No-fault divorce changed the American culture of marriage.So did the sexual revolution. Now proponents of gay rights are redefiningmarriage at an even more fundamental level. What’s to be done? As apost-biblical vision of sex, gender, and marriage gains the upper hand in oursociety, should our religious institutions get out of marriage? Should priests,pastors, and rabbis renounce their roles as deputies of state authority inmarriage? Or should we sustain the close links between religious and civil marriage?
To help us thinkmore clearly about these issues, we asked eight writers to respond to thefollowing question: With the legal affirmation of same-sex marriage insome states, should churches, synagogues, and mosques stopperforming civil marriages?
Ryan T. Anderson
The redefinition of marriage will have profound consequencesfor society. For this reason, focusing at this point on getting the Church outof the civil marriage business or—a true fantasy—getting the government out ofthe marriage business ultimately distracts us from what most needs doing:defending the truth about marriage.
Provided that rabbis, imams, and Christian ministers are notcoerced into performing services that violate their beliefs about marriage,they should continue our tradition of the joint sacred-civil service. Ofcourse, if a state were to require any minister who believes the truth aboutmarriage—that it is a union of male and female—to perform same-sex marriages,that would give him good reason to stop acting as the state’s agent. And oncehe did, the First Amendment would protect him, as a religious minister, againstfurther coercion.
The coercion that should really concern us is broader—andunavoidable wherever same-sex marriage is recognized. As experience has alreadyshown, the redefinition of marriage and related state policies on sexualorientation have led to intolerance, intimidation, and even government coercionand discrimination against citizens who believe that marriage unites a man anda woman and that sexual relations are properly reserved for marriage.
Recently, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that the FirstAmendment does not protect a photographer’s right to decline to take picturesof a same-sex commitment ceremony—even though doing so would violate theChristian photographer’s deeply held religious beliefs.
Christian adoption and foster-care agencies have been forcedto stop providing services because they object to placing children in same-sexhouseholds. Similar cases include a baker, a florist, a bed-and-breakfast, aT-shirt company, a student counselor, the Salvation Army, and more.
Religious liberty infringements aren’t the only cause forconcern. The redefinition of marriage will undermine the public understandingof what marriage is and what it requires of spouses. That will make spousesless likely to live out the truth about marriage, and all of society willsuffer as a consequence. After all, the law teaches, and what it teaches aboutmarriage matters.
Debating whether religious communities should perform civilmarriages undermines the more urgent task of teaching the truth about marriage.But the reverse isn’t true. Given mounting political pressure, we may think itprudent to discuss how to distance ourselves from civil marriage. But, in fact,defending the truth about marriage—including civil marriage—and persuading thepublic that our views of marriage are reasonable will go a long way towardsecuring at least the political freedom to live by them.
That freedom matters, because Americans and the associationswe form—nonprofit and for-profit—should be free to speak and act in the publicsquare based on our beliefs about marriage as the union of a man and woman,without fear of government penalty.
That freedom is threatened because our neighbors fail tounderstand even why we believe as we do. And the fault frequently lies with us,for being too often unwilling to make our case.
Our efforts must be extended and multiplied. We need dozensof different ways of defending marriage philosophically, legally, and as apolicy matter. We need theologians as well as artists, musicians, and otherculture makers to engage in the same task.
That won’t happen if we let discussions about Church andmarriage or state and marriage displace the more basic task of actuallydiscussing what marriage is. The best defense of our interests is adefense of the truth by which we seek to live.
—Ryan T. Anderson is the William E. Simon
Fellow inReligion and a Free Society at the
Heritage Foundation, and editor of
PublicDiscourse.
Vigen Guroian
The recent Supreme Court decisions and laws that variousstates have adopted sanctioning same-sex marriages gravely challenge theOrthodox Church and other churches for which marriage in its very nature iscomprised of male and female members. Every sacrament includesnon-substitutable elements of transformation: wine and bread in the Eucharist,water and oil in baptism, and male and female in marriage. Same-sex marriage isa nonsensical locution; our use of it, such as in the question posed, revealsthe extent to which already the proponents of this misnomer have the advantage.
