Reader Writes May 2023

Here is the only funny thing I have seen so far on a thorny and painful subject. A gay

couple in wedding garb stand outside the Archbishop of Canterbury’s front door. One of

them, finger poised on buzzer, says “Right, we’re agreed, I press the buzzer, then when

the Archbishop opens the door, you sneeze loudly, he then says ‘Bless you’, and we say

‘Amen’; job done!” Rumbling away with gathering storm clouds is the debate within the

Anglican Communion whether same-sex partnerships should be included in the Church’s

teaching and practice of marriage. This was debated hotly at Synod earlier this year, and a

decisive step towards this will be voted on later in the summer. Some claim, especially in

the global south, that changing the orthodox Christian teaching and practice regarding

sexuality would alienate some 75% of the world-wide Anglican Communion.

We all have gay friends and members of our families, so lay people and secular society in

general are usually utterly mystified by the objections that the Church raises. Why on earth

wouldn’t the Church want to bless and spiritually support same-sex relationships in the

same way that it provides for traditional marriage of a man and a woman? At the very

foundation of the Christian’s relationship with God is the confidence and certainty that we

are known and loved by God as individuals, including our sexuality. That ‘expressive

individualism’ seems to cry out for acceptance of the widest range of committed sexual

partnerships.

Jesus found himself in fierce conflict with the Jewish authorities as soon as he began his

public ministry. He was both radically inclusive and he was radically conservative on the

Jewish scriptural norm of marriage. He praised a woman, known to have a sinful

reputation, when she wept over his feet, and pouring a jar of precious ointment over them,

wiped them with her hair. When another woman was brought to him having been caught in

adultery, he neither humiliated her nor condemned her. And again a Samaritan woman

with a shameful reputation was astonished when Jesus asked her for water. Christian

teaching is both these things; radically inclusive but also radically consistent on the norms

of heterosexual marriage.

So where does the individual Christian stand on the blessing of same-sex partnerships?

Many, perhaps most of us, might expect teaching to evolve in response to society’s own

development. At the same time, however, a traditional understanding of scripture says that

marriage was given by God for the union of a man and a woman, and is not extended in

the same way to same-sex partnerships. Living in accord with scripture’s teaching and in

the light of the Church’s tradition, borne out of historical practice, ensures that the Church

(ie believers) continues to walk in God’s will and purpose.

Christians will want to support gay people, and share their pain, when their longings and

commitment to each other are constrained by what the Church legally allows. We pray for

long-term committed relationships pastorally, whether they are within the Church or

outside, whether they are heterosexual or same-sex. This is not the same as changing the

Church’s practice by formally blessing same-sex unions. Christians must listen and hear,

both in terms of care and by taking seriously established orthodoxy.

Robert MacCurrach