Expression in the Scheme of Union

According to Article 9 of the Basis,

It is important here to recall that the Basis of Union was one section of a wider document, the Scheme of Union. In fact, the URC ‘orders its life’ largely according to other sections: those which now make up the Structure. Primacy of one section over others was never asserted, and a fundamental theology of the Church also underlies the subsidiarity expressed in paragraph 1(3) of the Structure. Here it is stated (after introducing the local church, the province or nation with its governing council (the synod) and the General Assembly) that

The explicit reservation of the right to revise underlying doctrine showed the lessons learned from other churches’ experience of over-entrenchment. The facilitating Acts were used to substitute ‘purposes of the URC’ – thus incorporating Article 9's flexibility – for any doctrinal provisions in property trusts.Footnote ⁷ Avoiding doctrinal statements, even by reference, in the Acts themselves ensured that there would be no need to return to Parliament to reflect new insights.Footnote ⁸

Given this right, therefore, binding doctrine can only be found in the Basis or Structure by reference to the current text. That text, of course, may require interpretation, and Assembly is the ultimate expositor. Described as ‘the final authority, under the Word of God and the promised guidance of the Holy Spirit, in all matters of doctrine and order and in all other concerns of its common life’, Assembly includes among its functions (‘function 10’):

To take action which is thereby implied to be consistent with the Basis, or to resolve doubts by a declaratory resolution, requires no special procedure; but Assembly can also fill lacunae in the more formal way described below.

In any event, neither the Basis nor the Structure make any direct reference to marriage.

Incorporation in the Basis of Union by reference

According to the current text of Article 18 of the Basis,

The Congregational–Presbyterian gulf was far wider than any previously bridged, and in 1972 each partner had to surrender cherished principles. Uniting Congregationalists accepted an ecclesial oversight they had hitherto eschewed, but subsidiarity replaced the uniformity which had made so much depend on the PCE Assembly. Regarding doctrine, each side had to accept a reduced importance for its historic texts. This could not have been otherwise. One partner could not have kept its distinctive tenets while the other's were abandoned, and the Savoy Declaration annex on ‘The Institution of Churches’ would have made the Structure of the URC unworkable. Congregationalists, for their part, could never have accepted what the Westminster Confession said about the civil magistrate's right to convene, attend and supervise synods – a statement from which the PCE was indeed also distancing itself well before the union.

This reasoning indicates how the Basis of Union reference to the heritage documents should be construed. They are the URC's ‘own particular heritage’ as a matter of history: ‘valued’ by the Church's predecessors but not in every particular by the URC itself. They indeed ‘sought’ to make the implications of the gospel clear, but more recent insights suggest that they did not always succeed. In short, they remained respected, but no longer bound Church councils or members. And this matters because it is the heritage documents, rather than the substantive text of the Basis itself, that contain propositions about marriage and human sexuality.

Three of the documents named in Article 18 make such references. The Westminster Confession and Savoy Declaration endorsed the procreative understanding of marriage, which they asserted was ‘to be between one man and one woman’ and had been ordained ‘for the increase of mankind with a legitimate issue, and of the Church with an holy seed’. Marriage to papists and heretics was also discouraged.Footnote ⁹ The Statement of the Christian Faith published by the PCE Assembly in 1956 asserted that ‘The bond of the family is marriage, in which God ordains that a man and a woman shall vow themselves to each other in an intimate, exclusive and life-long union in fellowship with him’. If other texts are relevant, as the ‘e.g.’ in Article 18 suggests, the First Book of Discipline (1560) focused largely on parental consent, proclamation of banns and remarriage of persons divorced for adultery if the guilty party were not hanged (which would be ‘the most perfect reformation’).Footnote ¹⁰ The Second Book (1578) listed solemnisation among a minister's prerogatives. The Larger Catechism (1648) ranked ‘sodomy, and all unnatural lusts’ as sins against the Seventh Commandment.Footnote ¹¹

Nevertheless, these statements can enjoy no greater force in the URC than other heritage document assertions and, on the reasoning above, cannot be considered binding, however uncontentious they may have been in 1972. They thus fall to be assessed today on their own merits or demerits as readings of Scripture, rather than deriving additional cogency from their inclusion in the texts concerned.

