Marriage and its Modern Crisis

Marriage and its Modern Crisis: repairing married life
By Alan Storkey
Hodder & Stoughton. 240pages. £8.99

'Something to Celebrate' was produced by a working party of the Church of England last year: a study which seemed to abandon the idea of moral absolutes and advocate individual 'lifestyle choices' in the area of family life. The national media took note of the resignation of Dr. Alan Storkey from this working party: a principled and commendable decision.
As he writes in this book, the Report 'was basically seeking to affirm whatever subjective views of marriage and family might happen to exist.' Victims of 'the liberal and individualist culture in sex and marriage ... knew there was not much to celebrate. Broken marriages and families were and are problems which need facing ... because so many have been hurt. Many of the more reflective people were angry that this report had side-stepped this issue. If you've just had a driving accident you don't have a party ...' (p.218).
By contrast, Marriage and its Modern Crisis is honest about the cost of permissiveness. Dr. Storkey argues well against pre-marital or extra-marital sex, and affirms the biblical standard of heterosexual marriage. He analyses the reasons for increasing marital breakdown, and exposes the pitiable state of marriage and divorce legislation. There are repeated but justifiable sideswipes against consumerism (and TV!).
Throughout, Storkey seems to assume that the ideal is interchangeable and egalitarian unison between husband and wife, and one finishes the book wondering quite why God ordained marriage between a man and a woman? Why in his providence did he so clearly design them to be different? Why the carefully differentiated advice to husbands and wives, men and women in the New Testament?
Storkey presents the realities of differences between the sexes as myths to be challenged: no positive treatment of gender complementarity is given. One is left with a rather bland androgynous ideal, and there seems to be no positive affirmation of masculinity or femininity. Quite rightly there is rejection of masculinist oppression, but the logical fallacy of excluding a middle position is committed: it seems that the only options are complete egalitarianism or oppressive hierarchy.
Of headship Storkey writes: 'This is a concept which some have seen in a number of biblical texts' (p,57). Many may disagree with the concept, but it is there! Ephesians 5.21 is briefly dismissed; no reference is made to the other texts which point to a hierarchy within marriage. Yes, this has been grotesquely abused: but through church history and in the present day there are families where the husband exercises leadership in a self-sacrificial and Christlike way (not as a tyrant), and the wife submits in an equally Christlike way (not as a doormat).
It is possible to believe that the sexes are 'equal but different'! No reference is given to the most convincing of the arguments on the 'traditionalist' side, such as the major work edited by John Piper and Wayne Grudem, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (Crossway 1991), or Equal and Different by Michael Harper (Hodder & Stoughton 1994). A brief chapter ('Men, Women and God') by Douglas Spanner in The Anglican Evangelical Crisis (Christian Focus, 1995) gives a perspective diametrically opposed to that of Storkey, but one which seems to accord better with Scripture, nature and common sense.
To be fair, Marriage and its Modern Crisis 'sets out to be Christian sociology, not theology or ethics' (p.x). The author has degrees in philosophy, economics and sociology, and there is relevant material related to these disciplines. But for positive treatment of the Biblical material on marriage and the family, one would need to look elsewhere.

Marriage and its Modern Crisis

Sharon James

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