The challenge that Orthodox and other Christians face,therefore, is a challenge to marriage, plain and simple. This requires carefulnavigation, as during the period that began with the emperors Theodosius I andTheodosius II in the fourth and fifth centuries through Justinian in the sixthcentury. During this era, Christianity was established as the religion of theRoman Empire, and great codes were promulgated that truly began to define andshape Christendom. Now this legacy is being banished from North American soilas prohibitions restricting abortion and suicide, and customs of public prayerand observation of Christian holy days, are cleansed from the land. Next,marriage stands to be twisted into something it is not by a ruinous juridicaland legislative nominalism.
Orthodox Christians have a long historical experience underMuslim domination in the Middle East (and within some European nations). Thatexperience can provide us guidance for life under secularist domination. UnderMuslim domination, civil marriage and religious marriage were separate, theformer the province of the state, the latter belonging solely to the Church.Under these arrangements, couples had to go through two distinct steps to bemarried: They received the sacrament of marriage in their church, and theyobtained a state marriage license. Now, here in North America, under anincreasingly intrusive secularist state, the churches themselves must initiatea similar two-tiered arrangement. Neither medieval nor Enlightenment models areuseful or beneficial to the Church and sacred matrimony any longer.
Almost a decade ago, I delivered a keynote address to theannual diocesan meeting of the Eastern Prelacy of the Armenian Church ofAmerica in which I argued that in states where same-sex marriage is law, ourbishops should prohibit priests from participating in the standard process ofdelivering marriage contracts on the state’s behalf.
I argued that when clergy in these states continue todeliver civil marriage contracts, the Church is complicit in a radicalredefinition of marriage contradictory to the fundamental teachings of theOrthodox faith. I also argued that this change in Church practice could providean opportunity to instruct Orthodox Christians about the meaning of marriage assacrament. This is needed today. Many think of marriage merely as contract. Theobstacles to this action are a combination of inertia and fear that adoption ofa two-tiered marriage process might lead to fewer couples seeking thesacrament.
I do not think that the story ends here, however. Pressureswill continue and only build, culminating in legal actions designed to requirechurches to marry same-sex couples. This dire future is sadly plausible becauseso many understand marriage in strictly consensual and contractual terms. TheOrthodox Church has never taught that marriage is in the contract. Rather,marriage is in the blessing and God’s presence through it. Marriage is alsoprofoundly related to baptism and the Eucharist. Yet, today, the Orthodoxchurches do not offer a nuptial Eucharist, or anything of that sort. It iscommon practice in the Armenian Church, however, for couples to take Communiontogether on the Sunday preceding their wedding. It would be theologically rightand worldly wise for all of the Orthodox churches to bring the Eucharist intothe marital rite, or at least in closer liturgical proximity to maritalpractice, as in the Armenian case. This would be demonstrative of the closerelation of marriage to the Eucharist and strengthen appeals to thefree-exercise clause that may be needed in a future when the state mandates orotherwise pressures churches through punitive sanctions to marry same-sexcouples.
—Vigen Guroian is professor of religious
studies inOrthodox Christianity
at the University of Virginia.
Russell D. Moore
No, not yet. Marriage is, of course, more than a matter ofstatecraft. That’s the reason we deny that the state can, for instance, callmarriages into being without creational essentials such as sexualcomplementarity. Marriage is grounded in the natural order itself (Gen.2:21–23) and points beyond nature to the Gospel mystery that stands behind andmakes sense of the cosmos (Eph. 5:31–32).
Obviously, then, if the state ever forced congregations orreligious institutions to solemnize unions that are not, in our view,marriages, we would be compelled to obey God and conscience and not thebureaucrats. Even with the audacity of recent religious liberty incursions,though, that moment will not be upon us any time soon.
