The Lead

Coming from a number of venues now, we're seeing stories like this one from The Telegraph's political editor, Patrick Hennessy, reporting that civil partnerships could be recognized in English churches:

Lynne Featherstone, the Liberal Democrat equalities minister, is expected shortly to outline firm plans to lift the current ban on civil partnerships being conducted in places of worship.
In a political "win" for Nick Clegg and his party, the Coalition will also say that such ceremonies should for the first time be allowed to have a religious element, such as hymn-singing and readings from the Bible.

They could, it is understood, also be carried out in the future out by priests or other religious figures.

The landmark move will please equality campaigners but is likely to prompt a fierce backlash from mainstream Christian leaders, as well as some Right-leaning Tories.

BBC reports:

There are no plans to compel religious organisations to hold ceremonies and the Church of England has said it would not allow its churches to be used.
Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said the change was "long overdue".

Civil partnership ceremonies are currently entirely secular.

From The Guardian:

The Home Office said: "The government is currently considering what the next stage should be for civil partnerships, including how some religious organisations can allow same-sex couples to register their relationship in a religious setting if they wish to do so."
The move, likely to come as early as next year, would mean historic reforms of marriage laws, according to newspaper reports over the weekend. However, it will cause ructions among churches strongly opposed to formal gay unions.

....

However, the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, gave the news a guarded welcome. He told the BBC1's Andrew Marr Show that he "believes in a liberal democracy, and actually wants equality with everybody", but he did not want churches to be told what to do.

Another Telegraph item runs under the headline "Sentamu: don't force churches to conduct gay weddings" and includes the following:

Some critics fear the reforms could pave the way for legal challenges that would force vicars to conduct homosexual “wedding” ceremonies against their will.
Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, told BBC One’s Andrew Marr show: “I live in a liberal democracy and I want equality for everybody. I cannot say the Quakers shouldn’t do it.

“Nor do I want somebody to tell me the Church of England must do it or the Roman Catholic Church must do it because actually that is not what equality is about.”

Also widely reported are the comments of a Church of England spokesperson:

We have yet to see the proposals, so cannot comment in detail. Given the Church's view on the nature of marriage, the House of Bishops has consistently been clear that the Church of England should not provide services of blessing for those who register civil partnerships.
The proposal as reported could lead to inconsistencies with civil marriage, have unexplored impacts, and lead to confusion.

Any change could therefore only be brought after proper and careful consideration of all the issues involved.

UPDATE: A February 2010 letter to The Times was signed by a number of key church leaders including Oxford's Diarmaid MacCulloch, Jeffrey John and the late Colin Slee. They wrote:

Sir, The Civil Partnership Act 2004 prohibits civil partnerships from being registered in any religious premises in Great Britain. Three faith communities — Liberal Judaism, the Quakers, and the Unitarians — have considered this restriction prayerfully and decided in conscience that they wish to register civil partnerships on their premises. An amendment to the Equality Bill, to allow this, was debated in the House of Lords on January 25. It was opposed by the Bishops of Winchester and Chichester on the grounds that, if passed, it would put unacceptable pressure on the Church of England. The former said that “churches of all sorts really should not reduce or fudge, let alone deny, the distinction” between marriage and civil partnership.
In the same debate, the bishops were crucial in defeating government proposals to limit the space within which religious bodies are exempt from anti-discrimination law. They see that as a fundamental matter of conscience. But it is inconsistent to affirm the spiritual independence of the Church of England and simultaneously to deny the spiritual independence of the three small communities who seek this change for themselves (and not for anybody else).

The bishops’ “slippery slope” argument is invalid. Straight couples have the choice between civil marriage and religious marriage. Gay couples are denied a similar choice. To deny people of faith the opportunity of registering the most important promise of their lives in their willing church or synagogue, according to its liturgy, is plainly discriminatory. In the US it would be unconstitutional under the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free exercise . . . of religion.

Comments (9)

And so blessings on this side of the pond are a communion-breaking issue because ... ????

The mind boggles.

Posted by revsusan | February 13, 2011 3:48 PM

PS ... forgot to sign ... that's The Reverend Susan Russell.

I don't think Sentamu's comments today - I did watch the programme - constitute any change of position from a year ago. The CofE leadership remains officially opposed to allowing any CofE church to take part in this relaxation of the civil law restrictions on the venues for civil partnership ceremonies. Sentamu doesn't mind if other religious bodies do what they want to do.

Posted by Simon Sarmiento | February 13, 2011 4:22 PM

Simon - Two questions:

(1) Can the CofE have it both ways? Can they be "in bed" as it were, with the government, being an agent of the state on marriages and then unilaterally deny its LGBT citizens the opportunity for the marriage ceremony?

