Church of England Halts Plans for Gay ‘Weddings’

The Church of England has halted its plans to introduce ‘wedding’ services for same-sex couples after the bishops finally accepted long-resisted legal advice that it is not possible to do so without the approval of two-thirds of General Synod. Plans to allow clergy to enter a same-sex civil marriage have also been scrapped owing to the legal complications, ongoing divisions on the issue and the confusion that bringing in the reform by itself would sow. The Times has more.

Bishops will halt plans to allow gay couples to have dedicated blessing services in church and the ban on priests marrying same-sex partners will be extended.

The Times understands that, after years of deliberation, bishops have reached long-awaited decisions on two key unresolved problems involving gay rights in the Church of England.

They have decided not to grant special permission for a trial of dedicated blessing ceremonies for gay couples or for priests to be allowed to enter into same-sex civil marriages, insisting that any changes should require the lengthy rewriting of church law.

They will be “painful decisions to accept” for many, but are necessary to ensure “proper processes” are followed when considering changes to church doctrine, the Bishop of Blackburn, the Right Revd Philip North, said.

The church’s governing assembly, the General Synod, voted in February 2023 to allow priests to bless gay couples, but only during the course of regular church services. The blessings, which came about at the end of that year, will still be permitted.

In November 2023, the synod voted to back a trial of special “standalone” or “bespoke” services, which were likely to take the form of a special ceremony dedicated to the gay couple, who could invite guests and choose readings and music.

There were fears from traditionalists, however, that such services would closely resemble same-sex weddings, which remain banned in the church.

Bishops will say the services should not be permitted even in trial form unless canon law is rewritten. This would, however, require a two-thirds majority in the three houses of the synod, deemed unlikely with its present make-up.

Gay priests can enter into same-sex civil partnerships if they remain celibate, but are barred from civil marriages. They face a “rebuke” for having a gay marriage and are barred from new roles, while married gay people are barred from ordination to the priesthood.

With the church allowing priests to bless worshippers in same-sex civil marriages, there were calls for priests to be allowed them. However, bishops will rule that being in a gay civil marriage should remain a bar to ordination or being licensed for a new role. …

The Times has seen the documents behind the bishops’ decisions. One warns that allowing gay priests to have same-sex weddings under civil law while they remain banned under church law could lead to “legal challenges and increased confusion”. Permitting the change would need simple rather than two-thirds majorities in synod.

Another warns that blessing services for gay couples “may be seen by some to communicate ecclesial endorsement of a couple’s relationship as a whole, including its sexual dimension”.

Worth reading in full.

This is a victory of sorts for conservatives in the church, who will be relieved that further divisive changes will not be rammed through at this point. The forced departure of Justin Welby as Archbishop of Canterbury last year over safeguarding failures – Welby being the main driving force behind trying to get this question ‘solved’ before he retired – was key in the momentum collapsing, combined with the retirement of a number of stalwart liberal bishops.

While relieved, though, conservatives will also be frustrated that the reasons for dropping the plans now – essentially the legal situation and the voting calculus in Synod – are no different from what they were eight years ago, before huge amounts of church money, time and emotional energy were expended in divisive ‘conversations’ at every level of church life. A number of bishops and others in senior leadership, led by Welby, had chosen to ignore this reality and attempt to find a way, any way, to push through the changes they wanted. The consequence is a church more divided than ever, with pain on both sides, local churches reeling from acrimonious splits and further demoralisation and disengagement in the pews.

Will the church now be able to move on from this lost decade of division? There are signs liberals were already resigned to this outcome, so it’s possible an uneasy truce will now settle, with liberals going back to quietly ignoring the rules in practice while refraining from making big noises about trying to change them.

It’s possible we will see a new attempt at Synod to push through allowing clergy to enter same-sex marriages, which can be done with simple majorities, albeit involving complex changes to multiple laws and canons simultaneously. But clergy are already allowed to enter a civil partnership, provided they are ‘celibate’ (well, that’s what they tell their bishop). And same-sex blessings as part of ordinary services are already allowed, having been (controversially) brought in in 2023, so provision has been made there as well. You may wonder why something can be done in a Sunday service that can’t be done in a standalone service. The reason, according to the church’s lawyers, is because a standalone service will look too much like an actual wedding, when – and this is the fudge Welby used to get his blessings through – the blessings are technically limited to blessing the ‘couple’ and not their ‘relationship’ in all its aspects. This is the device that (supposedly) allows the bishops to get round the church’s longstanding prohibition on gay sex. (Even more technically, the approved prayers do not involve the priest blessing the couple but invite God to bless the couple himself, should he so choose; yes, this is the level of fudgery they went to to get these ‘blessings’ past the lawyers and through Synod.)

The upshot is that the Church of England will continue, for the time being at least, officially to hold to traditional biblical teaching on marriage – while liberals will continue quietly to flout it and make use of the ‘blessings’ fudge they got in under Welby. What happens in the future will depend on whether conservatives grow or diminish in strength over the coming decades – whether they lose their ‘blocking minority’ in Synod, or conversely even become a majority. With the church on other issues – such as reparations, race and climate – seeming to do everything to repel people of a conservative disposition, there is a risk the church will be increasingly abandoned to the liberals. On the other hand, it tends to be the more (theologically) conservative churches that are thriving and growing. So perhaps there is hope yet for the C of E.