Cuthman Lecture
An Issue! An Issue! We all fall down! The Church of England and Civil Partnerships
Mark Oakley
Thank you for your very kind invitation to be here this evening. As you may know you are invited to agree to give this talk in theory quite a way in advance and then to choose your topic much nearer the time on a contemporary issue that relates religion in some way to society. Just before it was time to come up with my theme there was a bit of Press interest in a letter that had been signed by 140 priests in the Diocese of London addressed to their representatives on the General Synod. The letter was asking the representatives to note that there is a substantial number of clergy who would wish to be able to celebrate the registration of civil partnerships of their parishioners in church for sound pastoral reasons but, also noting that the conscience of other clergy wouldn’t allow them to do this, that it was their hope that all clergy should be permitted to hold registrations in their church but none forced to do it – rather like the current situation with the re-marriage of divorcees in church. Clergy may do it but they may not too. As I say, there was a little interest in this letter and because I think my name was towards the top of it because I work at St Paul’s I had a few enquiries come my way as to my reasons for signing.
It seemed right, then, to make this talk my attempt to say why I did. But I have to be honest and say I have never spoken on this subject before and seeing my name on your lecture list with my title made me feel as I think Pontius Pilate must feel about the Creed – delighted to get a mention but slightly unsure of the role I’m actually playing. You’ll have to forgive me if my thoughts tonight aren’t original or very coherent. I know also that some of you will either mildly or strongly disagree with me and that’s never really a comfortable thought as you begin: as the mother whale wisely advised her baby whale – beware my dear, she said, because it is when you are spouting that you are most likely to get harpooned. But I’m sure you’ll give me a fair hearing. As I say, this is my first go at talking about the topic but I did have reasons, convincing reasons for me, as to why I signed that letter and I’m happy to try and tell you what they were and are.
Of course, since the letter this subject has somewhat developed into new shapes. The Government has begun a consultation process on how best to proceed to allow the marriage of same-gender couples and a renewed debate has begun, in society and in the church, as to the nature and purpose of marriage. Also, the Archbishop of Canterbury has announced his forthcoming resignation in December and the inevitable reviews of his time in office have largely focused on what is widely referred to as “the gay issue”. There is also, of course, the “women issue” too – meaning the possible development of ordaining women to the episcopate. Commentators have written that “the gay issue” has and will continue to split the Church of England and the Anglican Communion. In an interview about his standing down, the archbishop said that this issue certainly “isn’t going away in a hurry”. And so my title tonight: an issue! An issue! We all fall down! And I suppose what I want to do is place a question mark at the end of that.
I want to stick in this talk with what I intended to talk about, though, that is – civil partnerships – for that is what we have in society at the moment and there is no plan to abolish them even should same-gender marriage be made legal. We will have time in conversation afterwards to think about the marriage debate if you’d like to.
By civil partnerships, of course, I am referring to those relationships between two people of the same gender, formed when they register as civil partners of each other, and ending only on death, dissolution or annulment as granted by the Civil Partnership Act of 2004. A civil partnership is formed once both individuals have signed the document in the presence of a registrar and two witnesses. No words are spoken; and no religious readings, music or symbols are allowed. Although in England and Wales it is now permitted for the registration to take place in a religious venue if permitted by the religious organisation. The position of civil partners in relation to financial, property and inheritance tax arrangements mirrors that of married spouses. The first civil partnership took place in December 2005 very near to where we are now - at St Barnabas Hospice, Worthing, one of the partners dying there the following day. In the first year just over 18,000 couples registered. Now it is around 6000 a year.
The Church of England bishops at the time made a pastoral statement, acknowledging that the Church’s current teaching is that sexual intimacy is for a man and a woman to enjoy in marriage but that there is nothing about a civil partnership that confirms whether the relationship is sexual or not. Therefore there was nothing inconsistent about a priest, for instance, entering such a partnership if he or she assured the bishop that the relationship was chaste. Consequently there are quite a few clergy in civil partnerships, perhaps the best known being the Dean of St Alban’s.
As for the laity, well, they seemed to be allowed more scope. I quote now from the pastoral statement:
The House of Bishops considers that lay people who have registered civil partnerships ought not to be asked to give assurances about the nature of their relationship before being admitted to baptism, confirmation and communion. Issues in Human Sexuality made it clear that, while the same standards apply to all, the Church did not want to exclude from its fellowship those lay people of gay or lesbian orientation who, in conscience, were unable to accept that a life of sexual abstinence was required of them and instead chose to enter into a faithful, committed relationship.
Now, that seems important. The Church does not want to exclude from its fellowship those lay people of gay or lesbian orientation who, in conscience, were unable to accept that a life of sexual abstinence was required of them and instead choose to enter into a faithful, committed relationship.