New doctrinal formulations by the Assembly

The Structure allows for doctrine to be declared otherwise than by amending the Basis of Union. The General Assembly has power ‘to alter, add to, modify or supersede the Basis, Structure and any other form or expression of the polity and doctrinal formulations of the United Reformed Church’ (function 11).Footnote ¹² But the same safeguard which regulates amendment of the Basis itself also governs additions to doctrinal formulations. Under what is now paragraph 3 of the Structure, any exercise of Assembly function 11 requires a qualified majority and must be ratified at a second session after synods (and, optionally, local churches) have been consulted. Early in the Church's life, the consulted councils gained an effective veto: if one third of them requested the Assembly not to proceed with the step proposed, then it was not to be ratified.

Since 1972, the URC Assembly has commended several versions of a URC Service Book in which the ‘statement of purpose’ introducing the marriage rite referred to humanity's creation as male and female and spoke of ‘husband and wife’ living together. Assembly also (in 1978) approved a statement on ‘The Christian view of marriage’, stating that ‘God gives [marriage] as a creative relationship, in which husband and wife help each other to be more complete persons and care for each other.’Footnote ¹³

The 1978 statement remains the most recent marriage-related affirmation in the URC at denominational level. It understandably uses ‘husband and wife’ language: marriage equality was then so remote that intimacy between men was criminal in Scotland and only restrictively tolerated in England. But Assembly was answering requests for guidance on divorce, not on the genders of spouses. It cannot have been interpreting doctrinal formulations under function 10 if none related to marriage. Still less can it have been formulating new doctrine under function 11, which would have required paragraph 3 procedure. A simple resolution sufficed for Assembly's function ‘to make decisions on reports and recommendations from its own committees, issue such directions and take such actions as it deems conducive to the propagation of the Gospel’ or other worthy goals;Footnote ¹⁴ but such decisions do not make binding doctrine. Nor is it accidental that the Structure makes no reference to prescribing liturgies: the restrictive effect that statutory prescription had on worship and preaching ranked high among predecessors’ grievances. Lex orandi, lex credendi can never be a maxim in the URC.

Doctrine: conclusion

The question of whether doctrinal considerations should obstruct, or place procedural restrictions on, conciliar decisions favouring same-sex marriage was addressed in 2014–2015, when the Acting Clerk of Assembly, the Assembly's Faith and Order Committee (FOC) and Mission Council's Law and Polity Advisory Group (LPAG) all considered it.Footnote ¹⁵ The highly respected Acting Clerk, James Breslin, concluded from listed heritage documents, service books and the 1976 statement that authorising solemnisation of same-sex marriage would constitute a change in doctrinal formulations and so require paragraph 3 procedure. FOC, however, suggested that ‘marriage is a secondary doctrinal issue, rather than a primary issue’, noted that, ‘within the United Reformed Church, service books are not regarded as holding the doctrine of the Church’ and concluded that ‘although permitting same sex marriage is a significant change to the church's practice of ministry it is not a change to the United Reformed Church's doctrine’. A majority of the LPAG advised that ‘a decision for the “local option” would not imply or constitute a change in doctrinal formulations’.

Ultimately this question was one for the General Assembly itself to resolve, as the final interpreter of doctrine under function 10. Only if it held existing doctrinal formulations inconsistent with same-sex marriage would it have needed to consider (under function 11) whether to revise them. The fact that Assembly, in the end, declared the key decision on hosting same-sex marriage services to lie within the remit of church meetings, and referred only this declaration – not any statement about marriage itself – to synods, suggests an implicit ruling that no denominational doctrine stood in the way of affirmative decisions.

Nor, of course, did Assembly declare any doctrine allowing for same-sex marriage. Its silence implies, in effect, that the URC has no denominational doctrine of marriage at all. That does not mean that no beliefs on marriage are held within the URC: it simply means that a variety of beliefs can legitimately be held and acted upon, by both individual members and local churches.

Local churches, though, do not act in a doctrinal vacuum: they fill the gap themselves. Should practical decisions within a Church council's competence carry theological implications and should authoritative formulations say nothing, the theological groundwork must be done at that council's level. The Structure names the General Assembly as ‘the final authority … in all matters of doctrine’, but not the only authority. On the contrary, it ascribes to every council, including a church meeting, ‘such authority, under the Word of God and the promised guidance of the Holy Spirit, as shall enable it to exercise its functions’.Footnote ¹⁶

Although this lets different local churches act on different theological premises, that would hardly have surprised our Congregational forebears. On truly fundamental topics there remain remedies against confusion: either written formulation or the possibility of appeal, allowing any radical view damaging to unity to be corrected.Footnote ¹⁷

