There has been a good press for marriage lately. More people are marrying and more people are staying married. This is welcome news. I have recently been with a number of community groups that promote marriage in schools, colleges and generally in society. This has been an encouraging and hopeful experience for me.

The Church certainly did not invent marriage. The union of a man and a woman for mutual support and for the upbringing of children has been there from  the beginning but it did emphasise the importance of consent, love between husband and wife and 'one-flesh union' which is based on the complementarity of male and female; social, psychological, biological and sexual.

It is such a public doctrine of marriage that needs to be restored in this country. Both divorce reform and other kinds of legislation have not just damaged but almost destroyed any public understanding of marriage. What is marriage in this country? For many years, centuries perhaps, the public doctrine of marriage was that of the Book of Common Prayer as it is set out in the preamble to the marriage service and one by one all of the aspects of marriage in the preamble have been placed under severe threat at the very least, if not more than that.

Why do we need a public doctrine of marriage? The Roman Catholic bishops today in their recent letter on the subject have given some of the answers which bear repetition because a) marriage is good for society: marriage is one of the basic building blocks of society and as far as I know, there has never been a society which has not had marriage and the family as a basic unit of it; b) It is good for children: the best outcomes for children are to be found within marriage, whether that is how they do at school, or in terms of delinquency, the likelihood or not of children getting into crime or other kinds of anti-social behaviour; c) Marriage is good for the partners themselves:  all the studies show that people who are married live longer, are healthier, perhaps even happier (that would be something, wouldn’t it?). So there is that aspect to marriage, the fact that it is good for society, good for children, good for the partners themselves.

Now, human beings have many different kinds of relationships. We are social animals and, of course, we have relationships with parents, with siblings, with relatives and with friends and it is important for us to recognise the importance of relationships and the richness of relationships, that there should be in people’s lives. I’m so sorry that so many of these relationships, because of the patterns of modern life, are nipped in the bud, as it were, and not allowed to flourish. It may be right for us as a society and indeed for the government to recognise and to support some of these relationships. It may be right for people in a particular kind of relationship, whatever that may be, to take legal steps for that relationship to be one that is just and fair to each person in that relationship. I’m certainly not against that. In the House of Lords, when the Civil Partnerships bill was going through, some of us sought to widen its remit to include people who were sharing domestic arrangements on a long term basis for a number of reasons. In fact, the amendment was passed in the House of Lords and was only set aside in the other place. I’ll leave you to judge the wisdom of that.

But what about civil marriage? The press delights in telling us that more and more people are now not getting married or if they are getting married they are not getting married in church, they are getting married in registry offices or in one of these wonderful ‘New Agey’ places that there are all around. What preparation is there for such people? I was at such a marriage recently. The groom, to keep up his nerve had had quite a number of drinks and he was having another one, so I said to him: “Do you really need to have this drink?” and he said: “Oh yes, I do because in a few minutes [this was just an hour or so before the ceremony] I’m having my preparation with the officiant at the ceremony”. Well, how much? What sort? What would be the influence of such preparation on a person who had already had more than his fair share of you know what? This is simply unacceptable. This is heading for disaster and if Parliament can do nothing else but to encourage all around marriage preparation for people, whether that’s in church, or in the ceremony of another faith, whether it’s  a nikah, whatever it may be, or if it’s on civil premises.

If there is a public doctrine of marriage – this is one of the reasons why a public doctrine of marriage is necessary – then there will be some preference for marriage and for the family, for example, in the tax system. I was so glad when the Conservative Party before the election made a pledge that there would be such preference and I was sad, however, when that pledge was not honoured or, at least, not yet. It is very important, if people are to mean what they say – if the Conservative Party or the PM, whoever it may be – says that marriage is important for society and important for the family, then that has to be recognised somehow. One obvious way to do it is through the tax system. How that is done can be discussed; whether through some kind of restoration of the married couples allowance or the transfer of tax allowances between one partner and the other or the support of marriage and families where there are children, the last being the pattern that is to be found on the continent – in France and in Italy. However it is done, it must be done for the sake of marriage, for the sake of the family and for the sake of demography.

We are in a situation which is quite serious insofar as the replacement of the population is concerned. The reason we don’t see it more clearly is, of course, firstly, immigration and secondly, people living longer. But the whole of Western Europe is facing a critical issue of demography and there should be no shame in encouraging people to have children and supporting them by the State and through the tax system, so that we can look after the elderly when they can no longer work.

Our present need then, is not to redefine marriage but to understand the nature of it and the threats to it. It is also to promote marriage and defend it; for the sake of society, for the sake of the children and for the sake of the spouses themselves. Would that we were having a consultation about these essentials, rather than the marginal and somewhat exotic one in which we are engaged at present. 

This article has been published in the ResPublica Fringe magazine, a collection of articles and essays from our party conference partners. 

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali will be speaking at ‘Marriage: Changing the terms of debate’, a ResPublica public fringe event at Conservative Party conference: Wednesday 10th October, 10.00am - 11.45am, the ResPublica Marquee, the ICC Birmingham (secure zone).