The question hovers, well apart from not excluding them and other gay partnerships that are intimate but not sexually active, as indeed many marriages are not after a time, what might we want to say or do as a Church that is more positive than not excluding?
The Bishops were clear that blessing the partnership was not an option. There being no theological consensus about same-gender unions it was not right to authorize a rite of blessing. The bishops continued:
One consequence of the ambiguity contained within the new legislation is that people in a variety of relationships will be eligible to register as civil partners, some living consistently with the teaching of the Church, others not. In these circumstances it would not be right to produce an authorized public liturgy in connection with the registering of civil partnerships. In addition, the House of Bishops affirms that clergy of the Church of England should not provide services of blessing for those who register a civil partnership.
This has proved a relief to some clergy who are approached by Christians or maybe parishioners wanting a blessing of their new partnership; to others it has proved frustrating and to others an impossible situation. There are quite a few churches that consider a prayer of blessing to be the right thing to offer such a couple and some that do so. In some parts of the Anglican Communion, a blessing is commonly offered. The English bishops have been clear about what they consider proper however. In their statement they say:
Where clergy are approached by people asking for prayer in relation to entering into a civil partnership they should respond pastorally and sensitively in the light of the circumstances of each case.
Recently a Judge and Diocesan Chancellor has stated that canon B5 of the Church of England allows for a priest to hold a service for which no provision is made in the Prayer Book as the cure of souls may deem appropriate as long as it is reverent and seemly and not contrary to the doctrine of the Church of England in any essential matter. The Chancellor concluded: “Unless and until the House of Bishops expressly forbids any form of prayers or church service at all after a civil partnership ceremony anything conforming to the above is allowed”. So, in the Church of England: prayers, yes, a service, yes, but not a blessing. Again, to some clergy this is right for they could never in conscience bless such a union without being assured of the non-sexual nature of it and so be made to ask some pretty intrusive questions that might be awkward on a first meeting in the vicarage study. For others, it is an odd state of affairs when a priest can bless a battleship and a pet budgie but not two people who love each other and want to thank God for what they share.
So, the first thing to say is that when I signed the letter I did not believe I was asking anything theologically, liturgically or pastorally improper or scandalous. There is a new reality, same-gender, state and church-recognized civil partnerships, and some of those couples are faithful people in our pews for whom to integrate who they gratefully are together with their faith and their God is very important. I was conscious that I might look like a naughty canon stepping out of line. I didn’t think, on what had already been stated by the bishops and by church law, that I was. Clergy, by the way, can often be very inhibited to do anything that feels it might get them noticed or known for a particular viewpoint. I suppose in a congress of masseurs, no one ever wants to show their back. But in London there is a large gay community, and there are many gay men and women who are full and active members of our churches, from organists to churchwardens, from servers to treasurers and to the person sitting at the back wondering if they’re wanted or not. Gay couples in the parish, just as heterosexual people, come to the vicarage asking for the church to witness their relationship and help them celebrate it, to be a place of welcome to them even if they don’t perhaps come every week. It seemed to me that if clergy in conscience could offer them the church as the place of registration and of prayer for the day then that would be an important pastoral ministry of an established church that counts every resident in the parish boundaries as a cherished soul to be served in the name of Jesus Christ.
And this brings me, to the second vital reason I signed the letter – the fact that I see nothing inconsistent between what we were asking for and the beliefs and ethics of the Christian faith. As I say, I know many will disagree but let me outline where I am here.
I start with a fact. There have and always have been people attracted to others of the same gender. This may not fit someone’s ideal of how they would like the world to be but it is fact that for whatever reason, and there are many theories though none proved as to the origins of homosexual orientation, whatever reason there have always been what we now refer to as gay and lesbian people. We don’t know what percentage but it is a minority of people, though most of us will know gay people today, they are friends at work or in the street, members of our family, and in every possible area of public and common life, indeed I am sure there will be gay people here tonight. And what each gay and lesbian person will say is that they did not choose their sexual orientation. They didn’t wake up one day and say, I think I’ll be gay. Like heterosexual people they usually gradually came to understand and realise their sexuality, although they may have been frightened to admit it to themselves or others because there are so many messages around that it is wrong or shameful to be like this. It is not unknown, especially in past years but still the case, for someone to commit suicide because they have been made to feel so ashamed of who they are. What most gay people will say though is that when they have the confidence, support and love around them to freely recognize their sexuality it comes as a great relief because they no longer have to pretend or hide. The truth sets them free.
