Love and Faith is a genuine exploration of this kind. Is it capable of contemplating “enlargement” when it comes to same-sex relationships and equal marriage? And if so, will our churches one day not only acknowledge but celebrate what is true for so many of our Christian brothers and sisters, that to love a person of the same sex is to find the “bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh” that Genesis speaks about? And will it not only affirm the goodness of loving same-sex relationships among both laity and clergy, but solemnise them publicly? 

I have no hesitation in saying that that day will come. It would be foolish to imagine that it will happen very soon. The forces of aggressive conservatism in both religion and politics will make sure that this ground continues to be contested for a while yet. Nevertheless, in the arena of personal and social ethics, history is on the side of generosity and inclusion. That is why the Campaign for Equal Marriage in the Church of England will be successful in the end. This blog has, I hope, demonstrated that the campaign is a principled one because its case is built on a solid theological and ethical foundation. Which is why we have every reason for hope. 

The Ordination of Women as Priests - 25 Years On

This is one of a handful of photos that mean more to me than I can say.

It was taken at Coventry Cathedral on 11 May 1994. You will probably guess the occasion: the ordination of the first female priests in the Diocese of Coventry. And what a celebration it was! I've regularly attended glorious liturgy in no fewer than four cathedrals. But I knew on that day that this was a ceremony that would not just live on bathed in a kind of generalised afterglow. I knew that it would be unforgettable in its detail as well. Such as singing "Be still for the Spirit of the Lord is moving in this place" and, for once, truly recognising that she was.

When you are a cathedral precentor, as I was then, you train yourself to know the liturgy in all its particulars, to become familiar with the soul of it, inhabit it from the inside. Even when you have written the rite yourself, as you do on many a special occasion, you still have to learn the grain of it, intuit how it is going to "feel" in the particular liturgical space it's devised for, how the community that gathers together to celebrate is likely to respond to the words and actions, the silences and the music that you have so carefully devised for it.

We all knew that this ordination of women would be a once-for-all event, unrepeatable as a history-making act of worship. For many months I worked on the service with a small planning group of women who were due to be ordained, together with Bishop Simon Barrington-Ward and Director of Ordinands Canon, now Bishop, Mark Bryant. That preparation process was a remarkable experience in itself, both for the joy of looking forward to a great event in the life of the church and of the ordinands and their families, and for the deep sensitivity that was felt towards those who could not accept the validity of their ordination and for whom this ordination day would be one not of joy but of pain. 

I want to pay tribute to one of them in particular, Barbara Baisley who was then chaplain at Warwick University and the Dean of Women's Ministry in the Diocese. She and her husband George had both been students of mine at Salisbury (indeed, her brother Robin taught me English at school). I mention Barbara not only because of the skilled way she led those women through the delicate (and for some, highly controversial) process of becoming priests, but because she died a few years afterwards, long before her time. I also remember that a curate in the Diocese at that time by the name of Justin Welby joined the planning group in order to get a feel for how a major liturgical event is planned in a cathedral. I recall that he had his own gentle wisdom to contribute to the process.

All this was twenty-five years ago. It was in March 1994 that the first female priests were ordained in Bristol Cathedral. For those of us who had long wished and prayed for our church to take this step and had campaigned for it, the outcome of the vote in General Synod on 11 November 1992 was also a night to remember. That day, Armistice Day, is also the birthday of our youngest daughter who was nine that year. So we deferred the family fireworks that year by a few days, and as soon as Archbishop George Carey had announced the result of the vote, and we had taken it in (and shed a few tears of relief), we went out in the garden to light rockets and sparklers to celebrate what felt like a double birthday. 

As (now Archbishop) Justin Welby said this week, the contribution female priests have made to the life of the Church of England has been immeasurable. Women are now occupying every conceivable role in the church as priests: as chaplains and bishops, area deans and archdeacons, incumbents and cathedral deans. We had our ups and downs in the General Synod I was part of when it came to the question of female bishops. I won't say all that is forgotten - we mustn't airbrush out of history or our present experience the pain of those who dissent from these decisions, nor the fact that many of our sister churches have not taken these steps. My first cousin made the journey from Anglican to Roman Catholic priesthood because of the ordination of women as priests, and that made it a family as well as a church matter. Like #Brexit, you feel things in more pointed ways when they intrude upon your personal relationships. (But he and I have always remained good friends and colleagues in ministry, I'm glad to say.)

