Forgive me. I can already feel eyes rolling. And this is a long read.
For many years I visited General Synod when it sat in London to sit upstairs (as visitors must do) and watch for an hour or so. It was fun to be a spectator.
When I was first elected, it wasn’t that the fun disappeared, Synod can be fun (though I’ll understand those who find that a difficult concept!). Rather, it was the realisation that I was now a participant and that what I thought, how I voted, mattered.
That sense of responsibility has never left me – and I hope, whilst I serve on the General Synod, it never does.
I say this, not as a ‘pity me’ statement. I knew what I was getting into. But it is important to remind people that General Synod members are, for the most part, good and Godly people, trying their best to prayerfully do the right thing. We’re very aware that entails a complexity of our own faith, belief, and views together with those of the wider Dioceses we represent, the wider Church of England (and Anglican Communion), our place in the Church Universal and the nation and world in which we find ourselves. We are not delegates, and importantly, we must remind ourselves from time to time that “it’s not just about me”.
That is as true for what many might consider trivial details about a single word in a standing order (the ‘rules’ by which we conduct our business) as it is for major debates on significant and profound matters. Each in their own way can have a significant effect: and the General Synod of the Church of England is first and foremost a legislative assembly.
The governance model we have is, for good or ill, what we have. It in many ways encompasses all the above, with all the tensions (and joys) that come with that. But to those who ‘do synod down’ my plea is: be careful what you wish for – you could end up with something which makes you beg for a return to Synodical governance. This all comes most sharply into focus on those days when, as a Synod, we have a matter of huge significance to deal with. Whatever decisions we make, we are acutely aware that what we decide will gladden some, disappoint others, and bewilder yet more.
My own view is that what my role is as a member is to look carefully at what is proposed, what a proposed motion (or proposed amendments) says, what that might mean, what effect it might have and to ask: can I vote for this?
That means preparing beforehand, thinking, and praying; listening to others before a debate; trying to think through consequences and opportunities and asking, what is the theology here? Sometimes that involves asking a big question: what this is about (for some debates are ‘proxies’ for wider or bigger issues and concepts).
After all that, my job then is to listen attentively to the debate (or, when moved or given the chance, speak to it). You learn to pick up on how Synod ‘feels’ and how a debate is moving one way or the other. You learn to weigh the contributions you hear being made as the debate moves along. You look at and consider amendments which might enhance, improve, clarify, or just make something easier to vote for (or against). And then you vote at the end of a debate. Sometimes, gladly; sometimes sadly; sometimes with conviction and enthusiasm and sometimes with great uncertainty and trepidation.
For eight hours (a remarkable amount of time in Synod terms, where debates are usually an hour or two at most) we debated a motion from the House of Bishops which I reproduce in full below. I do so because a debate isn’t framed (just) as ‘do you think the overarching issue is good or bad’ but as ‘do you agree or disagree with this specific motion’.
WEDNESDAY 8 FEBRUARY 2023
2.00 p.m. to 7.00 p.m.
LIVING IN LOVE AND FAITH (GS 2289)
The Bishop of London to move:
Item 11
‘That this Synod, recognising the commitment to learning and deep listening to God and to each other of the Living in Love and Faith process, and desiring with God’s help to journey together while acknowledging the different deeply held convictions within the Church:
(a) lament and repent of the failure of the Church to be welcoming to LGBTQI+ people and the harm that LGBTQI+ people have experienced and continue to experience in the life of the Church;
(b) recommit to our shared witness to God’s love for and acceptance of every person by continuing to embed the Pastoral Principles in our life together locally and nationally;
(c) commend the continued learning together enabled by the Living in Love and Faith process and resources in relation to identity, sexuality, relationships, and marriage;
(d) welcome the decision of the House of Bishops to replace Issues in Human Sexuality with new pastoral guidance;
(e) welcome the response from the College of Bishops and look forward to the House of Bishops further refining, commending, and issuing the Prayers of Love and Faith described in GS 2289 and its Annexes;
(f) invite the House of Bishops to monitor the Church’s use of and response to the Prayers of Love and Faith, once they have been commended and published, and to
report back to Synod in five years’ time.’
