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| Church wedding Source: Church of England |
In 2017 Premier reported that Anglican church weddings had reach a record low: "Figures from the Office for National Statistics show they hosted 49,717 ceremonies in 2014, a reduction compared to 50,226 in 2013."
In April this year the Church Times reported that "for the first time ever, fewer than one quarter of all marriages in England and Wales were religious ceremonies. They accounted for 24 per cent of marriages in 2016, falling by nearly a half (48 per cent) from two decades ago. In the same period of time, the number of all marriages fell by 28 per cent. In 1966, a third of marriages were civil ceremonies. Since 1992, civil marriages have increasingly outnumbered religious marriages every year."
The Government plans to introduce a new system of registration for marriages, including church weddings, in England and Wales.
Premier reports that the new system could lead to criminal offences and £1,000 fines. Under changes which may be law before 2020, couples will no longer be given a marriage certificate at the end of a church wedding. Instead of being asked to sign a register and certificate, they will instead sign a "marriage schedule", the Faculty Office said. The couple then have to take this document to their local register office to record their marriage into a database and only then will they get a certificate, it added.
A London-based Anglican priest commented said it was "an astonishing change to the way marriages are recorded. Now, instead of marriages being registered then and there by the priest, the couple will get a temporary certificate which they then have to present to the register office within a week of the wedding. When they might want to be on honeymoon."
In addition the Government wants to give every married couple in England and Wales the chance to downgrade their marriage. As the Coalition for Marriage (CM4) points out, by allowing people to downgrade their marriage, the Government is creating new instability, a halfway house to family breakdown. Just because a tiny minority of people want the rights of marriage without the commitment.
The slide continues with another nail in the coffin for Christian marriage!
More marriages in Register Offices followed by Church blessings are likely to lead to more pressure to allow same sex blessings in church.
Civil partnerships were welcomed by many but it did not stop there as illustrated by CM4:
"It’s part of plans to introduce heterosexual civil partnerships, after the Supreme Court ruling last year. C4M predicted this ruling all along. It stems directly from introducing same-sex marriage for homosexual couples in 2014 when they already had access to civil partnerships. The court said this was discriminatory against heterosexuals, who only had access to marriage."
Once people start fiddling with an institution change by stealth takes over as illustrated by the decision to ordain women.
After women were made deacons they complained that they were discriminated against if they were not allowed to be priests. Once they were priests they complained of a stained glass ceiling. Before long virtually anything goes.
The Church of England has lost its way with All the fun of the fair in Cathedrals which are used to play mini golf and provide helter skelter rides at £2 a slide.
There are secularised archbishops charged with being 'not fit for office' by a vicar who says his disclosures about being sexually abused as a teenager were ignored by senior clerics while Justin Welby keeps digging a pit for himself over gay marriage.
One would have thought that the Church would provide some stability based on scripture but that is no longer what the Anglican Church is about. It is about satisfying personal desires regardless of biblical teaching.
In Wales Archbishop John Davies said after a Governing Body vote in September 2018: "The bishops are united in the belief that it is pastorally unsustainable and unjust for the church to continue to make no formal provision for those in committed same-sex relationships."
The Governing Body had agreed by 76 votes to 21 that the lack of formal provision was "pastorally unsustainable". Abdicating all responsibility the archbishop responded: "the vote was an important steer to the bishops in exercising pastoral care." So much for leadership.
Pastoral care used to be in line with scripture and tradition. Under the current regime it has become liberal social work in vestments.
I may be a Nonconformist but I would view marriage to be just as important as it is to my Anglican colleagues, although we would never regard it as a Sacrament as I believe some do. However we sadly have to accept that we live in an increasingly secular society, which means both that fewer couples actually decide to “tie the knot” and that those that do so are less likely to do it in a church. Perhaps I could make a few points.
ReplyDelete1. I have to be honest and say that I sometimes despair of “church weddings” where a couple come and make promises before a God who they clearly don’t believe in nor think about at any other time. I always include a stipulation that there will be a short Christian homily at weddings as I wish to impress on all present that this is a sacred event rather than a civil one that happens to be taking place in a nice ancient religious building. Harsh words, and I know that the occasion can perhaps direct peoples’ thoughts towards God; but too often I’ve had the impression that people were thinking, “Let’s get the religious bit over and done with as quickly as possible so we can get to the party”.
2. Our way of conducting weddings vis-à-vis the State is quite different as, basically, we act as representatives or agents of the local authority. There are no Banns; the couple have to apply to the Register Office for certificates which they then pass on to us; we conduct the wedding, fill out the registers and certificates, then return the original documents to the Registrar’s office with our quarterly returns. The wedding is made legal by the presence of an Authorised Person; this may be the Minister but equally it may be a lay person chosen by the congregation and endorsed by the local authority. I have been an AP but prefer the latter system as it absolves me of the paperwork and lets me get on with the service itself. I am one of the signatories on the wedding certificates though.
