Over the Broomstick

Down the years I’ve come across a variety of explanations for this curious expression. None, however, more persuasive than the suggestion that ‘broomstick’ embodies the corruption of an old word for part of a bridle, a restraint. Hence its use to describe the practice of informal marriage, that is, to marry without troubling to observe more formal constraints, like putting up banns or registering the union by a church ceremony.

My guess is that through much of England’s history a whole variety of different ways of marrying have co-existed. And why not? Marriage is, after all, only the making of an agreement between two people, and we have long recognised different ways of making contracts. I rather think that while there have always been some who went to church, gave notice of their intent to the parson, and turned up with their friends on the appointed day to exchange vows at the church porch: there have always been others who simply decided to live together; and others whose families celebrated a union informally with them, without ‘benefit of clergy’. And even some, maybe, who simply decided to announce their union in the marketplace or tavern.

I really don’t think anyone worried overly about this merry muddle until the early 19th century, when the rich needed a way to stop fortune hunters marrying their impressionable heiress daughters in romantic elopements. When issues about marriage affected only the poor, frankly, I don’t think anyone cared much at all. But when something touched the rich and powerful, action had to be taken. And it was: by a series of acts of Parliament applying legal constraints on when, how, where, and by whom marriages might be solemnised.

Still. All this comes to mind because of an eMail on our clergy list about limitations on videos of wedding services in church. I responded to its author, but will not pursue it that conversation further. Seems to me that to do so would be the eMail equivalent of wasting one’s breath, for the Church, it seems to me, is already determined to miss the point I would want to make about the reform of ecclesiastical law regarding marriage in churches. The Church’s response to a situation where most folk no longer seem to marry at all, and many others happily prefer a civil ceremony in a castle or hotel - while very few indeed any longer wish to marry in church - is decidedly minimal.
People are to be allowed to marry in parishes other than their own if they can demonstrate an appropriate link with the church of their choice.
That’s it. Nothing more. Strikes me as just a half-hearted attempt on the one hand to let folk get married in the prettiest churches, without on the other having to acknowledge that that might be the only motive in their choice.
Whatever, it won’t get people in general back into church for their weddings. And I’m not at all persuaded that’s what we should be trying to do.

In the nature of things, though we do much elsewhere, the work of Anglican parish clergy centres on their Parish church and its worship. And the Parish church has long been, for many folk, an important centre of their community life. But it is after all only a building. In the past it may well have been that many folk found it appropriate, or convenient, to marry there. But that was yesterday. Trying now disingenuously to lure (or press) folk to marry there, is an empty exercise. It will not make them, or their marriages, Christian.

We should be starting from a different place. It is people, who matter; not places. Faith is about persons, not places - whether the persons of the Trinity or of individual human souls. If you would urge upon folk the virtues of Christian marriage, you must first make faith accessible to them. Speak a language, act an action, which they can understand.

To put it a different way, I have lost count of the number of times young folk have asked me to marry them in a place other than their parish church, and I have had to disappoint them, because that is the only place where I can marry them. The church building is neither here nor there. That they wish to marry elsewhere does not mean they don't want to make a Christian marriage. If only the church authorities could grasp what that means, and accept the sort of change which is really needed, so that the parson (the ecclesiastical registrar) like his counterpart (the civil registrar) might marry folk in other places!

Clergy these days seem to chatter so about theories of Evangelism. But there is little point in that, if the powers that be condemn us to attempt the practice of it with one hand tied behind our backs....