Many of you will, by now, have read some coverage of this debate. You’ll probably have heard several ‘hot takes’ and you might even have encountered more tweets on the subject than you care for. I wont hold it against you if you want to stop reading now.
So, what happened, and what are the issues that arise?
Firstly, let me ‘fess up’: I voted against the motion (when we finally got there). For me, my primary objection is simply that this was a motion that was so ‘flabby’ that it opens a stable door through which many proverbial horses can bolt. In the debate what was clear was how many people, on every side of the debate, were unhappy. That there were 18 different amendments, only one of which was passed testifies to that reality.
For the House of Bishops, whose motion this was, I do have some sympathy. They were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t. There is an inevitable sense that this was a motion which felt ‘compromised’ as much as it was undoubtedly a compromise, which they believed might clear the bar and be approved in each of the three houses.
At the heart of the debate are, I think, three essential overarching ‘meta’ questions:
1. What is marriage as the Church has defined it?
2. Is sex outside of Marriage (heterosexual, lifelong, and for the procreation of children) wrong in any and every way, shape and form?
3. What is our theological method for deciding?
Those, of course, are not necessarily straight-forward questions.
The Church of England defines marriage in Canon B30 which repays careful reading:
“B 30 Of Holy Matrimony
1. The Church of England affirms, according to our Lord’s teaching, that marriage is in its nature a union permanent and lifelong, for better for worse, till death them do part, of one man with one woman, to the exclusion of all others on either side, for the procreation and nurture of children, for the hallowing and right direction of the natural instincts and affections, and for the mutual society, help and comfort which the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.
2. The teaching of our Lord affirmed by the Church of England is expressed and maintained in the Form of Solemnization of Matrimony contained in The Book of Common Prayer.
3. It shall be the duty of the minister, when application is made to him for matrimony to be solemnized in the church of which he is the minister, to explain to the two persons who desire to be married the Church’s doctrine of marriage as herein set forth, and the need of God’s grace in order that they may discharge aright their obligations as married persons.”
Here is where the difficulties start to arise. Marriage is, yes, defined as between ‘one man with one woman’. But that’s only part of the definition. It is ‘permanent and lifelong…’ The canon which sets out the definition of Marriage makes no allowance for divorce and remarriage. Sex too is here framed as both ‘for the procreation of children’ and for ‘right direction of the natural instincts and affections. Sex is set within marriage where its primary purpose is ‘for the procreation and nurture of children’.
That is set out in Preface to the Solemnization of Holy Matrimony in the Book of Common Prayer:
“First, It was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name.
Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body.
Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity. Into which holy estate these two persons present come now to be joined.”
Marriage is first about having faithful Christian children, then about sexual continence (or, to use a more modern phrase, ‘not putting it about’) and lastly, as an estate into which two people find love and companionship.
That might, of course, jar on the ear today. Indeed, Common Worship inverts this ordering: love and companionship is first; baby making last (‘the delight and tenderness of sexual union’ – a somewhat always awkward phrase).
This reveals three contingent problems, both in the LLF context, but also for our wider theological consideration:
1. The Sexual Revolution of the 1960s
2. The Church already being fast and loose with the definition of marriage
3. The inverting of the definition itself meant if it’s all about love and companionship – how could that reasonably be restricted to only opposite-sex couples, especially in the light of civil equal marriage?
I want to make brief comments on these three areas – as they are, I think, important to try to start to get to grips with, for they then illuminate the wider debate.
Firstly, the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the advent of contraception have (for good or ill) changed western society and how much of society views marriage. 50 years or so ago in this country, most people were married in church (and in their own parish church, where one or other had to reside). Register Office weddings were either for the avant-garde or for those who had ‘gone wrong’. I do not wish to outrage or condemn anyone – that’s not my point here – but I can remember my mother, not alone in her generation, thinking that a civil marriage carried a great deal of stigma.
