Thinking Anglicans

More on that CofE marriage report

on Friday, 17 May 2013 at 11.44 am by Simon Sarmiento
categorised as Church of England

Stephen Bates writes in today’s Diary column in the Guardian about that report.

• Rumblings of discontent emerge from the distant shrubbery as some diocesan bishops quietly take issue with the church’s recent report outlining its adamant opposition to gay marriage. The wobble is important as the coalition’s bill is up for report stage and third reading in the Commons next week. The report by the church’s standing faith and order commission was subcontracted to be written by two conservative academics, Oliver O’Donovan and Michael Banner, and has been widely criticised, including by members of the commission and by church conservatives as well as liberals They say it is badly written, incoherent and theologically superficial. Its launch too was naively mishandled, with the commission’s chairman Christopher Cocksworth, bishop of Coventry, declining to answer questions at a joint press conference but instead seeing selected journalists separately – a sure sign of institutional nervousness and one bound to fail since the reporters compared notes anyway. John Sentamu, the archbishop of York, apologised – a very rare event – at a private meeting of diocesan bishops for the botched publication and the way the report was railroaded through. The trumpet’s certainly giving an uncertain sound (Corinthians 1, 14:8). Good old CofE!

Fulcrum has published an article by Andrew Goddard which is titled Men and Women in Marriage: Study or Ignore? It starts out this way:

No recent report from the Church of England’s Faith and Order Commission (FAOC) has caused as much media confusion and engendered such vehement repudiation and anger as the publication of Men and Women in Marriage on April 10th. Some erroneously claimed the church was now more flexible on blessing gay partnerships but the press release made clear this was false. It quoted FAOC’s Chair, the Bishop of Coventry, stating “the document is clear that public forms of blessing belong to marriage alone”. The Church Times, in a short, dismissive comment, advised “the kindest thing to do with the new report Men, Women and Marriage is to ignore it”.

These responses show just how volatile this subject is in the Church of England and how difficult many find it to engage in constructive theological discussion. Despite some weaknesses, the six-part, 50-paragraph document represents a valuable contribution which richly repays the careful study called for by the Archbishops. The rapid campaign to sideline and silence it by opponents is an illuminating and worrying sign of where things may be headed in the Church of England.

The document’s purpose and central claim

A common complaint has been that the document does not reflect the diversity of views among Anglicans on the subject of marriage. This fails to understand its clearly stated purpose. Aware of government plans to redefine marriage in English law to include same-sex couples, last year FAOC requested and was authorised to produce a summary of the Church of England’s understanding of marriage and in particular its doctrine that marriage is between a man and a woman. Its report complements the Church of England submission to the government consultation which opposed “equal marriage” (to a similar outcry from the usual suspects) but with limited theological rationale.

As the report’s first part makes clear, the document is therefore not a contribution to wider debates on human sexuality. That will appear from the group under Sir Joseph Pilling whose crucial report is due to be submitted to the House of Bishops by the end of this year. Indeed, sensitivity about not encroaching on that report has weakened this one which simply expounds the definition of marriage found in various Church of England documents. It does so to resource Christians in publicly defending marriage and to correct misunderstandings of marriage liable to have negative consequences. It is especially defending the claim that “the sexual differentiation of men and women is a gift of God” (para 3, citing Genesis 1.27-8). Rather than condemn and dismiss it for not setting out the views of those who reject church teaching, critics need to refute this central claim or show why it is no longer essential to the church’s teaching on marriage…