Gay Marriage - a rough guide for nonconformists

Humanly speaking the campaign against gay marriage was over before it began. Supported by most in the media, by the leaders of all three major parliamentary political parties and, polls suggest, by a majority of the UK population it was always going to happen. 

There may now be some spats in the House of Lords. The Government may use the Parliament Act to force the laws through. At "best" the parties may have to put it in their manifestoes and come back and vote on it again after 2015. But, apart from some massive social change, this is going to happen.

As I've argued elsewhere evangelicals fought entirely the wrong campaign - one that put us, in the public perception, on the side of homophobia not freedom, when other (more winnable) options were available. Indeed one of the striking things is that throughout the Coalition for Marriage campaign public support for gay marriage increased from 45% to 62%. That's hardly any sort of victory, and should certainly cause Christian leaders to stop their slightly irritating press-releases about getting 1 million signatures (out of a population of over 63 million!) and fundamentally reconsider the whole approach taken to these issues in future.

Anyway now that it is, to all intents and purposes, over, how should we respond?

For Anglicans, despite the so-called "quadruple lock" (which seems about as secure as depositing your pension money in a "new and innovative high-return investment") there are real fears that there will be constant and increasing lobbying for the CofE to perform gay marriages. Indeed, as this Telegraph article shows, there are some clergy pressuring the church in this direction already.

But what about us non-conformists?

Most of the comment I've seen from evangelical Christians has been very doom laden, warning that Christian teachers will be disciplined or fired for expressing a view that marriage is between a man and a woman, or that our churches may end up with activist gay couples deliberately coming and asking to get married in order to provoke a refusal and then bring a discrimination case.

Government ministers are going out of their way to assure us that this won't happen. I'm not sure whether that's because they are naive enough to believe that it won't or because they know it will but they're determined to shut us up any way they can. But I confidently predict that court cases will follow with results that discriminate against those of us who hold to a traditional view of marriage and say so within state institutions. Probably not that often, but they will happen.

However those of us in any kind of nonconformist churches should expect nothing less. We are, by definition, in churches which refuse to fit in to the demands and expectations of the state and its agents.

That's one of the reasons I consider nonconformity to be biblical: unlike established churches nonconformity tries to preserve the nature of the Church as a heavenly invasion of worldly space, a community that constantly challenges secular understandings of power rather than merely co-existing with them.

The day-to-day result of this should be that any Christian attending a baptist, FIEC, newfrontiers or similar church should always expect the state power we interact with (as citizens, teachers, doctors, drivers or whatever) to have fundamentally different ambitions from our own. Earthly kingdoms and empires inevitably embody godless values, even as all of them also hold to some other values that reflect God's truth.

Christians need to learn to live with that and seek to be salt and light, even where state power tries  to exclude us. Some of us, no doubt, will do so more bravely than others. As always some of us will be so brave as to be foolish. As always others of us will be so cautious as to be cowardly. Fortunately God's grace covers all of us!

In the case of gay marriage Christian teachers must find ways to express their view, without causing unnecessary offence, that marriage is for a man and a woman, and be prepared that occasionally offence may be taken, sometimes with dire consequences.

Christian registrars should prepare to resign or be sacked if they aren't willing to conduct gay weddings, at least in some local authorities.

Other Christians will mostly find that there is no need to disagree with the new legislation as part of their job; but some will discover that even expressing a personal view in conversation at work will lead to disciplinary action.

Churches should be prepared to challenge those brothers and sisters who have gratuitously got themselves into trouble by speaking unwisely or aggressively. We should also provide all necessary financial, prayer and pastoral support to those folk, whether they have handled the situation well or not.

The task of Christian pastors will be, as ever, to teach and model the wise pattern of clarity, boldness and discretion that we are called to and that Christ himself, along with his apostles, showed us.

For what it's worth I'll be spending more time praying about those things than I will that the legislation will fall. That's because I believe the cause of Christ can be most commended by our godly responses.