Committed Church Membership

In Yours Lord: A Handbook of Christian Stewardship (A&C Black, 1992), pp. 96-97, Michael Wright offered an adaptation of A Short Guide to the Duties of Church Membership as a help for considering one’s own personal discipline. He suggests noting some specific intentions for the next twelve months to be kept in one’s Bible or a devotional book, for regular reference.

·         We have our unique part to play in the life and witness of our church.

What do you see your part being in your church now?

·         We have the opportunity to reflect the light and love of Christ in our lives.

How do you see you can do that in your activities, decisions and relationships each day?

·         We are invited to share each day of our life with God.

How do you intend to safeguard time to listen, love and share with him each day?

·         We are offered the Word of God in the scriptures.

How do you plan regularly to read and seek to understand the Bible?

·         We have the opportunity to share in worship and fellowship with other Christians each week.

How often do you plan to do this?

·         Christ invites us to his table, to be fed with the sacrament of his body and blood.

How often do you intend to accept this invitation?

·         Christ asks us to ‘always treat others as you like to them to treat you’.

How do you plan to express this in service of others?

·         Marriage is intended as a lifelong partnership of love.

How can you help to nourish this ideal in your own relationships, and how can you help others to do so?

·         Christ has a special love and protection for children.

How do you aim to nourish and protect the spiritual, emotional, social, educational, and artistic well-being of your own, and other people’s, children, and help them to know Christ’s special love for them, and to experience the joy of knowing him?

·         Christ invites us to store up treasure in heaven, rather than treasure on earth.

What proportion of your income will you decide to give this year, as an act of gratitude to God for all he has given you, that you may help to do his will on earth as it is in heaven?

Duties of Church Membership

At the request of the Church Assembly in 1954 Geoffrey Fisher and Cyril Garbett, archbishops respectively of Canterbury and York, produced 

A Short Guide to the Duties of Church Membership

All baptized and confirmed members of the Church must play their full part in its life and witness. That you may fulfil this duty we call upon you:

To follow the example of Christ in home and daily life, and to bear personal witness to Him.

To be regular in private prayer day by day.

To read the Bible carefully.

To come to Church every Sunday.

To receive the Holy Communion faithfully and regularly.

To give personal service to Church, neighbours, and community.

To give money for the work of parish and diocese and for the work of the Church at home and overseas.

To uphold the standard of marriage entrusted by Christ to His Church.

To care that children are brought up to love and serve the Lord.

Geoffrey Cantuar :

Cyril Ebor :

Published by the Church Information Board and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. S.P.C.K., London.

A report to the Church of England's General Synod in 1990, Receiving and Giving: The Basis, Issues and Implications of Christian Stewardship (GS 943), recommended that an updated version of this be widely used 'as a guide, rather than a requirement, for new and existing members' of the Church. In Yours Lord: A Handbook of Christian Stewardship (A&C Black, 1992), pp. 96-97, Michael Wright offered an adaptation as a help for considering one's own personal discipline.

Christ Church Virginia Water offers a Bible verse for each of the nine statements.

Is it possible to tolerate liberal views?

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.

On Affirming Marriage as a Lifelong Union

Canon Dr Angus Ritchie, like others, claims that

To remarry divorcees and to conduct same-sex marriages both go against the Primates' Communique, which affirms that marriage must be “between a man and a woman in faithful, lifelong union.”

This implies that the Church of England’s practice, which allows remarriage of divorcees in some circumstances, and its official doctrine as expressed in Canon B 30

The Church of England affirms, according to our Lord’s teaching, that marriage is in its nature a union permanent and lifelong, for better for worse, till death them do part, of one man with one woman, to the exclusion of all others on either side, for the procreation and nurture of children, for the hallowing and right direction of the natural instincts and affections, and for the mutual society, help and comfort which the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.

Like others, Angus Ritchie is coy about spelling out what if anything is to be done about this contradiction. 

