The C of E’s clandestine move toward gay ‘marriage’
by Harry Blanchard, TCW:
SINCE writing my previous piece in TCW critiquing the Church of England’s plan for blessing same-sex couples, the scheme has been enfleshed in the form of the draft Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF). I should couch any criticism here with an understanding that these prayers are still being formulated and should therefore be judged less harshly; however their authors are obviously satisfied enough with their quality to publish them in provisional format on the C of E’s official website. You will not be surprised to learn, reader, that I have one or two issues which I briefly expound here.
The first is the poor theology. Part of the problem is that the PLF have emerged from a theological context which values superficial church ‘unity’ and does not wish to disturb the conscience of the secular world. PLF dishonestly gerrymander doctrine in an attempt to appease the Bible-believing camp by suggesting that these prayers are not a change of doctrine, merely a pastoral provision. The clergy who are propagating PLF are largely insistent that this is not a change of traditional Christian doctrine, and that the Church of England’s official position that marriage is a lifelong union ‘between one man and one woman’ remains unaltered. The church unity the hierarchs are seeking to uphold is nothing more than a common religious history and heritage; they are unconcerned about the doctrinal fidelity to Christ which has always defined church unity (1 Cor. 1:10) and simply seek to maintain an illusory paper unity which has no substantial basis in doctrine, practice or ethics.
As their contradiction belies, the simple reality is that there is a shift in official doctrine here. Like many other churches, Anglicanism determines doctrine in part through the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi (‘the law of prayer [is] the law of faith’ or more helpfully ‘what we pray is what we believe’). That is to say that liturgy serves as a reflection and consolidation of theological beliefs and expresses the faith in a tangible, active way. With this principle in mind, how PLF prayers such as that below can be interpreted as anything other than de facto wedding prayers is beyond me:
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