The following is the introduction to a debate on MARRIAGE IN CHURCH AFTER DIVORCE (GS 1449), which took place in York on Tuesday 9th July, given by The Bishop of Winchester, The Rt Revd. Michael Scott-Joynt.

I am glad to present to you the House of Bishop’s  Report on Marriage in Church after Divorce [GS 1449] – glad because after six years wrestling with this set of questions with excellent colleagues I believe that these are the best and most workable proposals available to us; and glad especially because I am convinced that the questions with which we are dealing this morning represent a front-line of pastoral care, of Christian teaching and of evangelism to which we have to be prepared as the Church of England today to go, to stay and  to accept all the admitted risks of staying. God’s presence among people and their families who want to marry and who have suffered marital breakdown requires us to struggle faithfully with the real tensions involved in witnessing to him there.

Please do not see this Report  as some “stand-alone” piece of work. It comes to you as the latest in a series of Church of England Reports on this subject going back to the 1970s; and in particular it arose from the Report [GS 1361] of the House’s Working Party, that I chaired, which was published in January 2000. Closely connected is the House’s Teaching Document on Marriage that was published in September 1999. It is significant that all these Reports have taken the view that “there are  circumstances in which a divorced person may be married in church during the lifetime of a former partner” (I quote from the July 1981 Resolution of this Synod). What the Church of England, through this Synod, has so far been unable to agree, are the principles and procedures by means of which this judgement may be  translated into consistent pastoral practice.

I stress this long genesis because it is critical to understanding  the present Report’s recommendation that the Church of England should make provision for further marriage in church in certain circumstances; people sometimes speak and write as if this was a new idea among us!

I make no apology for the fact that you do not have a major, freshly worked, theological analysis before you this morning. This is not because this foundational aspect has been overlooked; but because the ground had been very extensively covered, particularly in the 1978 Report of the General Synod Marriage Commission, Marriage and the Church’s Task [the Lichfield Report] – relevant sections of which were reprinted in GS 1361. This Report examined the key New Testament passages about divorce, concluding that ‘the mind of Christ cannot be simply read off the recorded words’ but rather viewed ‘within the total context of Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God, and his own ministry of challenge, forgiveness and renewal’. There has  properly been substantial debate within the Church ever since New Testament times as it seeks to discern the mind of Christ. It is  significant that Anglican, as well as  Continental, Reformers believed that the qualifying clauses in Matthew and Paul allowed for divorce and further marriage in exceptional cases; and that indissolubility is not explicit  in The Book of Common Prayer, the Marriage Service of which was used for “further marriages” between 1753 and 1836. When the General Synod voted by large majorities in all three Houses in July 1981 – in the wake of the Lichfield Report - that ‘there are circumstances in which a divorced person may be married in church during the lifetime of a former partner’, it was following in this tradition.

I have already noted that since then this Synod  has been unable to agree how to carry forward this judgement into agreed and consistent pastoral practice. Some here will no doubt remember the ill-fated attempt in 1983/4 to implement a panel-based system known as ‘Option G’. But while this foundered, the House of Bishops acknowledged that clergy were legally free to solemnise further marriages, and that the decision whether or not to do so lay in their hands. It drew up Draft Guidelines, in the light of which most diocesan bishops issued guidelines in the late 1980s for their clergy setting out procedures within which decisions to solemnise such  marriages could responsibly be made.

This brief historical resume sketches the position that faced the House’s Working Party set up in response to a Private Member’s Motion of November 1994. While the first clause of the 1957 Act of the Convocation of Canterbury  remained in place, saying that ‘the Church should not allow the use of the marriage service in the case of anyone with a former partner still living’, the reality had become very different. When the Winchester Report included its draft code of practice under which further marriages could take place, it was not proposing some seismic shift in pastoral practice, but rather seeking to reflect best practice from existing diocesan guidelines and from experience in every diocese of the Church of England. According to the latest statistics [1999], more than 11% of weddings in the Church of England and Church in Wales – over 7500 a year – include one or more divorced persons. So it was not surprising that, when the Working Party’s proposals went out to diocesan synods for consultation, there was near unanimity on the principle of the permissibility of further marriage in certain circumstances, and  over 60% supported the shape of the proposals.

I know that we are not debating the Winchester Report (GS 1361) as such today, but rather the House of Bishops’ own response to it. But GS 1449  very much builds on the thinking of the Working Party which I chaired, in setting out proposals which would allow clergy to conduct further marriages in line with advice on the handling of applications from couples. The House is firmly convinced that marriage should only be entered into as a lifelong vocation, and it would not have supported these proposals if it had thought otherwise. And Synod members will wish to note that the Synod’s Law Officers are  unanimous in their advice that  Canon B30, which particularly sets out the Church of England’s traditional understanding of marriage, does not require amendment in order to put these proposals into effect. (The text of its first paragraph can be found in the footnote on page 2 of GS 1449).