Instead, what we see are governments affirming both unionswe do recognize as marriages and those that are something else. As citizens, weought to oppose the redefinition of marriage, but, should we lose across theboard, what should we do as churches?
Churches should join together only those who meet thecreational criteria for marriage. A church that accommodates itself to thesexual revolution is no longer a church of Jesus Christ.
Moreover, churches should only marry those who areaccountable to the Church and to the gathered witnesses, and who are held totheir vows. The marrying parson who stands where the wedding coordinator tellshim to, reads his script, and signs the paperwork for whatever couple shows upis a disgraceful hireling and ought to do an honest day’s work as a justice ofthe peace rather than as a steward of the mysteries of God.
When a congregation certifies a biblically married couple tobe also civilly married, the congregation is not affirming the state’sdefinition of marriage. Instead, the Church is witnessing to the state’s rolein recognizing marriage as something that stands before and is foundational tosociety. We are bearing witness to the fact that these unions are the businessof the larger society in ways other unions aren’t.
We are witnessing that the state has no business inrecreating marriage, but the state does have a responsibility to safeguardchildren, by holding mothers and fathers to their vows to each other and to thenext generation.
In this sense, we are acting much as Jesus did when he wasasked about the payment of the temple tax. Jesus believed himself and hisdisciples to be heirs of the kingdom and thus free from this obligation.Nonetheless, he paid the half-shekel “so as not to give offense to them” (Matt.17:27).
If the state ever attempts to force us to call marriage thatwhich is not marriage in our churches and ceremonies, let’s obey God, even ifthat means we sing our wedding hymns in the prison block. But, for now, byregistering Gospel-qualified unions as civil marriages and not officiating atunions that are not Gospel-qualified, we call the government to itsresponsibility even as we call attention to its limits.
We gladly render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, but theimage imprinted on the marriage union isn’t the union of Caesar and his court,but of Christ and his Church.
—Russell D. Moore is president of the Ethics
and Religious Liberty Commission of
the Southern Baptist Convention.
Francesca Aran Murphy
Cutting the link between civil marriage and Christianmarriage seems to make sense because Christian attitudes about marriage nowseem so “discriminatory” to many that they may soon be criminalized. A chasmhas opened between the conception of marriage held by most of our contemporariesand the Catholic, sacramental conception. For most people today, a homosexualperson is like that chap who dies in Four Weddings and a Funeral: aperfectly decent and admirable man who just wants to marry the person he lovesbut is prevented by society from doing so. Few other than religious people, andnot nearly all of them, can see how weird that idea is.
Even most Catholics have little appreciation of thespiritual and sacramental meaning of marriage. The saintly priest who preparedme for confirmation back in 1985 remarked that he wished he could perform onekind of ceremony for couples who want to get hitched and another for the tinynumber who had glimpsed the nuptial theology—that the marriage of man and womanis a symbol of the marriage between Christ and his Church—that makes their vowsbinding until death.
Paul Griffiths has argued, completely reasonably, that sofew Catholics live by the ideal of matrimony as binding two lives together into“one flesh,” and so many of us divorce or misuse the annulment courts, thatCatholics have lost the right to “own” and define the public, civil meaning ofmarriage. It takes an informed faith to grasp the Catholic meaning of marriage,with its underlying Pauline nuptial mysticism. Most Catholics don’t have therequisite spiritual formation to take part in this ceremony: They do not knowwhat they are letting themselves in for.
A teaching that was once part of the common sense of societyhas now become an item of faith, and rather an esoteric faith. Only those withbiblical principles, including those Catholics who use natural law, seem to beable to see the need to restrict marriage to heterosexual couples. The rationalarguments we offer fall on deaf ears. We may as well be citing Scripture.
