Remarriage in church - time for new thinking

ROBERT and Diana came to see me about five years ago with a view to getting married in church. Robert was an officer in the Royal Navy, and his first marriage had broken up within ten weeks, because his wife had begun an affair with another man as soon as he went back to sea.

Following the 1957 Act of Convocation, the Church of England does not permit remarriage in church, and even though the first marriage had ended several years before the beginning of the new relationship, and even though there were no children involved, Robert could remarry in church only if his former spouse died.

In May this year, I officiated at the marriage of Susan and Michael. Neither had been previously married, and so, under the Canon Law of the Church, I was obliged to conduct their marriage in their parish church. Yet each already had two children by previous long-term relationships, which in Scotland would have been regarded as common-law marriage. The commencement of the new relationship that led to the marriage might morally have been considered to be adulterous, in that bonds with the former partners may not have been broken first, but that would not have removed from me the statutory obligation to arrange the marriage.

In so far as clergy have toed the line, and refused marriage in church to divorcees, is it the case that, from the point of view of the couple, we have presented divorce as the unforgivable sin? To do so is to contradict Jesus's teaching reported that it is only slander against the Holy Spirit that cannot be forgiven.

On the other hand, where clergy have been obliged to conduct marriages despite anxieties about the children of previous relationships, or the nature of the present relationship, is there not a danger of giving the impression that marriage will provide the solution or cure for all relational difficulties? All too often, children brought to a new marital relationship are treated almost as though they are appendages belonging somehow to one or other party. By assuming that children accept the new parental relationship, the Church downplays their significance in the survival of that relationship.

Marriage is one of the opportunities that the Church has to meet with and assist people who are not regular worshippers. An aspect of the discussion about remarriage that seems to have been missed in the House of Bishops' Report is the potential impact, for those who wish to marry or remarry, on their understanding of the nature of God. The way in which the Church deals with moral and ethical questions will suggest to those who stand on or beyond the fringe of the Church what sort of God we worship, and what the character of God's love is likely to be.

A dogmatic stance on the matter of marriage betrays a legalistic view of God's moral demands. God's love and acceptance become conditional on human compliance or intended compliance.

Couples such as Robert and Diana find themselves rejected and confused, unable to receive through the Church the forgiveness and healing that they need in order to make their new relationship blossom and grow. God as Monad, presented by the patriarchal Church, demands an unattainable perfection, and remarriage is not, therefore, a viable option. At a point of need, the Church turns them away, and presents God as unapproachable.

Discovery that in another parish the clergy might have ignored the rules and married them anyway could help to present God as not simply inaccessible, but fickle.

Part of the crisis faced by marriage is that it has been associated for too long with patriarchy. For all that marriage provided a modicum of protection to women and children in the pre-modern and early-modern era, the patriarchal character and expectations of society allowed it to provide legitimised space for oppression.

When the Church signals its unwillingness to remarry, it does so not because it is challenging patriarchy but because in itself it is patriarchal. Having "failed" in a first marriage riddled with patriarchal expectations, some find they wish to enter a new relationship founded in mutuality. Yet the Church that proclaims a Gospel rhetoric of love and radical equality of persons will not accept them. Adrian Thatcher insists that Christian marriage must be redeemed by breaking with patriarchy. He argues that: "the loving communion on which [Christian marriage] is founded is the communion of the Trinitarian God, and the invitation to share in it is given by the self-giving of the Trinitarian God in the Person of Christ."

Just as marriage has to be disentangled from patriarchy, so the Church must disentangle its presentation of the Gospel from patriarchal conceptualisations of God. John Zizioulas, writing from an Orthodox perspective, insists that the Church is not simply an institution but a way of being, and that members of the Church become "images of God", not by their own efforts, but by taking on God's way of relationship, God's communion with the world. He claims that:

"The being of God is a relational being. . . It would be unthinkable to speak of the 'one God' before speaking of the God who is 'communion', that is to say, of the Holy Trinity'." A Trinitarian model of God enables the Church to emphasise the relational rather than the legalistic; and, instead of presenting a set of static dogmas as the foundation for marriage, to engage with couples in a journey of exploration into mutual hope.

From the Church's point of view, the emphasis on the legal framework has made the business of processing requests for marriage very manageable. In an era where good management, understood as control, appears as essential in a fast-changing culture, it is tempting to maintain this straightforward approach.

Yet a better management of our theological heritage would lead the Church to reckon with marriage as, in essence, relational rather than contractual, and therefore more rather than less inclined to be complex and messy.

In addressing the question of remarriage, a Trinitarian approach will help couples to find healing in the process of exploring a new relationship. To seek remarriage is to hope that the new start will lead to better experience of relationship than the first marriage allowed. At this point on the couple's journey, the Church can draw on the model of communion as the ground for marriage, and there is the opportunity to present the new start as of a different order from the patriarchal context that may have damaged the earlier experience.

If marriage can be presented as essentially communion rather than contract, it becomes possible to speak of the children of previous relationships inclusively. The difficulty with a contract approach is that the focus of the marriage is narrowed to the arrangements between the couple, and children who represent an enduring reality from past relationships become automatically peripheral to the new one. The contract focus implies that children are part of the baggage of the past.

This is a problem, whether the parties to the marriage have been married before or not. However, when the Church is prepared to allow marriage between parents who have not previously married, like Michael and Susan, there is perhaps a greater danger of giving couples desiring remarriage a set of distorted ideas.

Although a sense of guilt may remain, a Trinitarian focus on communion as the heart of marriage offers the possibility of including children of previous relationships. Preparation for remarriage would then embrace the children, and look at their place in the evolving new relationship in such a way that they experience healing and forgiveness.

To shift an understanding of marriage towards an emphasis on communion is to raise questions about how relationships evolve, and what insights the Church can bring to bear for persons committing themselves to new relationships. No longer need the Church highlight the legal constraints or demands, because that is not what couples need to help their marriage develop and grow. The Church could facilitate marriage as a process, rather than aiming only to conduct its inaugural ceremony.

The Church of England, as an established Church, is caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of patriarchy and wide diversity of praxis. In the search for an adequate and appropriate response to requests for remarriage, the Bishops would do well to consult with church leaders of other traditions where remarriage is commonplace, and to listen to their experience in the search for a theologically consistent approach.

It is essential for the Church to consider how its dogma and doctrine are being understood in a changing, secularised social context. What we are saying, or think we are saying, will not necessarily be heard, in the post-modern era, in the way we expect.

The Revd Timothy J. Woods is Team Rector of Brixham with Churston Ferrers and Kingswear, in Devon.