“The main reason for the state to be involved with marriage is children,” says Prof David Paton, an industrial economics lecturer at the University of Nottingham and a supporter of the Coalition for Marriage, a group arguing that traditional marriage is beneficial to society and would be undermined by a definitional change. “It seems reasonable for the state to treat the one type of relationship from which children can directly result in a different way to others, and this is the basis for marriage laws,” says Paton.
Not all marriages will result in children, he concedes, and also suggests that issues such as pension rules or inheritance may require the state to recognise alternative relationships in different ways.
But the same-sex marriage law is not about this, he says. “It’s about changing the very definition of marriage to encompass other types of relationships that are inherently different. That is both unnecessary and carries the risk of weakening the legal structure designed to encourage the attachment of children to their natural mother and father.”
At first sight, a comprehensive and helpful summary, but on further thought there is a glaring omission – the S-WORD.
Sin – if the many admonishions in the Bible are correct, and sin does create a barrier between man and God and those who do not repent and take advantage of the reconciliation offered with God by Jesus on the cross, then this is a very serious matter indeed. What if those who unrepentantly ‘lie with men’ are indeed not going to enter the kingdom of heaven? It is not the only sin, but the Bible says that sin it is.
The problem is that if this is the case, then any church which endorses anything from gay marriage to ‘pastoral accommodation’ is in fact far from bringing people to Jesus, actively leading them away. This concerns everyone from on the one hand the English HOB with their broadly permissive ‘prayer’ authorisation, to on the other hand the Archbishop of Canterbury and the HOB with their failure to support the plain biblical instructions and their plans for some sort of secular ‘referendum’ through the Welby/Porter designed ‘facilitated conversations’ – as if this was just a matter of secular democratic decision-making – as if it was just like deciding on Scottish independence, or whether to pass yet more powers to the European Union.
For all the talk of ‘faithful loving relationships’ and the need so often expressed by Justin Welby and his supine House of Bishops to find ways to support them, the unspoken expectation of ‘marriage’ is of sexual consummation, something which the legislation has side-stepped.
The moment a life-sharing relationship between two men, women, or a brother and sister for example becomes one that is sexual as is implicit in ‘marriage’ then according to the Bible, sin has entered in, and the Bible says that not only is this not living in accordance with the best God plans for us but is active rebellion – the words immoral and abomination are used in the texts, so we have to assume that this is not something which God endorses, and the church which tells people that it is, comes under God’s judgement.
If you want an example, just look at TEC and ACoC, where believers are marginalised and leaving and the provinces are plunging into unviability, and as their leaderships follow slavishly the prince of this world, with preoccupation with litigation, immorality and infanticide.
For all Welby’s soothing words and clever schemes, and all his residual evangelical fervour, this is where we are being led and perhaps it is better to place our reliance upon God and His Word, as our CofE Canon A5 continues to call us to do and as I observe it; or if you will the Jerusalem Declaration also does in almost identical terms, as it has been affirmed recently by the Diocese of South Carolina [although as yet, not by me, although I do not have a problem with it].
If St Paul is correct and our bodies are a temple in which the Holy Spirit indwells, then should we be surprised when the Bible tells us that sin divides us from God, and indeed that sin is a ‘stench’ in His nostrils? As the old prayer book puts it we pray: ‘O God, make clean our hearts within us, and take not thy holy spirit from us’ echoing Psalm 51:
“Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me”
That is my prayer, and also that we do not lead others astray.
I was very struck with the issue of Sin listening to the Newsnight interview last night by Jeremy Paxman with the Rev. Paul Flowers, Methodist minister, and former Chairman of the Co Op Bank, one of the leading products of the Victorian Cooperative movement.
Rev Flowers resigned following disasterous results and exposure of allegations of drug buying and paying for rent boys with his company expenses. A summary of the interview is here and in the UK it can be watched in full here
It was this quote which made me sit up and take notice:
How strange that the word sin is something a Methodist minister would rarely use, and to what extent does that inform the way he fell right into it in a massive way. I wondered – whether we use the word rarely or not, nevertheless our sins have a way of finding us out and it seems of taking their price [or wages as the old versions put it].