Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T05:01:02.611Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Is Equal Marriage an Anglican Ideal?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2014

Abstract

A critical conversation between the Church of England's response to the Government's consultation on Equal Civil Marriage 2012, questions arising from professional parish practice as a priest, and literature in this area of research. The article explores the theological significance of ‘equal marriage’ (equal access to marriage and equality within marriage) as a Christian possibility within the Church of England, with contemporary approaches to gender and sexuality.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1.

Revd Gill Henwood is Rector of Ribchester in the Diocese of Blackburn, and a doctoral research student at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Chester, UK.

References

2. Church of England, ‘Civil Partnerships – A Pastoral Statement from the House of Bishops of the Church of England’ (London, 25 July 2005), para. 16.Google Scholar

3. Ruard Ganzevoort, R., ‘Narrative Approaches’, in Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore (ed.), The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), pp. 214–23 (214).Google Scholar

4. Cameron, H., Bhatti, D., Duce, C., Sweeney, J.Watkins, C., Talking about God in Practice: Theological Action Research and Practical Theology (London: SCM Press, 2010), p. 51.Google Scholar

5. Stephen Pattison, ‘Practical Theology: Art or Science?’, The Challenge of Practical Theology: Selected Essays (London: Jessica Kingsley, 2007), pp. 261–89 (277).Google Scholar

6. Pattison, ‘Practical Theology’, p. 279.Google Scholar

7. Pattison, ‘Practical Theology’, pp. 283–84.Google Scholar

8. Carolyn Taylor and Stephen Hicks, Achieving your Professional Doctorate: A Handbook (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2009), p. 54.Google Scholar

9. Government Equalities Office, ‘Equal Civil Marriage: A Consultation’, (London: Crown copyright, March 2012).Google Scholar

10. Government Equalities Office, ‘Equal Marriage: The Government's Response. December 2012’ (London: Crown copyright, Version 1.1 February 2013).Google Scholar

11. Government Equalities Office, ‘Equal Marriage: The Government's Response’, p. 17, para. 4.19, 4.20.Google Scholar

12. Church of England, ‘A Response to the Government Equalities Office Consultation – “Equal Civil Marriage” – from the Church of England’ (June 2012).Google Scholar

13. Government Equalities Office, ‘Equal Marriage: The Government's Response’, p. 18, para. 23.Google Scholar

14. Church of England, ‘A Response’, para. 8.Google Scholar

15. Church of England, ‘A Response’, para. 6.Google Scholar

16. Church of England, ‘Same-sex Marriage and the Church of England, an Explanatory Note’ (12 December 2012).Google Scholar

17. Government Equalities Office, ‘Equal Marriage: The Government's Response’, p. 18, para. 4.22.Google Scholar

18. Church of England, ‘A Response’, para. 6.Google Scholar

19. Church of England, ‘A Response’, para. 6.Google Scholar

20. The Archbishops’ Council, Common Worship: Pastoral Services (London: Church House Publishing, 2000), pp. 102–34.Google Scholar

21. Stephanie Coontz in Adrian Thatcher, God, Sex and Gender (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), p. 85; Charlotte Methuen, ‘Marriage: One Man and One Woman?’ http://opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/charlotte-methuen/marriage-one-man-and-one-woman (12 April 2013).Google Scholar

22. Office for National Statistics, ‘Short Report: Cohabitation in the UK, 2012’, (1 November 2012), p. 1.Google Scholar

23. ‘Heterosexuality and homosexuality are not equally congruous with the observed order of Creation or with the insights of revelation’ (Church of England, ‘Civil Partnerships – A Pastoral Statement’, para. 6).Google Scholar

24. Bracknell Forest Registration Service, ‘Your Civil Partnership Ceremony Choices’ (2011).Google Scholar

25. The Archbishops’ Council, Common Worship: Pastoral Services (London: Church House Publishing, 2000), pp. 173–93.Google Scholar

26. Cameron et al., Talking about God in Practice, p. 54.Google Scholar

27. Church of England, ‘A Response’, Summary.Google Scholar

28. Changing Attitude, ‘Submission to the House of Commons Committee Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill’ (26 February 2013).Google Scholar

29. Inclusive Church, ‘Equal Civil Marriage: A Consultation. Inclusive Church's Response’ (2012).Google Scholar

30. Changing Attitude, ‘Submission’, para. 1.2.Google Scholar

31. Cameron et al., Talking about God in Practice, p. 54.Google Scholar

32. Elaine Graham, Heather Walton and Frances Ward, Theological Reflection: Sources (London: SCM Press, 2007), pp. 88–89.Google ScholarPubMed

