Finally, we come to what I really
wanted to talk about in the first place: what do we all do now? I have been a little slow in getting this
final post out there because I wanted to absorb the popular reaction to the
recent decision by the US Supreme Court to see if it conformed to my analysis
of the situation. It has been interesting to see at least some of the public comment mirroring my concern for the challenge to religious practice that the change in marriage definition entails. Before going onto conclusions, perhaps a brief recap is
needed.
In part 1, I attempted to draw out
the three different types of marriage that are currently in tension:
Cultural, Legal and Christian. It
appeared to me that occasionally inappropriate labels were attached to the
debate (e.g. Traditional vs Gay Marriage) which tended to either confuse the
issue or reduce it to a matter of sexual orientation. In part 2, I proposed that the heart of the
debate was really centred around broader shifts in the shape of Cultural
Marriage rather than being solely located in the permission of homosexual
unions. These changes, which pushed the
primacy of the criteria of Individual Love to the almost exclusion of all
others, meant that the space in which Cultural and Christian Marriage now were
able to coexist had been dramatically reduced.
In recent days, the proliferation of the social media tag #lovewins to
celebrate the Supreme Court ruling appears to bear this out. The push for change in the form of Legal
Marriage is thus based on a change in what is viewed as public justice – as the
morality surrounding the entire institution of marriage has shifted, so the legal
framework by which those relationships are regulated by the State must also be
changed. Those who believe that marriage
represents more than romance and that the relationship should support
traditional social order (or point to the spiritual reality behind it) are
ridiculed as bigots and are made to understand their views are no longer
welcome. Whereas once Legal Marriage was
able to accommodate both the Cultural and the Christian, the Cultural is now
demanding changes to the Legal to express its disapproval of the
Christian. No longer may the three dwell
together in harmony.
So, have the Jensens got it
right? If Legal Marriage no longer
stands on moral foundations that Christian Marriage can affirm, is the right
thing to do to get out of it altogether?
Do we all sign our divorce papers and hand them in to let the courts
know we mean business (even if they can’t approve any of them)? Do we pressure our elected representatives to
create a Conscientious Objector category for those who can’t abide by the
changes in Legal Marriage? Do we burn
our marriage certificates outside the courthouse, like our fathers did with
their Draft Cards?
I did not want to make a snap call
on the proper course of action, and the more I thought about it the more
complex it seemed to be. So here are my
observations:
1) Legal Divorce is not in itself sin. An accusation that has been made against the
Jensens, including by some Christians, is that in their plan to divorce they
would be protesting one sin by committing another. This is simply not a fair evaluation of their
intentions. While the breakdown of a
marriage relationship will undoubtedly involve sinful actions by sinful people,
an application to deregister the recognition of that relationship by the State
is not in itself wrong, and may in fact merely reflect the reality that the
relationship had in fact broken down.
The subversive nature of the intended protest was that the couple did
not want to break their commitment to each other or undermine their Christian
witness, but simply wanted to remove their relationship from State
oversight. In Jesus’ conversation with
the Pharisees in Luke 20 over the issue of divorce, Jesus pointed to the true
sin was not in the issuing of a divorce certificate, but in the hearts of the
people who wanted a way to back out of their commitments. My conclusion is that if it was possible for
a Christian couple to legally opt out of State oversight, they could do so with
a clear conscience.
2) Legal Marriage both Regulates and Affirms. At this point I feel that I am running
counter to many fellow Christians who do not wish to concede the power of Legal
Marriage too much authority. The
argument goes that all Legal Marriage does is regulate the administration of
relationships and to get too worked up about the exact boundaries of that
recognition risks conceding the ground on defining what marriage is, which
should rest with God alone. I agree up
to a certain point (and there will be more to say on this later), but I fear
that our focus on this issue has been too narrow, concerned only with What is
being regulated rather than the Why behind it.
Yes, the letter of the Law only has the power to regulate according to
those prescribed boundaries and there is nothing to prevent Christian Marriage
from continuing to be regulated exactly as previously. However, the broader shift in the public
morality and philosophy of Cultural Marriage means that any changes in law will
by implication affirm the truth on which the altered legal framework is now
based. To ignore this affirmation is to
accept the position of the proponents of change who couch their arguments in
terms of Inclusion and Tolerance, which I have argued is far from the
truth. We must, in effect, look beyond
the letter of the law to the spirit which has shaped it in order to determine
the most virtuous path.
