Did that title grab your attention? This is an argument for
saying that it is structurally impossible to tolerate a less rigorous
(‘liberal’) practice within a more rigorous (‘conservative’) set-up. Or at
least it is a thought experiment; thinking out loud. I use three questions on
which one might distinguish a more ‘liberal’ and a more ‘conservative’ view within
the church. The argument applies to any polity, of course, but my interest is
in the church.
Is it possible to enter marriage only once while a
(former) marriage partner is still alive or are there circumstances in which it
is possible to enter into a second marriage while one’s former spouse is still
alive? A church that officially holds the more rigorous view may be able to
tolerate that some members hold a more
liberal view but it cannot condone practice grounded in the more permissive
view. Once actions grounded in a less rigorous view, i.e. the remarriage of
divorcees while a former partner is still alive, are permitted, the institution
has adopted the more liberal view. In this case the question is no longer
whether to tolerate the more liberal view but whether the more rigorous view can
be tolerated. It should not be too difficult to do so, as long as those views
are not considered in and of themselves obnoxious. It is even possible to
accommodate conservative practice, which is simply a refusal to engage in the
additional act, alongside liberal practice, as long as one finds a way to ensure
that whether a couple can or cannot get married does not become a postcode
lottery.[1]
Is the ordination to the priesthood only possible for men
or also for women? As long as a church holds the narrower view, it cannot
allow for the ordination of women, even if it allows for people arguing in its
favour. Once the more liberal practice is adopted, the church may be able to
tolerate those who hold the narrower view and maybe even make concessions to
those with a more tender conscience, as long as these do not threaten the
overall consensus.[2] The
greatest difficulty here may be the harmonious ministry of clergy alongside
other clergy whom some consider not to be clergy at all or to be clergy
wrongfully.
Does marriage require a diversity of sexes or not? A
church that teaches that a marriage covenant must involve both a man and a
woman might refuse to excommunicate those who disagree with this teaching but it
cannot approve of marriages in which both partners are of the same sex. Once it
does this, it has abandoned the conservative teaching. A set-up in which
marriages are allowed between any two consenting partners of whichever sex
might tolerate people who hold the more traditional view and even try to
accommodate clergy who refuse to conduct certain marriages. In such a case the
church might well struggle to allow for clergy that refuse to recognise certain
people as ‘married’ because they are in a covenant relationship in which there
is no diversity of sexes. It would certainly seem impossible for a church to
allow for both the approval (blessing) of sexual activity within such
covenantal partnerships and the condemnation of such activity as immoral.
The short thought experiment shows that it is difficult but
arguably not necessarily impossible for conservatives to tolerate liberal views
and for liberals to tolerate conservative views. But as far as practice is
concerned, while churches which allow a wider practice may be able to
accommodate members who favour a narrower practice, it is structurally
impossible to hold a conservative view and allow liberal practices, not without
the charge of hypocrisy becoming appropriate.
In sum, agreeing to disagree is not much of an option when
it comes to deciding which practices are permissible. The only possibility for permitting
two different, contradictory practices in the examples above is to adopt
the less rigorous practice as the official stance and find ways of accommodating
/ tolerating those with more rigorous views.
[1]
Because this could be read as a comment on the Church of England, it should be
pointed out that, strictly speaking, the practice of the Church of England
seems to have been more rigorous for many years than its official teaching
required which means the situation is more complex than the illustration above.
[2] Again
the situation with the Church of England is more complicated than this,
especially since the ordination of women to the episcopate which makes it
harder for conservatives to avoid women clergy but ways have been found to accommodate
people who hold the narrower view and practice.
