Last week I linked an article from Ekklesia about marriage. Nobody here commented at all. So first, here is another item a week old, which is a discussion of that on last week’s BBC Sunday radio programme:
Marriage
Under draft legislation to be debated by the church of England’s General Synod next month, couples should be able to marry in any church they like if they can show they have a connection with it.
The religious think tank Ekklesia suggests that the Church and society should go further. It suggests serious consideration should be given to the abolition of legal marriage and its replacement by a variety of civil partnerships through which couples could specify the type of legal commitment they wished to make to one another.
The Dean of Wakefield, The Very Reverend George Nairn-Briggs, sat on the working party which drafted the proposals to relax the rules on where couples can marry. He and Jonathan Bartley, director of Ekklesia, discuss these controversial proposals.
Listen (7m 4s)
This week, Geoffrey Rowell writes in The Times: The Church must not sway to the siren voice of postmodern culture
In the Guardian Face to Faith is written from a Quaker perspective by David Bryant.
Christopher Howse writes in the Telegraph about A helping hand from St John [the Baptist].
Why
1) Were you posting here at 4.20pm instead of watching the match?
2) Have you not posted a link to the Bishop of Rochester’s article in the Sunday Telegraph?
Simon, I apologise for not commenting at the time. It did not go un-noticed nor was the posting in the church newspaper about ABC’s concerns about the losing the importance of marriage. I did not post because the precedent in the US deserved to not be overshadowed by red herrings (the marriage debate in the UK has been going on for some time now). Further, I have been trying to be quieter to give room for others to express their voice. I have been concerned that the debate on marriage is going backwards. Not that the sanctity of marriage has… Read more »
Mark – Simon did. See here:
http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/001749.html
I can’t explain why he wasn’t watching the match.
Do the people at Ekklesia ever bother reading the Bible? Or does that get in the way of their promotion of the annihilation of the Chrtistian West?
Eh? Ekklesia appear to me to be looking at a contradictory situation quite effectively – that we have an essentially secular society where there is no actual difference , legally, between civil and religious marriage. Indeed, it is now largely a secular event, yet the church still try and fit it into their boundaries. Ekklesia’s suggestion would clearly delineate the difference between religious marriage and secular partnership and reflect the reality for the vast majority of those who marry – that it has precisely nothing to do with religion. Can you honestly say that non-churchgoing people marry in church because… Read more »
I wonder how many marriages merseymike has conducted? Or Jonathan Bartley? The fact that the state offers a legal arrangement called marriage does not impact upon what the Church believes about marriage, nor upon the great majority of people who ask for a religious wedding service. The Church does not have to fit anything into its boundaries: the same wedding service is provided for both churchgoers and non-churchgoers alike, and the event is a moving spiritual experience for both. Even if universal civil registration were to be required as in France, people would still be asking for religious services as… Read more »
Alan ; to try and attract people to church weddings, of course, the number of which has halved since other venues became available.
I think if you honestly think that non-churchgoing recipients of church weddings do it for anything even remotely connected to religious belief, you are being very naive. Try asking a few of them the reason why.
Face To Faith with David Bryant
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Thank you for the link to this article.. It is worded with such expressive, subtlty. It reflects my experience of Quaker worship since the Invasion of Iraq, and why I cannot let a Sunday pass without joining my F/friends for a time of shared silence, peace and more…. personally,I always feel like I’ve been in the mass.
(former anglican clergyperson)
The South Africans wrote a very good position paper last year. They distinguished between the laws of the state and the religious vows within a church. We should all be praying for laws of state that fairly and consistently provide for the needs and shelter of all its citizens – including those in dependency relationships with others. Further, if we want to live in a world where Christians are not murdered in non-Christian countries (and vice versa) then we need to be able to respect and provide room for the religious requirements of each faith (unless they cross over into… Read more »
I have, merseymike. Have you?
Yes, Alan.
Ekklesia is wrong. Say it again: wrong. Say it a third time – and again I say: wrong. And this can be fairly simply demonstrated. In two simple ways: (1) If the problem lay with marriage itself, then marriage success/failure rates would be similar across different cultures, subcultures, and people groups. It is not – not by any means. Therefore the root of success or failure has to do primarily with the health or otherwise of the culture[s] in question, not with something innate within marriage itself. For example: Our culture was comparatively healthy in the 1950s: so were our… Read more »
BRAVO CHRISTOPHER!!! You are correct in my opinion–Sick culture=sick marriage success rates, at least in this instance–i.e., modern culture is definitely SICK!
Steven