Phill Sacre

Tag: same sex marriage

  • The Bible and (same-sex) marriage: Cutting through to the root issue

    Image by Sabtastic

    Long-time readers of this blog will know that I have blogged quite a few times about marriage, and in particular same-sex marriage. You can see my previous posts under the “marriage” tag. Anyway, it seems we are still talking about marriage: the debate has simply moved from society – where same-sex marriage is now a reality – to the church.

    General Synod recently spent a few days finishing the two-year-long ‘Shared Conversations’ process in which the CofE has been trying to find a way forward on same-sex marriage. As part of that, a number of books have been released and a number of people have written quite passionately in support of changing the church’s current teaching. These include ‘Amazing Love’ by Andrew Davison (reviewed here and here), as well as ‘Journeys in Grace and Truth’ by Jayne Ozanne (reviewed here and here). What is notable about both of these books is that they claim to be orthodox Christian, Biblical accounts of why we should change the church’s teaching.

    If you read the books, and look at the discussion it generates on Ian Paul’s blog (and elsewhere), the discussion often focusses on peripheral issues. It can be very difficult to digest what is actually going on and get to the heart of the issue. I’ve had an interest in this issue for a long time now, and I wanted to write to try and outline the issue at the heart of why I believe marriage can only be defined as the lifelong union of a man and a woman.

    It’s easy to get lost in the details, but to my mind you can boil down the issue to one basic root issue, which is this:

    What does the Bible say positively about marriage?

    It is sometimes claimed that Jesus said nothing about same-sex relationships; however, he did say something about marriage. The Pharisees asked a question about divorce, and he replied with this answer (this is from Mark 10):

    5 ‘It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,’ Jesus replied. 6 ‘But at the beginning of creation God “made them male and female”. 7 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, 8 and the two will become one flesh.” So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’

    So when Jesus was asked a question about marriage, he goes back to creation – he takes us back to Genesis 1-2 and to God’s original intention for mankind.
    What does this teach us about marriage? Marriage was intended from the very beginning of creation to be a permanent relationship (hence why Jesus gave this answer to a question about divorce) – but he also says that marriage is the union of a man and a woman. In marriage, with apologies to the Spice Girls (and to you for putting that thought in your head), two become one.

    Some people claim that Genesis 1-2 is only about a covenant commitment – that the male-female character of marriage is purely accidental. But given Jesus’ words here – the male-female nature of marriage comes across more clearly than being a lifelong union, doesn’t  it? If you argue that the male-female nature of marriage is purely accidental, then so is everything else about marriage from Genesis 1-2.

    And this is the issue. Marriage becomes entirely what the reader thought it was before they looked at the Bible.

    Jeffrey John once wrote a book “Permanent, Stable, Faithful” in which he argued that same-sex marriage was in accord with the Bible – so long as those relationships exhibited the three values of permanence, stability and faithfulness.

    The thing is, where do those values come from? As we have just seen, the Bible doesn’t say “marriages must be permanent, stable, and faithful”. Let’s take permanence, for example: the Bible doesn’t say “marriages should be permanent”, but it does say, “a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh”. So permanence is only defined in the context of a male-female relationship.

    Similarly with faithfulness. The Bible says, “Marriage should be honoured by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral” (Heb 13:4). But what is meant by faithfulness? Faithfulness, again, is defined in the sense of not becoming “one flesh” with another man or woman (1 Cor 6:16 – it’s interesting that when lawyers were drafting same-sex marriage legislation, consummation could not be defined and so was left out). Faithfulness is, to put it bluntly, not having sex with someone of the opposite sex who is not your spouse.

    Some people define faithfulness as ‘not sleeping with someone else without telling your partner’. In other words, ‘open relationships’ can embody faithfulness – depending on how you define it. I can well imagine someone who had such a view reading Heb 13:4 and it fitting in with their preconceived ideas – because they had an idea of what faithfulness was rather than letting the Bible define it.

    This brings me to my final point. When you abstract your understanding of marriage from what the Bible actually says, marriage can become virtually anything. Almost every argument for same-sex marriage would also work for, say, polyamorous marriage. Or incest. Or ‘open’ relationships. Or time-limited marriages. And so on: the point is that it’s up to you and how you want to define it. Not the Bible.