People for whom I have great respect hold that the Churchshould not “die in a ditch” for a principle that has become a truth of faithrather than a matter of shared common knowledge within our society. They arequite right that seeing the Christian meaning of marriage today is a matter offaith and not reason. And yet I cannot agree with those who argue for cuttingthe link between the Christian sacramental liturgy that forms a man and womaninto the image of Christ and his bride the Church, and the civil ceremony thatenables them to be legally regarded as “next of kin.”
Their fideism is too reasonable. The best position is morefideistic than theirs: They think that ruling out same-sex marriage is a matterof faith, so we must abandon or sideline the public argument against it. Ithink the traditional view of marriage has indeed become a matter of faith andwe have to keep on arguing for it to be on the law books, until and even afterevery state has ratified same-sex marriage.
Yes, it takes the craziest kind of faith really to see thatthe marital bond between man and woman is so deep that it is rooted in thesupernatural life of the Trinity. But what this crazy faith sees is that theCatholic mystical understanding of marriage is really true, really part and parcelof reality and of the divine laws of reality. Even though now few people holdthis belief, this understanding of marriage reflects the anthropological andeven trinitarian laws.
It’s up to us to defend the “public” character of theselaws, even if and when belief in them is criminalized. Because to do so is todefend our fellow human beings from blasphemy against themselves and againstGod. So, it’s a Nein from me.
—Francesca Aran Murphy is professor of
theology at the University of Notre Dame.
David Novak
In my opinion, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim clergy shouldstop officiating at civil marriage ceremonies altogether in those jurisdictionswhere same-sex couples have the right to register their unions as civilmarriages. There are fundamental theological reasons for my stance having to dowith the covenantal reality of marriage, but here I want to focus on politicalreasons.
Secularists have tremendous power in Canada and the UnitedStates. From them we hear increasingly about the secular “values,” especiallyegalitarianism. These “values” insist on the necessity of setting aside orredefining many traditional religious institutions, like heterosexual marriage.Indeed, secularist advocates now regularly castigate our religious traditionsas being “discriminatory.”
Given this trend, how long will it be before my synagogue inToronto will be forced by the court to allow a same-sex couple to be married inthe sanctuary or have their wedding reception in the social hall? Not long, Ifear. Clergy are now functioning as registers of civil marriage. We alreadyknow that other religious persons, whose job it is to officiate at civilmarriages, have been forced out of their jobs altogether for refusing toregister same-sex marriages (at least in Canada, where same-sex marriage ispermitted throughout the country). The only difference between the two kinds ofmarriage registers, officially secular or officially religious, is the locationof the respective weddings. Our legal vulnerability would be much less if mysynagogue were no longer in the civil marriage “business” at all.
Even renouncing clergy’s role as register of civil marriagesmight not be enough. The day may yet come when purely religious weddings willhave to be held clandestinely. It’s not hard to imagine that“anti-discriminatory” zealotry will insist on the duty of all officiantsat any ceremony that solemnizes anything that calls itself a“marriage” (whether secular or religious) to do so for any couple whocomes to them for this purpose. Those who refuse to do so will be penalizedlegally. As marriage is redefined by civil law, what’s to stop judges fromrequiring us all to conform to the new meaning?
Therefore, I suggest that faithful Jews, Christians, andMuslims work for the abolition of civil marriage altogether (wherever it hasalready lost its traditional definition), and for it to be replaced by civilunions. Since these civil unions need not involve any sexual relationshipbetween the parties, there need be no concern about the state sanctioning whatare illicit sexual unions by traditional standards, whose origins areadmittedly religious. Like any contract, they could be worked out among theparties themselves. Of course, for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, marriageis much more than an ordinary civil contract, but by defining civil marriagedown, as it were, we’re more likely to preserve its covenantal meaning in ourreligious traditions. A covenantal relationship is much deeper than a merelycontractual one.