While I was taking part in that service 25 years ago, I thought back to my own memories of ordination in 1975 and 76. Ordination services have that effect on us who are deacons and priests, and it's a good thing that we're reminded of our ordination vows from time to time (even in retirement). But I had - I have - a very specific memory of the night before I was ordained deacon. Our Bishop (of Oxford - Kenneth Woollcombe) saw each of us for an hour that day. What he said to me would be imprinted on my memory for a lifetime.

The Bishop had led the campaign in General Synod that year in support of the resolution that "there are no theological objections to the ordination of women". He said to me: "Michael, you know what the Synod has resolved this year. From now on, everyone who is ordained as a deacon and thereby becomes an officer of the Church of England understands that this is the publicly stated position of our church. You must not say that the rules were changed during your public ministry. If you can't be content with that, now is the time to step back from receiving holy orders tomorrow." I imagine he said the same to all the ordinands. (But perhaps he thought I might have concerns about male "headship", trained as I was at a conservative evangelical theological college - whose last Principal, Emma Ineson, has just been ordained a bishop!). 

I've often thought back to that interview, and how influential it was, not in coming to a conclusion I'd already embraced, but in having the confidence to speak up for it publicly. It was my first experience of facing the reality of diversity in our church and learning to see it as a gift that enriches and ennobles us all. But I'm also trying to learn what Justin Welby has taught us to see as "good disagreement", how to listen carefully, practise generosity and charity alongside holding deeply to this and other matters of conviction (I'll not mention the B****t word a second time).

The Church of England still has a long way to go before it can claim to be a genuinely diverse institution. In particular, we are a long way from recognising and celebrating committed gay relationships as joyous, God-given and loving, let alone affirming and solemnising same-sex marriage - as we must, I believe, soon. Regular readers of this blog will know that I've tried to stand with my LGBT friends as they find a place of genuine, unreserved acceptance in our church. If I began to discern anywhere how we must all work tirelessly to become a more just, more equal, more caring church, it was at that marvellous ordination service in Coventry in 1994. 

Thank you to the women in the diaconate, priesthood and episcopate with whom it's been, and continues to be, such an inspiration to serve in the public ministry of the church of God. This silver anniversary brings fond memories of past ordained female friends and colleagues "who rejoice with us but on another shore and in a greater light", "those angel faces I have loved long since and lost awhile". And to those ordained women who read these words, congratulations to each one of you. This blog comes with gratitude, admiration, prayers and expectancy for all that is yet to be in the next quarter of a century.

AMDG

*** I want to add a postscript to this blog in the light of Twitter comments it’s received so far. 

One person reminded us that it is too easy to simply celebrate  without acknowledging the cost born mostly by women. An acknowledgment of the pain caused needs to go alongside a celebration of where we have got to. It is too easy to bypass the former. Another added: true, and it still goes on. Until the Institution recognises how the barriers it has imposed inhibit the full flourishing of women’s ordained ministry the cost will continue unjustly.

I responded: Yes. I can see that for all its good intentions, this [my blog] is a man’s perspective who perhaps wants too much for it all to be well. Or wants it prematurely, before real healing has had time to happen? Or doesn’t see the injustices that are still being perpetrated in our church? I wish I’d written more sensitively in the light of this. I’m aware how much this is also true for LGBT clergy in our church. We say we intend to listen and learn from people’s experience but in practice the Church goes on “othering” those who don’t fit its theological template. The recent disinvitation of bishops’ same-sex spouses to the Lambeth Conference was a case in point (the website has now removed that offending parenthesis). Nevertheless I still want the church to rejoice with and for its women who are deacons, priests and bishops, however long the road ahead that we must continue to travel.

Vicky's Book

I've just finished reading Vicky Beeching's memoir Undivided: Coming out, becoming whole, and living free from shame.

It's a remarkable book, and an important one. Vicky is known across the conservative evangelical world as a song-writer and performer. Her songs have been sung in mega-churches in the Bible belt of the USA where she lived and worked for several years. After much personal struggle she accepted her sexuality and came out as a gay woman. She immediately incurred the wrath of the constituency she had served faithfully for so long. It entailed not only a spiritual and emotional crisis but an economic one too, for evangelical Christian music was not only her love but her livelihood.

