Incest

I've been thinking a bit more about the essay from Fulcrum casting the Anglican Covenant in terms of a marriage contract. Even if I believed that it was wise more strictly to order the relationships of people who are having difficulty ordering their relationships, I think this author has the wrong relationship in mind. Marriage is spoken of in the church — but it is not the marriage of the members of the church to each other or the symbolic marriage of one church to another church. Rather the church's members, or the various churches, all have one Lord — one husband. It is no accident that the Hebrew Scriptures presented God in the form of a patriarchal husband with several wives, even portraying Israel and Judah as sisters.The various churches are more like the wives and handmaids of Jacob, and their various quibbling offspring — family squabbles being quite natural in such a setting, more characteristic of historic Christianity than otherwise, I think.

One of the critiques aimed at those who support same-sex marriage is that it represents a confusion between marriage and friendship. (I do not think this a fair assessment, as most couples, mixed- or same-sex, know the difference between their spouses and their friends.) It is therefore ironic that covenant supporters actually seem to make this mistake: portraying as spousal what is at base fraternal.

In short the churches of the Anglican Communion are not, and ought not be, married to each other. We are siblings or friends, not spouses, to each other. The church is not spousal to itself or its members, but to its Lord, as the Bride of Christ. Within the church and between its members we rejoice in our brother- and sisterhood. To arrange a marriage would be incestuous, and distort the proper relationships we have as children of one Lord, united in one Faith, adopted in one Baptism.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG