It is my growing belief that the church cannot credibly defend marriage unless it grapples with the perils inherent in marriage.
The Church of England recently voted to mothball its conversation about marriage and relationships (Living in Love and Faith), and to focus on safeguarding. Given that the last archbishop was forced to resign because of his role in a safeguarding failure, this is unsurprising.
There’s a lot to say about these two developments, but for now I want to share something that struck me when I read them side-by-side. Namely: marriage comes with its own package of safeguarding vulnerabilities.
Let me explain.
Safeguarding is structural
In broad terms, safeguarding is about the way that institutions have structures, processes and stories that prevent harm. Because it relates to institutions, safeguarding is something discussed and practised in the context of schools, churches and workplaces, rather than the home. We don’t usually have formalised policies and processes about how people within a home may interact.
The exception, of course, is after the intervention of a legal process or law-enforcement. And yet, even leaving that aside, it is undeniable that marriage is itself a structure. It creates legal rights and obligations for spouses. We also tell stories about marriage, especially within the church, and these stories foster expectations about how spouses should behave.
These structures and stories can work to prevent and limit harm, but they can also heighten and lock-in vulnerabilities and power imbalances, creating and amplifying opportunity for harm. If the church is to talk credibly about marriage, it needs to acknowledge both sides of this.
Marital rights can be structural problems
The church heralds marriage as:
- an intimate, exclusive, lifelong union between two people (most denominations would say a man and a woman);
- an institution designed by God in creation;
- a symbol of Christ’s union with the church;
- the best context for raising children;
- a preventative against sexual sin; and
- a context for mutual edification and support through all stages of life.
Whether you agree with all of that or not, marriage is also a legal structure that, amongst other things:
- confers rights over where each spouse can live;
- allows spouses to take out financial products (like a joint bank account or home insurance policy) where either spouse, on their own, can take executive actions; and
- confers rights over children.
Many of these rights are there for very good reasons and have good effects, but vulnerabilities emerge when each right is designed to operate in a context of trust. And that makes marriage a safeguarding issue.
For example, (content warning for domestic abuse), the consumer champion Martin Lewis recently had a hard time advising a woman who had a joint account with her ex-husband; the man had taken out an overdraft, which she couldn’t afford to repay and she couldn’t close the account and separate her finances from him until it’s paid off. The Guardian also recently reported on the plight of Francesca Onody, whose husband drained their shared bank accounts and cancelled the home insurance before burning the house down. (In doing so, he ended his life but fortunately Francesca and her two children escaped.)
These abusive husbands could do what they did because of the rights they had gained via marriage.
Defending marriage doesn’t help
One might say that there is nothing wrong with marriage, only something wrong with abusive people who exploit marriage. But this is unhelpful.
True, the existence of abusive spouses does not mean that marriage is bad. Marriage should give spouses rights over their homes, finances and children. However, the structures of marriage are very definitely part of the problem when domestic abuse takes place!
I would also say that this “marriage is not the problem” argument is also a story that the church tells itself in defence of marriage. And it’s not told in isolation. Instead, it comes with other stories that create and foster opportunity for harm.
When the church emphasises the good of marriage — how marriages are a witness to the world, and how commitment is costly, and how God hates divorce, and how God loves sinners and wants to bring everyone to repentance, and how selfless love bears with people in their failings — these stories form part of the safeguarding environment of Christian marriages. And whilst the above statements might be true, the way we tell them can reinforce harm in marriage.
We therefore also need to observe that promises are perilous because they create vulnerability. And that marriage promises are especially perilous because they create physical, emotional and legal vulnerability; sometimes these promises lock-in power imbalances (both pre-existing and acquired).
Now I’m not going to say that marriage vows are inherently bad. But vulnerability and power imbalance both need to be managed and regulated in the context of marriage.
The church needs to give an honest message
I know that marriages are never going to be totally equal and vulnerabilities are never going to be totally mitigated. I’m not here to call for a ban on joint bank accounts or mortgages. I’m not here to tell wives to build up muscle so that they can match their husbands in a fight. And I’m certainly not here to tell a spousal carer that they should leave their marriage because they hold too much power in comparison to their dependant spouse.
I’m saying we need a church that is able to tell stories about the risks and realities of structures, vulnerability and power imbalance inside marriage. Good safeguarding mitigates vulnerabilities and power imbalances to the point they can be tolerated, and the risks are understood collectively. Similarly, the church should acknowledge vulnerability and power imbalance in marriage and push back on messages that ignore or even celebrate this.
I get that making choices and commitments always means giving up the possibility of other choices. This is just as true of marriage as it is of other life decisions. And I’m fine with that. But commitment is not a virtue in and of itself.
The church needs to acknowledge that a promise can be weaponised by its recipient and that this is an inescapable risk for everyone who chooses to marry. Such a message does not denigrate marriage, nor should it foster unwarranted fear. Rather, it is honest. With it, the church can demonstrate that it understands its responsibilities towards married couples. Its responsibility is not just to help those who want to stay together and need some support to do so. It is also to help a spouse leave their marriage if its structures have become an instrument of harm.
If you liked this post then you might also enjoy:
- On wives ‘depriving’ their husbands of sex because she ‘doesn’t feel like it’
- Sex and Consent: How does that work in a long-term relationship?
I believe that commitment overlaps with faithfulness, but faithfulness is much bigger. On my sister-site Faith in Grey Places, I wrote a short reflection and poem on faithfulness, as part of a series on the fruit of the Spirit.