This book is Vicky's story and her apologia. It will have taken real courage to write, just as it took real courage to come out in the first place. I guess that the journey of coming out almost always entails greater or lesser ordeals, or at least the threat of them. So much depends on how your family, friends and community view same-sex relationships. When you are immersed in the environment of conservative religion, still more when you are a public figure in that world, the hazards are infinitely greater. Here's one response on Vicky's Twitter account today that gives a flavour. Vicky you don’t appreciate how vile, debasing and degrading your vision of Jesus is. The gospel is inclusive of those who hear and respond to the call, turning from their selfish, sinful ways, giving up all for Him. The church is meant to be exclusive, keeping out sin and sinners. I don't quote it with any pleasure. You have to wonder what kind of Christianity that Tweeter is following.

So the first thing I want to do is to salute Vicky's bravery in writing so candidly. She has been subject to shedloads of abuse on social media and in hostile reviews that no-one should have to put up with. This book has been written out of a great deal of personal anguish and pain. Those who don't see human sexuality as Vicky now does need at least to respect the integrity out of which she writes and the personal cost to her of doing so. When we hear another person's story, what we do not do is to rush to judgment as some are doing. Rather, we learn to listen empathically, try to understand what has motivated her, even ask the question, could it be that we need to think again about our assumptions and maybe see things differently?

This is where a narrative approach to personal life can be so illuminating. In the book, we overhear Vicky negotiating the spiritual and theological dimensions of her emerging identity as a gay woman. As a Christian formed within evangelicalism, her integrity necessarily demanded that she take the scriptures with the utmost seriousness, as well as examining her conscience before God. For me, the truth-seeking aspects of her book are among the most moving. In the spiritual tradition, conversio is never a once-for-all decision. It's a lifelong habit of "turning round", re-orientating ourselves to the light and grace of God, always seeking "truth in the inward parts" of ourselves. At its best, this is what the journey of personal discovery and awareness, "coming out" if you like, should mean. Vicky exemplifies this beautifully.

It's not that she makes a strikingly original contribution to the church's understanding of homophile relationships. She doesn't set out to, though as a theologian in her own right, Vicky comments on some of the more contentious biblical texts that are quoted in the debate about homosexuality. She also offers analogies from history that show how the church has at times radically re-evaluated its traditional stances when it comes to, for example, the inclusion of uncircumcised gentiles, the place of the earth in the solar system, slavery, and the role of women in the church's leadership. But the major contribution she makes is to invite us as readers to venture inside Vicky's personal spirituality and thought world. That's a cherished place where we need to tread carefully and respectfully as we consider how to respond. For we are accompanying her on what is possibly the most fraught journey any of us ever have to undertake, that of not only searching for and discovering who we are, but learning how to speak about it before others.

This is what makes Vicky's book more than mere memoir. I want to describe it as a necessary act of witness. That word means pointing to the fundamental truth that belongs to the story we tell. I used the phrase truth-seeking earlier. Witness is about truth-telling. It always has a public aspect to it, the assumption being that where truth is at stake, we bear witness before other people to what we have seen and heard. The lived experience is the thing. No doubt Vicky will have "borne witness" to her Christian faith hundreds of times at the evangelistic events she has taken part in. That's a privileged but often costly thing to do, for it involves declaring who we really are. Now she has had to learn what for her has proved an even more costly way of bearing witness that entails disclosing another, hitherto concealed, dimension of her persona. I come back to her integrity and bravery once again, in being willing to tell us: "this is who I am under God".

But Vicky is doing more than bearing witness to the importance of personal integrity in human life. The book is a plea to all Christians, especially conservative evangelicals, to revisit their attitudes to LGBTQ+ people. The visceral hatred exemplified in some of the interactions quoted by Vicky ought to have no place in any community of faith that wants to live according to New Testament principles. Differences there will always be, "good disagreement" as we are learning to call it. But always with respect, courtesy and above all, charity. We ought to have learned the hard way by now that discrimination is always a sin against the image of God in humanity. The book bears witness to necessity of honouring that truth in the church. We all subscribe to it. But as Vicky makes painfully clear, living out that aspiration is another matter entirely.

