The debate over same sex marriage
has divided not only society but has also deeply divided the church. The two positions seem to be
intractable. As a result of the votes by
the Lutheran Church and congregations, congregations and individual members have
left the church in significant numbers.
The Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) is haemorrhaging as members and
congregations leave. The debate within
the church has been complicated as one side presents the argument in favour of
same sex marriage largely in terms of rights while the other side claims that
their position is scriptural and accuses the church of abandoning scripture. Tragically both sides believe God is on their
side, but for very different reasons. At
the moment there seems to be no way of bridging the divide while the leadership
of the church has dissolved into silence.
Luther, I believe, may offer the church a way out of this dilemma.
Luther makes it clear that marriage
is not a sacrament but a rite. He also
is clear that marriage is a social issue and belongs to the realm of creation
and therefore the responsibility of the temporal authorities. He is emphatic that the Church cannot and
should not make rules, or canon laws, concerning marriage. He believes that the church has no right to
impose its laws on society. His position
does not mean that marriage is not created by God. For him marriage is part of the created order
and it like the rest of creation, is to be managed by the temporal authorities
and not the church. God has placed
temporal authorities over creation and thus also over marriage. This position is a radical departure from
that of the Roman Catholic Church as well as the Protestant churches. Even though his position on marriage is about
500 years old, it comes as something refreshingly new for the church.
The debate to define marriage within
society is a perfectly legitimate activity according to Luther. Society is the sphere where rules and laws
concerning marriage are to be enacted.
The problem for society that affects its understanding of marriage is
that there have been significant changes in the area of sex. A major change that has not been fully
appreciated by the church took place in 1960 when the US government approved
the use of the birth control pill. With
the introduction of the Pill the function of sex changed. Humankind was now in a position to avoid or
at least delay one of the basic biological functions of sex, namely to propagate
the species. The Pill and other forms of
birth control allowed sex to become a recreational activity. Anyone who lived through the 1960s and 1970’s
is aware of the change of attitude to sex when slogans such as “Free Love” were
bandied about. A significant outcome of
the so-called sexual revolution was that love and sex became separated. TV shows have picked up on this phenomenon, and
in some ways legitimatized it, with the so-called “one night stand.” As these changes became part of the social understanding
of relationships the understanding of marriage changed. This change is reflected in the steep
increase in the number of couples who decide not to get “married” but rather
live in a common law relationship. The
British Columbia government has noted this change and in March 2013 they
brought in a new law that states that after 2 years together the couple are referred
to as spouses and that if there is a separation then the usual divorce laws
apply to the division of property.
Ironically Mark Shields on the PBS Newshour (March 29, 2013) noted that
it is the gay community who are now lobbying most aggressively for marriage.
Given Luther’s position that
marriage is the responsibility of the temporal authorities, what is then left
for the Church? To accept Luther’s
perspective on marriage means that the Church is going to have to give up on
certain issues and positions and define much more clearly its place in society? One major issue that the Church needs to acknowledge
is that it cannot legislate for society.
The church in the West and particularly in the USA has persisted in
holding a belief that its values and beliefs are to be those of the whole
society. It has sought to encourage the
temporal authorities to legislate its position for all citizens. The pursuit of this goal has been to bring
together a disparate group of churches.
The “right wing” of the Church who in the past could not accept the
Roman Catholic Church as being Christian and the Roman Catholic Church which
believed that it was the only Christian Church has now found common
ground. Ironically some conservatives
and fundamentalists are putting forward a position on marriage which comes very
close to a sacramental understanding.
The problem facing these two church
groups is that there is a deeper issue driving them. This coalition has a view that was rejected in
Europe with the Reformation and the rise of independence movements. The Roman Catholic Church has obviously not
given up on the concept of the Holy Roman Empire in which the church was the
pre-eminent power in Europe. It assumed
that the civil authorities would obey their demands and make their beliefs and
policies the law of the land. This is
not dissimilar to the position held by some conservatives and
fundamentalists. In the USA Calvinist theology
has shaped much of the church. There
seems to be echoes of Calvin’s Geneva in the attempts of some evangelical and
fundamentalist to legislate their beliefs and values for society as a
whole. These two groups have now found
common ground around a number of issues, marriage being one, in seeking to have
their beliefs and values legislated for the whole of society. They have difficulty in imaging a society in
which the church is not the dominant force.
