Letter to the Editor of The Church Times

Dear Editor,

My immediate neighbour in Biddulph, the Revd Andrew Dawswell, presents your readers with the standard, modern evangelical argument (3rd Jan) concerning the marriage of divorcees and the blessing of homosexual couples in church. This is that the Scriptures have some ambiguity about divorce and remarriage; but, they are wholly clear on the sinfulness of homosexual genital activity. Thus the allowing of the marriage of (some) divorcees and the forbidding of blessings of homosexual couples in church makes logical and biblical sense.

However, what is beginning to surface in the Church of England (indicated by Bishop Montefiore's article), after having proceeded apace for at least a decade in the Episcopal Church of the USA, is that a cultural connection between blessing the marriages of divorcees and blessing the partnerships of homosexual persons is clearly to be felt if not seen. This has nothing to do with logic or biblical hermeneutics in terms of its driving power and attractiveness. The use of biblical texts is merely the outward, religious form of the connection.

The driving power is the powerful force within western culture of belief in human rights, in the need for personal fulfilment and happiness, in fair play (if they have it why can't I), in the gains of the sexual revolution, and so on.

In the Episcopal Church, a very large percentage of clergy not to mention laity, are divorced and remarried. To get permission from bishops for a first marriage after divorce in church is virtually automatic and in some dioceses this is so for second ones as well. The only attempt at any kind of real discipline starts with either second or third marriages. Serial monogamy is a practical doctrine of the ECUSA. Further, within this Church, as within the country, many heterosexual couples are living together without being married or even intending to marry. There is no church discipline to address co-habitation.

In this situation it is not surprising that sixty or so bishops allow (or do not seek to prevent) the blessing of homosexual partnerships and that the General Convention has come very near to stating that such blessings are acceptable. This year the Convention is expected to approve the blessing of "faithful partnerships."

This ECUSA situation looks like becoming the C of E situation by 2010!

I regret to say that evangelicals in the ECUSA have been and remain "soft" on both the prevalent divorce culture and the co-habiting of young people while they have vehemently opposed all forms of homosexuality, as if this were the sin above all sins. I hope that English evangelicals will be wiser and will recognize where the sexual revolution is coming from and thus seek to address all its manifestations. This will not be easy for them because within the "successful" evangelical, charismatic churches there is a growing number of divorced and remarried members, who will need special pastoral care, if the divorce culture along with the cohabiting and homosexual cultures are to be addressed with prophetic zeal and shepherdly compassion.

The Revd Dr Peter Toon