On Relationships & Matrimony

The words "marriage" and "matrimony" are rapidly becoming words which belong to yesterday's culture and morality. As used for centuries these words pointed to a norm, a law, a protected social institution - of a man and woman joined for life as man and wife in a one-flesh relation for the procreation of children and their upbringing. Now these words are being placed in the category of insensitivity and judgmentalism and we are being asked to use instead other open-ended words.

Since the practice of marriage as the traditional norm for sexual relations is no longer normative for much of western society and even for some of the main-line, liberal Christian denominations (e.g., the Episcopal), new words are used for the temporary or long term or life-time coming together of two persons (of a different or the same sex). These words are headed by "relationship" and include also "partnership" and "cohabitation". In some circles an effort is made to give a higher moral tone to these words by adding adjectives such as "faithful" so that both a man and woman union as well as a man with man union are called "faithful relationships."

In much media talk, from soap operas to the news, the word "relationship" is used not only of what was once called holy matrimony and what are now temporary unions of people of the same or opposite sexes, but also of a whole variety of working alliances (temporary or long term) between countries, organizations and individual persons. In fact "Relationship" is a favorite and key word of psychologists and in general of social scientists, for where a society is dominated by individualism and thus where a person expresses his individuality in terms of "I feel," then "how I feel about those near to me [relationships]" is extremely important. It is the same individualism, together with the assertion of human rights (be they righteous or sinful), that inform and require the dropping of the word "matrimony" or "marriage" and the substitution of the word "relationship." In the new morality created for the practice of individualism and self-esteem all working alliances between persons are judged to be of equal value, for the value is given the alliance by the individuals creating them, rather from a received and objective norm or law.

To give an example from Melbourne, Australia, where I spent a work recently as a guest speaker. Here we find that the new norms have virtually taken over public discourse. What used to be the "Marriage Guidance Council" is now "Relationships, Australia." The "Anglican Marriage Education and Counselling Services" is now "Lifeworks" and the Roman Catholic "Focus on Marriage" program is now "Partnerships." Further we note that the Australian government has recently issued a booklet entitled: "Relate: Relationship Skills for Love, Family and Life." In this there is a major effort to avoid using the word "marriage."

In the U.S.A. the so-called Christian publishing houses send forth many books whose titles include the word "relationship[s]." Thousands of Christian counsellors use the word many times every day of the week. Preachers of the right and the left and from the center call upon individual persons to have a "personal relationship" with God [ a "working alliance"?] as well as have good relationships with human beings.

Some preachers and theologians even dare to speak of "relationSHIPS between the members of the Holy Trinity, God" !!!!! [Obviously they do not understand the use and force of the Latin word, "relatio".}

I sometimes ask people to try to go a whole week without using the word "relationships" for if we examine the history of the English language ,the word was rarely used before modern times - the reason being, I suppose, that individualism and the "I feel" culture were not then present.

Christian people who accept the authority of the Holy Scriptures and that tradition of doctrine contained say in the Service of Holy Matrimony in the classic Book of Common Prayer must now be alerted to what is happening. They must watch their vocabulary for if we lose the word "marriage" we lose the thing itself!

And on the use of the word "relationship" why not take a look at the explanations in Fowler's' "Use of Modern English" (Oxford Univ. Press)?

Peter Toon ptoon@OnlineToday.com Trinity XV, 1999