Songs of Praise is one of the programmes in England that is like marmite - you love it or you hate it. It doesn't have a particular appeal for me, but because it is an institution in this country, I watch it when I'm feeling like I need a bit of church without being at church. This week, twitter and a few of my tweety friends took a bit of an exception to it, because it was about something that is close to a lot of us - being single. I wanted to respond fully to it, as I feel that I needed to. Please feel free, if you have seen it, to add your comments about what it means to be single in the church or any faith group.
For some, the first stumbling block is the presenter - God Bless Anne Widdecome for laying out her feelings about being single and being willing to talk about it on camera, she too is like marmite though, I feel she did a good job, though her choice of songs were a bit dire for me. The second stumbling block is (quite often for me) the 'congregation', there are a lot of women, and a lot of older men. I have been known to play 'spot the 20 year old'. If you want to celebrate singleness, why have you got married people all over the place?
Ok, so the content (because in a weeks time you won't be able to watch it) - it starts with Anne talking to Fr Christopher Jamison, who is famous in his own right for being a monk who engages with non-Christians on national tv. He lays out 4 vocations of the Christian community
Ordained Ministry
Monk/Sister
Married
Single Lay Person
Pretty basic to get to grips with. He is a monk and he's honest about it, particularly his struggle with celibacy. Anne goes on to say 'it doesn't supply the intimacy, but you have people around you all the time, the single lay person doesn't have that'. People think she's mad because she doesn't feel the need for intimacy and is happy as a single person. I hope that no-one thinks I am mad because I live on my own, and I want to be single... I disagree with the final bit of her statement. As a single person I am fortunate to have a depth of friendship with those in my Christian community (church, twitter!, work etc) that allows me to share my struggles. I am not alone because I am single. I do always have someone to talk to because I have build my friendships like that.
Christ was single, and that is significant, both Anne and Christopher recognise that. Lots of other people in the Bible chose to be single for God, but they had community around them... can you see a theme starting to develop?
Anne goes on to say she's content and talks about spinsters. Anne then speaks to someone who is 40 and is still single. Well done Julie Dunlop for being a well rounded single woman, who lives in community, with a strong church. Shame that you do still feel the need to be looking for a partner. She says it is about quality of relationship. I agree. It's about having a content and peaceful feeling and a strong relationship with God, the Bible doesn't say women should have a relationship with God through a man, it's quite the opposite in fact.
We then get a very pretty lady, who is married, singing about God's love. Great. Irony at it's best.
David McCabe is then interviewed by Anne. He has gone through some tragic things, and come through having a child with cerebral palsy, losing his ex-wife to cancer, finding Jesus and then getting married for the second time. Good for him, he found someone after 4 years to share his life with and got married again. Cue a whole load of photo's of him and his wife at their wedding. Slow clap for a programme that I am losing faith in. Please can you speak to someone else?
Finally we meet Fiona Castle, Roy Castle's wife, who sadly lost her husband to cancer and has been a widow for 18 years. An older lady talking about a wonderful marriage and how she coped with being on her own after a long period of being married. She tells us that she learnt a lot and God keeps her going. Her theology, in my opinion, is a little off. Anne asks her if she'll see Roy in heaven and she says that she'll get a new body so she doesn't know if she's recognise him. I believe that in heaven our spirit, the thing that makes me 'me' will be the same, so I will recognise other people. I think that this part of the programme will speak to the demographic of Songs of Praise the most. Being widowed must be a horrible thing. I have seen how my Nan has struggled with it, in the last 6 and a half years.
Anne's final prayer is interesting - 'Father, show us how to fill our lives' (there's more to it than that, but I don't want to transcribe it all!), I would suggest that serving the church you worship with or the international church might be a way of filling your life.
Songs of Praise did an 'o.k.' job of sharing the idea about singleness
with the church who watches, but it didn't really challenge any ideas
about churches who do point out and treat single people (and married couples without children) differently from their community.
As a recently single person, I have felt less pressure since becoming single to get married, although other people are 'marrying me off', I am actually really happy with who I am and where I am at the moment. I have learnt so much in the last year and a (very little) bit about who I am and what I feel God wants from me. I do hope I will get married, because I don't think I am called to being single - although I am like Julia Dunlop a little bit... being unsure about which way God is calling me.
I love the community I work with, I love the friends I have made from creating new communities. Keep in community, please, all you single people.
What do you think about being single? What pressures do you feel, if any?
3 comments:
Many thoughts I could share, but it's late so I won't now.
What I will say is that this is an excellent comment on some of the problems with how singleness can be perceived, particularly by the Church (both the people and the organisation) and I found both interesting and challenging to read.
Nice one Liz!
With a 1:1 ration at club and me being on the door I thought I might get back to my thoughts on being single.
As a single guy of 33, there are several things that regularly come up. The first is the assumption that I am either married or have a girlfriend, so there is the pressure through other people's assumptions that I shouldn't be single. This can also lead to questioning my sexuality.
Then there is the fact that I am 33. If I am to have children, according to the suggested ages for both being physically capable of being a parent and close to the peak of capability (although we don't have the same problems that we brings to women's reproductive capabilities, age still does have an effect on men), then I am running out of time. Age also means that the likelihood of me finding a woman who is of childbearing age decreases as I get older (I know that age is not always an issue, but more often than not it is).
Finally there is the stigma of a single man working with young people being linked with pedophiles, aparticularly in the light of the recent revelations about Jimmy Saville.
There are also the impacts of all these pressures which, when linked to the way society is regarding sex and sexuality, leads to a huge number of temptations.
1 final addition, which may not be the case for everyone, is the problem of couples. I have youth worker friends who, in the main, are either going out with someone or married. There is nothing wrong with this and I wish them every happiness in their current situations. However, this means that they are often looking for doing things with other couples, and when this isn't happening there are times when they look to meet up with the girls doing something together and the boys doing something else together. As such this can leave those who are single with very few playmates, for want of a better word.
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