    That’s the root issue here: either we let the Bible be God’s Word and define what marriage is, or we crowbar the Bible into supporting same-sex marriage and opening the door for virtually anything. Don’t be fooled by fancy words, follow the logic and see where it leads you.

  • Reflections on the same-sex marriage debate within the church

    Reflections on the same-sex marriage debate within the church

    Over the last few weeks, I’ve been involved with a Facebook group set up to discuss same-sex marriage (SSM) within the church. This has been set up as the CofE undergoes a “shared conversations” process to talk about the issue. This has been the first time I’ve really spent much time actually talking with people within the church who believe in same-sex marriage (or ‘affirming’, as I will use in this post as a convenient shorthand). Although I have had brief conversations with affirming people before, most of them have been pretty fleeting so it’s been good to have the chance to engage with people over an extended period of time.

    I thought I’d share one or two observations about the debate as I’ve observed it over the past few weeks. I do think there is a difference in the way the two sides think and approach the question.

    Firstly: the debate is all about the Bible. This one is pretty much a no-brainer. Obviously the debate was going to focus on the Bible, it is the heart of the disagreement: does the Bible call same-sex relationships sinful or not? When I joined the group, I was expecting to spend a lot of time discussing the Bible.

    Having said this, what I’ve found interesting is that the debate has not really been about the Bible texts themselves. We have spent a little bit of time discussing interpretations of the Bible, but in general the group does not spend much time discussing the various interpretations of Romans 1:18-32 (for example). I wonder whether this reflects the fact that there really is very little scope for interpreting the Bible any differently to the way it has traditionally been interpreted. Diarmaid MacCulloch (who is himself strongly affirming of SSM) has said: “Despite much well-intentioned theological fancy footwork to the contrary, it is difficult to see the Bible as expressing anything else but disapproval of homosexual activity, let alone having any conception of a homosexual identity.”

    It seems instead that people would rather talk about almost anything about the Bible other than the Biblical texts themselves. We talk about the Bible’s clarity, interpretation, translation, history of interpretation on slavery and so on… almost anything other than the text of what the Bible actually says.

    This leads me onto the second point (where I contradict my first point, but please stick with it…): the debate is not really about the Bible at all. It seems to me that the debate is not actually about what the Bible says. It’s not even really about interpretation, or any of those other issues surrounding how we understand the Bible.

    The debate is actually about the presuppositions we bring to the table. As we’ve been discussing, what I’ve come to believe is that most affirming people see SSM as a matter of basic justice. When asked for a Bible text to justify SSM, a lot of people come out with “love your neighbour as yourself.” Now unless I’m missing something, Jesus doesn’t here mention marriage – rather, the idea is that the most loving thing to do for our neighbour is to allow them to enter into a SSM if they want to. So SSM is argued for on Biblical principles rather than on the text of the Bible itself.

    I find this interesting because although equality, justice etc. are all Biblical principles – you can’t just extract them from the Bible and use them in isolation from the Biblical context. Especially when those principles are being used to argue against other things the Bible does actually say. So, for example, although I think ‘equality’ is a Biblical principle, it doesn’t stand on its own – it only exists within the larger framework of other things the Bible says about what it means to be human. Similarly, ‘inclusion’ is a Biblical principle – Jesus ate with sinners such as Zacchaeus – but we must also read it in tandem with its radical exclusivity: Jesus’ demand is to repent and believe in the good news. So, in this example we can’t just take ‘inclusion’ as a Biblical principle and apply it in isolation – that would be doing a big disservice to everything else that the Bible says.

    My sense is that most people on the affirming side of the SSM debate come to the table believing that SSM is an inalienable right – that no-one should be denied the right to marriage because of their sexual orientation. In our society this is a hugely powerful idea which draws on a lot of things our culture believes about identity, humanity and romance. Given this foundational belief, when coming to Scripture one essentially has to presuppose the conclusion one wants to draw: because if the Bible did actually call same-sex relationships sinful, that would be wrong. So the answer is already decided before the Bible is even opened.

    Recently someone made the perceptive comment that a theology of SSM is actually highly elusive: although many affirming groups criticise the traditional interpretations of Scripture, there are very few people who actually attempt to go through the Bible and build up a theology of SSM. A few have tried but their efforts haven’t achieved anything like a consensus. Most people seem content to simply point the finger at a range of interpretations, no matter how good or bad those interpretations are – just their very existence validates the fact that at least one of them must be correct (see my third point on this post).