For me, then, to speak of gay and lesbian people is to speak of a minority of people in every society who did not choose to be the way they are but who, like most human beings, know that life is often better shared with someone in love and who set about life in the hope they might be fortunate enough to find life’s companion. This makes gay and lesbian people like any other minority who did not choose to be the way they are – people with black skin, or white skin, say, or those born Jewish, or in a particular Indian caste. And justice in society is achieved when such minorities are afforded a life with the same opportunities and privileges as the majorities and are not diminished simply for having been born or having developed into the person they find themselves to be. Like many minorities they often suffer the hatred and suspicion of people - for whatever psychological often scape-goating reasons. They therefore often need protecting by law although in many countries the law is actually against them. In over 80 countries today homosexuality is illegal and in some the death penalty is in place.
As a Christian I believe that the criminalisation of a person’s identity is wrong and that the protection of minorities is a duty. But I believe more than this.
I believe that any person who finds him or herself with a homosexual orientation deserves to be happy and fulfilled and should be encouraged to flourish as a human being. If this means, as it does for most people, that a permanent, faithful and stable relationship is what one looks for then, if one is fortunate enough to find that person in life (and what a miracle it is when one does) and that you both decide to share life together, to share intimacy, emotion, a future, to share a home, holidays, to have that person there when you get home, to grow old together, to be there when you go into hospital, hold your hand when frightened or hug when full of joy then where love is, God is. I have known gay couples who, against so much prejudice over past years, have stuck together faithfully for years and have known the ups and downs of any similar loving heterosexual couple and who, at the end, when one partner dies feel that they have lost their, literal, other half. Where love is, God is.
Some will not like me quoting scripture here and would prefer me to start quoting other verses, ones that appear to condemn homosexuality and, naturally, Christians must attend very seriously to what those verses say.
And I am conscious now that I am referring to some biblical verses that refer to homosexual behaviour and not to civil partnerships, the nature of which did not exist in biblical times nor which, as I say, necessarily involve sexual intimacy.
As an Anglican Christian I am not interested in an approach to the Bible that, say in some forms of fundamentalism, uses biblical verses like bullets to fire off and hit someone so that you win an argument. I am interested in the context of the biblical writings and consequently how they may have been heard when written rather than simply how we hear them today and to learn from this, often with much more radical conclusions. Where the Bible does not always answer all our questions, it does always question all our answers and that is more important to me. Like a critical friend, always asking me to read the love between the lines, the Bible is the inspirational challenger and developer of my faith, not least by the difficult dialogue it often sets up. I am not a biblical literalist for the bible is too rich for that. Neither do I believe it is a sort of doctrinal dictionary. It is for me a collage of God and faith as people have experienced them over generations and it is there to encourage us to dive deeper into these mysteries so that faith doesn’t try to be relevant but resonant and fresh in every age.
The first thing I note from the Bible is that Jesus never mentions homosexuality. The average person in the street might be confused to hear that at the moment, but Jesus just does not mention the subject according to the gospels. In fact the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality is much more sparse and ambiguous than many would think and, as I say, it is questionable to what extent we can derive from it any direct application to the ethical issue of civil partnerships as it faces us at the moment.
There is the famous sin of Sodom in Genesis 19. Although people are quick to say today what that sin was, it remains unspecified in the scriptures. The sin committed by all the men of Sodom at Lot’s house was one of gang rape of visiting strangers by a majority, presumably, of heterosexual men. This violation of hospitality to visitors in the town was the sin, a contravention of the rules of how to be hospitable to the stranger and this is clearly how Jesus understood the sin of Sodom himself in Matt 10, 14-15 : “if anyone will not receive you or listen to you shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that town. It shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for that town”. Jewish commentators writing between the testaments were keen to condemn homosexuality as a Gentile vice and so began the term sodomite, even though as it seems you should be using this word for people who are not hospitable to you. You can try it out next time someone doesn’t buy a round. It might be interesting also to note that at the end of the story, it is assumed to be perfectly ok for Lot to offer his two daughters to be raped by the crowd as substitutes for his male guests (19,8). As one of the statements by the bishops noted, in texts like this the situation is too remote from our own in human terms for any direct ethical transfer to be made. What the story should be teaching us is how recklessly generous in our hospitality we should be to those who may be different from us – so perhaps this story does have something to say to our current situation after all?