• Does it matter whether or not the Church acts in accordance with its beliefs?
• If so, should the Church  revert to its more rigorous practice of not allowing divorcees to get married in church?
• Or should the Church adapt doctrine to practice and abandon the doctrine that marriage is a lifelong union?

(Ritchie's general argument suggest to me that he would not be content with blatant contradiction between doctrine and practice and his endorsement of Jeffrey John's Permanent, Faithful, Stable suggests that he does not want to abandon the idea that marriage involves "faithful, lifelong union" but I am not aware of any efforts on his part to revert to a less liberal marriage practice in relation to divorcees.)

The claim that the practice of remarriage of divorcees is incompatible with the view that marriage is a lifelong union is presented as self-evident. But it can hardly be said to be self-evident. Why?

Because for at least one and a half millennia the Eastern Churches strongly affirmed that marriage is a lifelong union, while allowing for the possibility (and permissibility in some circumstances) of divorce with right of remarriage, appealing to Origen and Basil among others.

Because even within the Western Church this was rarely undisputed. There was a period of about 400 years from the Decretum of Gratian onwards during which (Christian!) marriage was held to be indissoluble without much contradiction but the issue was re-opened during the Reformation period. The Reformers abandoned the principle of absolute indissolubility for theological and pastoral reasons and “believed that in doing so, they were recalling the Church to the Scriptural teaching on marriage and divorce.” (Atkinson)*

Because in spite of the fact that the Church of England adopted the most stringent practice in all of Christendom, as far as mainstream churches are concerned anyway, a division of opinion on this matter has been characteristic of Anglican history.

All are (were?) agreed that God’s will for marriage is for it to be a permanent and lifelong union. The debate concerns whether the claim that marriage must be “between a man and a woman in faithful, lifelong union” expresses God’s design which can however be broken or whether a valid marriage once entered into on these terms is a “lifelong union” in the sense that it can ever be broken in God’s sight, whatever the civil authorities declare.

The claim that remarriage of divorcees invariably goes against the view that marriage is a lifelong union seems to presumes not only the view usually attributed to the Roman Catholic Church that sacramental marriage forms a bond which is only severed at death but also extends this principle to all marriages, whether they involve Christians or not. (See here a statement on why marriage that involves someone who is not baptised can be fully valid and even conducted in church without being sacramental according to Roman Catholic church law.)

In short, the assumption behind the claim that remarriage of divorcees goes against an affirmation that marriage must be “between a man and a woman in faithful, lifelong union” is highly controversial. To present the claim as self-evident betrays either an astonishing ignorance of other Christian views on the matter or a breathtakingly arrogant confidence that other views can be dismissed without even being mentioned.

An incumbent within the Church of England should not remain in such ignorance. For the benefit of anyone needing a crash-course in the discussion preceding the change in practice within the Church of England I have excerpted David Atkinson’s To Have and to Hold: The Marriage Covenant and the Discipline of Divorce (St James’s Place, London: Collins, 1979) in notes from chapter 1 (areas of disagreement), chapter 2 (historical sketch), chapter 3 (marriage as covenant), chapter 4 (background and biblical evidence), chapter 5 here (principles for a Christian view of divorce) and here (applications of these principles), and chapter 6 (the pastoral problem of divorce and remarriage). A more recent, very learned but not Anglican discussion can be found at http://www.divorce-remarriage.com/.

Quick summary:

(1) Some believe that no (Christian) marriage ever comes to an end in this life. This is the position usually identified with the Roman Catholic Church.
(2) Some believe that there are two ways in which a marriage can end, through death or through sin. This is the position of the Orthodox churches and of the Protestant Reformers.
(3) Some believe that there are many which in a marriage can end other than death and sin. This seems to be the most widespread view in Western society outside the church.

The phrase "lifelong union" means different things to different people.

• For those affirming (1) it describes an inescapable fact about marriage. 
• For those affirming (2) it says something about what marriage intrinsically is according to God's design which is however breakable, a bit like saying a house is a space with walls and roof does not imply that the roof cannot fall down.
• For those affirming 3) the phrase expresses at best an aspiration rather than something that marriage intrinsically is.

