Last evening National Capital Presbytery had a
discussion on marriage. That’s certainly not news, though, as was noted in the
introductions to the discussion, “it is long overdue.”
Because it’s far too late to make news, I won’t bore
you with the “positions” that were articulated. At this point, most of us can
make all of the arguments whether or not we agree with them. Courtesy of Pew Research
Center we did see some interesting demographic data that no doubt surprised
many members of the Presbytery if for no other reason than how the facts
underscore how rapidly the culture is changing around us with respect to
marriage.
The facts and the arguments are more or less
interesting, I suppose, depending upon your knowledge base and opinions, but
the tone of the evening was far more fascinating to me than the content.
Because we were not debating an issue to be voted upon, the discussion had no
winners or losers, and thus the evening felt far less anxious and stressful.
Perhaps the fact that no votes were taken also meant that some stridently
partisan voices (like mine) were quiet. For the most part, the “the usual
suspects” did not lead, but, instead simply participated around tables to which
we were randomly assigned.
After various perspectives were offered (that’s the
not-news-worthy part) we were invited to talk with others at our tables
prompted by a set of questions, the first of which was:
- Where did your understanding of marriage come from?
At my table, that question prompted reflections
about our respective parents and our own marriages, and that’s when the evening
got interesting and profound. One person at our table grew up Roman Catholic
and has been married for 29 years to a woman who grew up in a Presbyterian
congregation in Alexandria. When he went to his priest to ask about getting
married in the church, the priest said, “not here you won’t.” When his fiancé went
to her pastor to ask about getting married in the church, the pastor said, “not
here you won’t.”
Many of us at the meeting last night have performed
weddings for couples who come from different faith backgrounds. The differences
can certainly be hugely significant, but for most of us that significance would
be the beginning of the conversation not the end. We can scarcely imagine
saying “not here you won’t” to a straight couple that comes to us seeking, for
all the right reasons, to get married in the church. But that is precisely the
word that gay and lesbian couples hear from the church all of the time: “not
here you won’t.”
Another person in our small circle noted that, as an
African-American woman married for more than four decades to a white man, she
had experienced first-hand the resistance to changing attitudes about marriage
and that her husband had been threatened more than once because of their
marriage.
Then she went on to tell us a remarkable, uniquely
American story of change. Her great-grandmother, whom she had known and whom
she remembered from her childhood, was the daughter of a woman produced by a
union between a slave and slave-owner. She noted that “folks who aren’t
supposed to be having sex have been doing it for a long time, and it’s nothing
new!” She went on to tell us that a few years ago the white descendants of that
slave-owner had tracked her family down when doing genealogical research, and
that now they hold a joint family reunion of the sons and daughters of former
slaves and the sons and daughters of former slave-owners.
At the time when those two family lines first
crossed no one could have imagined their joyous reunion just a few generations
later. Indeed, had the slave and master sought to be wed, every church in the
land would have told them, “not here you won’t.”
