Brian Tammaus says that all churches should do as the Episcopal Church is doing: study, think, pray, and talk about marriage and sexuality in real-life terms.
Marriage, in fact, has been evolving for tens of thousands of years and has taken various forms in various cultures. As Steven Mintz, a Columbia University history professor, said in a 2012 piece about marriage in The Week: “Whenever people talk about traditional marriage or traditional families, historians throw up their hands.”
In almost any Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox congregation today, you’ll find young couples, both heterosexual and homosexual, cohabitating. And you’ll find older single people living together but not married for many reasons, including issues of taxes and inheritance laws.
Are all of these people — often faithful church members — “living in sin,” as the old phrase so indelicately puts it? The Episcopal Church intends to speak to that matter.
Posted by Andrew Gerns