Local decisions before and during the 2000 moratorium

Same-sex relationships were not directly addressed by the General Assembly until the mid-1990s but that does not mean that issues did not arise. Whether a person in a same-sex relationship should become or remain a member or serve as an elder, whether a local church should declare itself ‘open and affirming’, whether organisations (and indeed churches) advocating sexual orientation equality should have the use of church premises – all of these are local questions.Footnote ¹⁹ Though regard is to be had to other councils’ views, and denominational committees offered study guides,Footnote ²⁰ the principal decision-maker in each of these issues has always been the church meeting. Only the last decision (depending on ‘reputable use’ provisions in the Scheduled Trusts) even involves trustees. The URC of the 1980s experienced the same shifts of opinion on human sexuality as every other major Christian body; but unlike many neighbour congregations, its local churches were able to reach and follow convictions without organs of the wider Church imposing their views. The appeal route, although open, was not pursued.

Then, in 1994, a ministerial training college queried the eligibility for call of candidates living in same-sex relationships. The 1997 Assembly initially ruled this an issue for the church meeting calling such a candidate and the concurring wider council.Footnote ²¹ In effect, the relationship was a factor to be taken into account by the councils normally competent in such decisions, but ordination was possible if these councils were content.

So far no denominational position had been taken on the question. In the years following, it became clear that this was because the URC did not have a position. The 1997 Assembly commissioned further study; two years later, following the reports of various working groups co-ordinated by a ‘core group’, the mind of more local councils was tested regarding a statement that ‘The United Reformed church affirms and welcomes people of homosexual orientation; but there is not a sufficiently clear mind within the Church at this time to affirm the acceptability of homosexual practice’.Footnote ²² But a quarter of local churches, 40 per cent of district councils and 50 per cent of provincial synods all called on the 2000 Assembly not to ratify the statement. Assembly thereupon recognised that no resolution attempting to declare the mind of the Church on human sexuality would find adequate support, and so called for a seven-year moratorium on such attempts in any council.Footnote ²³ Although the 1997 ruling was declared in 1999 to have served its purpose and become ‘spent’,Footnote ²⁴ this meant in practice a return to the 1997 position for ministerial candidates, and several more in same-sex relationships were called and ordained.Footnote ²⁵

It is significant that the URC did not pursue in 1999–2000 any changes to the relationship between its councils as suggested by one of the working groups. The group reporting on ‘The Authority of the Councils of the Church’ suggested that ‘the variety of thought and practice that can often be creative’ might be considered a strength of the URC's structure, while ‘procedures that sometimes militate against acceptance and reception because they have been too hasty’ could be considered a weakness. The group called for a new process for dealing with contentious issues, which ‘would more fully involve the Church at every level in both the consideration of contentious issues and the consequent decision-making’. This would have ‘the aim of improving the sense of relevance of one council to another and to enhance reception of decisions by other councils of the Church’.Footnote ²⁶ But the final outcome as regards the call of ministers appears to have prioritised the liberty of local churches to decide a question chiefly relevant to themselves over any claims of others beyond the normal procedure for concurrence.

The 2007 Commitment

When the moratorium expired, views on same-sex relationships remained as varied as ever. Moving away from the language of ‘acceptance and reception’, Assembly adopted, in the Church's name, a formal agreement to differ. The ‘2007 Commitment’ recognised a very wide range of views within the URC on human sexuality. It stated, very fairly, the two extreme positions held, alongside a further widespread view ‘that the debate on human sexuality has become a wrong focus and has received too much attention’. Accepting the integrity and passion with which all views were held, while acknowledging Christ's call to live together in the Church, the Assembly committed the Church's members to continuing to explore their differences, but also ‘to stay together, to work and pray together, to treat one another with respect, and to seek God's gifts of unity, harmony, wisdom and deeper understanding’.Footnote ²⁷

The 2007 Commitment did not spell out any practical consequences in terms of office-bearers, member discipline or liturgy. It did not formulate doctrine or insert any new text into the Basis of Union (and it was not subjected to the ratification process this would have required). Nor did it extend the moratorium, but it would have been very difficult for any council to propound its view soon thereafter as ‘the mind of the URC’.

2006: local decision on blessings

Meanwhile, the advent of civil partnership during the pause for reflection had led some ministers and churches to feel that the time was ripe to ask God's blessing publicly on the union of committed same-sex couples. In 2006 Mission Council considered guidance prepared by James Breslin, then Clerk of Assembly, and three others, which indicated that ‘the decision whether or not to allow such a service lies with the Local Church’. This was clearly correct: any use of a local church building for worship fell within the primary uses under the Scheduled Trusts and hence under the church meeting's power of direction, provided that it could be said to accord with ‘the principles and usages of the URC’.Footnote ²⁸ Mission Council's endorsement of the guidance as a local church resource, subsequently reported to that year's Assembly, implied that no conflict with those principles was perceived.Footnote ²⁹ Church meetings were assured that ‘whatever decision they make will receive the full support of the URC’.

