What is in Kelvin's Head?

Scottish Government’s proposals for Marriage

12/12/2012

The Scottish Government has published its proposals for amending marriage law in Scotland. There are one or two surprises too as they are going to try to amend some of the bits of law that apply to straight couples getting married. I didn’t see those changes coming and they are likely to be a bit lost in the hubbub surrounding the news that the Scottish Government has indicated that it is to legislate in favour of allowing same-sex couples to get married.

Religious bodies will need to opt into the legislation. They will be able to authorise all of their celebrants to do same-sex marriages if all (yes, all) agree. Alternatively they will be able to nominate designated people as celebrants so long as the religious body has agreed that it is appropriate for some of its celebrants to do so.

The new legislation is to be warmly welcomed. It isn’t equal marriage (most notably in the ways in which celebrants can be authorised) but it is getting very close and it provides a workable way forward for marriages of same-sex couples to be regarded in the same way in society as marriages between a man and a woman.

All of this will kick-start decision-making processes in a number of churches including my own. Somehow or another the Scottish Episcopal Church will need to make its mind up what to do.

For now, I’m simply going to say that I’d be very happy to conduct such marriages and look forward to the day that same-sex couples will be able to be married in St Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow. Indeed, there are members of the congregation hoping and wishing and praying for that day who want to get married and who are currently unable to do so.

I’ll continue to support and encourage those couples and continue to work to ensure that they can have the happiest day of their lives in their own church as soon as possible.

But what, I hear you ask, about those other changes? Here are a few things to think about.

Well, it looks as though there is going to be a significant change to the law which would allow registrars to conduct weddings (of any kind) anywhere rather than simply in approved premises. Up until now, religious and humanist celebrants have been able to conduct weddings just about anywhere in Scotland whilst registrars have been limited in where they could do it. This has meant something of an industry developing whereby couples shopped around for a marriage celebrant who was prepared to go to their preferred place – mountain tops, beaches, hotels, golf-courses etc. Generally speaking, I think it has been Church of Scotland and notably in recent years humanist celebrants who have been involved in this business. (In my diocese the bishop frowns at the thought and clergy need permission from him before celebrating a wedding outside of a church. In this case, I share in his frowns and don’t generally do weddings outside a place of worship).

I expect the consequence of this to be that civil weddings will rise in numbers, Church of Scotland weddings will fall in numbers and maybe those humanist figures which have risen so impressively will now start to tail off.

Another big change, which does not seem to me to have been thought through at all is the idea of establishing a category of wedding based on belief. (This would subsume the humanists). Thus, a group or organisation could establish itself as a belief group and apply for recognition for doing weddings.

It seems to me that it would be entirely possible that a Christian group which was not a church could be established with celebrants drawn from existing denominations authorised to do same-sex weddings. I don’t see how the state could discriminate against, say, Changing Attitude Scotland or Affirmation Scotland applying to have (lay) celebrants authorised to do same-sex or indeed opposite sex ceremonies. All kinds of groups could be imagined. There could be an Ecumenical Lay Association for Same-Sex Marriage for example. Or a bunch of renegade nuns.

Expect a lot more ink to be spilled over this suggestion.

Oh, and one more thing. The current proposals we have from Holyrood and Westminster don’t seem to me to deal with issues about celebrants being authorised from outside their current jurisdiction. I see a way whereby someone might end up authorised to conduct same-sex weddings in Scotland (an Anglican priest, for example) being asked to go to England (for example) and conduct the wedding of a gay couple. Seems to me that, notwithstanding the local ecclesiastical courtesies, the local registrar in England and Wales would struggle to say no.

Finally, a very welcome change in that people going through gender transition will no longer need to divorce their spouse before being recognised in their new gender. This was an iniquitous situation and one issue which my own congregation raised in its response to the Scottish Government.

Talking of responses, this is round 2 of the consultation process. We are going to need responses to all this to come from individuals and groups and congregations and denominations all over again. More details about that in due course.

But for now – hurrah!

equal marriage, gay, LGBT, marriage, Same Sex Marriage, Scottish Government

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.

Reply
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.

Reply
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.

Reply
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!

Reply
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!

Reply
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?

Reply
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.

Reply