    But I think it serves to highlight the differences in our approaches. Although many affirming folk would claim the Bible as their authority, I think in reality the Bible’s authority is relativised and set aside. Our current cultural narratives about equality, justice, romance etc are taken as axiomatic and take precedence when interpreting the Bible – without any real theological reflection about the nature of equality etc.

    In sum, I’m grateful for the opportunity I’ve had to discuss this issue with people – it’s always good to try to understand other people’s views better, and it has helped me to clarify my own thinking. But it has made me realise even more that there is a huge and unbridgeable chasm between our two perspectives – and I think to affirm both within one church would be absolutely unworkable.

  • Gay marriage and the power of stories

    Image by Sabtastic

    Although same-sex marriage has been legal in the UK now for nearly a year, I still think it’s worth reflecting on the road which brought us to where we are. In fact, I think it’s probably good to reflect on what happened with the benefit of hindsight.

    One thing which is clearer to me now than it was at the time was just how powerful a story can be. The pro same-sex marriage argument would often present itself using the story of someone who wanted to get married. I remember reading and seeing various different stories about a young man or woman, who grew up dreaming of a white wedding, dreaming of a family – only to have those dreams shattered because gay people were unable to marry. Now, whatever your position on marriage – you have to admit, in our culture today, that is a powerful story. A story so powerful, in fact, that I think most people bought into it.

    By contrast, those who were (and are) against same-sex marriage – and I include myself in that camp – had nothing really to compete. That’s not to say that the arguments weren’t sound: I still believe what was said about marriage two years ago (see my blog posts on “What is marriage?”: part one, part two) – but I think by and large people didn’t understand because they didn’t have anything to relate to. Quite a few people who I interacted with simply could not see how same-sex marriage would make any difference at all, and abstract arguments didn’t really help. The argument was mostly won (or lost, depending on how you see it) at the emotional level.

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  • Marriage and ‘Public Theology’

    Image by Sabtastic
    Image by Sabtastic

    I’m doing a course at college at the moment called ‘Public Theology’, which is basically about how theology and the public sphere (e.g. politics, society) interact. Earlier this week I did a seminar on marriage, i.e. how the church should engage society on the topic of marriage. As regular readers will know this is something I’ve written a fair bit about here, so it’s a topic I’m interested in! I focused on the topic of same-sex marriage, because we had limited time and that’s the thing which I think is most relevant.

    Anyway, this course has really made me think through the whys and the hows of engaging culture, and has probably left me with more questions than answers! In particular on the topic of marriage – why is it that Christians should stand up for the ‘traditional’ / Biblical view of marriage?  (more…)

  • The Church is wiser than our secular society

    A BibleOne of the articles that seems to have been doing the rounds on Twitter lately is “Our secular society is wiser than the Church” by Oliver Kamm (most recently I saw it tweeted by my friend @pandammonium). I often read articles online without responding to them, but sometimes one annoys me sufficiently that I feel the need to write something about it here.

    The article itself is pretty short, it won’t take a minute of your time to read, but the argument is basically that the church always lags behind societal attitudes. Frankly I find the thinking in the article so muddled I don’t quite know where to begin, but I’ll quote a few sentences and try to explain:

    Gay marriage will become established and there will come a time when few of its current opponents (including Archbishop Welby) will be exercised by the issue.

    This is unbelievably patronising. Kamm is basically saying, “There, there, dear – your petty and ridiculous objections to same-sex marriage will be forgotten in a few years when you’ve finally caught up with society – and you will.” In other words, “you’ll come round, just give it time”. It doesn’t deal with any of the objections to same-sex marriage (hereafter known as SSM); it just assumes that SSM is correct and that any objectors are purely irrational hatemongers who will come round.

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  • What is marriage?

    What is marriage?

    I’ve blogged about the whole ‘equal / same-sex marriage’ thing before (here, for example). I don’t really have anything else to say about the way ‘bigots’ who disagree are being steamrollered out of the way; instead I want to talk about something which seems to have been somewhat missed in this whole debate: what is marriage?

