No sooner do we enter the 21st century than the dear old government decides to catch up with what LifeRites and others are doing, as Ming said in the last issue of Viator “they must have been looking at our leaflets!”
In a document entitled “Registration – modernising a vital service” the Registrar General has put forward a review of this service and invited comment on how it can be modernised and we have filled in the subsequent questionnaire – mainly on how marriage law could be changed to encompass all spiritual paths.
The document can be obtained from the Registrar
Generals
office but for ease of understanding I will summarise
where it affects those of us who do not follow either
Anglican, Jewish or Quaker paths, who are allowed by law to
conduct legal marriage ceremonies, and post religious
preliminaries (e.g. banns) and other denominations of
Christian belief whose ministers are also licensed
registrars.
All other spiritual paths are required to fulfil civil preliminaries, which involve attending the register office in person to gain the superintendent registrar’s authority, and to undergo the civil ceremony to gain legal marriage.
Since 1995 couple have been able to marry legally in other venues licensed for this purpose where a registrar will visit to conduct the ceremony. In other countries such as Australia couples may be married out of doors and elsewhere, e.g. Scotland and New Zealand, individuals (known as celebrants) are authorised to perform marriages where they choose, rather than being tied to particular buildings.
For the future, there are suggestions of adopting this type of model from other commonwealth countries for those outside of the Church of England and Wales, the alternative would be that all marriages should be preceded by civil preliminaries as in Scotland.
The latter is favoured by the Churches Main Committee – a committee for churches other than Anglican or Church of Wales, and I also agree that it would provide a level playing field.
The Registrar General is also
implementing a trial of secular baby namings for those
parents who wish to mark the birth of their children but do
not want to commit them to any specific spiritual path (as
in baptism) until they are old enough to make their own
informed choice. I had a wonderful debate on the Nicky
Campbell show on Radio 5 with an Anglican priest who felt
that these sort of namings would be of little worth and
thought that government should not be involved in this.
While I agree with him on the latter point, available
ceremonies to celebrate the birth of a child are an
important rite of passage. Some of the phone contributors
from other Christian denominations said that they provided
thanksgiving services rather than baptisms and accepted
that parents may want a ceremony that does not commit the
child to a specific spiritual path.
Where do we, who follow, other spiritual paths fit in to all of the above, how will this affect us? Will we be excluded?
The third and most major move is the fact that the Human Rights Bill becomes law in October. The Religious Resource and Research Centre at the University of Derby is preparing a paper for the Home Office on Religious Discrimination in the light of this bill and we were invited to fill out a hefty questionnaire for them. The Interim Report deals with minority spiritual paths and New Religious Movements including Paganism, very favourably and can be found on the internet at www.multifaithnet.org – this also provides a field where individuals can make their comments about religious discrimination – well worth putting your spoke in.
If their recommendations are accepted no one will be able to be discriminated against on the grounds of the religion. It will be interesting to see how much of the final report the government will adopt and how it will affect us.