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.