What do I take from the book? Two things especially. The first is how damaging it can be for LGBTQ+ people to suppress their identity for fear of what others will think of them. It's entirely understandable, and Vicky's story explains why. But the damage can be extremely hard to put right and can take a lifetime. She writes about the experience of shame in relation to affection and intimacy. The sexual dimension of this is something I understand well from my own formation as a teenager within conservative evangelicalism. But in Vicky's case her denial of her sexuality was also associated with distressing mental and physical illness that required specialist intervention. It's shocking that even in the so-called enlightened societies of the west, there are still suicides among the young due to the shame they feel about their sexuality or the public disapproval they experience. Vicky's book will help young Christian readers conflicted by their own sexuality not only to befriend it but to discover how the vision of radical inclusion as "beautiful, restorative, and life-giving" is truly transformational.

The second thing I take from the book is how urgent it now is for the churches to affirm same-sex relationships publicly and embrace equal marriage. Some have already done so, but not yet the Church of England. I last blogged about this in early 2017. It's not just a question of how we as a church welcome and embrace our LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters and celebrate their covenanted relationships. It's about how we become a genuinely inclusive church that recognises and honours the God-given humanity of every person. I believe that the C of E will in time recognise and celebrate equal marriage among its laity and clergy, just as it came round to accepting contraception and the remarriage of divorced people in the twentieth century. I hope that this time, however, we do better than merely "come round to accepting" same-sex relationships. I hope that we shall want to affirm them generously and gladly. My hunch is that there is now a majority among the active membership of the C of E who want to press for change. Let's hope it happens in our own lifetimes.

Thank you Vicky for your courage and candour in writing, and for the rich gift of your personal and spiritual experience. Thank you for a book that has helped me see things more clearly. You are part of the movement for change in our church. May it happen quickly.

After the Act - 50 Years On

Today marks a big anniversary. On this day in 1967, homosexual activity between consenting male adults in private was no longer criminal. This Act of Parliament is rightly regarded as having made history. It marked a watershed of modern times.

My times, I can say, because I remember it well. If you were an adolescent of seventeen, this highly public debate about sex and sexuality couldn't fail to be of absorbing interest. I hadn't long come out as a Christian, and without understanding much of the theology (or much of human nature, for that matter), I remember being obscurely relieved that Michael Ramsey, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, supported decriminalisation.

As we all know, 1967 did not, to strike a Churchillian note, mark the end of a campaign, or even the beginning of the end. But perhaps it was the end of the beginning. Progress, especially in the last quarter of a century, has gained momentum. It has seen the equalisation of the age of consent, the inauguration of civil partnerships, the acceptance that gay couples should be eligible to foster and adopt children, and most recently, legislation to allow same-sex marriage. All the major political parties have strenuously supported equality legislation. Our understanding of homosexuality is vastly more sophisticated than it was fifty years ago. Gay culture has moved into the mainstream and enriched us all. These are all achievements to celebrate today.

But as we know, or ought to know, full equality for our LGBTQ+ friends has yet to be won. This is not only or primarily about legislation. It's as much about changing attitudes, winning hearts and minds as politicians used to say.  And this is the hard part. The extent of discrimination against gay people is deeply worrying. You want to hear gay people tell you about it? Try watching the excellent BBC3 series of documentaries Queer Britain (warning - not always comfortable viewing). You'll learn about religious prejudice against gay people, the bullying many young gay people experience at school, the mental health problems many face, the staggering proportion who are homeless because they have been thrown out of their homes - you wouldn't be human if you didn't feel for these victims who simply want to be allowed to love in the way that feels natural and right.

The first programme in the series was entitled, "Does God Hate Queers?" And that brings me to what I want to say most of all on this fiftieth anniversary. It is that we people of faith must, absolutely must, purge ourselves of words and actions - yes, and thoughts too - that discriminate against gay people, and assert or imply that religion is against them. And I mean the policies and practices of our faith institutions, not simply our behaviours as individual men and women. 