That has, of course, changed dramatically. Attitudes to civil marriage are now very different – and with an explosion in the places where people can get married, there has also been a precipitous fall in the number of marriages solemnised in a church (where there is more flexibility and choice as to where that might be). The Church of England is now merely one of many ‘providers’ of ‘wedding venues’ – increasingly it might be argued, being forced to compete in a large, expensive marketplace. Marriage is now less and less an institution and more and more a business.
Couples now often co-habit before marriage (if they get married at all) and certainly in my experience, an increasing number of those who come to be married do so with their children as bridesmaids, flower-girls, and page boys. Marriage is not exclusively the context in which people have children today – and whether within marriage or not, couples exercise significantly more control over having children, if they choose to have them, through contraception.
[It was telling, in my last parish, that a) there were significantly more weddings in church in the 50s and 60s – less people married in the span of the 70s 80s 90s and 00s than in the previous two decades combined and that b) the average age of couples was under 21 in the 50s and 60s – and over 30 by the 2000s]
With that, remarriage after divorce is also (significantly) less socially frowned upon. One or other party marrying for the third or fourth (or more) time is no longer as unusual as it was (no longer just a thing that celebrities did, or that Royals argued over…). We are, after all, about to crown a monarch who married his Queen in a registry office…
That neatly leads me to my second point: that the church if not playing a bit ‘fast and loose’ with the definition of marriage, does at times appear to fudge the issue of ‘is marriage lifelong and permanent’ or not?
Since the significant loosening of the law regarding divorce and set against the more permissive background of the 1960s, the Church of England faced the question of whether those who had divorced and whose former spouse was still alive, could marry again in church.
s.8 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1965 gave each parish priest an ‘opt out’ from the canonical responsibility to marry parishioners who qualified to be married. That right, enshrined in law to this day, can only be changed by legislative means. But it opened the possibility for clergy to officiate at the marriages of those who had divorced. It would be for the cleric to decide – even though the 1930s convocation resolutions had expressly forbidden re-marriage in church.
So, a ‘Form of prayer and dedication after civil marriage’ was eventually devised which studiously tried to avoid ‘blessing’… And in the early 2000s the Church of England officially resolved that ‘in exceptional circumstances’ a couple could marry in church after a previous marriage had been dissolved, again only if the cleric was willing to conduct such a service.
This of course begged the question of whether General Synod was changing the definition of marriage in Canon B30. The legal response was, ‘no, it was not’ – an answer which seems somewhat familiar today. One which is, I think, not wholly convincing.
My point here is to argue that bit by bit, consciously or not, the Church of England has at least in what it allows – or turns a blind eye to – if not made changes to the definition of marriage in Canon B30, then it has effectively made the definition multiple-choice (where ‘all the above’ is infrequently the option).
It is not without irony, that some have noted that there is surely an inconsistency about those who assert that same-sex marriage – or prayers for those civilly married (in SSM), undermines Canon B30, might well happily re-marry those they choose to; or be content that they live together and have children without marrying first.
That may appear glib (and to some extent probably is) – but again, my observation here is if Marriage is ‘the union of one man and one woman; for life; where sex is for the procreation of children’ – then you can’t pick and choose which bits of that definition you do or don’t like without looking either discriminatory or theologically partial. It’s either Ronseal or it’s not.
But to be fair, that’s not just the Church of England. The Roman Catholic Church has, in essence, a single coherent theological sense of Marriage and sex – sex outside of marriage is wrong, same-sex marriage is wrong, contraception is wrong etc. But annulments, and how they are granted is a mystery, varies from Diocese to Diocese and in practice is honoured as much in the breach as is the keeping. Boris Johnson anyone?
The Orthodox Church does though take a slightly more nuanced view (though not for everyone) with a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ approach (this is a very gross simplification).