The outcome of this approach has been that the church has become the
hand maiden of the state and the clergy its servants. The tragic outcome has been that the church
has had its credibility seriously compromised. In a recent UK poll only about half of those
polled trusted the clergy to speak the truth (http://www.timeslive.co.za/world/2013/03/31/uk-poll-points-to-mistrust-of-clergy-lack-of-moral-leadership)
Luther offers a way for the church
to deal with the confusion surrounding the debate over marriage and particularly
the issue of same sex marriage in the church.
His view is very simple. For him
marriage is the sole responsibility of temporal authorities. The church he claims has no right to enact
any canon laws to regulate marriage, a view that runs counter to the way the
church has been addressing the issue. To
accept Luther’s view means that the church needs to take step back from the
course it has been blindly following and acknowledge that the best it can do is
address issues to its membership and not to society at large. The church needs to give up its pursuit of
imposing its views and beliefs on society and let society make its decisions
about marriage and leave responsibility for this issue with the temporal
authorities. By entering the social debate
the Church has allowed this social issue to wreak havoc among its members. The implication of following Luther’s
proposal means that the church must step away from the debate concerning same
sex marriage. For Luther this debate
belongs in the temporal realm and not in the Church. But here Luther’s understanding of life as
paradox assists the members of the church.
In a paradox two opposites are held in tension and when they are held
together there one finds the truth. However,
when one side of the paradox is stressed to the exclusion of the other, then
that side of the paradox becomes false. Paradox
has been fundamental to Lutheran theology and is one of its greatest assets. Paradox, for example, is at the centre of
Lutheran theology of the bible, the sacrament of the altar and the Christian
life as being fully saint and fully sinner.
Christians live constantly a paradoxical life in the world. According to Jesus his followers are in the
world but not of the world. Christians are
members of both realms. As important as
it is for Christians to be a member of the Church, it is equally important that
they participate in the state and engage in societal debates. They do this as responsible Christians and
not as agents of the church who seek to impose the will of the church on
society. By failing to live in the
paradoxical tension of being citizens of two realms and trying to merge the
two, the church has opened itself up letting the world enter into its
realm. The disagreements of society have
now morphed into conflicts in the church, for example the same sex marriage
issue. Issues that are the
responsibility of the temporal authorities have been adopted by the church with
tragic results for the church and its members.
Ignoring the paradoxical nature of the Christian life and resolving the
tension of the paradox in one direction has had serious implications for the
church. If the Lutheran Church had only
listened to Luther!
What then is the place of the
church in the married life of members? If
the church adopts Luther’s stance, does it leave the church without a credible
place in the lives of couples? Where do
same sex couples fit into this new stance of the church? Note that the questions address the church
and its members and not society and its actions. The church in parts of Europe has already
done this work. In some countries couples have a civil marriage ceremony but
then those who so desire, return to the church for a blessing. But what does it mean to bless a couple?
Blessing, I believe, has to do with
covenant. The bible describes a number
of covenants God has with the people of Israel and through those covenants God
offers God’s blessing on the people.
Covenant is more than a legal contract binding of two parties: the
biblical covenants are at its heart about relationships. In the covenant God promises to be the people’s
God and the people promise to be God’s people.
The people covenant to live lives shaped by God’s promises and promise
to serve God by serving the world. Luther
described this latter aspect of the relationship with God in his interpretation
of the first commandment that we “fear, love and trust God above everything.” According to George Forell, Luther’s ethic is
best described in terms of “faith active in love (Galatians 5:6).”
By turning the issue of marriage
over to the temporal authority the church is free to invite all couples, which
includes same sex couples to come to the altar and enter into a covenantal
relationship with God, one another and the community. The essence of the covenantal relationship is
agape love. It is the love of God for us
as expressed in the life, death and resurrection of God’s son, Jesus the
Christ. Entering this covenant with God,
the couple is called upon to live that agape love in their relationship with one
another. This covenantal agape love
shapes the life of the Christian in all his or her relationships. As the Christians way of life it honours and respects
God and in the marriage relationship, the other. In Christ there is no distinction in how this
love is expressed in relationships by the Christian since according to Paul
there is neither “male nor female (Galatians 3:27).”