2012: Assembly decision on civil partnership formation

The Marriage and Civil Partnership (Amendment) Regulations 2011 followed Lord Alli's successful bid to eliminate in England the 2004 rule preventing civil partnership formation on religious premises.Footnote ³⁰ In a number of respects they were not ideal from the URC's point of view. Two criticisms – the government's decision to build on regulations originally made to accommodate marriage in secular venues,Footnote ³¹ and their undiscriminating approach to jointly used buildings regardless of the basis of joint use – go beyond this article's scope. The introduction of a consenting authority role also posed a challenge. While this was clearly designed to give denominational hierarchies extra leverage over local trustees, ministers or congregations dissenting from the hierarchy's view, the regulations’ language did not actually stipulate this. Instead they required consent either from an authority named in the new Schedule A1 or from a ‘governing authority’, defined as ‘the person or persons recognised by the members of [a religious] organisation as competent for the purpose of giving consent under these Regulations’.Footnote ³²

In May 2011 the URC's Human Sexuality Task Group (HSTG), after consulting the LPAG, offered Mission Council an erroneous prediction of what the Regulations would say. The government consultation in March had said

The HSTG report interpreted this to mean that ‘any local decision … will require the prior permission of the parent body of each denomination. In other words, the Assembly has to decide whether or not to allow applications’ (the present writer shares the responsibility for this misinterpretation). At the same time, however – taking the 2006 guidance on blessings as a precedent, and in the spirit of the 2007 Commitment's recognition of different integrities within the URC – it advised in favour of an ‘enabling resolution’ so that church meetings could in practice decide.Footnote ³⁴

When they appeared in November, however, the Regulations did not refer to a ‘parent body’. But by then the government had been asked to list the General Assembly among consenting authorities in Schedule A1.Footnote ³⁵ The recommended ‘enabling resolution’ was, therefore, duly passed.Footnote ³⁶

This was the only occasion on which the General Assembly ascribed to itself a power to decide whether action should be taken at the local level in respect of a same-sex relationship. The outcome was the same as formerly – a ‘local option’. But, by contrast to the earlier approach, the 2012 ‘enabling resolution’ treated approval of buildings for civil partnership formation as an Assembly matter, belonging to church meetings only by delegation. This coloured the initial approach to the governing authority question as regards same-sex marriage.

2014–2016: the National Synod as the locus of decision on marriage in Scotland

Scottish Congregational accession to the URC in 2000 injected into the Church's overall make-up a new and powerful tradition of local autonomy and aversion to dogma. In one sense this only affected the territory represented in the National Synod of Scotland. But its influence on the URC as a whole was enhanced by changes in the Structure: after 2000 the National Synod had the same functions as England's provincial synods, together with a national ecumenical role and weighted representation on the General Assembly.Footnote ³⁷ A further expectation (based on the Proposals for Union, though not immediately written into the Structure) was that the National Synod would speak for the URC in dealings with civil government on issues of purely Scottish concern.Footnote ³⁸ It was perhaps not appreciated, in the earliest days of devolution, how important this role would later become.

When the Scottish Government consulted on civil partnership and marriage reform in September 2011, the National Synod responded through its Church and Society Committee, welcoming the same-sex marriage proposals as ‘permissive rather than prescriptive’. Religious solemnisation was also favoured as meeting needs of couples for whom a civil ceremony would not suffice. At this point the synod was commenting, as any group of the electorate with specialist insight could properly do, on the broad legislative proposals of purely Scottish concern. But in December 2012, when Holyrood published a government response and draft Bill and it became clear there would be an option for the URC to seek ‘prescription’ or to nominate individuals as same-sex marriage celebrants, this posed the question as to which council of the Church might take these steps.