I think this is a realistic direction to take in the publicdiscussion. There is less and less of a secular consensus today as to thedefinition of what “marriage” actually is. It is only in the religioustraditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that “marriage” has a consistentdefinition (logically and historically) of what it is and what it is not. Onlythere can the fallacy of generalization (i.e., marriage being any officiallysanctioned relationship two or more persons want it to be) be avoided. As such,why not leave the institution of marriage to the adherents of these venerabletraditions (as in Israel)? Furthermore, isn’t the inclusion of same-sex unionsin civil marriage still discriminatory, hence anti-egalitarian? And isn’tegalitarianism the value that liberals regularly invoke to justify theinnovation of same-sex civil marriage? Why are polygamists excluded? Why ispolyandry excluded? Why is “polyamory” (which involves more than one man andmore than one woman) excluded? And what about people who feel intimate ties butdon’t want to have sex with each other?
The clamor for same-sex civil marriage, when civil unionsare readily available, seems to be beseeching the secular state for a blessing.(Indeed, several homosexuals have told me that they seek the blessing of thestate because they feel they have been “cursed” by their families and theirreligious communities.) But the secular state is not and ought not be in theblessing business. Blessings have a uniquely religious meaning. So leaveblessings to those who have a tradition in both receiving them and dispensingthem. And, finally, as for the more liberal clergy (Jewish, Christian, andmaybe Muslim, too) who do officiate at same-sex marriages (or even only “bless”them), they must be asked and ask themselves: What warrant do you have fromyour respective religious traditions (and the divine revelations upon whichthey are based) for engaging in such nontraditional, radical practices?
—David Novak holds the J. Richard and
Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies
at the University of Toronto.
Edward Peters
Before considering whether churches, synagogues, and mosquesshould “stop performing civil marriages,” we should first consider whetherreligious institutions are performing civil marriages and, if they are, whetherit lies within their power to continue or cease doing so.
Setting aside Roman Catholic teaching that the bride andgroom confer marriage on each other, canon law regards what clergy do in awedding ceremony as fundamentally religious, not civil, in nature. Indeed,occasional queries from Catholic clergy about the possibility of officiating ata supposedly purely civil wedding are nearly always rejected by canonists.
Because no other religious rite carries so many implicationsunder civil law, it is not hard to see why some characterize religious weddingsas essentially civil exercises performed with music and flowers. But while itis not wholly mistaken to see clergy as state agents with regard to marriage,Church wedding rites are first and foremost religious and sacramental ceremoniesthat also happen (happily) to be recognized in America by civil authorities asmarriage, which is why the state so willingly delegates that authority toclergy.
This brings us to the second consideration: Preciselybecause states, not religious institutions, grant civil recognition toreligious wedding ceremonies, it is for states, not religious institutions, todecide whether civil recognition should be granted them in the future. It isnot clear, therefore, exactly how religious institutions could unilaterallywithhold civil recognition of their wedding rites any more than they couldcompel civil recognition of their rites by states unwilling to grant it.
With these two points in mind, one may directly ask whetherreligious institutions should discontinue cooperation with the civilrecognition of their weddings or, as some put it, “get out of the civilmarriage business” and—among Catholics at least—henceforth be concerned onlywith the sacrament of matrimony. Speaking as a Catholic, I cannot see how theChurch could responsibly “get out of the civil marriage business” withoutfailing in her duty to proclaim the truth about marriage in the secular orderand matrimony in the religious.
According to well-settled—indeed, I would argueinfallible—Church teaching, without marriage there is no matrimony. Christ didnot invent a new way for people to live together and then bestow upon it theterm “matrimony”; rather, he restored marriage to its original plan and raisedit, for the baptized, to the level of a sacrament. Thus, while natural marriagecan exist without it being sacramental matrimony—and for most of the world,this is how marriage is experienced—there is no such thing as sacramentalmatrimony that is not also natural marriage.