To invite couples to the church for
a blessing is to invite them into a covenantal relationship. To be blessed by God is an expression of the
covenant which the couple seek by coming to the church. They, with the help of God, seek to live out
in their relationship this agape covenantal love with one another. This covenantal agape love is expressed in
relational terms as trust. It has always
interested me that the Lutheran vows do not emphasize love, but trust. Not only does the couple promise to trust one
another, but they promise to trust till death parts them. Trust is the essence of a covenantal marriage
relationship whether of heterosexual or homosexual relationships. For the Christian it is not the legal
documents required by the state that constitutes marriage based all too often
on a rather shallow romantic love but covenantal trust. The promise, with God’s help, to trust to
death is important is essential since trust can never be subject to
conditions. To set a limit on trust is
to undermine it from the moment of promise.
To promise to trust the other for 5 years will cast doubt upon the
relationship since one will never be sure that one can trust the other the next
day. When relationships are built upon
trust rather than a romantic sense of love then there is a freedom in the
relationship that allows a person to be angry and upset with the other and
probably not feel very loving toward the other, but a person can still, in
spite of those feelings, trust the other.
Couples coming for counselling when there has been an affair the one who
has not had the affair would nearly always state that, not love, but trust has
been broken. At its deepest and most
profound meaning, covenantal agape love is expressed as trust.
A covenantal relationship with God
and with one another is a dynamic relational process which at times can be very
messy. The problem for the Christian is that
the old Adam must die. Luther commented
that in baptism the old Adam is drowned only to find that he can swim. Whether in Israel’s covenantal relationship
with God or a married couples relationship with one another there are times in
which the old Adam and Eve swim to the surface creating problems. In the life and death of Christ we see the
depth to which God goes to deal with our old Adam and Eve by offering
forgiveness and acceptance and the restoration of trust. In Christ we identify the very essence of
healthy relationship processes in which trust can be restored through
confession and forgiveness. Forgiveness
is a process at the heart of a covenantal relationship of love.
By freeing the church from the
societal process concerning laws about marriage, the church has the option of
inviting all who desire to enter into that covenant to come to the altar. Since the church no longer has anything to do
with marriage and the laws concerning marriage, it is open to invite all
couples, both heterosexual and homosexual to enter into a covenantal
relationship with God and one another. Such
an invitation is an expression of the church’s hospitality rooted in God’s
hospitality to all. By leaving the questions
concerning marriage to the temporal authorities as Luther suggests, the church
would no longer be distracted and would be free to focus on its mission and
ministry in and to the world.
It would appear that Luther offers
the church a way of thinking about its response to all married couples without
having to enter into the debate. His
position expressed about 500 years ago is both profound sublime. Unencumbered by the divisive and conflicted debate
surrounding marriage the church is free to be again the heart, arms and feet of
Jesus in and to the world. What Luther
suggested was similar to a proposal put to the churches by the Province of
Alberta in the early 1980s. At that time
when I served on the National Council of the former ELCC we received a letter
from the Government of the province of Alberta requesting input from churches. The Province was trying to deal with problem
of licensing clergy to officiate at marriages.
There was a growing demand for marriage licences from an increasing segment
of the population belonging to other than Christian world religions. But the Province was also dealing with a
proliferation of smaller Christian’s communities who were also demanding
marriage licences for their religious leaders.
The Province was not sure how to proceed with these demands. They presented the churches with two
options. The first was that everyone
have a civil marriage and then could go to a church if they so desired, and the
second option was to continue with the present system. The national council of the ELCC voted to
support the first option but the reactivity from churches in Alberta made the
government maintain the existing licensing system. This, I believe, was most unfortunate not
only for the government but also for the church. The first option which would have been
consistent with Luther’s understanding that marriage is a matter for the
state. If this proposal was accepted it
would have made a clear distinction between the role for the state and that of
the church in marriage. By rejecting
this option the Church and state continue to be tied together in an unhealthy and
unholy alliance. Furthermore, the Church
has become embroiled in the controversy of same sex marriage and its mission
and ministry seriously compromised.