*Note Tudor Church Reform: The Henrician Canons of 1535 and the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum (Boydell Press, 2000)

To Have and to Hold: Divorce and Remarriage, Pastoralia

The final chapter of David Atkinson’s To Have and to Hold: The Marriage Covenant and the Discipline of Divorce (St James’s Place, London: Collins, 1979) explores the pastoral problems of divorce and remarriage. See previous notes from chapter 1 (areas of disagreement), chapter 2 (historical sketch), chapter 3 (marriage as covenant), chapter 4 (background and biblical evidence), chapter 5 here (principles for a Christian view of divorce) and here (applications of these principles).

Atkinson notes that “divorce is often a symptom of a far deeper problem in contemporary society – for Christians as for others – than simply the personal failure of a particular couple within their marriage relationship” (p. 181) The problem is not addressed by simply making divorce as difficult as possible. “The pastoral problem for the Church...is how to foster and encourage the personal qualities which make for covenant-faithfulness and commitment, even within the pressures of contemporary society.” (p. 183)

“As Michael Pollitt rightly comments: ‘education for and within marriage is a much more urgent matter than the question of the remarriage of divorced people.’” (p. 184) Furthermore, without dismissing the role of other agencies, “it is the duty of the Church to be an agent of reconciliation” where there is a threat to a marriage. (p. 186) “Whatever the practical steps needed, the Church has a duty to make itself known, and inspire confidence in its value, as the agency within which the reconciling grace of God can become a reality in the strained relationships of marriage breakdown. And it must work towards establishing as a regular procedure, the use of that agency as a first resort by married couples at times of marital distress.” (p. 187)

When marriages are broken: “For too long the primary stance of the Church to people who have been divorced has been one of condemnation or rejection...The Christian community needs to learn how to express compassion towards the divorced person as ‘victim’ [not only agent of divorce].” (p. 188)

“Part of the pastoral question for the Church is to ask how best it can be an agency of support and acceptance to the victims of divorce. And the second pastoral question is how best the Church can aid the divorced person, and his or her family, in finding ‘the Father’s will’ for their future.” (p. 188) Atkinson elaborates this in terms of guilt and feelings of guilt, receiving and extending forgiveness, and “for some, but surely not all, the covenanted obligation of sexual exclusiveness may lead them to view their future life as divorcee as a calling to celibacy” (p. 189).

“The moral question of the propriety of repeating lifelong vows is not as central as some argue.” (p. 189) While failure to uphold a vow reduces one’s moral credibility, it does not preclude the genuine possibility to make another life-long vow with utter sincerity.

“Whereas, therefore, the moral question concerning the right of remarriage may be fairly clear, the pastoral question as to the Church’s role in such remarriage, in particular whether or not it should give its blessing to any particular remarriage, is much more complex. The Church has other needs to consider than only those of the couple concerned; it is here that the tension between the Church’s prophetic and pastoral callings can be most acute.” (p. 190)

“The practice of refusing to marry any divorced person with the Church’s blessing seems unfortunately to witness only to the fact that Church law must always come before personal need. And yet, of course, indiscriminate remarriage on demand would seem to speak of a God of cheap grace who is blind to sin. If the Church is to give its blessing to some who seek remarriage after divorce, it needs first to be sure that it is pastorally possible to operate a consistent, fair and adequate discrimination...The only feasible criteria on which the Church can decide whether or not it is appropriate to give its blessing concern not degrees of guilt, but present attitude.” (p. 191)

“The Church’s blessing for any marriage should be reserved only for those who share its view of marriage, and the condition (with respect to the couple) on which the Church’s blessing on second marriage should be decided, is penitence for past sin and a genuine desire to seek God’s grace for a new marriage which accords with his pattern.” (p. 191)

