Church of England Marriage Measure

My Lords, I merely say: where angels fear to tread, so coming in as a Methodist—and a Welsh Methodist of a disestablished church at that—what can we do but welcome the measure from these Benches? However, it is largely a temporary measure, because we are living in an age of such rapid change. We all have to look at the ecumenical scene of joint ministries and buildings being used by more than one denomination. In keeping an eye on that changing scene, is this measure really flexible enough to meet the change of the present time and the years to come? I am sure that one of our great problems is how to have an attractive Christian marriage and not trivialise it. You can marry on a beach in Cyprus, or in a hotel, wherever—in Antarctica, perhaps. There are so many different places, and marriage is meaningful; yet sometimes I think of Las Vegas, where you can marry under all sorts of different circumstances. We pray that those marriages will also be successful. Here, we see that people of faith will be able to marry in a wider area than they have in the past. I should like to see people of Christian faith being able to marry in any place of worship, but that is, perhaps, the next measure. If we have restrictions, then I know, in my own circumstances, of somebody wanting to marry in a certain church and area where the registrar would ask, ““Sorry, do you live in that area?””, so they left a suitcase of clothes in their parents’ house to claim that they resided there when that, in truth, was not so. We should somehow have measures that encourage substantial marriage, of course—and encourage people to be totally clear about the situation they are in and where they live at that time. On this measure, I do not intend to be pretentious—how dare I seem so?—in saying that it goes in the right direction, but that we are aware of a changing scene and of the measures that will, one day and perhaps quite soon, have to follow this.