When it comes to legislation, which is what today is celebrating, the glaring statutory anomaly is the Church of England's continued inability to permit same sex marriages to be solemnised and blessed in church. The website of our national church says, somewhat disingenuously, that the C of E is not allowed by law to conduct equal marriages. But this exemption was specifically asked for by the Church! Parliament agreed to it, no doubt to help expedite the passage of the equal marriage measure through its houses. But politicians are increasingly unhappy about this exceptionalism as we've heard in some public utterances on the subject in the past few weeks. And it's clear from the two most recent meetings of the General Synod that the mood of the governing body of the Church is not very happy with the status quo either.

I've argued in a series of blogs (for example, here) for the Church's full acceptance of same sex marriage. And make no mistake. However tolerant and generous the Church's discourse about gay people, it's actions not words that count. Of this, equal marriage is now the acid test of equality. To accept it, not grudgingly but willingly and joyously, would make all the difference. Not to do so perpetuates the message that this is an institution that continues officially to practise discrimination. That can't be interpreted away (though some try very hard). This untenable position we are now in as the national church in England is a tragedy for its standing and reputation in the nation, especially among the young. To them especially, its stance feels archaic and cruel and wrong.

The Episcopal Church in Scotland has charted the way towards celebrating equal marriages in church. Here in Northumberland we live just south of the Scottish border, a few tiny minutes of latitude. But they make all the difference! In the English Middle March, I'm more than ever aware of our two churches' varying polity on this point. Actually, I'm not pessimistic about the Church of England's change of heart in the longer term. I'm as sure as I can be that in a decade or so, maybe less, the English Church will have followed where Scotland has led. Our church has a strong sense of justice and fairness, and it will assuredly act on these God-given instincts. It always has in the past, even if, as with slavery, contraception, the remarriage of divorced people and the ordination of women, the wheels have ground slowly. And equal marriage is, after all, only the law of the land! It's a good law. We should be heartily glad to catch up with it and embrace it.

But given the pace of change we have seen in our society in the last two decades, I believe we have to demonstrate far more of a sense of urgency. The Bishops intend to bring back to the General Synod a teaching document in sex and sexuality in due course. It's right that time is taken to do our theology and ethics rigorously and reflectively. But it's hard to imagine what stones remain unturned when it comes to same-sex relationships and Christianity. We have examined the scriptures exhaustively, we have reflected carefully on the tradition and on our human experience. We have done our best to understand the science. But we can agonise too much, I think. We can be too afraid to be decisive and take the long view. We can put off acting courageously, doing the right thing, by engaging in the displacement activity of endless process. "How long, O Lord?" On this auspicious day, I'd love to think that the Church of England could cross this rubicon and proudly (adverb intended) celebrate the wonderful part gay people play not only in our church but in our society.

Today, 27th July, happens to be my forty-third wedding anniversary. I've every reason to be profoundly thankful for the gift of marriage that has so enriched every aspect of my life. (I hope my wife would say the same, but it's for her to speak for herself.)  So my plea for equal marriage in the Church comes out of my own experience as a married man. Marriage is good for us. It should be open to everybody. So on this day of celebration, I urge us all in the Church of England to say yes to equal marriage. Please. With gladness and hope in our hearts. And soon.

My letter to Tim Farron

Dear Tim

Thank you for your personal message to LibDem party members explaining that you have decided to stand down as leader. I know you will not have taken this enormous step without a great deal of thought and prayer.

The first thing I want to say is that you are in my own prayers now. I respect your candour as a politician, as a Christian and as a decent human being. Thank you for your leadership of the party in these tumultuous times.

I too am a Christian and a liberal (big L and small), living, as it happens, not far away from you. I love the far north of England as you do, not least for its sense of spiritual place, its soils infused with the long memory of our northern saints like Aidan and Cuthbert. I don't say that it's easier to be a Christian here than in the hectic Westminster village where, like Athens in the Acts of the Apostles, people are forever in search of something new to gossip about. Maybe up here we breathe a little more easily and are not always having to defend ourselves or our faith against the kind of opprobrium you have had to endure.

It's not for me to comment on your decision. I know you will have taken it with integrity, and from the tone of your letter, not without much inward struggle. But I am genuinely sorry about it all the same. I think you were under a degree of media scrutiny that was pitiless and intrusive in its invasion of your privacy. "We do not make windows on to men's souls" said Elizabeth I famously, but this is precisely what the media have tried to do with you, despite the fact that during the campaign you have not wavered an inch from LibDem policy in relation to same sex relations, equal marriage or anything else. The Prime Minister is also publicly known to be a Christian of conviction, but we don't find the media spotlight focusing relentlessly on her own personal opinions as a woman of faith.

