Saturday May 24th - at a conference in Limehouse, London

On Saturday evening we re-enacted the adelphopoiesis ceremony, presented the story of saints Sergius and Bacchus, a same-sex couple seen as sworn brothers and invoked in both rites, followed this with a plain-clothes re-enactment of the Roman Catholic brother-making ceremony, the Ordo ad Fratres Faciendum.

The Chorus sings 'How good and how pleasant it is for brothers to live together' Psalm 133.
The Holy Gospel has been processed from the altar, down to the couple. It is treated as an icon, emblazoned with gold and encrusted with jewels, to express in ceremonial form, its importance as God's words of redemption to mankind. The relationship is 'blessed and consecrated' with the couple's hands placed upon the Holy Gospel as for an oath.

It was pleasing to be able to perform the full programme in our final re-enactment, and include both ceremonies.

The adelphopoiesis ceremony begins, as it has for 1500 years. The couple's hands have been placed on the Holy Gospel (joined as for a marriage), they are given candles in their left hands, and are censed by the priest.

In the discussion that followed, one of the younger participants (who took part as one of the couple) asked why we took the ceremony and its theology so seriously, when it was in latin and would not have been understood by most of the congregation. This was a question we had not had before, but we suggested that in the Eastern church they were using Greek, precisely because it was the language they understood. Indeed they translated into Slavonic for the appropriate regions. But for the latin version (which came from the same region) he had a good point.

Another contributor suggested that civil partnerships should be open to heterosexual couples as well as same-sex couples. This came as a surprise, since civil partnership is based pretty closely on civil marriage: a state open to heterosexual couples anyway. It is the equivalent to religious marriage that will still be denied to same-sex couples, and at the moment same-sex couples have no option of legal status, where currently heterosexual couples have two forms of marriage. We were surprised that this issue is still being taken up.

To comment on this page, click the email link here.