“With My Body I Thee Worship”: Prayer Book Marriage, Consensual Nonmonogamy, and the Shape of Anglican Sexual Ethics

Abstract

Recent discussions within The Episcopal Church often presume an absence of coherent sexual ethics. This essay challenges that assumption by arguing that Episcopal sexual ethics are articulated primarily through sacramental theology rather than comprehensive moral regulation. Drawing on the Book of Common Prayer’s doctrine of marriage—particularly its covenantal exclusivity (“forsaking all others”)—the essay contends that the Church’s successful discernment to include same-sex couples depended upon expanding access to Christian marriage as this Church had received it, without dissolving its moral and formational expectations. While ethical nonmonogamy can be theorized in abstract terms, the essay questions whether such arrangements can function as dependable practices of Christian formation for those formed by Anglican approaches to scripture and tradition. Ultimately, it argues that inclusion without ethical contour risks rendering Episcopal sexual ethics indistinct, thereby weakening both marriage and the justice it has been invoked to serve.