You and I may come from different wings of the church, but this is not a factor as far as I am concerned. I am a Christian who believes with all my heart that the logic of gospel faith drives us to an inclusive vision of the world in which we give our LGBT friends the same rights as everyone else, just as we do people of colour, women and those with disability. I may wish that everyone else saw it that way, but I realise that this isn't the case. So we learn as Christians to practise what Justin Welby calls "good disagreement". I know that you have made your convictions about gay marriage clear in both what you have said, and how you have voted. That should have been the end of the matter. But even if you had taken the opposite view, I would have respected it. I can see that it might have been a struggle to reconcile personal faith with aspects of official party policy, but how you or I do this is no-one's business but our own. In any case, as you've said, a true liberal allows others to have different convictions from our own.

But illiberal media commentators don't seem to want to allow you that privilege (even though on this issue you haven't asked for it!). So if your recent relations with the media are behind your decision to resign, then I am doubly sorry. It is yet another victory for a media that is too often a disgrace to a progressive (I want to say enlightened) secular society that should be proud to sign up to liberal values. It does in theory - but not always in practice.

Of course, you may have been subject to a lot of other pressures that have added to your discomfort in the role of leader. Life in politics must be extraordinarily stressful. But if your resignation is a straw in the wind, and it is going to become harder than ever for a convinced man or woman of faith (any faith) to contribute as a political leader, then I am deeply worried about what this says about our country. We need Christians to be committed to leadership in public life in every sector of a secular society. I know you believe this ex animo because you have given us an example of how to inhabit such a role as a man of Christian principle. So I believe you would not have resigned unless the pressures had become intolerable. That's what is so troubling about your announcement - not because of what it says about you, but because of what it says about the rest of us!

You end by referring to Isaac Watts' great hymn of the cross: Love so amazing, so divine / demands my life, my soul, my all.  I was moved by that confession of faith on your part. And yes, we must not compromise our holding on to that central article of our faith. What could possibly matter more? It's why I have been a priest for more than forty years. And when conscience directs us in the light of the cross to act in a particular way, we dare not disobey.

So I want you to know that I entirely respect your decision, even if it also saddens me. You will be a loss to the party as its leader, and as a man who has brought your Christian gifts and insights to the high table at which our political leaders sit.

Let me wish you well for the future in a spirit of Christian friendship and in thankfulness for all that you have brought to British politics during your tenure as leader.

Best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
Michael

Jeremy, the Church of England and Same Sex Marriage

So Jeremy Pemberton has lost round one. An employment tribunal has ruled that the Church of England was not guilty of discrimination when his permission to officiate was revoked by his Acting Bishop. The grounds were his defiance of the prohibition on C of E clergy to marry a partner of the same sex, though celibate civil partnerships are permitted. The Bishop's argument had been that the Church's doctrine was that marriage could only be between a man and a woman. Jeremy is appealing.

The lawyers will go on debating this, but at first sight, I don't think we can argue with the secular tribunal's reading of the Church's position. The Church has ruled on the definition of marriage. Right or wrong, it's hard to dispute that to go against the rules is to breach the clergy vow of canonical obedience. We may think it's plain inconsistent, not to say unjust, to allow the clergy to enter into civil partnerships (which, let's not forget, many bishops fiercely resisted when they came in) but balk at marriage to their same-sex partners. But there it is.

It's the rules themselves that need questioning. The Church has ruled many things in the past that have imposed a discipline on its members, especially on the clergy as its public officers. But later, as situations have changed, it has changed its mind too, either by rewriting the rules or quietly forgetting they were there in the first place. I've written about this before, so this isn't new. But here are some instances we shouldn't forget.

Take contraception. In the early twentieth century, birth control was as contentious a matter at Lambeth Conferences as homosexuality has been in recent decades. Bishops argued fiercely that to tamper with the beginnings of human life flew in the face of the Bible and Christian tradition; and contraception accessible to all would be bound to encourage immorality. But I guess not many C of E couples today refer to these official statements when deciding on contraception. And theology has successfully integrated it into an entirely biblical view of creation and procreation so that it's been a matter of principle and not just pragmatism.

