This gentle muddle of Church and State may be as good as it gets
13th June 2012
[..........]
Gay men and women will soon be able to get married in this country, and so they should. They may even be able to get married in a church. But whatever happens to the relationship between the Church and the State, religion won't go away. It certainly hasn't gone away in the US, which has no official State religion, but versions of Christianity which play a much bigger part in national life than ours. These are versions of Christianity which don't agonise about finding sympathetic, modern interpretations of the Bible, but prefer instead to talk about a God who believes abortion is murder, and hates gay people.
Religion, whether we like it or not, is here to stay. And it's the radical versions of it that are on the rise. Those of us who wish they weren't might look at the muddle of the Church of England, and its relatively good intentions, and its desperate efforts to be as open to as many people as it can, and its desperate attempts to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear of an ancient text, and conclude that it's sometimes better not to break up a marriage, and stick to the devil you know.
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This gentle muddle of Church and State may be as good as it gets
13th June 2012
[..........]
Gay men and women will soon be able to get married in this country, and so they should. They may even be able to get married in a church. But whatever happens to the relationship between the Church and the State, religion won't go away. It certainly hasn't gone away in the US, which has no official State religion, but versions of Christianity which play a much bigger part in national life than ours. These are versions of Christianity which don't agonise about finding sympathetic, modern interpretations of the Bible, but prefer instead to talk about a God who believes abortion is murder, and hates gay people.
Religion, whether we like it or not, is here to stay. And it's the radical versions of it that are on the rise. Those of us who wish they weren't might look at the muddle of the Church of England, and its relatively good intentions, and its desperate efforts to be as open to as many people as it can, and its desperate attempts to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear of an ancient text, and conclude that it's sometimes better not to break up a marriage, and stick to the devil you know.
Read full article on The Independent website.