Someone chucked into the proceedings at PCC last night that there might be a ban on husbands and wives both being members (she’d read it or heard it somewhere. It’s great fun when people chuck in things like this, which they’re never able to give chapter or verse for – it wastes time wonderfully, generates heated argument, and saves everybody the trouble of having to worry about things like parish share, the leaky roof and requests for exhumations.) I can just about accept that somewhere, once, probably in the US of A*, some bright Herbert thought it would be a wizard wheeze to ban one of a married couple in case they started a domestic during a meeting. But let us for a moment suppose that this potty idea is true, and that diocese has decreed it.
For a start, in our household there would immediately be only one person working for the church, not two. Next there would be a legal challenge on one of two grounds – discrimination against married couples, and/or infringement of human rights and individual liberties, and that would go right up to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary.
And why just ban one of a married couple? Would the ban extend to one of a cohabiting couple? Or one of a gay couple? Would a candidate have to declare the nature of his or her relationship with somebody, even a putative one, a sort of twinkle in the eye, in case that somebody had to be blacklisted?
And what would be the idea behind such a ban anyway? An assumption that husband and wife, or partners, think and vote in exactly the same way? Or that somehow a married couple is denying a place on PCC to somebody more worthy – a sort of National Church Service bed-blocking? After all, worthy and well-qualified candidates are queuing up for the opportunity to serve, aren’t they?
My wife and I are different in many interesting ways, she being a woman and I not, and so we have come to an understanding. I don’t run the Mother’s Union, and she doesn’t sing bass in the choir. But she is a member of PCC because she is secretary to deanery synod, and I am a member because I was elected to sit on deanery synod. We have full speaking and voting rights on PCC, although that might be because our PCC doesn’t actually have Standing Orders to say that we can't, and the rules of conduct are made [or made up] by the people with the longest memories – ‘we’ve always done it like that here.’
But try getting advice or even model standing orders out of diocese! Diocese people are very canny – they know very well that if PCC members were made fully aware of their legal responsibilities as trustees of a charity, and their possible personal liability if something went badly wrong, like sacking an organist who then goes to an employment tribunal and wins [case reports available on request] the PCC chairs would be empty.
But what I really, really want to know is this – which one of us in our household would fall victim to such a ban: me or my very independent and differently skilled wife? Because if PCC was minded to take this nonsense seriously, it wouldn’t see one of us for dust. Until the court case came up, that is.
*’A small Kentucky church finds itself at the epicenter of a battle over racism and the gospel. Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church, a small, 40-person congregation located in Pike County, Kentucky, is catching widespread grief over its recent decision to target interracial couples. The church has decided to forbid these couples from partaking in worship activities and will not allow them to become members...’
Read the full report here
No comments:
Post a Comment