3. I believe that the current system does need reforming as it is archaic (that horrible black ink!), insecure and open to corruption if false declarations are made. It also places Anglican clergy under some stress in assuring themselves that a forthcoming wedding is legitimate; we don’t have that fear as any initial interviews are done at the Registrar’s office.
4. Some of my Nonconformist colleagues believe that it’s wrong for the Church to be acting as agents for the State; they therefore refuse to conduct “legal” marriages but will insist that the couple get married at the Register Office before having a “church wedding” which is really an affirmation before God and a congregation of their vows. Many of us would, in any case, prefer to have the legal bit separated from the spiritual; indeed, the British situation is something of an anomaly in that I believe most European countries have always insisted in a civil ceremony with any church service an “optional extra”. The question does of course then arise as to precisely when the marriage is recognized by God!
You are right to be a Non Conformist, not being in sympathy with our hallowed tradition.
ReplyDeleteJimmy
This is what happens when you drive a bus through scriptural teaching on marriage. the crazy situation of having marriage or civil partnership, or men 'marrying' men or women 'marrying women'. If consensual love is the sole and final criterion for who should marry, then polyamourous, bigamous and incestuous 'marriages' should all be allowed.
ReplyDeleteThose who feel so morally superior and righteous who believe in homosexual marriage need to look at themselves when, as many do, still apply the criterion of monogamy as well as affinity in marriage.
Can I ask, to you who call me bigot for sticking with traditional teaching on marriage being between one man and one woman? When you decide arbitrarily, against the logic of your own arguments, to still use the traditional criteria of monogamy and affinity? If you have your rules, let me have mine.
To bigamist who is in a loving, consensual relationship with his several wives or husbands you are the bigot for not allowing them to marry. Unless of course you think that acceptable too?
In terms of what God sees as a marriage it doesn't matter what our temporal parliament says. They could pass a law saying 2+2=5 but the reality is it is always going to equal 4. Thus it is with Christian marriage and will ever and always be - one man and one women joined in faithful union for life.
Marriage can only be between a man and a women, having complementary parts which allows the possibility of bringing children into the world. Homosexual couples have the same parts and cannot therefore be married even if that's what we decide to call their union. The Church is likely to sanction GM and lose its remaining credibility with the public.
ReplyDeleteLoosemore
The question here is this: Will priests who have a traditional understanding of marriage call banns in the church for the church elsewhere which will be marrying those of the same sex shortly?
ReplyDeleteIt would be good to hear some views on this issue
Postie
As I understand it at the moment, Postie, the Church in Wales is only talking of services of blessing after a same-sex civil ceremony. That will not require banns to be called in church. Of course, the Church in Wales is on a slippery path towards marriage ceremonies in church for everybody. It's the softly, softly, catches the monkey approach. You only have to look at what happened with divorce and marriage after divorce to see that Bishops are one trick ponies.
DeleteSeymour
How many marriages are null and void ab initio because of defective intention?
ReplyDeleteThere is another simple solution: weddings and marriage for believers, civil partnerships for those who are not. Ban 'civil weddings' altogether - just make them all 'civil partnerships'.
ReplyDelete'... for the first time ever, fewer than one quarter of all marriages in England and Wales were religious ceremonies ...'
ReplyDeleteThat's because couples can now have a ceremonious marriage in impressive surroundings before the registrar in posh hotels, country clubs, entrepreneurial stately homes and the like.
Brides and their mums used to choose churches in preference to registry offices because the latter did indeed look like offices; the venue tended towards drabness and the ceremony was understated and bureaucratic. And churches offered a more impressive and attractive alternative.
But now civil marriages can take place in a 'wedding hall' in a posh venue, and registrars have adapted themselves accordingly, eschewing the 'bureaucrat' approach in favour of something more like a 'master - or maybe mistress - of ceremonies'.
And your wedding can be a package deal, with the marriage, reception and evening disco all under one roof and with only one bill at the end of it. Why use the church when something better and less arduous to arrange is now on offer?
Just part of the processes of secularization and consumerism which have been developing for a century or more. Processes which the church has been slow even to fully acknowledge, much less develop a strategy of response.
All true. But - one has to ask - why should people who profess no faith want to get married in church and makes vows before a God in whom they don't believe? I'd much prefer all weddings to be Civil, followed by a church blessing for those who wish it - as has been the norm in some countries (eg Holland) for centuries.
DeleteIncreasingly now they don't, because these days there's an attractive alternative. Possibly even more attractive than many a church could offer. But in the past when the church offered the most attractive of only two basic alternatives, church or registry office, people opted for the church.