There is then Leviticus 18, a prohibition of male homosexual behavior in the Holiness Code where it is punishable by death. This is the earliest prohibition in scripture, probably dating from the exile in Babylon, where the encouragement of childbirth was vital in the exile situation for the forthcoming resettlement and where to distinguish themselves from the Babylonians, who were apparently quite tolerant of homosexuality even as part of their worship, was also vital. In Leviticus it is very much a Gentile sin and the Holiness Code is all about what sets Israel apart as holy. There is a long list of abominations including the trimming of your beard, the eating of shellfish and the weaving of two types of yarn in the same garment. So the next time you see a clean-shaven man at a church buffet wearing a poly-cotton shirt and eating a shrimp do remember to tell him he is an abomination. My point is cheaply made but real – Levitical rules are not regarded as having moral force for Christians, if so please make sure the disabled are kept away from the sanctuary on Sunday because that is very clearly prohibited too. We aren’t accustomed to look to them for guidance, so why single out the one on homosexuality except as a bullet. And if you want to truly follow the code, will you be doing the execution?
In the New Testament, as I said, the Gospels have nothing to say on homosexuality. There are only two relevant texts in the letters of Paul (I Cor 6,9 and 1 Tim 1,10) where he mentions it in a list of sins in a society where prostitution and pederasty (the Greek practice of a temporary pupil-teacher relationship between a young and older man) were the standard forms of homosexual practice and are the forms which are most likely to have been in his mind when he refers to the subject. Paul did not know of permanent, faithful, stable same-gender civil partnerships such as we know of. The culture was very different. He spoke of what he knew.
The most significant biblical text is Romans 1, 18. And this is the only place where we have a theological argument. Although the subject of homosexuality is not the real interest here. The letter is addressed to a church composed of both Jewish and Gentile converts and in Chapter1 he is engaged on an attack on Gentile idolatry. He argues that all people could have deduced knowledge of God from observing his creation but they chose to reject it and turn to idol worship. Because of this rejection of him therefore God abandoned them to their lusts and impurity and to dishonorable passions exemplified in the exchange of heterosexual intercourse for homosexual and to a base mind and improper conduct, exemplified in a long list of sins deserving death. This completes the attack on the Gentiles. Chapter 2 then turns the tables on the Jews in his audience to condemn them equally for the same sins although they have had even less excuse having the Law. Chapter 3 reaches the climax of Paul’s argument for Gentile and Jew alike that all have sinned, none is righteous but all can be justified through Christ.
When Paul argues homosexuality is against nature he does not only mean that it is against the order of nature itself but also that it is against the person’s own nature. Paul does not recognize a separate category of homosexual people but of only homosexual acts. He takes it for granted that homosexual behaviour is a free and perverse choice on the part of “naturally” heterosexual persons. But as I said at the beginning, this is not the situation we are addressing. Instead, we are speaking of people who had no say as to who they are and consequently it would be perverse of God to condemn them as if it were a matter of wilful sin. Neither Paul nor his Jewish antecedents considered the case of a homosexually orientated person and therefore, again, there is a question as to whether they can be applied to the relationships we are reflecting on.
At this point it might be the time to also note that for some homosexual practice is morally sinful because it is not procreative. Well, only men and women have that potential sexually and therefore the creation of children will not be part of a same-gender partnership. However, not all heterosexual marriages are procreative, not all heterosexual sex is procreative and if you are going to apply a universal law it needs to be universal. As an Anglican Christian I am not against contraception and I am not against infertile heterosexual people marrying so why would I suddenly throw the procreative demand at homosexual couples?
So, I must end. I hope to have shown you that the reason I signed the letter asking that those clergy who feel able, and I am one of them, to permit civil partnerships to be registered in church and to be supported with prayer should be allowed and that those who don’t should not be forced. I signed because I think there are good pastoral reasons to support love and commitment wherever it is found, to encourage its stability by allowing friends and family to surround it and celebrate it, and to integrate this with their lives of faith.
I think that the biblical texts have been misused as part of an attack on homosexual people and that in the name of Jesus Christ, who never mentioned this topic, I want to read the love between the lines of scripture and ensure that gay people do not feel as if they are a “them” when it comes to church, but are actually a part of “us”, a diverse family or what Desmond Tutu refers to as the rainbow people of God. To categorise people in the body of Christ or in society, anyway, simply around their sexual orientation would be wrong.
I also believe that there is a general move amongst many to be more embracing of same-gender partnerships and, if someone in your family, say, your child, or sibling, told you they were gay and wanted to share life with a partner that a majority would seek to be supportive, loving and hoping they find happiness in life. We have to ask the question at some point, as did Martin Luther King when Christians and others were starting to see black people as equal to white, whether if segregation now looks dead the only issue will be how costly people make its funeral. I hope that this is not an issue, an issue that will make us all fall down but that it is one we can celebrate and thank God for, for we are talking at the end of the day about people committing themselves as they find themselves to each other in fidelity, permanence and stability and I say it again as it is the bedrock of my Christian faith – where love is, there is God and it strengthens the couple and the Church if we can celebrate the fact.
