Perhaps the even more serious challenge looming relates to same-sex relationships and marriage. When in 2004 the Civil Partnership Act gave those entering legal same-sex partnerships fundamentally the same legal status as husbands and wives there were two exceptions: there could be no religious ceremony at the registration and marriage remained between a man and a woman. So, for example, a married person undergoing sex reassignment has formally to divorce his spouse before being legally recognised in the new gender and entering a civil partnership with his former spouse.

The former distinction was legally removed last year and discussions are now underway about how to enable civil partnerships on religious premises. Under the pretense of extending religious freedom, the state risks giving support to one perspective within churches’ internal debates on how to respond to civil partnerships by permitting religious premises to apply for authorization to host their registration. While this could create difficulties for a number of denominations, the Church of England as the national, established church will come under particular scrutiny.

Although there will be no compulsion and the Church of England has said it will not seek to gain authorization, conflicts could still result….

Read it all.

Marriage is under threat, we hear from some church leaders. Not by heterosexuals with an ever-increasing divorce rate, but by gay and lesbian people who want to express their religious faith in their civil partnership ceremonies.

Some leaders in my own church, the Church of England, as well as the Roman Catholic church have described this as an assault on religious liberty ”“ and no doubt there is an aggressive secularist agenda to embarrass the churches, though aggressive secularists should note that we are pretty good at doing that ourselves without their help.

Read it all.

Church-state tensions in the United Kingdom became headline news twice in February. Early in February a group of senior members of Parliament, fearful that legislation paving the way for women bishops might fail in General Synod, indicated that they would use parliamentary powers, if necessary, to see it through.

MP Frank Field filed an Early Day Motion calling on the government to remove the Church of England’s exemption from equality laws if the plan for women bishops fails in Synod. Various advocates of women in the episcopate welcomed this gesture, but others expressed concern that it would set an unhelpful precedent and open the way for the Parliament to impose other unwanted requirements.

Lynne Featherstone, the government’s Equalities Minister, announced plans Feb. 14 to allow religious buildings to be used as venues for celebrations of civil partnerships. She also announced plans to review current distinctions between marriage and same-sex unions. It made visible once more the deep divisions that exist in British society over sexuality.

Read it all.

Dr Rowan Williams has refused to be drawn on the issue publicly, but has broken his silence to tell MPs he is not prepared for the Coalition to tell the Church how to behave.

He told a private meeting of influential politicians that the Church of England would not bow to public pressure to allow its buildings to be used to conduct same-sex civil partnerships.

The comments are the first time he has spoken since the Coalition unveiled plans to allow religious buildings to be used to conduct homosexual partnership ceremonies.

Read it all.

Quebec’s governing Liberals voted in favour of an opposition motion to ban ceremonial daggers from the provincial legislature.

The Parti Québécois tabled its motion Wednesday ”” requesting the government prevent Sikhs from carrying their ceremonial daggers into the national assembly building ”” and the legislature voted unanimously in favour.

Read it all

The key distinction underlying classical liberalism is the distinction between the private and the public. This distinction allows the sphere of political deliberation to be insulated from the intractable oppositions that immediately surface when religious viewpoints are put on the table. Liberalism tells us that religious viewpoints should be confined to the home, the heart, the place of worship and the personal relationship between oneself and one’s God.

When the liberal citizen exits the private realm and enters the public square, he or she is supposed to leave religious commitments behind and function as a stripped-down entity, as an abstract-not-full personage, who makes political decisions not as a Jew or a Christian or a Muslim but as what political scientist Michael Sandel calls an “unencumbered self,” a self unencumbered by ethnic, racial, gender, class or religious identities.

Read it all.

Diocesan Diversity ”“ The Diocese of Toronto honours and appreciates the diversity represented in its parishes and clergy. This diversity will continue to be reflected in the selection and appointment of clergy, and in the membership of committees and councils of the diocese. We recognize there are theological and cultural differences across our diocese and within parishes which are strained by both the limits and permission represented in blessing same gender relationships.

–All congregations and individual Anglicans are called to exercise pastoral generosity one to another.
–Permission to participate in blessings of same gender commitments will be extended only to those parishes and clergy who fulfill the requirements noted above and are granted permission by the diocesan bishop.
–No clergy nor parishes will be required to participate in the blessing of same gender relationships.
–Clergy who object to blessing same gender relationships will be asked to exercise pastoral generosity by referring same gender couples seeking a blessing, if requested, to the Area Bishop.
–Clergy who support blessing same gender couples will be asked to exercise pastoral sensitivity to those in their parish who are not in agreement with the parish designation.

