Daily Archives: July 11, 2014

Conversations about marriage

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Marriage is highly contested in our culture in the twenty-first century. We fight about marriage equality and worry about changing marriage patterns. With a divorce rate around 45%, increasing rates of couples living together, and close connections between poverty and children born to unwed mothers, the challenges presented by changing marriage patterns have important social consequences. Some of the dramatic changes in marriage practice in the last half century include:

  • In 1960, 2/3 of all adults in their twenties were married; in 2008, only 26% were
  • 65% of all couples live together before getting married
  • marriage is much more common among college-educated and economically stable people than among the less-educated and less-affluent
  • 90% of young adults think they need to be completely financially independent before marriage

All data from material provided by the Task Force on Marriage. More info here.

In the Episcopal Church, our General Convention 2012 called for a Task Force to study the theology of marriage. As part of its work, it has invited dioceses, parishes, and interested individuals to engage in conversations about marriage. We will be holding such a conversation on July 31 at St. Luke’s here in Madison.

The impetus for the task force came in part from the discussion about same-sex blessings and the trial rite that uses language of blessing, stops short of calling it marriage, yet is being used in many places where gay marriage is legal.

The Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer is the product of its age and shows some signs of its historical context. With the use of two different rites in the church, and the oft-repeated statement made that the trial rite would be appropriate for use with heterosexual couples, there is a great deal of uncertainty surrounding marriage in the church.

For myself, one of the most important issues around marriage is my role as officiant. I am increasingly uncomfortable serving as an agent of the state and as an enabler of the marriage-industrial complex. What might an Episcopal rite, theology, and practice of marriage look like if neither of those factors were involved? It seems to me that the marriage rite is increasingly “divorced” from the practice of marriage. As a church we’re not very successful at doing “all in our power to uphold these two persons in their marriage” as we promise during the rite, and we’re even less successful in help couples who are struggling with their relationships.

A recent study explores the relationship between religious involvement and marriage among young adults:

Nominally religious young adults are in a vulnerable position: they are religious enough to be pushed into early marriage, for instance, but, lacking the social support mediated by an in-the-flesh religious congregation, they don’t reap the benefits of involvement in a religious community. Instead, religion may become a source of conflict.

More here

People may not come to church but they’ll come to a bowling alley: Random thoughts and links on sacred space

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The quotation comes from the pastor of a church in Birmingham AL:

People may not want to come to a church, but they’ll come to a bowling alley. People have needs other than spiritual needs. There’s a need for safe, clean, uplifting, family-oriented entertainment.”

Read it all here

Laura Ortberg Turner reflects on the sacrality of different churches which she has attended:

The church I attend now is two thousand miles away. We take communion every week, walking down squeaky hardwood floors—all one hundred twenty of us—past stained glass windows, toward the giant cross behind the stage. The smells and history and personality of this building shape my experience of worship, too. The strong wine a regular testament to the shock of the resurrection; the pews an invitation to sit close to the people I don’t know but already love; the constant, drafty chill a reminder of the building’s history in a city where everything else seems new. There is a sense in the room that we are surrounded by people who are not there, and if I don’t quite mean ghosts. I also don’t mean just those who are alive and present. It is full of that great cloud of witnesses that has filled the sanctuary for a century before us.

Steve Swayne ponders the differences between what he labels “stadium” and “sanctuary” culture. Thinking about the way people milled around a college commencement ceremony, he connected that behavior with “stadium” culture. He much prefers “sanctuary” culture.

And beyond lower blood pressure and better health outcomes, sanctuary culture at its best forces us to see and hear more of the world around us. It helps us to see and hear that world better. And if the history of lectures and libraries and liturgies shows us anything, the deliberation inherent in sanctuary culture, more than the carnivalesque nature of stadium culture, holds the key to make our world better than it is today.

Just a couple of quick observations about that. First, I’m not sure that “lectures” participate in “sanctuary” culture, or that they have for thirty years. I remember a class at Harvard for which I was a Teaching Fellow in 1987. The class enrolled almost 1000 undergraduates and we often remarked that the room was never quiet. Students were always coming and going.

And the idea that people sit quietly in church or concert halls is a relatively recent phenomenon as well. Pews only came on the scene in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and we know from sermons throughout the preceding history of Christianity that preachers complained bitterly that their congregations were milling about, coming in and out, engaging in conversations (even transacting business deals).

And I wonder what Swayne would think about the phenomenon of Social Media Sunday?

At the same time, physical space does shape us profoundly and helps to form us as human beings and as Christians. Worshiping in something that looks very much like an auditorium or movie theater invites behavior appropriate to those places.