There is an odd fact that dogs the debate about same-gender issues in the Anglican Church of Canada. While marriage is a crucial aspect of the debate, the language of marriage is, at least officially, rarely used. The motion before our general synod is expressly a motion regarding same-sex blessing. The assumption seems to be that there is a difference between blessing and marriage, and we are considering only blessing.
And yet, it is really marriage that is at issue for both liberal and orthodox Christians. The distinction between blessing and marriage does not hold up, either liturgically or in the popular mind. What people really mean, and what they really want, when they say blessing, is marriage.
They are right to think there is no real difference between blessing and marriage. The heart of the current marriage service is precisely the nuptial blessing. A church marriage is the blessing of the union-it is this act of blessing that formally distinguishes a Christian marriage service from a civil ceremony. If you have a blessing, therefore, you have a marriage, too.
What the movement for same-sex marriage challenges is, of course, the gender distinction in marriage. Andrew Sullivan, the well-known gay columnist says, "This isn’t about gay marriage. It’s about marriage" (Time, February 2004). In other words, according to Sullivan it makes no difference what the gender of the partners is: you still have everything that makes a marriage. You still have love, mutuality, commitment-even children if you want them.
This is the position of those in our church who advocate same-sex marriage. It’s not about gender; it’s about mutual love, mutual trust, mutual fidelity. The question we have to ask is why the church insists on the gender distinction. Is the man/woman pairing in marriage non-essential, arbitrary and unfair, as the courts and those in favour of gay marriage argue, or is it an essential and beautiful part of the Christian vision?
Marriage matters more
The Christian vision suggests that gender is in fact the essence of marriage, that without it no amount of loving feelings or amazing sex can create a marriage. It would say, in fact, that without a gender difference, sex is just plain wrong.
It can say this because the Christian tradition roots marriage in the purpose of God. "Marriage is a gift of God and a means of His grace," the Book of Alternative Services marriage service declares. "It is God’s purpose that, as husband and wife give themselves to each other in love, they shall grow together and be united in that love, as Christ is united with His Church."
Marriage exists by God’s gift and for God’s good purpose. It is a purpose that begins in creation and continues in Christ...and includes maleness and femaleness. From beginning to end, the gender distinction is crucial to God’s purpose. In Genesis 1, God creates humankind male and female, and commands them to go forth and multiply and fill the earth (Gen. 1:27-28).
Procreation is the first gift and command of God to humankind. It is a holy thing, and it is the natural and immediate consequence of being made man and woman.
Further, to be made man and woman is to cleave together. The union of man and woman in heart, body and mind is part of God’s purpose for humankind. When Adam sees the woman who has been formed from his side, he says "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken" (Gen. 2:23). "Therefore," the Bible says, "a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh" (Gen. 2:24).
The sexual union of man and woman in marriage has its roots in their created nature. This is how God meant them to live; this is who they are meant to be.
In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus ties the union of man and woman firmly to God’s purpose. To the wily Pharisees He says, "from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’" (Mark 10:6-7).
Jesus is talking about why divorce is wrong: it’s wrong because it goes against God’s purpose in creation. "What God has joined together," Jesus says, "let no one put asunder."
But He might as well have been talking about why same-sex marriage is wrong. It, too, goes against God’s purpose in creation. For it is as man and woman that we were made to join together and become one flesh. In this union and no other, as the Bible tells it, lie our fulfilment and our vocation, as far as sexual relationships are concerned.
It is this union that the Christian tradition hallows as marriage. Marriage is a gift of God and a means of His grace in which man and woman become one flesh. Marriage is about delight in each other, support for each other and the possibility of children. Marriage takes this form because that is how God designed it, and because it is how, in sexual relationships, we find our joy.
But there is more. Marriage reflects God’s purpose not only in creation, but also in redemption. If in the Old Testament the union of man and woman is the crowning glory of creation, it is in the New Testament a sign of our salvation.
The marriage in which man and woman become one flesh shows forth to the world the unity of Christ and the church. Ephesians calls it a great mystery. As we in the church share in the life of Christ, becoming actually members of His body, so in marriage husband and wife share in each other’s life, and actually become one flesh. In the marvelous unity of marriage, we see our unity as Christians with Christ. So marriage is a sacrament, a lived sign of our redemption, a holy thing.
To this sign, the difference of the sexes is essential, for it reflects the pattern of God’s saving love. The story of our salvation is a story about radical difference, drawn into a new unity. This is what the lasting marriage of man and woman mirrors.
A question of identity
What is the problem, then, with homosexual marriage? It separates marriage from the command and purpose of God. It separates us from ourselves, from our true identity-who God Himself made us to be. It says that creation doesn’t matter. The physical, the biological, the real and concrete simply do not play a significant role in God’s plan.
Homosexual marriage rejects creation. It is ironic. The culture says we need free sex, sex free from procreation, free from gender limits, in order to be fully alive. And in the process of freeing us from all limits, it denies us our very being.
The vision of marriage the Bible offers us, by contrast, affirms life. It is rooted in creation and it reflects our redemption. It makes of our marriage something bigger than ourselves, something that shares in God’s good purpose, something that is part of the saving story that stretches from creation to Christ.
Is there something distinctive about the Christian vision of marriage? Yes. It tells the whole story of salvation. If we take gender out of marriage, we lose the essential threads of the story.
What does our culture offer as an alternative to this sweeping Christian vision? It offers an ethic of individualism, a moral vision shaped by human need and desire, and a gospel of human rights. The courts are clear: marriage must be changed because it is discriminatory. It offends against the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
For the court, the gender distinction in marriage is simply exclusionary: it can find no rationale for the distinction. Yet in Christian thought, this distinction is what makes marriage what it is. It is not discriminatory, but defining.
Clearly we are working within two different worldviews. One sees the world as a free association of autonomous individuals, self-directed, self-preserving, self-governing. It is not a deliberately malicious world; it is determined to be fair. But there is no place for God in it. I am the author of my own salvation, our world says, and I know and shall claim my own blessing.
The other view, the Christian view, starts with God and the human He made and found very good. It places man and woman, and the marriage in which they come together most completely, at the center of the story.
The question we are asking today is not simply about gay marriage. It is about two worldviews, and it offers us a choice. Whom shall we follow? We can choose the courts, and follow the devices and desires of our own hearts. Or we can choose Christ, and see in the marriage of one man and one woman a witness to the amazing grace of God.
Catherine Sider Hamilton is a doctoral student at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, and Honorary Assistant at Grace Church on-the-Hill in Toronto. This article is excerpted from a paper prepared for the Anglican Diocese of Toronto’s "Same Gender Consultations" in early March. It appeared in longer form in Fidelity News, the newsletter of Fidelity, a resource and study group on matters of Christian ethics in the Anglican Church of Canada. Used with permission from the author.