Read it all.

Her Majesty The Queen will inaugurate the Ninth General Synod of the Church of England in Church House, Westminster on Tuesday 23 November. The Inauguration ceremony will follow the Eucharist in Westminster Abbey, at which the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, will preside and Dame Mary Tanner (a President of the World Council of Churches) will preach.

This Synod will reflect some significant changes amongst its membership: 35% of the elected members of the General Synod are starting their first ever five-year term; the proportion of elected clergy who are female has increased from 21% to 28%; and women now make up 46% of the elected laity membership (up from 40%).

The November group of sessions will continue with regular business for the afternoon of Tuesday, 22 November, until late afternoon on Wednesday, 23 November. There will be a Presidential Address from the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Other key features are indicated below….

Read it all.

The United Methodist Church’s public policy agency can advocate on causes beyond alcoholism and temperance without violating the terms of its endowment, a District of Columbia judge ruled on Wednesday (Oct. 6).

Superior Court Judge Rhonda Reid Winston’s decision is the latest twist in a long-running debate in the UMC about how its General Board of Church and Society is funded and the positions it takes on political issues.

“This matter has been an enormous, unnecessary distraction,” Jim Winkler, the board’s chief executive, said in a statement. The board has for decades fought “predatory enterprises” such as alcohol, tobacco and gambling, he said.

Read it all.

The international outcry over a tiny Florida congregation’s plan to burn copies of the Koran on Sept. 11 intensified on Thursday, drawing vocal condemnations from world leaders and touching off angry protests in corners of the Muslim world.

Read it all.

It’s church versus state in a local taxation battle.

Episcopal church officials say the property tax assessment on land next to Holy Apostles Church on the Oneida Indian Reservation is unlawful because it’s designated a cemetery.

Village of Hobart assessor Mike Denor says 23 acres that have a 2010 property tax obligation of about $600 are mostly woods, and even calling it a cemetery “is kind of a stretch.”

Read it all.

In a government that professes religious neutrality, these kinds of judicial attacks on named religious groups are extraordinary. One must ask: What business does a federal judge have declaring as a “finding of fact” that religious beliefs are harmful or beneficial to any group? Who is he to look into the hearts of religious believers and see only “stereotypes and misinformation”? Since when is a law held in suspicion simply because religious bodies endorsed it and churchgoers voted for it?

Roman Catholics, Southern Baptists, and others targeted by Judge Walker would give a different account of their motives. They affirm the unique status of the marriage of man and woman because they regard it as a blessing, not a harm, for all of society. They counsel people against all nonmarital sexual relations, heterosexual or homosexual, because marriage provides the best environment for both adults and children to flourish.

The judge offered reassurances that overturning Proposition 8 would not “affect the First Amendment rights of those opposed to marriage for same-sex couples.” He stressed a prior ruling that “no religious officiant will be required to solemnize a marriage in contravention of his or her religious beliefs.” But this has never been the principal threat.

The real threat impinges more upon traditionalist laypeople and parachurch organizations.

Read it all.

Catholic leaders in Scotland have denounced the coalition government’s plans to leave intact the 1701 Act of Settlement, which bans the monarch from marrying a Roman Catholic.

“When a monarch is free to marry a Scientologist, Muslim, Buddhist, Moonie or even Satanist but not a Catholic, then there’s something seriously wrong,” said Scottish Roman Catholic Bishop Joseph Devine of Motherwell.

In a written answer given to the House of Commons on June 30, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Cabinet Office, Mr. Mark Harper stated “there are no current plans to amend the laws on succession”

Bishop Devine, who during the General Election had urged Catholics not to vote Labour due to their social policies, expressed outrage over the Cameron government decision.

Read it all.

The concept that government should exist separately from religious beliefs is an ideal one according to an Anglican priest.

Systems where the line between state and religion was unclear have historically been open to ”˜blatant’ abuse, The Rev. Ng Koon Sheng expressed.

He was teaching a course organised by St. Andrew’s Cathedral (SAC) titled ”˜Sharing Our Faith in a Secular & Plural Society’ held on Tuesday.

Referring mostly to Christianity, the priest highlighted cases in which the Church either abused its authority or was abused by the state.

Read it all.

