Note: This is a longer version of an article from the Summer 2007 Anglican Action Briefing.
While it was not on the agenda at the Anglican Communion Network (ACN) meeting July 30–31, 2007, inBedford,TX, the defense of marriage was a topic that surfaced repeatedly.
Archbishop Gregory Venables, presiding bishop of the Province of the Southern Cone of the Anglican Communion, was the first to raise the issue. Speaking during a devotional time of the importance of holding to Anglican and Christian essentials, Venables cried, “Marriage is God’s idea, and it’s holy! You can’t bless something that isn’t marriage! … You cannot imagine that Holy Marriage can be coupled up with something else!”
Would that the passion so evident in Archbishop Venables were echoed by the Episcopal Church! For despite its wonderful marriage liturgy, the Episcopal Church has lost sight of one of the most wonderful treasures over which God has permitted it to keep watch.
The Undermining of Marriage
“Marriage is God’s idea, and it’s holy! … You cannot imagine that Holy Marriage can be coupled up with something else!” How many clergy in the Episcopal Church hold to this truth today? Yes, faithful, committed, monogamous, loving relationships are presented as an ideal in the Episcopal Church—but by blessing, in some localities, unmarried heterosexual and/or homosexual couples, Episcopal clergy have undermined the very institution of marriage.
One of the more extreme examples of this tendency comes from the Diocese of Vermont. A 2004 diocesan task force report on same-sex blessings equated civil unions with marriage: “What is blessed is the same. What is asked of the couple is the same. What is asked of the community is the same love and support.”
Sidebar—What Is the Anglican Communion Network (ACN)?The ACN (full name: the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes) was formed in January 2004 in the aftermath of the Episcopal Church’s increasing repudiation of orthodox Christian faith and social witness, most visibly seen in its then-recent stands against the classical Christian understanding of marriage. The Episcopal Church’s General Convention had consented in August 2003 to the consecration of a bishop living in a same-sex relationship. Despite pleas from the leaders (called “primates”) of the worldwide Christian body of which the Episcopal Church is a part, the Anglican Communion, the consecration of Gene Robinson as the bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire took place in November of that year. The General Convention also had approved aresolution stating that local parishes are “operating within the bounds of [the Episcopal Church’s] common life as they explore and experience liturgies celebrating and blessing same-sex unions” as pastoral measures, given the approval of the local diocesan bishop. The ACN originally was created to connect “confessing” Episcopal Church parishes and dioceses (i.e., those that held to orthodox faith and practice) with each other and the larger Anglican Communion. Several geographically-based convocations were formed to facilitate greater networking in given areas across theUnited States. Non-geographic convocations were added as such needs became apparent. Orthodox Anglican parishes outside of the Episcopal Church also became part of the ACN. Over the next few years, many of the laity and clergy in the ACN—including the majority or, in a few cases, the entire population of some parishes—left the Episcopal Church. Most of those who departed joined Anglican groups created as missionary arms of other provinces in the Anglican Communion. The ACN still is made up of orthodox Anglican parishes and dioceses within and outside of the Episcopal Church. Nevertheless, the July 2007 meeting evidenced a shift in the ACN’s primary emphasis to one of working for a “biblical, missionary, and united Anglicanism in North America” rather than working within Episcopal Church structures per se. |
But even more astonishing is this statement from St. George’s Episcopal Church, Maplewood, NJ: “St. George’s, in full accordance with the policies of the Diocese of Newark, offers same sex couples recognition and access to all sacraments, including Civil Unions” (emphasis added).
The idea that civil unions are sacraments is not directly stated on the Diocese of Newark’s website, but the belief that they are sacramental is clearly there. Just-retired Bishop John Palmer Croneberger announced in his January 2001 diocesan address that he had approved liturgies “to sacramentally make real that which is already true in the lives of gay and lesbian persons living in faithful, committed, monogamous relationships.” And a year later, he had this to say: “Maybe more than any other area of injustice, our diocese continues to live out its vision as baptismal sacrament through our very public support for the full inclusion of gay and lesbian persons.”
In these examples, and others like them around the country, marriage is devalued as same-sex blessings and other relationships not given grounding in Scripture or Christian tradition are placed on essentially an equal level as marriage.
Extending Blessings Beyond Marriage—or Stopping All Blessings
“You can’t bless something that isn’t marriage!” Here, the actions of the Episcopal Church in contrast to the words of Archbishop Venables are obvious. Liturgies—some termed“experimental”—are available for use at some parishes, provided that they are approved by the bishop of the diocese in which the parish resides.
But there’s another trend occurring in the Episcopal Church: one in which parishes and potentially dioceses either temporarily “fast” from marriages or stop performing weddings altogether. In the latter case, the churches bless only marriages that already have been performed by the state—thus turning all marriages or civil unions into essentially a civil, not religious, matter. Both trends reflect a point of view that more or less argues, “If gays and lesbians can’t be married, no one should be able to be married.”
At perhaps the most extreme end, Grace Church in Amherst, MA, is “fasting” from marriages until the spring of 2008 because its rector and vestry feel that it is unjust for gays and lesbians to be denied the opportunity to marry. They want to bless something that is not marriage.
The rector and vestry (see page 4 of the link for the “Vestry Motion”) claimed that the parish’s “fast” is not meant to be a form of protest; rather, they said that it is a matter of conscience and a way of walking in the footsteps of gays and lesbians. But the parish’s decision clearly was a reaction to Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s argument that a “fast” was necessary on same-sex blessings and future consecrations of bishops living in a same-sex relationship. That argument itself was a response to the communiqué from Anglican primates at the end of their February meeting inTanzania. That communiqué called on the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops to provide assurances by September 30 that they would refrain from doing those two things. (Jefferts Schori has since said that she does not expect the Episcopal Church to fast, given the prevailing liberal sentiment around the country.)
Such an attitude is not limited to one local parish. Diocesan resolutions asking for the church to stop performing weddings, and only to bless marriages that have already been recognized by the state, failed this year in both Massachusetts (see page 12 of the link for a report on the diocesan convention at which the resolution was voted upon) and New Jersey. Similar resolutions undoubtedly will be drafted in other dioceses.
A Countercultural Stance
Archbishop Venables told the ACN members that they would have to “[set themselves] apart” from the Episcopal Church in their higher view of marriage. Bishop Robert Duncan of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, the ACN moderator, drew the distinction in criticizing the Episcopal Church’s responses to two bishops-elect: “The [2006] convention approved a bishop [the Rev. Canon Barry L. Beisner, Bishop Coadjutor ofNorthern California] who was in his third marriage. Conversely, the Episcopal Church cannot approve the new Bishop of South Carolina [the Rev. Mark Lawrence] who has only had one wife.”
Other ACN bishops also spoke of the importance of upholding marriage, as a countercultural witness against the revisionist actions of the Episcopal Church. Bishop Keith Ackerman of the Diocese of Quincy stressed that marriage involves “dispens[ing] grace” in a way that is impossible with any other type of relationship. He, like other ACN bishops, saw the need for the Christian church to “[p]roclaim, guard, and defend what [it] has … received” from God—including Holy Matrimony.
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