Precedent was not helpful. Under the principal Scottish Act, a ‘religious body’ might seek prescription or make nominations.Footnote ³⁹ Defined as ‘an organised group of people meeting regularly for common religious worship’, this, if read literally, would best describe a local church;Footnote ⁴⁰ but bodies prescribed in the past included the Scottish Methodist district, supranational churches and even some wholly outside Scotland, and federations such as the Scottish Congregational Union.Footnote ⁴¹ The Structure said nothing about this purely Scottish function either before or after 2000: the URC had never been prescribed since its first extension into Scotland in 1981, but celebrants of opposite-sex marriage had been nominated by the competent synod.Footnote ⁴²

In November 2013, Mission Council was urged to work towards a ruling on competence, and was reminded by Scottish representatives of the role envisaged for national synods in the 1998 Proposals for Union.Footnote ⁴³ A year later – the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act having become law in March – Mission Council agreed that, should a later Assembly decision give scope for same-sex marriage solemnisation under URC auspices, the synod would be the appropriate council to nominate celebrants. If, in the meantime, a local church in Scotland wanted to offer the hospitality of its building to a same-sex marriage celebrant from another tradition, it would be free to do so, albeit urged to sensitivity.Footnote ⁴⁴ Assembly's recognition of the synod's role in the ratified resolution of 2015–2016 was a natural development from this, once the decision for England had been taken.

Marriage solemnisation in Scotland had never been confined to church buildings. This transferred the law's chief interest from the building's status to the celebrant's. Consequently, although the Scheduled Trusts applied to most URC buildings in Scotland after 1981, giving church meetings the same control over the use of their buildings for marriages as existed in England, it had always possible for a URC minister to officiate outside the building and without church council involvement. Ministers not in pastoral charge had no local church whose goodwill they could seek and, although it made pastoral sense for those who did to notify elders of a proposed marriage, there was no clear rule obliging them to do so.Footnote ⁴⁵

2015–2016: the church meeting as the locus of decision on marriage in England

No submission was made on the URC's behalf during the Westminster Government's same-sex marriage consultation which opened in March 2012. It was clear to all that feelings within the Church would run higher than they had on civil partnership formation, but were just as likely to be divided as on same-sex relationships generally. Without at least consideration in General Assembly (which the consultation's timing forbade), it was impossible to express a constructive view. There was, however, URC input on technical aspects of the Bill, including evidence given in February 2013 to a House of Commons Committee.Footnote ⁴⁶ The main concern voiced then was, as with civil partnership, the dilemma imposed on certain local churches between following their convictions and continuing their ecumenical hospitality.

In November 2013 the HSTG reported to Mission Council its study of same-sex marriage since the first indications of likely reform, indicating a ‘direction of travel’ founded on loyalty to the 2007 Commitment. It suggested that it might wish to advocate the same ‘local option’ as for civil partnerships: no single denominational view but freedom for ministers and churches to follow their consciences.Footnote ⁴⁷

The HSTG's primary resource for what proved to be the first session of the Assembly of 2014–2015 was entitled One Plus One: Thinking Together about Marriage. Setting the scene from Scripture, the history of marriage and the 2007 Commitment, this offered a set of personal reflections but no draft resolution. At the 2014 session, a resolution using the language of ‘permission’ like that of 2012 regarding civil partnership met with a mixed response and was not adopted. Instead the Assembly directed an informal facilitated consultation of local churches and synods to take place over the next eight months.Footnote ⁴⁸ Resourced by a second edition of One Plus One, this focused on the question ‘Would you wish General Assembly to allow same-sex marriage, in those local URC churches that wish to offer and host these services?’

The HSTG reported to Mission Council in May 2015 that 63 per cent of respondent local churches, and every provincial or national synod, had answered affirmatively. However, suggestions had also been made that the URC should recognise local churches as the place for such decisions – not only because this was a correct view of the Church's polity but also because, by removing the need for Assembly either to ‘grant’ or ‘refuse’ consent to same-sex marriage, it might reduce the risk of alienation on the part of either advocates or opponents.Footnote ⁴⁹ One such well-drafted proposal, commended by the March meeting of the Wessex Provincial Synod, was endorsed by the HSTG with minor amendments and proposed by Mission Council to a recalled session of the 2014–2015 Assembly.Footnote ⁵⁰ Extracts from that resolution, as passed, were quoted at the start of this article.

At the same time as adopting the resolution by a vote of 205 to 14, the 2015 session of Assembly referred it to synods under the paragraph 3 procedure applicable to exercises of its function 11.Footnote ⁵¹ Since the resolution expressly denied taking a denominational position on same-sex marriage, this could only be because it constituted a new ‘expression … of the polity … of the United Reformed Church’. Once ratified – as it was in 2016, no synod having sought to prevent ratificationFootnote ⁵² – any change of the locus of decision on same-sex marriage in either England or Scotland could not now take effect without further paragraph 3 procedure.