The governor of the commonwealth of Virginia has decided, “in the interest of religious freedom,” to grant state chaplains the freedom to pray in the name of Jesus at public events.

“I just didn’t think it was right, the change that was made a couple years ago, to have an official state policy to tell chaplains of any faith how to pray, whether Muslim or Jew or Catholic or Christian,” Gov. Bob McDonnell told reporters Thursday.

If you reverse an official state policy on prayer with another state policy on prayer, it’s still a state policy on prayer, right?

The conservative Christian Family Foundation of Virginia doesn’t seem to mind….

Oddly enough, the ACLU of Virginia agrees with the Family Foundation, at least on the need for the state of Virginia to have the right policy on prayer.

Read it all.

The Virginia Supreme Court has set oral arguments in the appeals brought by ECUSA and the Diocese of Virginia in the cases involving eleven ACNA parishes in the Anglican District of Virginia. I have previously discussed what took place at the hearings below in this post, and in this one; they may serve as background to understanding the issues involved. In this post, I would like to sketch out the issues as ECUSA and the Diocese have presented them in their briefs. In a subsequent post, I will go over the arguments of the ACNA parishes in opposition.

There is no way, of course, to predict what the Virginia Supreme Court will find significant in the briefs and arguments presented to it. Moreover, I am not licensed to practice in Virginia; someone who is may pick up on points of Virginia law and procedure that I have missed. Thus do not use these posts as a basis to expect any particular outcome. Instead, to the extent they assist you in making your way through the forest of contentions and counter-contentions, and in evaluating their relative strengths and weaknesses, they will have served their purpose.

At issue in these appeals is the interpretation and application of this Virginia statute, first adopted in 1867…

Read it all.

Lord Alli’s amendment to the Equality Bill, which allows civil partnerships to be registered on religious premises, if religious bodies wish to allow it, was approved during the Report Stage in the House of Lords on Tuesday by 95 votes to 21.

The proposed changes to the Civil Partnership Act had been significantly modified since the debate in January (News, 5 February). The scope is narrowed to England and Wales, and the existing rule that “no religious service is to be used while the civil partnership registrar is officiating at the signing of a civil partnership document” is retained.

An additional clause reads: “For the avoidance of doubt, nothing in this Act places an obligation on religious organisations to host civil partnerships if they do not wish to do so.” A further clause states: “Regulations may provide that premises approved for the registration of civil partnerships may differ from those premises approved for the registration of civil marriages.”

Lord Alli stressed that the issue was one of religious freedom. “Religious freedom means letting the Quakers, the liberal Jews, and others host civil partnerships. It means accepting that the Church of England and the Catholic Church should not host civil partnerships if they do not wish to do so.”

Read it all.

Vicars will end up being sued and the difference between marriage and gay partnerships will be ‘fudged’ after last night’s vote in the House of Lords, the Bishop of Winchester warned. Speaking to me by telephone a few minutes ago, the Right Rev Michael Scott Joynt, who was unable to be in the House for the vote because of unbreakable prior commitments, said he believed the next step would be vicars being sued for discrimation if they obeyed Church of England law and refused to do gay weddings.

‘Having thought about it a great deal since the committee stage, I regret enormously the vote last night….I think it will make for a great many difficulties. There are two I am particularly concerned about.’

He continued: ‘Notwithstanding the bland words of a number of individuals, some of whom surprise me, I believe it does further fudge the line between civil partnerships and marriage. That is shown by some newspapers which simply speak of gay marriages in church. The second thing is, I believe that it will open, not the Church of England but individual clergy, to charges of discrimination if they solemnise marriages as they all do but refuse to host civil partnership signings in their churches. Unless the Government does something explicit about this, I believe that is the next step.’

Read it all.

Gay men and women will finally be allowed to marry in churches after the House of Lords dramatically voted in favour of lifting the ban on religious premises holding same-sex partnerships.

The amendment to the Equality Bill, which was tabled as a free vote by gay Muslim peer Waheed Alli, received overwhelming backing in the Lords, including from a number of prominent Anglican bishops.

Read the whole article.

Employees at Catholic Charities were told Monday that the social services organization is changing its health coverage to avoid offering benefits to same-sex partners of its workers — the latest fallout from a bitter debate between District officials trying to legalize same-sex marriage and the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington.

