Sunday March 21st 2004
Re-enactment of Church Same-sex Unions
ON SUNDAY 21ST March 2004, about 20 people got together to re-enact and discuss two of the ancient same-sex union ceremonies in a Church in Croydon, in front of a public audience.
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The event began with a warm welcome from the Vicar, who had conducted modern blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples, but began by referring to Sir John Clanvowe and Sir William Neville, and other historical same-sex couples, who are commemorated in English churches in their shared tombs memorials and inscriptions. The first ceremony that we re-enacted is a 'blessing ceremony' for 'brother-making'. It dates from before the split of the Eastern and Western Churches and comes from the Eastern tradition. It would probably have begun with a procession, with incense and psalms, that went made its way round the village and finally entered the church [right] . |
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The priest places the couple's right hands on the book of the Holy Gospels [left] and gives them lighted candles in their left hands [below] before he censes them. |
| The Deacon then sings the Great Litany, which includes petitions for the couple, mentioning them by name. The petitions include requests that their love may abide all the days of their lives, and that they be granted unashamed faithful-ness. So it is clear that the rite is set in the mainstream of contemporary Christian worship and accepts the loving relationship of the couple. |  |
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Amongst the other elements in the service, there are prayers for the couple, who are, again, referred to name. Several paired saints and martyrs are invoked. |
The prayers stress that the couple (the 'brothers') are joined not by the bond of nature but by faith and the Holy Spirit, (echoing John 1 v13, where believers become children of God not by human procreation but by faith and the Holy Spirit).
The priest takes his stole and symbolically binds their hands [above] and prays that they be 'blessed and consecrated' in Christ.
| The couple would have exchanged gifts [right]
as equals rather than giving a ring from groom to bride. (Our couple
gave torques as seen in images of saints Sergius and Bacchus.) |
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The reading from the epistles is Paul's hymn to Christian love, I Corinthians 12 v.27 to 13 v.7. And the Gospel [left] is John 17 where the union of love that holds Christ and God the Father in one is extended to include the disciples and all who will believe through their word.
The couple then kiss the Holy Gospel and each other [below]. |
| After the Lord's Prayer the priest give them both the pre-sanctified
communion, showing, again, that this was part of mainstream Church
practice.
The priest then leads them three times around the sanctuary [below] while they and the choir sing psalms, probably including Psalm 133, which was commonly taken to refer to 'sworn brothers'. 'Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to live together …' |
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Many elements show how similar this is to the Church wedding of the time. Like marriage, sworn brotherhood was a civil relationship and the blessing ceremony is called brother-making. It was not a wedding or marriage and it did not conflict with the rights and duties of marriage at the time. See full text.
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Next, our first speaker, Alexis Tancibok, explained how the theology of the deep, enduring love of the couple in this ceremony differs from that of marriage which chiefly concerns reproduction and child-bearing. For a full account, click here. Alexis is a bishop from the Old Catholic Church, (see Grace Catholic Church) who has recently been updating the translation of the ceremony, |
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Then we heard the legend of the third century paired saints Sergius and Bacchus, who were inseparable in life and martyred for their faith. These are invoked as sworn brothers and invoked in the adelphopoiesis prayers. Click here for more detail.
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The Roman Catholic brother-making ceremony, the Ordo ad Fratres Faciendum [above] was re-enacted next, in plain-clothes. It's structure reflects the Western pre-sanctified communion, and the reference to St Peter is characteristically Roman. But the sentiments of the prayers is almost identical - one seems to be borrowed from the Eastern rite - and the readings, Matthew 4, 18-22 and 2 Corinthians 13, 11-13 do not alter our understanding of the rite, or the relationship that it blesses. There are no rubrics, or 'stage directions' so we could not introduce them. We don't know for sure what they were or whether there were any, though as the document comes from the same part of Europe it seems unlikely that they were much different from the Eastern Church cermony. See the full text.
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At this point there was a period of discussion.
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Our second guest speaker was Jeremy Marks [left] who told us about his organisation called 'Courage' (www.courage.org.uk). This was set up as a sincere ministry to help evangelical Christian homosexuals at least to live celibate lives and, as a community, to seek re-orientation if that were found to be realistically possible. However, over a number of years they found that no-one experienced the kind of change they were looking for: After moving on from the tremendous support provided through living for a couple of years in a close-knit Christian community, former members would often find themselves spiralling into depression a year or two later. Some were fortunate in finding a same-sex lover, though going right against their own convictions in the process. |
But the result was, such companionship enabled them to become very much happier, more balanced people. Courage was so shocked when one or two other former members attempted suicide (when the group had been such a caring, prayerful and supportive community), that Jeremy felt compelled to radically re-think their whole ministry, ethos and practice.
The process of questioning and re-thinking was a long one, but one key turning point was visiting a fairly theologically conservative US ministry that nonetheless accepted gay sexuality as God's gift, affirming gay people and gay couples committed to life-long partnership. After much soul-searching, further study of scripture (and also realising that he would inevitably lose a major proportion of his income), Jeremy and Courage undertook the drastic change from seeking to help gays "come out of homosexuality", to supporting gay people by helping them integrate faith and sexuality. Courage also works to help other Christians within the Churches to have a better understanding of the realities of being gay and Christian.
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In closing it was suggested that the sworn kinship that the church blessed
and which was distinct from marriage, was comparable to the government's
proposed Civil Partnerships a positive traditional Christian approach
to this development was proposed. And the discussion continued over tea.
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Re-enactment text, preliminary publicity and other material for March 21st click here.
If you'd like to attend or just find out more, click the email link here.