Special Reports

The future of marriage

TINA BEATTIE
8 July 2002

Marriage is in crisis in the modern world, and a major conference on the subject was held in Plymouth last week. A freelance theologian and writer who attended the meeting reflects on academic theories and human experience.

There is a worldwide crisis in the institution of marriage. Some of the damage can be attributed to the values which Western society exports around the world - individualism and consumerism, for beneficiaries of the present global order, or poverty and exploitation, for its victims. Rich and poor families alike are falling apart, and children are paying a heavy price for this disintegration. Research suggests that children from broken homes are disadvantaged compared with those whose parents are in stable, long-term relationships.

But the ethos of Western liberalism also enshrines values such as sexual equality, human rights and freedom of choice, and these too can challenge ideas about marriage which are based on traditional patriarchal models of male domination and female submission. In addition, Western culture no longer regards heterosexual marriage as the only socially acceptable form of expression of sexual love, and many Christians in same-sex relationships are searching for ways to live out their commitment to one another with faithfulness and integrity.

So complex questions surround the Christian understanding of marriage in modern society. Is there a need to distinguish between marriage as a secular social contract and as a Christian sacrament, particularly bearing in mind that more than half of all weddings in England and Wales are now civil ceremonies? Can Christianity reconcile its fundamental commitment to the sanctity of marriage with an acceptance of remarriage after divorce? Can the Church find ways of extending its idea of sanctified sexual love to encompass same-sex relationships?

Some of these issues were explored during a recent international conference held at the Anglican College of St Mark and St John in Plymouth. There were more than 120 participants, representing the main Christian denominations from Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia and South Africa. But most speakers failed to acknowledge that the Churches have different theologies of marriage. Denominational differences were often masked by a narrow biblical idealism, on the one hand, or a bland Christian liberalism, on the other.

An implicit difference between Protestant and Catholics emerged during the conference. The former see marriage primarily in biblical and moral terms, while the latter see it in symbolic and sacramental terms. Somewhere in between, Anglican speakers struggled to achieve a compromise between the Church of England's Christian identity and its responsibilities as the established religion of the state.

The Bishop of Winchester, Michael Scott-Joynt, reported on the consultation into divorce and remarriage currently being undertaken in the Church of England. The stated intention is to seek "coherent teaching and consistent practice". The Church of England has no provision for annulment, and remarriage in church is officially discouraged, but individual cases are left to the discretion of the vicar, who must establish that the divorced party was not to blame for the breakdown of the previous marriage. I asked Bishop Scott-Joynt how far the present debate has been precipitated by the situation in which Prince Charles finds himself, but he insisted that it had nothing to do with it. He pointed out that one of the discussion documents expressly refers to the need to avoid "suspicion that the new marriage consecrates an old infidelity". I was not entirely convinced. Coherence is a difficult goal for a Church which must reconcile so many conflicting demands.

The Catholic Church for its part offers no viable solution to the problem of remarriage after divorce. As a number of Catholic speakers pointed out, there is an impasse between moral theologians who appeal to the internal forum of conscience of those contemplating remarriage after divorce, and the Catholic hierarchy who insist that divorced and remarried Catholics are excluded from the sacraments. Nevertheless, I had the impression listening to Catholic speakers that theologians are helped by having teaching which is clearly spelled out and theologically coherent, because it gives them parameters within which to position their own arguments.

Professor Margaret Farley, Catholic Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale Divinity school, saw marriage breakdown as a result of the vulnerability of the human condition, affected as it is by original sin, and the fact that people sometimes fail no matter how sincerely they resolve to do something. In the past, the institution of marriage sustained the married relationship and covered over its failings, so that even very unhappy couples might stay together because there was no alternative. But today the survival of a marriage depends more on the level of commitment of the couple than on institutional supports. When a marriage commitment has failed and cannot be revived, Margaret Farley argued, it may be necessary to release a couple to begin a new relationship within the sacramental and ethical framework of the Christian community.

The Catholic marriage therapist Dr Jack Dominian declared his belief that attempts to find solutions to marital breakdown are misguided. Rather, we should be asking what Christians can do to support "marital permanence". Dr Dominian's paper focused on identifying the points at which marriages begin to experience problems, so that couples can be helped to anticipate those situations, rather than leaving the community to pick up the pieces afterwards. He said that many years of research had taught him that there are five dimensions - social, emotional, sexual, intellectual and spiritual - which at different stages in in a relationship are potential causes of conflict.

Professor Elizabeth Stuart of King Alfred's College, Winchester, gave a survey of gay and lesbian theologies from a Roman Catholic perspective. She suggested that friendship might provide an alternative to heterosexual marriage as a model for committed same-sex Christian partnerships. In a related paper, Alan Bray of Birkbeck College explored sworn brotherhood and sisterhood rituals in the medieval Church. He asked if these lifelong vows between friends of the same sex might provide a precedent for the modern Church to encompass same-sex relationships within the framework of Christian ethics and liturgy.

The only paper to focus explicitly on love was given not by a theologian but by a Catholic sociologist, Dr Philip Mellor of the University of Leeds. Dr Mellor argued that, contrary to fashionable sociological theories, love is a more important factor in marriage than power relationships and social contracts. People marry because they fall in love, and they stay in love when society and religion provide the symbolic forms which channel their emotional energies so that marriage becomes an expression of sacred love. He pointed out that even in societies which allow polygamy, monogamy is still the most universally prevalent form of marriage.

Returning home to my family, I was conscious of the gulf between academic theories and the realities of everyday life.

Family life has always been fraught with difficulties, but the family is a robust and flexible institution which has survived across cultural and historical boundaries. What model of Christian marriage will emerge from the present crisis? Perhaps we need to speak more in terms of forgiveness, healing and redemption, and less in terms of indissolubility and sacramental exclusion.

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