The House of Bishops’ proposed advice to clergy in ANNEX 1 is based on the draft Code of Practice in the Winchester Report. It is now advice rather than anything stronger, in recognition of the legal view that the cleric’s discretion in civil law whether or not to solemnise such marriages should not be fettered (for the reasons that are carefully set out in the Legal Officers’ Advice included as ANNEX 2). This advice has been framed so as to strike a via media between the need to flag up questions that should be considered if the Church is to witness to its doctrine of marriage, the current climate in which the risk of legal challenge  (based in a heightened awareness of individual rights) is that much greater, and a range of  practical considerations. The changes made since the Winchester Report were made in the light of these factors, with a view to making the document  more clearly focused and useable; and the Advice still,of course, adds up to a coherent picture of what the Synod in July 1981 called “the circumstances in which a divorced person may be married in church during the lifetime of  former partner”. 

I am well aware, following the lengthy consultation around the dioceses, that  a number of clergy feel quite exposed in remaining the point of discernment and decision in these matters; but the Working Party, and the House of Bishops, have been in no doubt that it is  the cleric on the spot who is best placed for this ministry. Not only does the law as it stands (S.8.2 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1965 is printed in the footnote on page 14 of GS 1449) not permit the decision to be transferred elsewhere, but we believe that  all proposed alternatives would be both pastorally undesirable and unworkable; and it is interesting in this context to note that the Anglican Church in Canada has recently come to a similar conclusion in abandoning its panel-based system. Clergy would, moreover, be able to seek advice from the bishop on these as on any other matters; and there will need to be training programmes in dioceses to prepare and to support the clergy in this element of their ministry – both the FLAME network and the Mothers’ Union have offered to assist with this task. Such programmes will also need to cover likely changes arising from the proposals debated yesterday; they should form  a well-designed  package aimed at ensuring the best possible marriage preparation for all  weddings solemnised throughout the Church of England.

Some fear that the proposals will make further marriage normative, and make a nonsense of the House’s declared view that “a further marriage after divorce is an exceptional act”[1].  I understand this anxiety; but I do not share it, because I have a good deal of confidence in the ability of the clergy to exercise discernment in such matters responsibly.  The advice in Annex 1 includes some searching questions designed to safeguard the Church’s witness to marriage as a lifelong vocation; it certainly will not sanction ‘a free for all’. The use of this Advice  nationally should help make the Church’s  position much clearer to couples than the present situation - and  when  couples are not  short of attractive secular marriage venues, the applicants are likely to be quite self-selecting: many who will realise that a church wedding is not likely to be granted will simply not apply. But on the other hand there is an important missionary element in making the Church’s position as clear  as it can be: some may wrongly assume that a church wedding is not possible, and be unnecessarily denied the pastoral and evangelistic service of the Church of England at a liminal moment in their lives. Marriage breakdown is a wretched reality for so many in England today; we have to be up and doing not only about  providing pastoral care to those who find themselves in this position and to their families, but also in representing the compassion and the rebuilding love of God to as many as possible of those who are serious and hopeful about embarking freshly on Marriage after a divorce.

That said and meant, the House of course  recognises that there continue  to be  those who legitimately hold  an “indissolubilist” position, and those who for other reasons will not be prepared to conduct a “further marriage”. Neither the Winchester Report, nor the House of Bishops in GS 1449, has any intention to seek alteration in S.8.2 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1965. The Service of Prayer and Dedication after a Civil Ceremony would also continue to be available.

In a number of dioceses, the suggestion was made that couples should be able to go to other clergy if  the possibility of further marriage was not available  in their parish church. The House is sympathetic to this difficulty; and if the concurrent proposals for reforming marriage law contained in GS 1448 – welcomed by the Synod  yesterday – do indeed proceed, applicants will have a wider choice of venue available to them through the criterion of ‘demonstrable connection’, rather than just residence or electoral roll membership as at present.

I want to urge Synod to be honest and realistic in considering this morning’s questions; and above all to be generously faithful, witnessing to God who is generous both in the gift of Marriage and in the gift of new beginnings. We are often still said to have one of the toughest marriage disciplines in Christendom, mainly because the first clause of the  1957 Act of Convocation is still on record as the Church’s official position. But so is the 1981 resolution of this Synod; and evidence from every Diocese suggests that the latter represents and informs a great deal more of the Church’s current thinking, and increasingly its practice, than the former.  As things are we present an uncertain, incoherent picture to those who want to know where the Church of England stands on an issue which sadly touches the lives of many thousands of people, of whom many are already within our churches, and many others  are within reach of our service and witness. In advocating that Synod agree to the motions in my name, and  take steps to rescind the remaining sections of the 1957 Act (and the 1938 Resolutions), I am not asking you to dilute the Church’s commitment to lifelong marriage.  I am asking you  to reflect in your decisions what all the evidence suggests is to a very large extent the Church’s current mind on this matter. I am also asking you, on a set of questions with which in my  judgement  the Church  has been struggling since within the New Testament period, to vote for what my experience over the last six years has convinced me is the most generally acceptable set of proposals available to this Church now.

I commend the House’s Report to Synod and beg to move that Synod do take note of this Report.