33. Stephen Crites, ‘The Narrative Quality of Experience’, in Graham et al., Theological Reflection: Sources, pp. 96–113.Google Scholar

34. Crites, in Graham et al., Theological Reflection: Sources, p. 107 (emphasis original).Google Scholar

35. Herbert Anderson and Edward Foley, Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals: Weaving Together the Human and the Divine (London: Wiley & Sons, 2001), Chapter 1, ‘The Power of Storytelling’, cited in Graham et al., Theological Reflection: Sources, p. 127.Google Scholar

36. Anderson and Foley, in Graham et al., Theological Reflection: Sources, p. 137.Google Scholar

37. Church of England, ‘Same-sex Marriage and the Church of England, an Explanatory Note’ (12 December 2012).Google Scholar

38. Office for National Statistics, ‘Marriage in England and Wales (provisional), 2010’ (London: Crown copyright, 29 February 2012).Google Scholar

39. Church of England, ‘A Response’, para. 17.Google Scholar

40. Enda McCaffrey, ‘The Sexual and Theological Ethics of Gay Marriage in France: A Dialectic between Autonomy and Universalism’, Theology & Sexuality 12.3 (2006), pp. 263–84 (267).Google Scholar

41. Robert Williams, ‘Toward a Theology for Lesbian and Gay Marriage’, Anglican Theological Review 72.2 (Spring 1990), pp. 134–57 (135).Google Scholar

42. George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine (London: SPCK, 1984).Google ScholarPubMed

43. Hunsinger, George‘Postliberal Theology’, in Kevin J. Vanhoozer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 47.Google Scholar

44. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, p. 39.Google Scholar

45. Church of England, ‘A Response’, para. 8, para. 13.Google Scholar

46 Robin Hawley Gorsline, ‘A Queer Church, Open to All’, Union Seminary Quarterly Review, 57.1-2 (2003), pp. 46–66 (46).Google Scholar

47. Antje Jackelén, ‘(Homo)Sexuality: Perspectives from Church, Society, and Theology’, Currents in Theology and Mission 29.4 (August 2002), pp. 265–72 (266).Google Scholar

48. Gorsline, ‘A Queer Church, Open to All’, p. 57.Google Scholar

49. All marriages in the USA are civil. Courts cases: Colorado (1996) and Massachusetts (2003). David W. Machacek and Adrienne Fulco, ‘The Courts and Public Discourse: The Case of Gay Marriage’, Journal of Church and State 46.4 (Autumn 2004), pp. 767–85.Google Scholar

50. Machacek and Fulco, ‘The Courts and Public Discourse’, pp. 776–77.Google Scholar

51. Machacek and Fulco, ‘The Courts and Public Discourse’, pp. 784–85.Google Scholar

52. Office for National Statistics, ‘Short Report: Cohabitation in the UK’, p. 3.Google Scholar

53. Éva Beaujouan and Máire Ní Bhrolcháin, ‘Cohabitation and Marriage in Britain since the 1970s’, Population Trends 145 (Autumn 2011), p. 10 and p. 18.Google Scholar

54. Office for National Statistics, ‘Families and Households in England and Wales 2011’ (30 January 2013), p. 10 and Office for National Statistics, ‘Short Report: Cohabitation in the UK’, p. 1.Google Scholar

55. Beaujouan and Bhrolcháin, ‘Cohabitation and Marriage’, p. 13 and p. 10.Google Scholar

56. Beaujouan and Bhrolcháin, ‘Cohabitation and Marriage’, p. 19 and pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

57. Beaujouan and Bhrolcháin, ‘Cohabitation and Marriage’, p. 2.Google Scholar

58. Office for National Statistics, ‘Short Report: Cohabitation in the UK’, p. 2.Google Scholar

59. ‘Sexual intercourse, as an expression of faithful intimacy, properly belongs within marriage exclusively’ (Church of England, ‘Civil Partnerships’, para. 4).Google Scholar

60. Government Equalities Office, ‘Equal Marriage: The Government's Response’, p. 17, para. 4.Google Scholar

61. Office for National Statistics, ‘Marriage in England and Wales (provisional), 2010’ (29 February 2012), p. 6.Google Scholar

62. The Archbishops’ Council, Common Worship: Pastoral Services, pp. 102–34.Google Scholar

63. I have prepared for approximately 140 marriages in eight parishes in four dioceses of the Church of England.Google Scholar

64. Church of England, ‘A Response’, para. 2 and para. 7.Google Scholar

65. Church of England, ‘A Response’, para. 6.Google Scholar

66. Church of England, ‘A Response’, para. 9.Google Scholar

67. Changing Attitude, ‘Submission’, paras. 1.3 and 1.4.Google Scholar

68. Church of England, ‘A Response’, para. 6.Google Scholar

69. Methuen, ‘Marriage: One Man and One Woman?’Google Scholar

70. Thatcher, Adrian, God, Sex and Gender (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), pp. 614.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

