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Churches can and should affirm the moral significance of marriage without denigrating those who are not married. So we have argued before in this space, noting at the same time that such affirmations must be sensitive to the diverse experiences of the people in the pews. A dramatic illustration of how controversial affirming marriage can be was provided recently by the National Council of Churches.

When Robert Edgar of the National Council of Churches suddenly told the NCC’s General Assembly that he was removing his name from an evangelical-mainline-Catholic statement on marriage, it appeared he knocked a leg off the much-discussed wider ecumenical table he was in the process of building. At the very least, his reversal embarrassed a vital ally in forming such an unprecedented pan-Christian voice in the U.S.