The Church of England does not allow same-sex blessings to take
place in church and has fought tooth and nail not to be subjected to
legislation that obliges it to do so.
On one level, I am sympathetic to
the principle that gay marriage ought not to be imposed by the
government.
Those of us within the church who argue for gay marriage
have to change the church from within.
Like many, I believe that fight will one day be won, and is fully consistent with the Christian gospel. But the charge of Erastianism
– the idea that the church is a wholly owned subsidiary of the state –
remains the ultimate theological dirty word.
The Church of England
already sails far too close to that wind, with its bishops in the House
of Lords and so on.
It doesn't help those of us who think gay marriage
works for theological reasons to be seen to be relying on the state to
push things through.
But the resistance of the C of E and the Catholic church
to the incorporation of religious readings and prayers in civil
marriage ceremonies is quite another matter, for either straight or gay
couples.
When it comes to civil marriage, the government must ignore
these objections and proceed on the basis of the core principles of
justice and freedom: justice that insists gay and straight couples be
treated equally at the altar rail of the town hall; and freedom to allow
them to use religious readings or prayers for their wedding.
No
church has intellectual property rights on the idea of God. Even so,
ecclesiastical authorities have throughout history sought to controlin
1536 any expression of faith that does not fall within its aegis.
The
very idea of translating the Bible into the vernacular was resisted for
so long precisely because it democratised the power to interpret
scripture – a power jealously guarded by the church itself.
It was the
clergy's job to tell the laity what the Bible actually said. A Latin
Bible was all about church control.
If ordinary people could read it for
themselves, at home, out of the gaze of the priest, they might come up
with a very different interpretation.
Which is why –
notwithstanding the 400th anniversary celebrations of the King James
Bible – the real hero of biblical translation is William Tyndale.
Up in the library at St Paul's we have one of only three remaining
copies of his 1526 New Testament, probably the cathedral's most
treasured possession. But soon after it was printed, the Dean and
Chapter of St Paul's were burning copies of Tyndale's Bible at St Paul's Cross.
He
had produced a Bible that even a ploughboy could understand – for which
he became public enemy No 1, hunted down by the church and eventually
strangled in 1536, his body burnt at the stake.
Less than a century
later the King James Bible (widely known as The Authorised Version,
though it never officially was) sought to bring the Bible back into
line with church and state control. Indeed, the King James translation
borrowed heavily from Tyndale and turned what was once damnable heresy
into official teaching.
The church has longstanding historical
form on wanting to manipulate how people think of God, and is as
threatened now by the way some gay people are reading and using
scripture as they were by the likes of Tyndale, Gerrard Winstanley and William Blake – all of whom did their theology beyond the reach of official ecclesiastical power.
As
a priest under the authority of the church I am not free to conduct gay
marriage.
At present our rules do not allow for this. Other churches
and synagogues are changing their minds and changing their liturgy.
And
for those that have changed, the legal authority to have gay marriage
within places of worship is extremely welcome.
But just as the
government ought not to impose gay marriage on churches that are still
not ready for it, so too the church must not impose its own
institutional homophobia on gay Christians who want to use the Bible in a
civil marriage ceremony.
Lynne Featherstone, the Liberal Democrat
equalities minister, is currently preparing plans for marriage equality.
She must not be distracted by a nervous church protecting its control
of biblical hermeneutics. People ought to be free to use the Bible as
they feel the spirit leads.
The word of God exceeds the limited
imagination of the church. It always has.