Starting Tuesday, Catholic Charities will not offer benefits to spouses of new employees or to spouses of current employees who are not already enrolled in the plan. A letter describing the change in health benefits was e-mailed to employees Monday, two days before same-sex marriage will become legal in the District.

“We looked at all the options and implications,” said the charity’s president, Edward J. Orzechowski. “This allows us to continue providing services, comply with the city’s new requirements and remain faithful to the church’s teaching.”

Read it all.

In conclusion, were the state to be preventing a religious body from exercising its freedom of religion it would indeed be quite wrong for the established church to support such restrictions simply on the grounds that it did not itself wish to exercise such a freedom. That is not, however, the situation created by the Civil Partnership Act. The current legislation does not place any such limit on religious freedom. Quakers, Unitarians, liberal Jews, any other religious group, is at liberty to celebrate the formation of civil partnerships and other patterns of same-sex union within their own communities in whatever way they determine according to the laws of their religious body. The state does not claim any right to interfere in or to prevent such religious ceremonies.

No religious body has a right for its clergy to be recognised as acting as a registrar on behalf of the state or for its premises to be used for such registration – registration of births, for example, is not franchised out in order that it can be completed on religious premises by a religious minister at a service of infant baptism or thanksgiving for the birth of a child rather than by a civil registrar! Saying that such registration cannot take place in a religious ceremony is therefore not a denial of anyone’s rights.As noted above, in many European countries, there is universal civil registration of marriage and this is not held to be an infringement of religious freedom. Furthermore, in contrast to marriage law prior to 1836, it is not as if those with religious commitments who wish to enter a civil partnership are required to participate in a ceremony to which (as agnostics, atheists or non-Anglicans) they may have conscientious objections – they simply have to sign a document in the presence of a registrar and witnesses.

As some have begun to argue, it may well be time for a more wholesale review of the law in relation to marriage, including now its relationship to civil partnerships. The proposed amendment by Lord Alli is, however, not the way to proceed. The rushed, piece-meal and agenda-driven nature of his changes to the Civil Partnership Act create many more problems and confusions than they resolve and show a lack of awareness of the history and contemporary complexity of the law in relation to civil marriage, religious marriage and civil partnerships. Sadly, given the weaknesses in the arguments advanced, and the known views of many of the signatories of the letter to The Times, it is perhaps not unduly cynical to see the sudden strong lobbying of support for Lord Alli’s amendment as something of a Trojan horse. Under the flawed but powerful rhetoric of “religious freedom” and “non-discrimination”, the amendment will have two consequences. Removing the restriction of registering civil partnerships to a civil ceremony will further undermine the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage. It will also make life increasingly difficult for those people and communities of faith who in conscience object to the establishment of ‘gay marriage’and who are given no protection under the proposed amendments from charges of being discriminatory if they only offer marriages but not civil partnerships.

Read it all.

Since the debacle of Civil Partnerships I must confess to some doubts about the place of Bishops in the House of Lords.

You will recall that eight bishops (Chelmsford, Manchester, Norwich, Oxford, Peterborough, St Albans, St Eds & Ips and Truro) voted in favour of the Bill while only two bishops voted against (Chester and Southwell). In recent times they have slightly redeemed themselves with a spirited defence of religious freedom by defeating the government on the Equality Bill, but such was the seriousness of the Civil Partnerships legislation that it is not easy to forget.

Three of those bishops who voted in favour came back again like bad pennies with a letter to The Times protesting this time that the Civil Partnership Act had not gone far enough in creating a new category of civil marriage. They now want civil partnerships to have the character of religious marriage, according to the various letter writers. They complain that the original Act had prohibited civil partnerships from being registered in religious premises. Now they want this overturned for uber-liber- al Jewish and Christian bodies, effectively making civil partnerships undistinguishable from marriage.

Read it all.

The Church of England has so far resisted change, arguing that if some religious groups are allowed to hold civil partnerships then the pressure on the C of E to follow suit will become intolerable. It is a feeble argument. No one is arguing that any church should be forced to conduct a civil partnership. But willing churches should not be precluded from doing so.

Benjamin Disraeli believed the Church of England to be “a part of our liberties, a part of our national character”. If it has any hope of continuing in that role, the Church ”” and the Government ”” must recognise that our liberties today should include the right of homosexuals to register the most important promise of their lives in a church.

Read it all.

This picture is routinely challenged by those who contend that secular reasons and secular discourse in general don’t tell the whole story; they leave out too much of what we know to be important to human life.

