There are three key problems with God’s way for romance: getting back to biblical courtship. First, the author seems to confuse Western cultural traditions with biblical teaching.
For example, Dr Burgess appears to equate ‘marriage’ with a church ceremony (pp. 96-97) that involves saying vows taken from the Book of Common Prayer (pp. 60, 88). Throughout, he contrasts that with ‘relationship culture’, never distinguishing between casual sexual relationships and long-term committed relationships.
Church marriage ceremonies (and the registration of the marriage relationship with the state), although not wrong, are a product of Western culture over recent centuries and are not explicitly found in Scripture. If the church is to be pastorally sensitive, it needs to interact with the practices of today’s secular, multi-cultural society, in which many long-term, heterosexual relationships involve neither church ceremony nor state registration.
Stuart Burgess
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