The question as to whether homosexual couples should be allowed to engage in ‘civil marriage’ has caused consternation in the church.
Some faith groups have not only happily welcomed the proposals by the coalition government, but are actively lobbying for it. Quakers, liberal Jews and Unitarians have had meetings with civil servants to discuss the issue.
Last week, the Archbishop of York voiced his disapproval, suggesting a rather unnecessary parallel between dictators and David Cameron.
His argument quoted in the press was primarily that we should not want to redefine very clear social structures that have been in existence for a long time and that "it is not the role of the state to define what marriage is".
The first part of the argument is one based on the authority of history and the need to conserve existing institutions and forms of relationship. But we already have civil partnerships, and while the church upholds that this is not marriage, the social structures that Sentamu is talking about have already been redefined. Given that he doesn’t oppose civil partnerships among his own clergy, this part of his argument is hypocritical.
However the next part is important and cannot be trivially rejected, but it does need more unpacking. It gets complicated because the Anglican Church is established and so has to deal with the awkward nature of its development in relation to marriage and the state. Let’s make some stops on the development of the modern understanding of marriage in church-state relations. What follows is a simplification but will suffice for our purposes.
In around 110 AD we have extracts of a letter from the Bishop of Antioch, Ignatius to the Bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp, in which he writes that "[I]t becomes both men and women who marry, to form their union with the approval of the bishop, that their marriage may be according to God, and not after their own lust."
This approach brings marriage into relationship with the church as an institution. The promise a husband and wife make to each other is not just a promise to themselves, their community and a bishop: it is a promise before God.
