Cuckoo in the nest?

This is unusual. I made the mistake of assuming that the Church of England’s latest document Men and Women in Marriage would be condemned by the usual critics and defended by the usual establishment figures, so a couple of days ago I played my part with a blog post and a longer article criticising it. I was wrong. It has been universally condemned, and my attempts to find something positive to say about it have generated more criticism than my objections to it.

In that blog I noted that even a Church Times editorial criticises it. I failed to note that immediately underneath it was a highly relevant editorial reprinted from 100 years ago. It begins ‘We have received a foolish manifesto from a society calling itself the Spiritual Militancy League for the Women’s Charter of Rights and Liberties’. This League, apparently, wanted to change the Marriage Service to remove the giving away of the bride and the bride’s vow to obey. It mockingly comments: ‘It surprises us that these “spiritual militants” do not protest also against the abandonment by the wife of her maiden name… the next step will be to put the husband and father into the lower place in the family, if, indeed, it will not be to abolish marriage altogether’.

Nothing could illustrate more effectively how marriage has indeed changed, contrary to the claims made by Men and Women in Marriage. Was this juxtaposition deliberate? I’d love to ask the editor, but I’m sure he’d be far too sensible to give a straight answer.

Even more telling, Charlotte Methuen, a member of the Faith and Order Commission that produced Men and Women in Marriage, has produced a devastating critique of it. I don’t know why her dissent does not get mentioned in the document itself – no doubt there is a reason – but since dissent existed even within the Faith and Order Commission, surely there is absolutely no excuse for presenting the document as ‘the doctrine of the Church of England on marriage’ as though it was the only view.

Something is happening. The tide, at last, seems to be turning. The short-term evidence is messy and often nasty: the string of public relations disasters by church leaders over the last few years on one subject after another – the Anglican Covenant, assisted dying, women bishops, civil partnerships, gay marriages. Official church documents, time and time again, defend – as the Church’s teaching – positions which are no longer acceptable to the majority in the Church of England, let alone society in general. At the very least, if they are convinced that they are in the right they should try to convince us, not just pontificate from on high by decreeing ‘what the Church teaches’. For church leaders to resist, so persistently and aggressively, the views of ordinary Christians, is new. There is a growing consensus that it should not be allowed to continue.

The long-term story can be told in a variety of ways, but here’s mine. When I was at theological college in the early 1970s there were students and curates who saw themselves not as Anglicans but as Evangelicals. The Church of England, as far as they were concerned, was in error but it allowed them to minister and it was a good pond to fish in. They did not expect to learn anything useful from non-Evangelical Anglicans, but they did hope to convert other Anglicans to Evangelicalism.

There is nothing inherently Evangelical about this stance; a decade earlier it would have been adopted more often by Anglo-Catholics who identified with Rome but for the usual reasons preferred to work within the Church of England. Nevertheless, since the 1970s it has been the Evangelical revival where it has flourished. Although only true of a minority of Evangelicals it has had a major effect. Some of those disdainful students and curates of the 1970s are, today, archdeacons or bishops. Naturally, with their particular interests they would be keen to get onto the Faith and Order Commission. Because they identify themselves not with the Church of England but with their own theological tradition, they are quite happy to threaten schism if they think it will achieve their ends. Perhaps it’s time to change the metaphor and talk about cuckoos in the nest.

The ‘broad church’ – those wanting the Church of England to include Catholics, Evangelicals and all stages in between – have failed to defend the Church’s broad nature. No doubt there are a number of reasons: a commitment to engage with society rather than focus on ecclesiastical issues, anxieties about shortages of clergy and laity. The Church of England no longer sounds like a broad church, let alone a national church. Sociologists explore the differences between churches, cults and sects. Whatever the terms we use, official church documents are now repeatedly presenting the Church of England as narrower, more counter-cultural, more defiant than would have seemed credible 20 years ago.

My hunch is – and this is what gives me hope – that the tide is turning. By gaining power the hardliners have revealed what they are like. Not many people are impressed. Either they will hang onto their power and lead the Church into a reactionary future where it will be largely forgotten, or the wider Church, now so often dismissed as liberals, will reclaim their inheritance and give it a new lease of life. I hope for the latter; but to make it happen, liberals will need to venture far outside our comfort zone, into the harshness of ecclesiastical politics.

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