71. Church of England, ‘A Response’, para. 4.Google Scholar

72. Elaine Graham, ‘Feminist Theory’, in Miller-McLemore (ed.), The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, pp. 193–203 (193).Google Scholar

73. Jeanne Hoeft, ‘Gender, Sexism, and Heterosexism’, in Miller-McLemore (ed.), The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, pp. 412–21 (412).Google Scholar

74. Lisa Isherwood and Elizabeth Stuart, Introducing Body Theology (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), p. 56.Google Scholar

75. Hoeft, ‘Gender, Sexism, and Heterosexism’, p. 418.Google Scholar

76. Trible, Phyllis, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), cited in Isherwood and Stuart, Introducing Body Theology, p. 56.Google Scholar

77. Bonnie Miller-McLemore, ‘Practising What We Preach: The Case of Women in Ministry’, Practical Theology 2.1 (2009), pp. 45–62, cited by Graham, ‘Feminist Theory’, in Miller-McLemore, The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, p. 194.Google Scholar

78. Thatcher, God, Sex and Gender, pp. 7–9.Google Scholar

79. Judge William Blackmore (1765), cited in Rebecca Solnit, ‘More Equal than Others’, FT Weekend Magazine 513 (25/26 May 2013), pp. 30–31.Google Scholar

80. Tim Hitchcock, ‘Redefining Sex in Eighteenth-Century England’, History Workshop Journal 41 (Spring 1996), pp. 72–90, cited in Isherwood and Stuart, Introducing Body Theology, p. 72.Google Scholar

81. Thatcher, God, Sex and Gender, p. 7.Google Scholar

82. Judith Butler, ‘Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex’, Yale French Studies 72 (1986), pp. 35–49 (35).Google Scholar

83. Hoeft, ‘Gender, Sexism, and Heterosexism’, p. 418.Google Scholar

84. Hoeft, ‘Gender, Sexism, and Heterosexism’, p. 415.Google Scholar

85. Eugene F. Rogers, Jr, ‘Sanctified Unions’, Christian Century 121.12 (June 2004), pp. 26–29 (29).Google Scholar

86. Isherwood and Stuart, Introducing Body Theology, p. 22.Google Scholar

87. Miller-McLemore, BonnieAnderson, Herbert, ‘Gender and Pastoral Care’, in Pamela Couture and Rodney Hunter (eds.), Pastoral Care and Social Conflict (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), pp. 99–113 (102), cited in Hoeft, ‘Gender, Sexism, and Heterosexism’, p. 415.Google Scholar

88. Hoeft, ‘Gender, Sexism, and Heterosexism’, p. 415.Google Scholar

89. Miller-McLemore and Anderson, ‘Gender and Pastoral Care’, p. 106, cited in Hoeft, ‘Gender, Sexism, and Heterosexism’, p. 416.Google Scholar

90. Hoeft, ‘Gender, Sexism, and Heterosexism’, p. 416.Google Scholar

91. Beaujouan and Bhrolcháin, ‘Cohabitation and marriage’, p. 18.Google Scholar

92. Office for National Statistics, ‘Short Report: Cohabitation in the UK, p. 4.Google Scholar

93. Hoeft, ‘Gender, Sexism, and Heterosexism’, p. 414.Google Scholar

94. Hoeft, ‘Gender, Sexism, and Heterosexism’, p. 419.Google Scholar

95. Hoeft, ‘Gender, Sexism, and Heterosexism’, p. 414.Google Scholar

96. Hoeft, ‘Gender, Sexism, and Heterosexism’, p. 413.Google Scholar

97. Hoeft, ‘Gender, Sexism, and Heterosexism’, p. 419.Google Scholar

98. Nancy J. Ramsay, ‘Emancipatory Theorgy and Method’, in Miller-McLemore (ed.), The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, pp. 183–92 (186).Google Scholar

99. Solnit, ‘More Equal than Others’, p. 31.Google Scholar

100. Hoeft, ‘Gender, Sexism, and Heterosexism’, p. 419.Google Scholar

101. Rogers, ‘Sanctified Unions’, p. 29.Google Scholar

102. Cameron et al., Talking about God in Practice, pp. 59–60.Google Scholar

103. M. Midgley in Pattison, ‘Practical Theology’, p. 281.Google Scholar

104. Cameron et al., Talking about God in Practice, p. 59.Google Scholar

105. Pattison, ‘Practical Theology’, p. 283.Google Scholar

106. Pattison, ‘Practical Theology’, p. 283.Google Scholar