Today, for the first Sunday in the 489-year history of the Church of England, its vicars are at liberty to offer “prayers of love and faith” to same-sex couples. Before you greet this news with a long-overdue hallelujah, it is worth studying the ecclesiastical small print. The blessings are to be understood in the context of what the church now calls “covenanted friendships”, explained as follows: “Covenanted friendships are relationships of an entirely different nature to marriage. The friends may be married to other people, or unmarried. The friendship is by definition not sexually intimate …”
Several bishops, even so, feel uneasy at the implied break with the organisation’s more traditional homophobia. The bishop of Ebbsfleet has instructed his parishioners to take private comfort, if confronted with such prayers, in what the scriptures had to say about the adulteress Jezebel. I’m no theologian, but I wonder if Jesus’s reported final plea “love one another” might be a more useful verse to have in mind – in particular, perhaps, when delivered with WH Auden’s pointed personal emphasis: “We must love one another, or die.” Otherwise, the synod may still be arguing about who exactly is allowed to love whom when they notice that no one walks down their aisles at all.