    A few weeks ago I read an excellent paper on marriage: it’s not from a Christian perspective – it’s written by two people who, as far as I know, have no particular religious affiliation (in fact, the church’s position on same-sex marriage comes in for criticism). However, they do talk about this most important question of the very definition of marriage. I’d like to pick up on the points they make, because I think it’s worth spreading these ideas as widely as possible: it seems to me that most people simply have no idea about what same-sex marriage would entail, as far as the definition of marriage goes. I think this just goes to show how far values of ‘equality’ and ‘tolerance’ have permeated our society – in many ways these are good and right concepts, but can be pushed too far. Allow me to explain.

    At the outset, I will say that you shouldn’t read this and think that you don’t need to read the actual document. I am going to be quoting from it, but please read the whole thing yourself! I just want to outline some of the points they make which particularly struck me.

    Their basic premise is that there are two competing ideas of marriage at stake – same-sex marriage indicates one idea of marriage, whereas ‘traditional’ marriage is another. It should also be noted that they are arguing for ‘traditional’ marriage, and not against same-sex marriage (per se).

    From the introduction:

    …there are two competing ideas of marriage at play in the current debate. The first is traditional and conjugal and extends beyond the individuals who marry to the children they hope to create and the society they wish to shape. The second is more privative and is to do with a relationship abstracted from the wider concern that marriage originally was designed to speak to. Some call this pure partnership or mere cohabitation. The latter is what marriage is becoming: a dissolvable contract between two individuals who partner purely for the sake of the partnership itself [my emphasis]. It has little or nothing to do with children, general education or social stability. This is not to say that it is to be wholly resisted – of course not – but it should be incorporated and built up to a conjugal summit, because the loss to society of the conjugal model imposes such high costs on society and the state that neither can be indifferent about its erosion [my emphasis]. The partnership model is one shared by many heterosexuals and wider society, and it is this that has done much harm to the institution of marriage. By the same token, many homosexuals actually fulfil a more conjugal model and it is to be hoped that the civil unions we propose speaks to this and offer same sex couples their own proper version of ‘conjugal marriage’. (p. 5)

    Their basic premise is that a stable society is not built around partnerships only. A stable society is built around a society which also looks to the future – a society where children are actively looked after and catered for. Marriage as an institution has been the way that children have been cared for and raised in the past, the place where children learn to become fully functioning members of society. However, what marriage is becoming – and will be cemented with the same-sex marriage legislation – is “a dissolvable contract between two individuals”. This is not marriage, and this will not be good for society.

    They continue, “Conjugal marriage is fundamentally child-centred and female advancing. Lone motherhood which is bad for both the woman and the child is the evident manifestation of the contemporary separation of marriage and parenthood.” Marriage has formerly been about children as much as it is about relationships: the changing definition of marriage to a contractual basis is what has caused so much ‘lone motherhood’. This is not how it is supposed to be: as they say, “[marriage] provides the sole institution that can successfully cope with the generative power of opposite-sex unions.”

    They then move on to talk about marriage as an ‘ontological change’, if you will – a change “from one mode of being to another”.

    This change of status has the benefit of social recognition. But it comes at a price. And the price has been, in traditional Christian societies, a heavy one: sexual fidelity ‘till death do us part’, and a responsibility for the socialising and educating of the children. As people become more and more reluctant to pay that price, so do weddings become more and more provisional, and the distinction between the socially endorsed union and the merely private arrangement becomes less and less absolute and less and less secure. As sociologists are beginning to observe, however, this gain in freedom for one generation implies a loss for the next. Children born within a marriage are far more likely to be socialised, outgoing and able to form permanent relationships of their own, than children born out of wedlock [my emphasis]. For their parents have made a commitment in which the children are included, and of which society approves … Children of married parents find a place in society already prepared for them, furnished by a regime of parental sacrifice, and protected by social norms. Take away marriage and you expose children to the risk of coming into the world as strangers, untutored by fathers or abandoned by mothers, a condition of effective abandonment in which they may remain for the rest of their lives. (p. 6-7)

    In other words, there are benefits of marriage to the children of such a union, which has a wider impact on society. Degrading marriage to a merely contractual arrangement devalues marriage, potentially impacts on children and so negatively impacts society at large. And, so they argue, this move towards same-sex marriage will further the idea of marriage being a merely contractual arrangement:

    Since then, however, we have experienced a steady de-sacralisation of the marriage tie. It is not merely that marriage is governed now by a secular law – that has been the case since Antiquity. It is that this law is constantly amended, not in order to perpetuate the idea of an existential commitment, but on the contrary to make it possible for commitments to be evaded, and agreements rescinded, by rewriting them as the terms of a contract [my emphasis]. What was once a socially endorsed change of status has become a private and reversible deal. The social constraints that tied man and wife to each other through all troubles and disharmonies have been one by one removed, to the point where marriage is in many communities hardly distinct from a short-term agreement for cohabitation. This has been made more or less explicit in the American case by the pre-nuptial agreement, which specifies a division of property in the event of divorce. Partners now enter the marriage with an escape route already mapped out. (p. 7)

    In other words, marriage has been devalued in society to the point that it is seen as a contractual agreement – it’s so easy to get out of, that ’till death us do part’ has become something of a joke. Although there are many benefits to society of such a union, nonetheless the state has seen fit to make it easy for people to end one. And, in so doing, marriage is devalued and actually discourages people from entering into it: “Just as people are less disposed to assume the burdens of high office when society withholds the dignities and privileges that those offices have previously signified, so too are they less disposed to enter real marriages, when society acknowledges no distinction between marriages that deserve the name, and relationships that merely borrow the title.”

    But “what about equality?”, we may say? How can we live in a society which promotes ‘equality’ while at the same time allowing an institution to exist which is based primarily around the difference of men and women? They say:

    Marriage has grown around the idea of sexual difference and all that sexual difference means. To make this feature accidental rather than essential is to change marriage beyond recognition [my emphasis]. Gay people want marriage because they want quite rightly a variant of the social endorsement that it signifies; but by admitting gay marriage we deprive marriage of its social meaning. It ceases to be what it has been hitherto, namely a union of the sexes, and a blessing conferred by the living on the unborn. The pressure for gay marriage is therefore in a certain measure self-defeating. It resembles Henry VIII’s move to gain ecclesiastical endorsement for his divorce, by making himself head of the Church. The Church that endorsed his divorce thereby ceased to be the Church whose endorsement he was seeking.

    In other words, by making the natural difference between men and women something which is only incidental to marriage, it actual undermines that institution. Marriage is something which exists for the benefit of the unborn – future generations. Its very definition involves the union of a man and woman which no homosexual union can have: redefining it to remove that union essentially redefines marriage out of existence.

    In addition, same-sex marriage would not promote the kind of ‘equality’ which is desired:

    We have profound reservations about same sex marriage not just because of the harm it does to a vital heterosexual institution but also because we reject the implication that in order to be equal and respected homosexuals should conform to heterosexual norms and be in effect the same as heterosexuals. In this sense we believe same sex marriage to be homophobic – it demands recognition for gay relationships but at the price of submitting those relationships to heterosexual definition [my emphasis]. This serves neither homosexuals nor heterosexuals. The former are absorbed into a structure that does not give due credit or recognition to their distinction and difference; whereas, heterosexuals are stripped of any institution that belongs to them qua their heterosexuality. Men and women who marry are denied proper recognition or celebration of their own distinctive union across the sexes and even more importantly any recognition of their role and unique responsibility in creating and nurturing children whose origin still lies exclusively in heterosexual union. (p. 9)

    In other words, ‘equality’ is not something which should obliterate all differences between people! There is a fundamental difference between heterosexual and homosexual relationships which should be celebrated, not brushed under the carpet. By forcing same-sex marriage into the traditional definition of marriage, what the government are doing is creating some kind of colourless, bland institution which does not celebrate difference but instead tries to force everyone to conform. As they say, “The pressure for gay marriage is therefore in a certain measure self-defeating for in seeking equality with something unlike yourself the thing that you join to is no longer what you joined.”

    I’m not going to quote to your their two recommendations – you can read the article yourself for those.

    But I do hope this at least provides some food for thought. I think it’s quite interesting to note how difficult it’s become to disagree with the same-sex marriage juggernaut in this country, but I hope that respectful dialogue will provide insight on both sides. In particular, I’m hoping that this paper will cause some to at least understand that arguing against the same-sex marriage legislation is not bigotry.

    There is also another paper which goes into the same-sex marriage arguments from another perspective, which I will leave for the time being as this post is too long already. But maybe some other time.