After exploring three options, Atkinson concludes: “Assuming that after pastoral consultation, the parish priest and the couple believe in conscience that it is appropriate to have a church service for their marriage – and, to aid the priest in his decision, a diocesan panel may well be a helpful advisory aid – it would appear that neither the Marriage Service as it stands, nor a Service of Blessing following civil marriage, gives adequate witness to the view that God’s will for marriage is for permanence, that divorce is sin, but that sin can be forgiven. The most satisfactory option appears to be a procedure which combines adequate pastoral preparation with a liturgical service which itself gives appropriate witness to the Church’s prophetic and pastoral roles. A form of service is needed, in which the marriage itself is included, which can act in a discriminatory way by expressing both God’s will for marriage and penitence for the sin of divorce. If both such facts are publicly declared in the liturgy itself, the important distinctions in the Church’s witness between first and second marriages can be maintained.” (p. 194)

To Have and to Hold: Divorce and Remarriage, Applications

In the fifth chapter of To Have and to Hold: The Marriage Covenant and the Discipline of Divorce (St James’s Place, London: Collins, 1979), David Atkinson articulates six principles “as basis for a Christian view of divorce in our contemporary society.” (p. 143, elaborated upon on the following pages)

“In attempting to apply these principles to our contemporary situation, three particular issues call for further comment.” (p. 151)

(a) Divorce is a moral act, not the result of ‘misfortune’

Atkinson critiques the Root Report, Marriage, Divorce and the Church (SPCK, 1972). “In contrast to the Eastern Orthodox insistence that the ‘permission for divorce in no way denies the tragic and sinful nature of every marriage breakdown’ [citing the Report, p. 121], the Root report (and indeed much of the way ‘irretrievable breakdown’ is currently understood) appears to transfer all question of blame for divorce away from the partners and to the ‘marriage’ as though (as D. Field comments) ‘the institution of marriage can be made into some kind of third party scapegoat on which all guilt can be laid’.” (p. 152)

He adds the observations that covenant breaches can be serious or relatively trivial and that “persistent and unrepentant sin is one thing; the action which, though of itself not morally good may none the less be right in the circumstances (like bearing arms in war), is quite another.” (p. 153).

This means that “although legally and socially in institutional terms all ‘divorcees’ are identical in that they were once married but are married no longer (and indeed the Church needs to recognize all civil decrees, even those granted on what from a theological standpoint it may regard as trivial grounds, as de facto divorces), in theological and pastoral terms this identity of ‘divorcees’ is not adequate.” (p. 153)

(b) Divorce as the ‘lesser evil’

“To initiate civil divorce procedure as the ‘lesser evil’ may sometimes be a responsible choice, but only with the recognition of sin, with sorrow and repentance.” (from the Summary, p. 174)

(c) Divorce: the legal procedures

“The legal procedures of the 1969 legislation in this country do not seem to fulfil the intentions of the authors of the Anglican Report Putting Asunder (1966) on which (largely) they were based. The present legal situation and court procedures are in fact making divorce easier and the maintenance of marriage harder.” (from the Summary, p. 174)

The issue of nullity is discussed on pp. 162-171. “Although some are urging the Church of England to follow the Church of Rome in exploring the possibilities of annulment in some cases of marital breakdown, it is sounder theologically and clearer in practice to recognize divorce, and to require the handling of even those ‘marriages’ which theologically may be deemed nullities to be the responsibility of civil courts.” (p. 175).

“Finally, what about the moral issues involved in the question of remarriage after divorce?

The possibility, indeed likelihood, of remarriage after divorce is presupposed in both Old and New Testaments, although, as we have seen, a second marriage falls under the cloud of the broken covenant of the first.” (p. 171)

“Our view is that it is not only remarriage which closes the door to all possibility of reconciliation and renewal. When that door has finally been shut by a determination of the will of either partner, there can be a freedom to remarry. But only if the door has been shut. Any children of the first marriage (almost invariably the chief casualties of divorce) are also of paramount importance, and the fulfilment of outstanding covenant obligations of parenthood towards them is another of the moral issues affecting the decision concerning remarriage.” (p. 172)

Atkinson also notes the importance of exploring and, if need be, addressing pastorally and maybe therapeutically “the question of personal ability to make and sustain committed relationships” (p. 172). Furthermore, one would need to judge “that the overall personal good of remarriage in a particular case would justify the threat that a second union would make to the social institution of marriage.” (p. 173).

