Reflections on a Report

Abstract

Fr Hastings has touched on many very serious problems in his report, now published as Christian Marriage in Africa, and in the previous article, with a compassion and sincerity that draw on wide reading and long reflection. Yet I feel myself out of sympathy with much that he has to say. This may be more to my discredit than to Fr Hastings’; at any rate, let me throw down a few words to suggest that at any rate such differences may be permissible.First of all, on a relatively secondary point, Fr Hastings takes a view of polygamy which, while he is not the first to suggest it, is still very much a minority view among both Catholics and Anglicans. The direction of the New Testament is monogamous, not so much in an explicit command, as in defining marriage by the image of the union of Christ and His Church in the New Covenant. For the baptized Christian, therefore, polygamy is not an option. For the non-Christian, however, polygamous unions, when they are in accord with the traditions of his society, cannot simply be written off as ‘immoral’; to force the disruption of such unions as the price of baptism is much more immoral. Polygamists might therefore be admitted to baptism; and while Christians should regard monogamous marriage as the norm, there are cases where a Christian who has taken more than one wife may be admitted to the Eucharist. Fr Hastings claims that this is the only policy which will be consistent with the ‘central precepts of the Gospel’.