(2) Could individual clergy decline to perform individual ceremonies for same sex couples the way they can, now (I assume), for different sex couples who do not meet their criteria?

Everything else being equal or at least legal, are CofE clergy allowed to decline to officiate at the marriage of a heterosexual couple based on their objections concerning one party's age, physical ability, or race - apart from or in addition to their concern about the future viability of the marriage?

I suppose comments like Sentamu's are to be seen primarily as political posturing, which one expects at this point. I guess I'm talking about the wisdom of a unilateral, institutional refusal for clergy to engage in marriage equality vs letting the state do what the state will and allowing individual clergy the option of declining the opportunity to participate in marriage equality. But, not knowing how the system works, exactly, on your side of the pond, leads me to ask the question.

Posted by Elizabeth Kaeton | February 13, 2011 5:23 PM

I flinch at this rhetorical move:

"The landmark move will please equality campaigners but is likely to prompt a fierce backlash from mainstream Christian leaders, as well as some Right-leaning Tories."

Mainstream? What's mainstream? Majority opinion? A declared sampling of key religious leaders (like the Dow Jones average or something?). I think many readers of the Cafe sense the "mainstream" of church and religious opinion moving toward an ethic of truthfulness and blessing relationships that bless us all. I recall one C of E priest (a New Testament professor) saying, 'That one thing most Gospel scholars agree on about Jesus was that he stood firmly against religious hypocrisy. The Church of England is all too slowly backing away from a program of systematically endorsing religious hypocrisy.'

Do 'mainstream Christian leaders' welcome Jesus to their numbers? As long as he doesn't make too much fuss.

'The old time religion' is made up. Throughout church history there have been scape-goating, judgmental, moralist versions of Christian faith. They're not the majority voice, at least not most of the time. But they always claim that they're the true voice. And when they get loud enough and insistent enough, the culture at large seems only too glad to agree.

I don't think I'm just complaining about language. Rhetorical moves like this from the religious right (in this and many instances with the consent and encouragement of supposedly neutral press) claim for their exclusive use words like 'traditional,' 'orthodox,' 'faithful,' 'Bible-believing,' and here 'mainstream.'

Posted by Donald Schell | February 13, 2011 6:03 PM

What's been appalling, is how long the CofE HAS been using its established role, to (help) prevent *other faith groups* from celebrating CUs as they wish to! [It's as if "freedom of conscience" ONLY extends in the homophobic direction. Never in the LGBT-affirming one.]

JC Fisher

Posted by tgflux | February 13, 2011 6:04 PM

It may be that the issue of same-sex marriages may be the straw that breaks the CofE establishment's back. We'll have to see. As I understand it, a parish priest in the CofE is obligated to preside over the wedding of any parishioner (i.e., lives in the parish, not necessarily a regular or even occasional worshiper).

Very different from us in the US (and I suspect many/most other countries): in TEC the clergy have an absolute right to decline to solemnize any marriage, period (I.18.4). My assumption is that if a priest declined for obviously trivial or sinful reasons (e.g., racial discrimination), a complaint might be made to the bishop and charges filed under IV.4(c) (Vows) or IV.4(h)(8) (Conduct Unbecoming), but such charges might be tricky to sustain. I.18.4 would still hold. (Canon lawyers, any comments on this?) I also suspect that all other clergy of other religious groups have similar provisions.

Of course, TEC clergy are also directed/constrained by I.18.2 & 3, and so there are some important issues that we need to work out. But I.18.2&3 also give us some protection that I gather CofE clergy do not have.

This issue is not going to go away as long as we are willing to serve as functionaries of the state. Celebrating-and-Blessing is our ministry. Secretarial work for the County Clerk is not.

Posted by Bill Moorhead | February 13, 2011 6:44 PM

Part of the reason Parliament invented civil partnerships in 2004 for same-sex couples rather than admit them to the institution of civil marriage like sex-discordant couples was to appease the Church of England, which did not want to have to deal with same-sex couples. By making it against the law for a civil partnership to be celebrated in any religious setting, the C of E saw to it that it would never have to deal with "those people" whereas civil marriage would have made it easier for LGBTs to claim their rights. Creating a separate category for same-sex couples and cordoning it off from religion constituted double apartheid.

But the prohibition on a religious setting for civil partnerships meant discriminating against saner religions and denominations.

At some point the C of E will need to be disestablished if its leaders continue to practice discrimination.

I do not understand why LGBTs would want to have anything to do with the C of E.

Gary Paul Gilbert

Posted by garydasein | February 14, 2011 3:45 AM

I found this analysis helpful,

http://churchmousepublishing.blogspot.com/2011/02/gay-marriage-and-church-of-england.html

Posted by John B. Chilton | February 14, 2011 7:00 AM

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