Equal Marriage: Church of England

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I believe that I can reassure him. As I said earlier, the new pastoral guidance will take account of the major change that the Church of England made last week. That guidance will be put together at pace by a group of bishops and a wider group with a diverse range of lived experience on these issues. On the changes that my hon. Friend seeks, I think I am able to say to him that he and others who are concerned will be pleased about the direction that this new pastoral guidance will go in.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

There is an awful lot of pain. Imagine being a church warden. You turn up maybe every day of the week to open the church before the priest gets there to take the 8 o’clock service. On Sundays, you turn up a couple of hours beforehand to make sure the church is warm. You clean and iron the vestments, you make sure the church is prepared, and you count the collection at the end of the service. And you have fallen in love with somebody of your own sex. The place that you have devoted your life to—and your God—is that church, and that is the place you cannot get married. That is terribly, terribly painful.

I think that there is still a cruelty in what the bishops have brought forward. There is a sort of hypocrisy. I know that they are trying to square everything off, but in the end there is a hypocrisy that we will bless the individuals but not the relationship. You can have a sort of blessing of your relationship—a celebration—but you cannot be married; you cannot refer to the other person as your husband. Imagine being a priest and wanting to be able to marry your church warden to the person they love. Is there any biblical teaching that says this is wrong? Is there any, really? Did Jesus say a single word about same-sex relationships or marriage? I do not think he did. He said a great deal about love—God of love. St Paul said that, in Christ, there was neither male nor female, neither Jew nor Greek, and I think he would probably also have said, neither gay nor straight.

[Andrew Selous]

The whole House will have been deeply moved by what the hon. Gentleman has said. I get his passion and strength of feeling on the issue. I do not know whether he had a chance to see the Church of England press conference last Friday. The Archbishop of York was deeply moved by what the Church of England did last week, as in fact was the Archbishop of Canterbury, who mentioned a former member of his congregation who was gay and who later took his own life. What a terrible tragedy that was for the Archbishop of Canterbury and for many, many others.

In a sense, the Church of England—if it will forgive me for saying this—has almost managed to upset absolutely everyone because these proposals clearly do not go far enough for some. I just ask the House to understand that there are some who are deeply grieving and troubled because they believe that the proposals have gone too far. The hon. Gentleman is right: we read the same Bible. It is slightly strange, Madam Deputy Speaker, I do not even have a degree in theology and here I am, the only person in the whole Parliament who speaks for the Church of England. But I study the Bible, like the hon. Gentleman, and I know that good and true people can come to different conclusions about it. He will know that and respect that. I thank him for his gracious and very moving words.