When the Church defends marriage, therefore, she isdefending a fundamental human institution, and when she opposes thecivil redefinition of marriage to include same-sex unions, it is because sheknows that civil laws treating same-sex unions as marriages are—by operation ofnatural law and not just by Catholic doctrine—corrosive of law and right order.Add to this the fact that some Catholics enter, with the Church’s approval, notmatrimony as in the sacrament, but marriage as in the natural union. Thishappens when a Catholic, having secured a dispensation for “disparity of cult,”marries any nonbaptized person. For the sake of these Catholics there’s apastoral imperative for the Church to defend marriage itself, and not just thesacrament, against attempts by the state to distort it.
What good is served by religious institutions withdrawingfrom civil marriage? It is distressing to watch the state definition ofmarriage careen toward something utterly unrecognizable under natural orecclesiastical law, but eliminating true marriages from the pool of unionstreated as marriages by the state will not help us correct the state’s errors.
If the day arrives when state power is turned againstministers who refuse to perform a “gay wedding,” one must refuse cooperationwith such violations of natural law and religious liberty. But that day has notarrived, and there is no need to surrender preemptively the many societal goods(such as the convenience, and even meetness) that civil recognition ofreligious weddings accords.
—Edward Peters is a canon lawyer and holds
the Edmund Cardinal Szoka Chair at Sacred
Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.
Ephraim Radner
The Christian Church should continue to oversee civilmarriages, but only so long as she is free to choose which couples she will dothis for, on the basis of her own understandings of marriage and of herwitness. This, of course, has always been the case. It could change, though,since one never knows these days who is going to sue.
My main reason for saying this is simple: Marriage—thelifelong union between a man and woman for the sake of mutual support and, Godpermitting, the bearing and raising of children—is a universal human estate,bound to God’s creative and redemptive will. Regardless of the civil state’sviews on the matter, the Church is bound to further and nurture this estate,and if the state provides the means for the Church to do this, however partialor confused, all the better.
There are, of course, profound theological truths thatinform this answer. Marriage is an objective reality, independent of what anyperson, institution, or government says about it. This reality both foundshuman life and also fulfills it: The Bible begins in Genesis with a descriptionof the original man and woman’s unitive purpose, and it ends, in Revelation,with a description of the Lamb’s marriage to the Church. Logically, the firstAdam’s life set in motion in Genesis is a reflection in time of the secondAdam’s nuptial purpose articulated in Revelation.
Paul affirms just this in Ephesians 5: The joining ofhusband and wife, in their procreative blessing, is a derivative expression ofthe work that Christ does in drawing the Church to himself through his ownsacrifice, and in so doing drawing all creation into God’s embrace. Paul callsthis a “mystery,” a profound divine truth now exposed to view. In Christ we nowknow that the redemptive purposes of God are at work, somehow, in the createdlives of men and women as they marry and enter into the contours first laid outin Genesis. As Jesus says, “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made themmale and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother [theprocreative basis of human existence and its generative continuity] and bejoined to his wife,and the two shall become one flesh.’So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joinedtogether, let not man put asunder” (Mark 10:6–9).
Marriage of man and woman, emerging from and contributing tothe procreative stream of creation, is thus the vehicle by which createdhistory moves into God’s final purposes. It is what these purposes “look like”in human experience. All life is bound up with this historical, nuptial order:love and loss, work and refreshment, self-giving and open receipt, physicalpain and joyous delight, growth and letting go. Marriage in this sense is afact that has happened and will happen, for it is already set in motion,already moves the world.
Marriage is not the only stream of historical life gatheredup into God’s final purposes, however. The marriage feast of the Lambultimately involves a virgin bride, and it is here that the calling tocelibacy, being a eunuch for the Kingdom, comes in. But this is another,parallel story, bound as the alter ego, as it were, to nuptial life, and itrequires another discussion.
The Christian Church’s calling, in part, is to move alongthe nuptial way, to bring others with her, to support those who have set uponthe path, to bear those beaten and left beside the road towards the goal, or tolower the helpless into the presence of the Bridegroom. The Church’s nuptialministry is thus, above all, missionary: bringing the children of Adam,along this path, to him who will join them to himself in the richest and mostgenerative embrace of all. This mission, furthermore, is one the Church pursuesalong every byway and with the fullest energy possible. If the civil state isprepared to offer a means by which the Church can pursue this mission, let herseize the opportunity, so that she may at least “save some.”
