Gay weddings and a gay hymn

Request for a wedding ritual and a new hymn for gays and lesbians

Since the publication of a government report in September 2010 on the “Danish Lutheran Church and Registered Partnerships,” there has been a lively debate on the rights and duties of the church in this context. In one of the latest contributions in the Christian Daily two pastors, Kirsten Winther of Helsingoer Cathedral and Kirsten Groenbech of St. Maria Church in Helsingoer, argue for a new wedding ritual, summarised as follows:
 
“Attraction to one’s own sex is a fact of life for some people, and we all have to live with our sexual orientation. We understand the general human need for rituals and think it worthy of note that in an increasingly secularised, post-modern world gays and lesbians are asking more and more for a wedding ritual.

“A Christian wedding is a physical realisation of a companionship that confirms faith in both body and spirit. The couple use the ritual to narrate themselves into a new story with a new order, a new path, and a new companionship. The physicality of the ritual is of deep significance: in the couple’s kneeling and bowing of heads, and in the pastors’ laying on of hands with the promise of God’s love the new couple are narrated into God’s story.
 
“We believe the church has a duty and a right to answer the request and provide a new ritual, ” so the two pastors.

 

But not all homosexuals agree with Kirsten Winther and Kirsten Groenbech. Some see no point in having a church ceremony at all, reports the Christian Daily on March 24.
 
Ib Hoch, member of his local church council and co-habiting with his male partner through 28 years says:
”I don’t care for a wedding ceremony in church – what’s the point? If you want to make sure of each other you can go to City Hall. And I have no interest in making my partnership look like holy matrimony, which I have specifically not entered into. Registered partnership and marriage should not be the same thing.”
 
Contact person Nikolaj Klintebjerg Arnby from The Danish network ”Christian and gay” says that members have different opinions on the issue, which is still much debated  in the Danish Lutheran Church.
 
Where love burns...

Pastor Benedicte Hammer Præstholm and her brother Christian Præstholm, organist at St. Morthen’s Church in Randers have written a hymn for gays and lesbians (and straights, they say!) entitled ”Where love burns.”
 
Hear the hymn sung by the choir of St. Morten’s Church here
www.folkekirken.dk/salmer/hvor-kaerligheden-braender/
 
The direct English translation runs as follows:
 
1. Where love burns like flaming torches
there we know with the slaked thirst of our love of life
that Time is still a time for miracles,
that love shows itself persistent – and greatest.
But our story does not stand alone;
we live in Time when you loved us first.
 
2. We come to church, for here we are at home
Here you receive us as children of your house,
you tell us with authority what none must forget:
that the hope of all people does not crumble to ruins.
We ask you to bless the life we share
and touch it with the rustling wings of the reddening dawn.
 
3. For God, you have made us and given us life
with spirit of your spirit and body of your earth.
Grateful we stand with what we were given:
a wonderful love, immense and great.
So help us to live with careful hands
with loving eyes and considerate words.

 

By: Edward Broadbridge

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