What is in Kelvin's Head?

A Form of Benediction for Married Persons

13/02/2014

Well, the change in the law last week makes quite a difference for clergy in the Scottish Episcopal Church. Oh, I know that you don’t think it makes any difference unless the Scottish Episcopal Church opts into the legislation to allow same-sex couples to get married but that’s where you are wrong.

You see, for quite some time, there have been couples entering into civil partnerships who have turned to sympathetic clergy in sympathetic congregations for services to mark their joy in getting hitched.

Now, in Scotland there has been no great demand for a new liturgy for blessing same-sex couples because we had a brilliant new marriage liturgy in 2007. One of the things that this service emphasised was the mutuality and equality of the couple – There was no giving away of brides, for example. In this service, the gender of the couple was not emphasised hugely and indeed one could perform the service without mentioning the gender of the couple even though until last week that was quite illegal under Scots law. (Oh yes, really!)

Now at the time that this service was introduced we were encouraged by the liturgy committee to see it as a resource for a number of different situations – for example, bits and bobs could be lifted out and used to make a splendid service for blessing a couple having a golden wedding ceremony. We were encouraged to experiment with it.

We were also encouraged when one of my colleagues helpfully pointed out that if one chose option A at every point then the service made no mention of the gender of the parties to the marriage whatsoever and that it was tantamount to being an ideal service for marrying a same-sex couple. (This version of the service has been known locally around here as the McCarthy version of the service ever since, in homage to my neighbour at St Silas who was the person who pointed it out).

Last year the bishops of the church formally acknowledged that these informal blessings were taking place. (Got that? I know it is difficult to make much sense of that but there you go). They effectively said that they didn’t want such services happening without their knowledge and that clergy were to let them know and work collaboratively with their bishops. They also said that bishops themselves were free to attend such informal services formally. Or was it that the bishops were informally able to attend these formally recognised services? I can’t for the life of me work it out any more. Anyway, the point is, the bishops knew that the services were taking place, wanted to know that they were taking place and said that they might or might not turn up to them but that this was a matter for each bishop.

Now the thing is, people were getting civil partnerships and we were using the marriage liturgy to put together an appropriate service which looked very much like a wedding. All you needed to do was substitute “Loving and lifelong partnership” instead of “lifelong marriage” for example and Bob’s your aunt – you had an appropriate service.

However, the wordings we have been using are not going to be appropriate for couples who are going to be getting married. You can’t have a couple getting married in the morning and then declaring they are entering into partnership in the afternoon in church. They are not entering into a partnership when they are already married. Neither can you simply recite the marriage liturgy over a couple who have been married earlier in the day because that would be naughty. Again, I have to admit that the reasons why this would be naughty escape me but I know naughty when it comes to liturgy and that would be it.

So, what to do?

One might hope for guidance from the church in this situation yet where is that to come from? I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has had a note from their bishop illuminating them as to what service to use for such couples. Yes that’s right – those services which the bishops have formally acknowledged happen informally (or informally acknowledged happen formally, I don’t know) and to which they might turn up. After all, one doesn’t want a bishop turning up to a service and getting sniffy about the liturgy. That would never do.

Fortunately, we have several sources of authority in the church. These include the liturgy and the Code of Canons.

The Code of Canons says this in Section 5 of Canon 31

A cleric may use the form of Benediction provided in the Scottish Book of Common Prayer (1929) to meet the case of those who ask for the benediction of the Church after an irregular marriage has been contracted or after a civil marriage has been legally entered into, provided only that the cleric be satisfied that the marriage is not contrary to Sections 3 and 4 of this Canon.

The point of this is that you can’t use the service of Benediction for a couple who are related to one another too closely and can’t do it if the marriage itself has been forbidden in church because if one party has been married before and a bishop has refused permission for a second marriage. (Refusal is possible but rare).

Thus – the canons seem to suggest that a form of Benediction is the right thing to be offering.

I don’t think that the letter of the law is very helpful suggesting that it be the service of Benediction from the Scottish Prayer Book 1929 but that service does have a very lovely prayer which I’ve rendered here in modern English:

God the Father,
God the Son,
God the Holy Spirit,
bless, preserve and keep you;
the Lord look upon you with favour and mercy
and so fill you with all spiritual benediction and grace,
that you may so live together in this life
that in the world to come you may have life everlasting.
Amen

This, it seems to me, is a wonderfully helpful resource in determining what to do with couples approaching the church for Benediction after a civil marriage ceremony. And all the more useful as the number of straight couples wanting this is surely destined to rise if the church forbids same-sex couples to wed in church. I expect that thoughtful straight couples will say, “Well, what’s good for the gander is good for the gander as the old gay proverb goes. If our gay friends get offered Benediction after getting married in a civil service then that’s what we want too.”

So, it seems apposite to look again at the modern marriage rite to see whether it has any useful resources that could flesh out a service of Benediction for Persons who are Married that would serve whatever the gender of the couple.

I’ve put this together for that purpose and hope that it is the beginnings of something useful for everyone.

I’d be interested in hearing feedback both on the content presented here and any use of this service by anyone in the future. Remember, this one is for straight people too.

