Categories: uncategorized
Date: 04 March 2010 17:19:25
No! Don't go hat buying, I am not about to enter into one, (despite the partial misreading of a Facebook status by one of the Wib contingent). The Lords has, though, voted to allow an amendment to the equality bill currently going through that would allow for civil partnerships to have a religious element.
The Times' Ruth Gledhill blog column has a summary of the Bishop of Winchesters arguments against this. The Evangelical Alliance has also commented, giving their concerns. Within both there are two main issues (i) the potential for anti-discrimination laws to be used to force churches to give services which they can't agree to on conscience and (ii) the confusion between civil and religious ceremonies.
These, I believe are valid concerns on one level, but they are also being used to scaremonger and create smokescreens. Here is my take on the whole thing. Firstly, the possibility for individual churches and ministers to refuse to conduct certain ceremonies and sacraments on grounds of conscience must be respected. Any amendment must include wording that specifically respects this right. This is not the same as the Catholic Adoption Charities issue, as the EA suggests. Whilst I believe they should have been given the exemption they were seeking the fact is they are a publicly funded service and this was the argument against, individual churches in this situation aren't. Therefore, there is no reason why an exemption cannot be given. However, I believe within every locality, where there is a difference of opinion within denomination or the dominant thinking of the denomination is that civil partnerships are positive some kind of religious ceremony should be available and officially sanctioned. It may be that some churches decide that they do not wish to allow the civil ceremony to take place within the church but they will facilitate ceremonies including a blessing and the wording of such services will be included within official service books. The reasons why this may be a good solution were put forward by Bishop Gene Robinson when he was describing his own relationship, in a talk at Greenbelt last year.
This leads onto the confusion between civil and religious services. The civil element of any service has the role of fulfilling the requirements of the state and giving legal protection to the couple involved. On one hand this is marriage and yet on another it isn't. Then there is the religious element. Following Catholic teaching, (flowing from Aquinas) and Protestant teaching (flowing from Luther) the theology invovled relates to partnerships that come together to produce children. In our modern society many heterosexual couples are recognised to be married but don't have children for various reasons. Marriage then has a wider meaning in modern society than the theological material thrown about often chooses to recognise. However, I understand why some in churches may choose to keep marriage as a heterosexual sacrament. This is where the sanctioning of particular services of blessing which recognise same sex relationships which are loving, monogomous, faithful and equal, (whilst people may bring differnet gifts to them) are important if people wish to stand before God and their friends and families and say we want to commit to each other publicly. Yes, churches should be able to combine both elements the civil and the religious if they wish, but equally they should be able to say actually we don't want to do this, but we do want to support civil partnerships by blessing them.
Personally, I would be happy to go into a office somewhere and sign a civil partnership agreement without ceremony, but I would desperately want a religious blessing of that relationship. As it stands at the moment I could do the former, but I would not be able to have a blessing of my relationship within church. If this law helps change that situation, by moving the Methodist Conference and others towards recognition of these services I would be very pleased. Yet, as I say I would not expect any minister or church council to be forced into agreeing to this type of service on their premesis if they weren't happy with it. I know this becomes more difficult in Methodist and Anglican churches which aren't congregational but through situations where people in individual churches have and haven't welcomed people for various reasons to married in church, or bring their children for baptism we can see this discretion between ministers and churches on issues of conscience is possible.