—Ephraim Radner is professor of historical
theology atWycliffe College.
Eric Teetsel
Gravity, rain, and music are some of God’s gifts to theworld. Knowledge of the Creator increases the enjoyment of these gifts, butthey exist for us all. Ours is a generous God!
Marriage is another of God’s gifts. It is a living symbol ofGod’s love for his Church, and the foundation upon which society rests. Thepersonal and social benefits of marriage are well documented. Married men andwomen tend to be healthier, wealthier, and happier. They have better sex, whichleads to healthy, happy children. Even couples who don’t understand the spiritual,theological, and civic significance of marriage—which is to say, mostcouples—benefit from it. And so do the rest of us.
Americans tacitly endorse the dual theological and civicnature of marriage by deputizing imams, pastors, rabbis, and priests to performweddings that the state recognizes. Though various traditions maintain theirown standards and prerequisites, citizens who desire to be married in a churchcan do so regardless of their beliefs or religious practices (or lack thereof).One pastor I talked to says he is delighted to marry couples from outside hiscongregation because it gives him a chance to share the Gospel with them andtheir entire network of family and friends.
Today marriage in America is being destroyed by a movementthat seeks to fundamentally deconstruct its meaning and purpose. And it ishappening fast. Given this reality, George Weigel has argued that it is timefor the Church to take a dramatic step: withdraw from performing civilmarriages.
If the Church were to take this step now, it would be actingprophetically: It would be challenging the state (and the culture) byunderscoring that what the state means by “marriage” and what Catholics mean by“marriage” are radically different, and that what the state means by “marriage”is wrong.
Weigel’s exhortation to the Church to be a courageouswitness to the true meaning and purpose of marriage is the right prescription,but the most effective way to rebuild a culture of marriage is not abandonment.The task before the Church is to rebuild a culture of marriage one couple at atime.
The question is “How?”
My wife has two sixteen-year-old siblings who are currentlylearning to drive. Obtaining a license in Kansas, where they live, is acomplex, multi-year process involving testing and fifty hours of practice witha licensed driver. There is a reason for these rules: Driving a car poorly is athreat to society. According to the Centers for Disease Control, motor vehicleaccidents are the leading cause of death for U.S. teens. Young people agesfifteen to twenty-four accounted for $31 billion in vehicle injuries in 2010.Because a reckless teenage driver has the power to wreak havoc on the lives ofhis fellow citizens, society restricts the privilege to those who are preparedfor the responsibility.
So it should be with marriage.
Studies put the total cost of divorce, including subsidiesto sustain single-parent families, education, crime, and health spending, atmore than $112 billion annually. Adam Thomas and Emily Monea of the BrookingsInstitution found taxpayer spending on Medicaid-subsidized medical care relatedto unintended pregnancy alone to be $12 billion per year. By one measure,marriage drops the probability of child poverty by 82 percent, yet four in tenU.S. children today are born into a home without their father and mother.
Religious leaders in the United States should be gettingmore involved in rebuilding a culture of marriage, not less so. We have anopportunity to begin a marriage renaissance by ensuring that engaged couplesare prepared for the responsibility ahead of them. It is time for a coalitionof representatives from America’s faith traditions to collaborate on thecreation of a pre-marital counseling curriculum that would cover common issuesincluding finances, conflict resolution, and sex. These nonsectarian classescould be offered regularly at churches, mosques, temples, and community centersnationwide. Religious leaders should politely decline to marry any couple whohas not completed the course, or an equivalent.
The same-sex marriage movement is a symptom of the breakdownof marriage, not the cause. The Church has the conviction and authority torebuild the most basic and important institution of society. And so it should.
—Eric Teetsel is director of the
Manhattan Declaration.
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