ReplyDeleteThere's a parallel in education, I think: if your local voluntary aided church school builds a reputation for providing the best education/exam results in the area, parents want their kids to get a place there. If the school's admissions policy prioritizes children of worshipping Christians, the parents will try and wangle a note from a local clergyman confirming that one or both parents are part of his/her flock.
If the clergyman scrupulously points out that he can't because they aren't, the keenest of them will start coming to worship on Sundays at least now and then. If the child gets a place in the school, the parents will 'tail off' and vanish, because it's mission accomplished - the child has his/her place. Unless of course there's a younger sibling, in which case they need to keep it up rather longer!
In the one instance the object is getting your kids into the best school. In the other it's booking the nicest wedding venue possible. Same principle, though. It's knowing what you want and doing what it takes to get it. Actual religious belief - if any - doesn't figure.
Ooops - I took pains to say 'him/her' and then used the term 'clergyman'. Clearly I haven't entirely absorbed the imperatives around inclusivity. Will my rather advanced age absolve me, I wonder?!
DeleteJohn: this is the 21st Century! Surely a woman can be a clergyman? Saying that a woman cannot be a clergyman would be offensive, but saying that the word clergyman includes both genders should be fine! (A bit like the bible where often the word "men" clearly means humanity, or humans, or people from the context, but the new PC translations have added the words "and women" so as not to offend their pals.)
DeleteMaybe 'clergyperson' covers all angles, but now that the era of 'self-identification' is upon us you may be proved right; people are to be be accorded the right to assert their own gender, and have their self-assertion unquestioningly acknowledged, even when it appears to conflict with outward objective evidence.
DeleteOne problem English-speakers face, of coourse, is paucity of language. Greek, ever a subtle language, had - probably still has - a word for 'man' as an individual specimen of manhood, and an entirely different word for 'man' as 'humankind' or 'humanity'. Maybe if English was as accommodating we would be less likely to get tied up in these quaint controversies.
I doubt it! I think your analogy is sound, up to a point; certainly couples who choose to get married in church and parents who send their children to church schools shouldn't then complain (as they can do, certainly in the case of schools) that it's "too religious".
ReplyDeleteI know I should rejoice when I'm asked to conduct the wedding of unchurched people, as it may provide them with a route into faith. But actually I find such weddings difficult, partly because I struggle in my homily to say something about God and his love which they want to listen to or even understand. The lack of a common language is a real problem.
This is no more than a hypothesis of my own, but I think that it may be somewhat easier for 'dissenters' to take the position which you yourself describe and take than it is for Anglicans. A Christian 'dissenter' starts with the premiss that s/he stands over against, not just 'the world' but also against mainstream traditional Christianity, be it Roman Catholic or Anglican. Which means that 'dissent' is much less driven by the instinct to please.
ReplyDeleteWhereas Anglicanism began with the presumption that there should be but one church for all, to which all should conform. That was a fantastical concept which was gradually and inexorably - if reluctantly! - abandoned within barely more than a century after the reformation happened; but it left Anglicans with the notion that they were nevertheless still the 'church of the nation' to which most English and Welsh folk should naturally look.
But now we've arrived at a time when most English and Welsh folk don't 'naturally look' to religion of any sort. That's not so difficult for 'dissenters' or 'nonconformists' - Baptists especially, perhaps - to accept, because the notion of the 'gathered' church was always central to their theology. But for Anglicans who presume to be the religious expression of Englishness and Welshness, it's created an identity crisis.
Which, I believe, goes some way to explain the endless quest for 'relevance' which has now obsessed Anglicans in Britain for five or six decades, and which has prompted them to attempt outreach by means of methods which, to a dispassionate outside observer, often appear ludicrous, demeaning and fruitless in equal measure.
That's helpful; but, to be honest, I think we've moved today to what might be a "market economy" in religion in which each Christian group is trying to "sell its wares" to an unchurched population. This of course has always been the case in the US where there has never been an official State religion. In some senses this is good as it does away with the default "I'm British so I'm a Christian" of many people who don't have the first idea about the faith; it can also make churches think seriously about evangelism and outreach in ways which will "click" with their communities. But, as you suggest, such ideas of outreach can misfire, even if done with admirable intentions! (The "market economy" also has its downside in that churches may compete against each other: the thriving magachurches may attract folk who have never been to any church before but they may also suck people from'ordinary' and less-exciting congregations. But we digress ...).