And given that there are ‘get out clauses’ that the Church of England has never quite officially built in (‘exceptional circumstances’ is about as close as we get – if that doesn’t touch Canon B30) – that then becomes ever more problematic in supporting an architecture of marriage today which is not, at all, what it was four hundred years ago…
That today becomes more complex if we reflect on marriage as a ‘sacrament’. Entry to the sacramental economy of the Church is through baptism. I’d be confident that the framers of the preface to the Marriage Service in the BCP wrote from an understanding that both parties to be married were Christians – that they had been baptised.
Today though, it is unusual that both parties are Christians. Sometimes one is, one isn’t and increasingly common is that neither are. To what extent then (by virtue of the canonical parochial obligation to marry qualifying couples) are we conducting religious civil services – but not Sacramental (or biblical?) Marriage?
This mirrors the surprise that Legal Guidance to Synod has caused viz the status of civil marriage (post 2013) v Holy Matrimony. Is every married in the country, married in the eyes of the Church of not? Is everyone married in Church in a (sacramental) state of Holy Matrimony – or not?
This leads me to the third point: isn’t it all about love?
Marriages have been contracted, historically, for a whole load of reasons. Some involve money, some dynastic power, some political allegiances, some property considerations, some for tax or other benefits and some, possibly, for love.
That we have liturgically ‘inverted’ the ‘purposes’ of Marriage, has synchronicity with how the world sees love and marriage: to borrow a phrase – a ‘conscious coupling’ for as long as that works for either party so coupled.
When a couple contracts a civil marriage, the common form of ‘vow’ is:
“I declare that I know of no legal reason why I (your name) may not be joined in marriage to (your partner’s name. I (full names) take you (full names) to be my wedded wife/husband.”
That’s it. Yes, you can add ‘personal vows’ afterwards – but it isn’t obligatory. The words above set out what the state thinks marriage is. There is no ‘one man, one woman’ nor ‘one woman, one woman or one man, one man’ neither is there any ‘till death us do part’ nor anything about children. There isn’t really anything about love and companionship. Again, yes, a couple can add music and readings and frankly anything they like (if it isn’t religious). But the ‘essence’ of this is that they are simple contracting words. This is a business contract: which at its simplest, with no readings, music, or guests you can obtain after due notice, usually on a Tuesday morning (but not May-September with no more than your two witnesses for about £70.
Perhaps that’s why I agree with a tweet the lawyer David Allen Green once wrote (I crave forgiveness for paraphrasing): “I don’t agree that divorce should be made more difficult, if anything it should be a lot easier. It’s getting married in the first place which should be significantly more difficult than it currently is.” He argues that this is the most complex and involved contract that any adult in the UK can enter: and that there should be significant legal, emotional, and financial planning before anyone says the magic words.
That of course is, in part, because marriage has historically been something the state has been keen on – and to which the Church came later to the party. Again, that’s a gross over-simplification. But the Church has never had a monopoly on weddings – well at least not until the last 400 years or so (if you exclude the last 50). In that sense, the institution of marriage is returning to state control.
That marriage is one of the seven sacraments is a later innovation. It’s the last to be added to the list (in 1184). By 1563 with the decree Tamesti at the Council of Trent canonical marriage was established. No longer could couples marry ‘clandestinely’ – the marriage, in full, had to be in the presence of a priest (and established the requirement for banns, witness and registration).
In the history of marriage (itself a long discourse) there is also a ‘catch’. What liturgically we celebrate today is an inherited port-manteau service. First is the service of ‘engagement’ or ‘betrothal’ in which couples declare they are free to marry and promise intent. The second part is the Marriage proper: the exchange of vows and ring(s). Historically, couples would often be betrothed (at a lych-gate or church porch): and there could be a considerable time between this act and the marriage itself. During that time, the betrothed couple would often live together (and have children): it might be thought of as constituting a form of ‘civil partnership’. Might this be sanctioned sex outside of ‘Marriage’?