3) Here
is the kicker. After much careful
consideration, I am not convinced that
Protest Divorce is the appropriate Christian response. I think that the Jensens proposal (and my
initial response) recognised something fundamentally true about the times we are now entering that does require action,
but the path of Legal Divorce in protest (or even just a Quixotic attempt) does
not seem to get us very far. Any action
of this kind must be driven by two big questions: Is It Consistent and Will It
Work? The divorce path seems on
examination to fail both these tests. It
is not the case that those who are already married will have to sign a revised
Terms & Conditions in order for their marriage to continue to be
recognised, and social and legal structures will continue to treat those who
are already married as having entered into those arrangements under the
conditions that were in place at the time.
That said, if in some bizarre set of circumstances the government
decided that everybody had to renew their marriage paperwork and that came with
revised Terms & Conditions then I would have some severe misgivings. In short, I can see no real issues of
conscience that should necessitate the breaking of Legal Marriage
relationships. As to whether Protest
Divorce would actually be effective in calling society to account, the reality
behind the shift in Cultural Marriage that has prompted legal change which I
outlined earlier in fact suggests the opposite.
Rather than provoking shock and horror that same-sex relationships would
not be considered “equal” even if legal change occurred, activists for change
would like nothing more than a hasty and panicked retreat. They feel that we don’t belong within the
institution of Cultural Marriage anyway, so why give them the satisfaction of
confirming it?
4)
Christian
Marriage needs to find a means of expressing distinctiveness and dissent from
Legal and Cultural Marriage. There are
a number of options on the table, and to be quite honest I’m not sure that
anyone has an infallible answer as to how best to be witness for Jesus in this
situation. Even though Protest Divorce
might not achieve the ends that it claims, the riskiest path would be simply to
carry on as if nothing had changed.
There are already serious discussions locally about how denominations(including my own) might respond to the legal challenges. I can
understand the position of those who are hesitant about cutting Christian
Marriage from Legal Marriage because of the risks of appearing to “concede the
field” and leaving relationships without State oversight. However, I think that this view
underestimates the depth of changes which are headed our way. But these discussions, necessary as they may
be, only address half the problem. That
is, the majority of the discussion about denominations and clergy refusing to
be involved with Legal Marriage in the future is centred on protecting
individuals and groups from possibly being sued despite all the legal protections
that will apparently be in place. This is
probably necessary, but unfortunately it does not address what individual Christians can do to counter the popular narrative about what marriages are and should be. The suggestion of the Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Tim Wilson, that civil and religious marriages be treated separately but equal under the Marriage Act appears to address the problem, but will probably only result in kicking the can down the road (though it is hard to say without seeing how exactly this might be framed legally). With that in mind, one possible path might be for Christians to elect not to register future marriages
with the State. There are, of course, risks involved in not
having the State involved in regulating relationships but in our present day
most of the rights and responsibilities of marriage are legally considered part
of non-registered relationships anyway.
Some may argue that if the State will continue to administer
heterosexual marriage as before then there really is no reason to
withdraw. Yet the reality is that the
underlying ethics of the whole game are changing – the legal contract will no
longer be concerned with ensuring permanency in relationships or protecting the
rights of children but instead on making sure that Love Is Free. Continued participation in the system by
Christians will only indicate a capitulation to the new Cultural narrative that
is imposing itself on the Legal framework.
And make no mistake – more changes will come that will be even more
challenging to Christian Marriage. If we
will have to withdraw eventually, then we might as well do it at a time and
place of our choosing, establishing our Cultural and Legal distinctiveness within
marriage. There doesn’t have to be a big
show about it, but as our churches stop filling in the government paperwork and
our young couples make a point of not going to fill them out elsewhere, then it
will become clear that Christians stand for a whole different framework by
which the marriage relationship should be understood.
So we can all
breathe a sigh of relief. Protest
Divorce does not appear to be a solid starter, but we’re all going to have to
learn how to live faithfully in some challenging new conditions. However, as has been said many times by
others, all of this is fairly insignificant – God is still God, Jesus is still
coming soon, and there are many good works that we can all be getting on with
in the meantime. Have confidence in the
fact that, as Romans 8 teaches us, that nothing can separate us from the Love
of God in which we all (married or not) now live.