DeleteWhat many people forget, Baptist Trainfan, is Jesus' words: "Fear not, little flock.." Those who truly follow Jesus, who will remain loyal to him through thick and thin, when the books are opened and all things will be revealed, are going to be few in number - "a little flock". The current Archbishop of Wales clearly hasn't grasped that - he sees bums on seats and money on the plate as the primary objective of the Church, as per his recent pastoral letter. On the one hand, he says that we are not about keeping the show on the road; on the other hand, when you read his pastoral letter, he seems to be saying that we are about keeping the show on the road - we need ordinands to maintain ministry; we need bums on seats; we need more money; we need newer liturgical practices. It all leads to the market economy - people buying in to what they like. As my old Vicar used to say: "Jesus said, 'Do this in memory of me', not hold café church or messy church in memory of me."
DeleteWhat is killing off the Church is people not being true to their calling. If faith in Jesus is worth having and worth passing on, it has to be the faith that all Christians in all places at all times have believed. The idea that we can change tack to suit the climate of the day is anathema. As St Paul pointed out centuries ago, people will always have itching ears; they will always look for teachers to tell them what they want to hear; and they will chase after every wind of doctrine. When you have bishops and clergy who play that game too, it is why the flock that Jesus of is going to be a little one.
Seymour
@ Baptist Trainfan:
DeleteFor me the most dubious aspect of that isn't a 'market economy in religion' because from the beginning the Church has been about 'marketing' the faith, i.e. evangelism. They just didn't use that very contemporary term. Wisely, perhaps!
What does strike me as dubious, however, - at least in the Church in Wales - is that under closer examination the 'marketing' too readily appears not so much to look like mission, or even like a call to deeper discipleship within Welsh Anglicanism, but more like a subterfuge for keeping the institutional ecclesiastical show on the road. And notably to focus, not unlike some secular businesses, on ensuring that in times of trouble the needs, comforts and expectations of the directors are prioritized!
When I moved back to Wales nearly three years ago after over thirty years elsewhere, the parish scene was still in the process of transformation in response to Bishop Richard Harries and '2020 Vision'. I knew a bit about it when I was east of Offa's Dyke, but not that much. When I took a slightly more thorough look, I thought there might well be some merit in the report's analysis and recommendations, and that in current circumstances some drastic restructuring was at least desirable and could probably be fruitful.
But I noticed that while Bishop Harries's recommendations for pretty drastic reorganization at the parish level were in the course of implementation, his similarly thoroughgoing recommendations around diocesan structures had been quietly shelved. No question, it appeared, of even considering the uniting of some dioceses; and rather than a slimming down of hierarchs to match a leaner, frailer church, a tendency here and there indeed to proliferate archdeacons! Maybe I'm over-disposed to suspicion, but suspicious I was - immediately!
Forty years ago I remember having a conversation with an archdeacon about the hazard of the church becoming, if only unsensingly and by default, primarily 'a career structure for clergymen', as the venerable gentleman pithily depicted it. Looking in from the outside, the Church in Wales does rather look to me as if it's caught up in that web.
But now, of course, it's career structures for clergywomen alongside the clergymen - and it doesn't altogether look as if it's 'unsensingly and by default'!
Over the weekend, I was at a festival in our village when one of the locals asked me about the Church in Wales' desire to go down the road of same-sex marriage. "How can the Church go there?" he asked. "It goes against everything we have ever been taught."
ReplyDeleteFurther on in the conversation, his wife got to the crux of the issue. "How do we know that everything we were taught about God and Jesus is true? If the Church's teaching on marriage is now wrong, maybe there is no God and Jesus is not his Son."
O what tangled webs the Church is weaving, and this at a time when the Archbishop is pleading with people to undertake mission.
Seymour
"How do we know that everything we were taught about God and Jesus is true?"
DeleteWe don't, which is why faith isn't the same as sight!
But the question's entirely rational, of course, because if the church starts to turn somersaults on a selection of its teachings with the consequence that, within a couple of generations, it ends up affirming the opposite of what it had affirmed previously, it's not at all unreasonable for people to start to wonder about the authenticity of other aspects of its message.
As pointed out in these responses, many couples marry in Church without any knowledge or interest in the Christian faith. Which means when same sex marriage is condoned we will have non believing gays and lesbians receiving a Christian marriage. Sadly, there will be many clergy anxious to conduct the ceremony while telling us all we're not showing enough love. I predict the first such occasion will be at St John's in Cardiff -see Diocesan website re Pride.
ReplyDeleteLoosemore
I've insufficient knowledge these days about St John the Baptist, Cardiff, to comment on how things go there. Though I do wonder how the late, and formidable (not to say ferocious) Canon W E C Thomas, sometime incumbent, would view it all!
DeleteBut if the church does ultimately move to solemnizing same sex partnerships I see no reason why the situation which has long pertained as regards heterosexual church marriages wouldn't simply be reduplicated in homosexual ones.