A Different Way

Marriage blessings are something I do even less often than weddings themselves, and those I have done have mostly been for couples who years before married after a previous divorce, and either never thought of wanting a religious element or weren't able to. I've never before blessed the marriage of a couple who've married before the civil registrar straight after that ceremony, as I've recently done. Given the strict exclusion of religious elements from civil weddings I was surprised it was allowed to take place in the same location, with barely a break.

I took Ivan with me: he's an ordinand based at an Evangelical Anglican church not far away and is with us on placement at Swanvale Halt to experience another brand of worshipping community. Astonishingly for a middle-aged gentleman, to me, he'd never attended a civil service before. 'I found it a bit 'thin' ', he commented, which is what I always think, too, when I attend civil rites of passage, whether weddings or funerals. I don't think this is simply a matter of my own particular ideological framework being absent; it's to do with the whole thing resting on the individuals concerned, rather than connecting them with something bigger (even eternal). Even if you know them that's a bit limited in comparison. 

You could argue that I shouldn't have been there at all. I know clergy who wouldn't have been. You could regard my presence as adding a gloss of legitimacy to an occasion whose assumptions and understandings are far removed from God's, or even salving the conscience of people who would be better off having their conscience pricked a bit. I prefer to think that, if a thing is capable of working for God's purposes, it can be blessed in his name, and his presence acknowledged. I did do a little preamble to explain what I was doing there and the different natures of the two halves of the ceremony, which the standard Order for the Blessing of a Civil Marriage actually does quite well. 

But those differences are ever clearer. The words the Registrar now uses are even less personal than before now they have to incorporate the marriage of same-sex couples: 'the State regards marriage as the union of two persons ...'. There is no open mention of sex or family life, while the Anglican ritual proclaims both, and apart from the statement that the couple are uniting 'to the exclusion of all others', which does sort-of imply a sexual relationship, it strikes me that this is a contract which could be entered into by siblings, or by more than two people (as some of my non-Christian friends would like to see). I now wouldn't object to that happening, as it would clarify further the distinction between what the State now sees marriage to be on the one hand, and the sacrament of matrimony on the other.

'I prefer 'thin' weddings', said Ms Formerly Aldgate later on. 'Most weddings can do with losing a bit of weight.'