No they don’t, is the reply; everything said to be left out can be accounted for by the vocabularies of science, empiricism and naturalism; secular reasons can do the whole job. And so the debate goes, as polemicists on both sides hurl accusations in an exchange that has become as predictable as it is over-heated.

But the debate takes another turn if one argues, as the professor of law Steven Smith does in his new book, “The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse,” that there are no secular reasons, at least not reasons of the kind that could justify a decision to take one course of action rather than another.

It is not, Smith tells us, that secular reason can’t do the job (of identifying ultimate meanings and values) we need religion to do; it’s worse; secular reason can’t do its own self-assigned job ”” of describing the world in ways that allow us to move forward in our projects ”” without importing, but not acknowledging, the very perspectives it pushes away in disdain.

Read it all.

What does the Church of England think about the fact that it is established? How does it go about defending the indefensible? The growing consensus among Anglican leaders is that this seeming anachronism is a crucial defence against an aggressive secularism, a guarantee that Christianity exists in that inescapable cliche of religious discourse, “the public square”. The Bishop of Durham gave his version of this line in a lecture last week (pdf).

He began by reflecting on the crisis of our democratic system. For politics to regain health, we need to rethink the role of religion in public life. The key problem is that “we have done our best to banish God from the public square”. Hardline secularists have had too much sway ”“ “and, absurdly, there are some Christians who have gone along for the ride, still believing the old fable that God and government don’t mix.” Since the Enlightenment, secular democratic ideology has edged God out of the political sphere, he says, and only a weak form of religion, deism, was permitted.

Read the whole thing.

A nationwide atheist group is asking religious leaders to take Jesus’ advice and render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s — especially when it comes to taking the federal tax break on their housing.

The Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation says the housing exemption gives churches an unfair advantage because they can compensate their leaders with tax-free housing. Other nonprofits, such as the foundation, can’t do that. So it’s suing the federal government to outlaw the housing allowance.

“We think the law is rotten at the core,” said co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor. “It is not constitutional, it is not fair, and it is not necessary.”

But the exemption’s supporters point to a similar court dispute in 2002 that went nowhere after Congress almost unanimously rushed to save the housing break.

Read it all.

The 25-member council advising the White House on faith-based issues has voted on two contentious issues for religious charities that receive government funds.

By a vote of 13-12, the council members said the government should require houses of worship to form separate corporations in order to receive direct federal funding for social services.

Separately, when asked whether the government should permit charities to offer social services in rooms containing religious art, symbols, messages or scripture, 16 said yes, two said no, and seven said they should be permitted if no other space is available.

Read it all.

Rebuffing the concerns of church leaders over the fate of shuttered church buildings, the city’s Landmarks Commission is recommending that six more Catholic churches be designated as historical city landmarks.

The designation, which would give the buildings some protection against demolition or structural changes, is opposed by the Diocese of Cleveland, which is in the midst of closing some 50 parishes.

The City Council would need to adopt legislation to implement the Commission’s recommendations, and in a letter sent to the commission and council members, the diocese called the proposals “extremely offensive.”

Read it all.

A fight over athletic fields in this city goes beyond who gets to play soccer where and raises thorny questions about separation of church and state and public aid to religious institutions ”” divisive issues that have flared repeatedly in heavily Catholic Rhode Island.

Parents of public school students accuse the city of favoring Saint Raphael Academy ”” a prominent Catholic school and alma mater of city and state power brokers ”” by granting its football team exclusive use of a public field. They say it’s unconstitutional to give a religious school priority access to a field meant for public use.

“It’s a long-standing and troublesome issue,” said Maggi Rogers, whose two children played tennis for a public high school here and is among the parents suing the city. “I have a strong belief in public education, and I know that public education suffers when public resources are diverted into private education.”

Read the whole article.

Fire stations across the country have decorated like this for years, and it has not pushed the United States down the slippery slope toward a religious state. If anything, Gallup polls show that the number of people who consider religion important in their lives has dropped nearly 10 percent in the last decade.

It’s not like there was a shrine to Christianity in the tax collectors’ office or city hall; there was no implied “thou shall worship,” no banner proclaiming “Charleston: Proud Sponsor of Religion.”

This is a fire hall, a place where firefighters essentially live. Since they have to stay there around the clock, waiting to save our houses, it’s only fair that they get to add a few touches of home. If they want a manger, what’s the harm?

Read it all.