The couple holds hands before the altar as a priest guides them through
their vows.
“I take you to have and to hold from this day forward, to love and to
cherish, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, as my
companion, lover and friend.”
The congregation responds: “Blessed be God who appears to us in their love.”
There is the exchanging of rings, familiar scriptures, a kiss and a
blessing on the couple’s “acts of tenderness and intimacy.” They may be
crowned or anointed before Holy Communion. The priest may lead them in a
procession around the altar, cover them with a veil or tie their hands with
a cord.
This is not a wedding.
Nevertheless, “A Rite for the Celebration of Commitment to a Life Together”
features a barrage of symbols from centuries of marriage rites. This 1996
text is an American example of the same-sex union rites that are shaking
the 70-million-member Anglican Communion.
“This rite is clearly parasitic on marriage,” said Edith Humphrey, a
Canadian Anglican who teaches at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. “At least
this American rite is in your face, so you know what is being communicated.
That kind of candor is refreshing. … This certainly looks like a marriage
rite.”
But most supporters say these rites merely bless existing same-sex
relationships. This distinction is crucial, according to Vancouver School
of Theology liturgist Richard Leggett.
“Despite some similarities to the marriage rite, the underlying theology
and the distinctive liturgical elements define a covenant that is unique
and that poses no threat to marriage as the sacramental union of a
heterosexual couple,” argued Leggett, commenting on a new Canadian rite.
Instead, this gives “liturgical expression to a new thing that God is doing
in our midst, life-long stable and covenanted relationships for gay and
lesbian disciples of Christ.”
There is fire behind these academic words. After decades of guerrilla
tactics, open Anglican warfare has erupted on three fronts.
In Canada, Bishop Michael Ingham — after numerous delays — on May 23
issued a same-sex union rite for use in his Diocese of New Westminster.
Meanwhile, the Diocese of New Hampshire elected Father Gene Robinson as the
Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop, guaranteeing pre-consecration
debates at the U.S. General Convention that begins July 30 in Minneapolis.
That gathering also faces a California resolution seeking rites to express
the church’s blessing on “all couples living in life-long committed
relationships of mutuality and fidelity outside the relationship of
marriage, which mediate the grace of God.”
Then Oxford Bishop Richard Harries appointed Father Jeffrey John, a gay
theologian, as bishop of Reading. Nine evangelical bishops in England have
publicly vowed a fight. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams called for
dialogue, yet signaled he will not oppose John’s appointment.
What is at stake? Sixteen Third-World archbishops from Kenya, South India,
Uganda, the Philippines, Sudan, Tanzania and elsewhere responded to Ingham
by declaring a state of “severed communion” with his diocese.
Archbishop Peter Akinola told the BBC that Nigeria — with 10 archbishops,
81 bishops and 17.5 million Anglicans — would “sever relationships with
anybody, anywhere, anyone who strays over the boundaries” of traditional
church doctrine. Robinson’s election, he told the Guardian in Lagos, is “a
Satanic attack on God’s church.”
But there is more to this debate than sex, said Humphrey. The new Canadian
rite makes a crucial claim: “All human relationships have the potential to
be agents of God’s purpose. Regardless of the specific characteristics of
the relationship, the act of blessing does not make the relationship more
holy but rather, in giving thanks to God and invoking God’s holy name,
releases the relationship to realize its full potential as an expression of
God’s love.”
This raises all kinds of questions about words such as “fidelity,”
“covenant,” “sacrament” and “union,” she said. In a marriage rite, God and
the church create something new — a sacred union that changes the
relationship between the man and the woman. These new rites insist that the
church is merely “blessing” an existing same-sex relationship.
“The whole premise is different. The relationship is already holy. It is
already sacramental,” she said. “The church is merely celebrating what the
couple is already doing.”
