Changing the Church's Teaching on Marriage is Nothing New

After friends and family have gathered for a wedding, and the procession has made it to the chancel steps, the officiant begins an Exhortation, sometimes known as the ‘Dearly Beloved...’ speech, and eventually asks, essentially, ‘If this is the Church’s understanding of what we’re doing today, are you still both prepared to go through with this?’

The Church’s understanding of marriage has shifted and developed slightly from one generation to another.

It’s interesting to watch how the way we talk about marriage has changed. The 1549 Book of Common Prayer, in listing the causes for which matrimony was ordained, said:

1. One cause was the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and praise of God.

2. Secondly it was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication, that such persons as be married, might live chastely in matrimony, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body.

3. Thirdly for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.

It seems that the three reasons we identify have been about 1) children, 2) sexuality, and 3) companionship. However, the order of these three causes has been shifting since 1571, when the Second Book of Homilies put companionship first, then children, then sexuality.

Over time, the marriage service has moved talk about procreation and children from first to second place. Procreation has been ‘bracketed’ to recognize that not all married couples can or should have children, and that it would be extremely insensitive to suggest that a couple marrying in their seventies, or a couple that already knew they were struggling with fertility issues, were somehow ‘second-class marriages.’ More recent marriage services talk about the goal of marriage not being for procreation, but to produce stable homes for families to thrive in.

‘Marriage is given as the foundation of family life in which children are [born and] nurtured and in which each member of the family, in good times and in bad, may find strength, companionship and comfort, and grow to maturity in love.’ (Common Worship, 2000)

The broad cause of ‘children’ became generous enough to encompass a whole range of families, and the cause of ‘companionship’ is likewise widened to include mutual society, help, and comfort for every member of the family.

Over time, the way that the Anglican Church has talked about sexuality in the marriage service has changed as well. Where the marriage service once talked about marriage as a concession to those who were not able to live celibate lives, it began to talk about the sexual union between husbands and wives as a good thing to be celebrated an honoured. Later developments were more specific, celebrating the idea that couples might ‘know each other with delight and tenderness in acts of love,’ or be brought together ‘in the delight and tenderness of sexual union.’

Marriage must be self-sacrificial, an earthly image of the heavenly self-sacrificial love of Christ

Modern marriage services no longer talk about taking a woman in marriage (as if she were a piece of property!), even if she in turn takes the man to be her husband. Instead, we talk about two people giving themselves to each other. This shift in emphasis allows us to talk about healthy expressions of sexuality as being about self-giving, within a committed, monogamous relationship. Marriage is ‘a community of faithful love’ in which ‘sexuality may serve personal fulfilment’: not because it is self-centred, with husband and wife each looking to satisfy themselves, but precisely because it is self-sacrificial, an earthly image of the heavenly self-sacrificial love of Christ!

The way we have been talking about sexuality and procreation in the context of marriage have been changing and developing through the whole history of the Anglican Church. The kinds of development we have been talking about are not new ones, driven by special interest groups, but by successive generations of Christians reflecting on the tradition they have inherited, and continuing to engage with it and make it accessible to the world in which they live. Is it really such a big leap towards marriage equality—the notion that the Church should be prepared to marry any two people who are legally entitled to be married within the civil jurisdiction?