Then there's a more recent change of mind: the ordination of women as priests and bishops. Traditionalists regard this as problematic both in principle and because it puts at risk wider ecumenical relationships. I won't rehearse the arguments on both sides. What I want to point out is that the Church has listened hard and changed its mind about the ethics and theology of how gender equality is reflected in the leadership of the Christian community. We can blame a secular 'society' for putting pressure on the Church, but such pressure may be precisely the prophetic voice that calls for and initiates change that is both right and just.

Most relevant to Jeremy's case is the remarriage of divorcees in church. I am old enough to have taken part in many a synodical debate about this. It's a sharp question: how can a promise of lifelong fidelity be dissolved by being overwritten by a subsequent identical vow? Didn't Jesus teach unambiguously that 'whoever divorces...and marries another commits adultery'? Nevertheless, the Church has found a way of acknowledging the 'fact on the ground': that marriages break up and couples look to the Church to sanctify a new start. Here too theology has looked again at its reading of scripture and tradition. It's a daring step because it clearly re-construes what we mean by the vows of marriage. But as the proponents of this change of discipline argued at the time, it didn't follow that the Christian understanding of marriage had itself been compromised.

In each case, the direction of travel has been from exclusion to inclusion. It hasn't meant a change in Church doctrine, rather the way in which it is lived out. We don't have to look very far in the New Testament to see that this was the question that exercised the mind of the early church and bitterly divided its communities. As soon as the gospel began to travel outside the Jewish world, it raised a sharp question. When gentiles felt the force of religion and wanted to become Christians, did they need to become Jewish first and be circumcised in order to be received into the church? The clear answer was no. But it took time to 'discern' it, and there was much fierce debate and painful falling-out on the way. We find it hard to imagine today what a profound change of mind and heart it involved.

So I have come to believe (not without struggle) that the Church of England should recognise and honour equal marriage. Fundamentally, what matters is that equal marriage (that is to say marriage) embraces the promise of lifelong fidelity. (The state still needs to spell out its understanding of loyalty and faithfulness in same-sex relationships, but the principle is there.) Christianity promotes covenanted unions because they confer shape and discipline on our otherwise wayward human sexuality. And like the remarriage of divorcees, this 'enlarging' of marriage is precisely not a change of understanding but a matter of inviting a previously excluded group to come inside, take on its undertakings and enjoy its benefits. If I have to choose between being more inclusive or less, I shall take a risk and go for the more. It's what I see Jesus doing in the face of bitter opposition. I what I see the early church demonstrating in its welcome to gentile believers.

 
This week, the new Church of England website on marriage has gone live. It's geat timing for us as my daughter and her fiancé are planning a church wedding next year. In many ways it's exemplary: warm, inviting, and helpful. But if you are a gay Christian man or woman in a committed relationship, how does this read to you? The law prevents ministers of the Church of England from carrying out same-sex marriages. And although there are no authorised services for blessing a same-sex civil marriage, your local church can still support you with prayer. At any time you are welcome to come and pray with us, or ask us to pray for you. Yes, the law is the law. But the website doesn't explain that the Church of England wanted it that way. How I wish we could say something different!
 

I blogged on all this a couple of years ago. I said that 'there is no likelihood of turning back the tide of events. So the Church must learn to live in the light of them.' We can either do that grudgingly, or we can broaden our vision of the Church as a universal community that is for LGBT people as it is for everyone else. Our claim to be generous, hospitable and open is not just a matter of smiling nicely at people. The evidence is in what we say and do when our gay friends ask us to recognise and celebrate their loyalties and loves as we do those of heterosexual couples.

 

It's no comfort to Jeremy Pemberton and many others in his position to know that one day, the Church of England will revisit its theology of marriage and change its mind and its rules. I am not underestimating the difficulty of doing this, nor how it may be received in some partner churches and other faith communities in this country and overseas. We need to heed the Archbishop of Canterbury's call for 'good disagreement' because that's the only way in which discernment can take place. But two thousand years of Christian history beginning with the New Testament show how theology and practice always need to be responsive to changing contexts. It's part of our call to become mature in Christ.

Will I live long enough see the Church of England embrace equal marriage in my lifetime? I don't know, if I'm honest. But I'm seeing enough movement of hearts and minds among Christians to hope so.