You can download it here:
Service of Benediction

If you think I’ve made any mistakes and allowed the M word to remain in places where it would be naughty for the M word to be, do please let me know.

And if, in the future, we get to a situation whereby straight people can enter a civil partnership and then want that partnership blessed in church, you can be sure I will have just the thing right up my sleeve.

Are all these distinctions not becoming rather silly?

Benediction, equal marriage, LGBT, marriage, straight people

7 responses to “Whither the Kirk?”

Pausing Place

25/08/2010

I missed last night’s programme, but I thought your comments were interesting.

In a sense, perhaps it’s unsurprising if the SEC is inwardly more positive about itself than the CofS. My take is that in the recent past, at least, the SEC started from a lower common denominator, not being the “local” church in the same way as the Kirk, and so it doesn’t have to contend with others saying of it “look how the mighty have fallen” in quite the same way.

As to the health of the Kirk (and the SEC for that matter), I think we need to reflect on our self-perception and to consider carefully the points and places in which a dying church (congregation or denomination) should be allowed to die gracefully, and the ways in which we might see new life emerge from the rubble.

As a young(ish!), relatively new Christian I have seen examples of (both urban and rural) SEC and Kirk congregations where there are few signs of new growth, little to draw in younger (under 50 year olds, to pick a random-ish number) new folk, and much to sustain negative preconceptions of church as boring, irrelevant and so forth.

We as a faith community need to get much better at stepping up to the mark in our creativity and engagement with our society. The sad truth is that most young adults do not know and have not heard about Jesus Christ, and unless we engage with them in ways culturally relevant to them, and which do not presuppose previous knowledge (too often taken for granted) they never will.

It troubles me, but I do think it’s true to say that in the SEC and in the Kirk we have a church sustained by the traditions and cultural reference points taught to a previous generation. Culture has shifted radically, with the result that the same will not be able to be said in 20 years time.

Our challenge is clear. Whether the Kirk and the SEC can step up to the mark to address what it means to live out the Great Commission in the 21st century is less so.

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Cal

25/08/2010

I didn’t really understand who this programme was aimed at, or even what its aim was.

Yes, numbers have fallen, but perhaps the small number of people who remain are there because they actually want to be, not because it’s the done thing on a Sunday morning.

And personally, I rather like the idea of a church “sustained by traditions”. Clearly the church has to be relevant to modern society, but in abandoning the traditions of worship then you lose the centre of why the church exists in the first place.

There was something very Presbyterian about the programme with its “we’re doomed” mentality. I find the SEC generally more positive in outlook.

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John

25/08/2010

The only book the presenter seemed to have used in his research was ‘The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800-2000’ By Callum G Brown – indeed Callum Brown was one of the speakers. The thesis of this well argued sociological study is that “quite suddenly in 1963 something very profound ruptured the character of the nation and its people sending organised Christianity on a downward spiral to the margins of social significanceâ€. That something he identifies as new media, new gender roles and a moral revolution which has dramatically ended peopleâ€™s conception that they lived Christian lives.â€ It could be said to have happened as â€œsex beganâ€ between the end of the Chatterly ban and the Beatles first LP as the poet Philip Larkin so famously put it.”
To balance this statistical decline the programme flagged up some of the “church without walls ” iniatives in a lame sort of way. All in all a most unsatisfactory programme that only told half the story.

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Kenny

25/08/2010

Good crit Kelvin. My reflection at the end of the programme was, “Lord, we visited this stuff over 30 years ago, and have come out of it stronger and better Church in the SEC.” Hopefully, we stopped longing for ‘the good old days’ a long time ago!

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MartinRitchie

26/08/2010

I thinking “Pausing Place” makes a good point about needing to creatively engage with society. From my own experience of working with a CofS congregation, this creative engagement is a weak spot for many.

As a counterpoint to the programme, interesting to note in the latest “Life and Work” a very positive article about a growing CofS congregation in Stornoway – and I mean really growing! So not all doom and gloom, and I’m sure there are many more examples of bright spots, just as there are in the SEC!

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Graham Vahey

28/08/2010

If the C of S disappeared completely we would be at a loss. During the dark and bleak years of Thatcher’s reign she refused to visit Scotland for 5 years. When she did she expressed shock that we had Royal Regalia and ordered it to be removed immediately for safe-keeping to England. Her ‘Sermon on the Mound’ is now historical for its condescension to the Scots. She was none too pleased to be handed two reports on poverty in Scotland by the powerful Church and Nation Committee. Indeed, it was to this Committee that the population turned to for a moral lead during Thatcherism. When James VI (‘Jamie the Saxt’) became James I in England, the population turned to senior Scottish earls for a moral lead. Unfortunately, the Piskie Church does not give a moral lead in Scotland, apart from the work of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the recent past. The RC Church does pronounce on moral issues. Could it not be conceivable that all the major Churches could unite in a Committee to pronounce for Scotland on moral issues as the Church & Nation Committee once did?

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Aldous N. Gaiters

01/09/2010

Speaking as a Nonjuror myself I am sure the SEC has a right to a moral voice in Scotland. Taking the US daughter church of the SEC as a model you could see where the fissures would appear. There is room for a modern liberal Christian voice, but even I an old Liberal myself, would have to fear that such a voice might appeal to only a select few.

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