See also notes from chapter 1 (areas of disagreement), chapter 2 (historical sketch), chapter 3 (marriage as covenant), chapter 4 (background and biblical evidence), and chapter 6 (pastoral questions).

To Have and to Hold: Divorce and Remarriage, Principles

David Atkinson, in the fifth chapter of To Have and to Hold: The Marriage Covenant and the Discipline of Divorce (St James’s Place, London: Collins, 1979), articulates six principles “as basis for a Christian view of divorce in our contemporary society.”

(a) In the teaching of Jesus we must reject any antithesis between an ‘ethic of law’ and an ‘ethic of disposition’: both belong together within ‘covenant ethics’.

(b) The ‘Father’s will’ for marriage has a general validity for all [people]. The ethical teaching of Jesus removes all limitation from the sphere of validity of divine law.

(c) The Messianic ‘gift of righteousness’ provides the possibility for the fulfilment of the Father’s will.

(d) We must be careful not to interpret the teaching of Jesus as a new law code by which the Father’s will is achieved.

(e) The New Testament speaks both of the Father’s will and of his concessions because of sin.

(f) We are not, therefore, to place the covenant ethic of the law of love which fulfils the Father’s will over against the juridical sphere of civil legislation.

Drawing these points together in the context of our discussion of divorce, therefore, we conclude that civil divorce legislation needs first to provide a context in which covenant love in the marriage relationship can flourish and be maintained: in which the harvest of the Spirit can grow (and therefore should provide sufficient barriers to easy divorce that divorce is never a first option, but always the tragic last resort); second, to provide for the maximising of support and aid in reconciliation for the hard times; and third, to regulate the ways in which marriage covenant may be terminated in line with the principles of order and justice.” (pp. 143-151)

Two further citations in the context of discussing the penultimate principle:

“By referring to creation (‘from the beginning it was not so’; Matt. 19:4; Mark 10:6), and by bringing divorce under the heading of the seventh commandment (Matt. 5:32), Jesus proclaims the Father’s will for marriage. By not rejecting the Mosaic ruling to regulate divorce, but regarding it as a concession because of ‘hardness of heart’ (Matt. 19:8), though none the less part of the law of God (the giving of a certificate was a ‘commandment’, Mark 10:5), and by his own words (‘Every one who divorces...’; ‘Let no man put asunder’), Jesus recognizes that the Father’s will may be thwarted by sin and that social regulation of divorce therefore becomes necessary.

                St Paul likewise distinguished between the will of God for permanence and the need for specific rulings if that will was not adhered to. The affirmation of the law of God for marriage cannot therefore be taken to imply that there is no place for legislation to regulate divorce within a sinful world.” (pp. 147-148)

“It has been the consistent view of theologians of the Reformed tradition (exemplified most clearly in Reformation times, perhaps, by Peter Martyr), that Christian thinking on the subject of divorce needs to hold two principles firmly together: the permanence of the marriage covenant in principle and divorce as a tragic, but real, exception. The essential moral force of Jesus’ affirmation of the will of God for marriage implies the following principles. First, that the permanence of marriage is not merely an ideal. Marriage is in fact a covenant in which permanence is not only possible, but indeed is part of the very meaning of what covenant is about. Secondly, divorce must therefore always be seen as sin or the result of sin, involving social evil as well as personal tragedy.” (p. 148)

A second set of notes from this chapter on the applications of these principles is here .See also notes from chapter 1 (areas of disagreement), chapter 2 (historical sketch), chapter 3 (marriage as covenant), chapter 4 (background and biblical evidence) and chapter 6 (pastoral questions).