How we view marriage today, societally, and ecclesial is not quite how our ancestors viewed it. It is as complex now as then: and bald claims to some form on enduring rite are, I would suggest, difficult to support. Marriage as both institution and rite has oscillated between the norms set by religious bodies and States. To mirror the Facebook relationship status: “it’s complicated”
Back at General Synod…
Part, I think of the difficulty of where we are is because all three of these ‘questions’ are not clear (enough) – there is not enough theological thinking going on. As this weeks Church Times leader column (Friday 17th February) puts it: is our doctrine now declared sola lived experience alone? Much of the debate was framed by “Yes, but for me…” arguments. The leader puts it thus:
“This seems to be an indication that the primacy of personal experience in contemporary Anglicanism — or Western Anglicanism — is a flaw. Surely the Church can do better than wait to improve something until a critical mass of individuals have enough lived experience of, say, women’s ministry, or a second
marriage after divorce — or, more widely, God help us, the need to prevent climate change. With the right balance of experience, observation, scripture — or, more classically, scripture, reason, and tradition — the Church could be in the vanguard of ethical decision-making rather than forever dragging its feet. Such an approach would equip it to resist harmful developments as well as champion beneficial ones. This is not an argument against democracy, but for greater engagement. Paradoxically, Living in Love and Faith got this right, allowing groups to reflect on their experience, consider others’, and examine scripture, in a context of mutual respect. Perhaps the mistake was to treat it as a process.”
Perhaps this is right. The management of a process (to lead to a decision) hasn’t quite engaged all the gears – and in the debate certainly lead to a degree of re-entrenchment. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t hear in the debate any profound theological thinking that shone new light. (Geoffrey Tattersall chaired the debate superbly – that will live on long after the speeches have left our heads). In fact, I’d go so far as to say the inter-panel episcopal dialogue the evening before was much more interesting from that point of view. In that sense, there may well be more theological thinking in the House of Bishops than in the rest of Synod – but the bishops, to quote one speaker, haven’t quite yet shown their working out.
Hence there felt very much like there wasn’t enough substance for a large majority to coalesce around. I suspect that is why there were those who thought the whole motion was poor but who voted for it on the grounds that ‘something is better than nothing’. Others would have voted against it, because it was ‘far too much, too soon’. Others would have voted for it because ‘that’s far enough, thank you very much’ whilst others voted against it because, like a blancmange, it was just a bit all over the place (not so much ‘that’s far enough, thank you’ more ‘where the hell are we?’).
However, working out an in-principal decision (of sorts) might make an eight-hour debate look timid. We’ve welcomed the replacement of Issues in Human Sexuality (a Report that Synod ‘took note’ of in the 1980s, which has become something of a shibboleth or totem depending on your views). The only trouble is, we’ve no idea what’s going to replace it. The motion as passed has said: refine and issue the prayers: but we don’t know if what we’ve seen and what will emerge might be entirely different (or better, or worse; richer, or poorer).
To find a way through, the Church of England needs to sort out, and agree on what it thinks marriage is today; what sex is for, who can have it, and when; and develop a credible ethic for sex and human identity that engage with the seismic scientific and societal changes of the last sixty years, and (re-)establishes what limits there might properly be to “love means love”. We might not have changed the definition but the practice has changed. But the latter does not definitively change the former. [I say this because I get fed up of the ‘if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck’ takes. It could be a dog toy, it could be a robot, it might not actually be a duck.]
That won’t be easy. There are engrained views – which you may or may not agree with. Some of that will be existential for some (for example, on the supremacy of scripture in an agreed hermeneutic). For others, the question of Justice will be an equally existential matter.
My problem (Synod’s problem – that we’ll all have to deal with) in where this motion has got us, is a phrase I well remember Fr Houlding, when I was his pastoral assistant, using one day at mass. “The problem with the Church of England,” he said, “is that it’s got sex on the brain. And that’s a very uncomfortable position to have sex.” I think he may be right. We’ve got a sex addiction – and we’re going to need to put in some hard work and need some serious therapy to recover.
thebusypriest 