Marriage has been on a slippery slope since God performed the first wedding ceremony in Eden to Lamech taking a second wife to Christ’s appearance at the marriage in Cana down to the dismal state of marriage today.

Marriage scholar Lawrence Stone noted that in the Middle Ages marriage was “treated as a private contract between two families . . . For those without property, it was a private contract between two individuals enforced by the community sense of what was right.” Indeed, marriage wasn’t even regulated by law in Britain until the Marriage Acts of 1754 and 1835 as I have documented in other columns. Marriage is a family and church affair not a state function.

I refuse to obey the Supreme Court ruling. Same sex “marriage” is impossible no matter what they and others say. Declaring something does not make it true. The Supremes and their acolytes are living in a dream world. That means they are delusional. Many pastors have taken the position that the state should have nothing to do with weddings: no forms, no application, no approval, and no involvement at all. Weddings should be done by churches that set their own standards. Of course, basic protection must be required such as age, relationship, etc. Couples, with approval of parents are writing their own vows and are united by their local pastor who signs a covenant along with the couple. Such weddings are then registered at the county courthouse.

While weddings should be holy, they are often turned into mockery with nutty “vows” spoken as a sappy couple jumped out of an airplane, vows taken in prison, and now the happy couple is a dead couple in South Africa! A dead Johannesburg “couple” was married recently! Seems a man shot his pregnant fiancée dead then killed himself. They were “married” posthumously a few days after the murder/suicide. The news account said their family and friends “wanted to remember them as a happy couple destined for a happy life together.” Happy couple! What nonsense. To think they killed a tree to print such tripe.

In front of 250 guests, an Aussie couple was married nude wearing only their wedding rings and a stupid expression. Another couple was married at T. J. Maxx; another in a morgue after the groom was murdered; another inside a shark tank with the groom wearing a traditional black wetsuit and the bride in an all-white wetsuit. Another couple vowed to be faithful “for as long as we can stand each other.” Still another promised to be faithful “through fat and skinny.”

Jerks, trying to be cute, or flippant, or profane, have taken their weddings into the dirt. But, at least, they did get married, except for the dead ones. That’s wacky but better than living like barn-yarn animals.

In ancient, uncouth civilizations it was a custom of young men to capture the bride of his choice usually from another tribe and when men became more civilized it became simulated, not actual.
Marriage by capture was common in many cultures being the normal entrance into marriage. Judges 21 provides a good example of marriage by kidnapping. Often a man had help from his friends and relatives to assure the success of the capture. That was wrong.

Kidnapping of brides is still practiced and is in fact increasing in the Caucasus region and in parts of Mexico, Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia. The modern honeymoon harkens back to the ancient couple hiding out for a few weeks from discovery. Hopefully within a month, the bride would be pregnant and her family would resign themselves to the marriage. Moreover, the family would acquiesce to the marriage because of the stigma of the couple living together for a few weeks.

From actual seizure they later thought it more civilized to purchase a wife. At times a man exchanged one of his female relatives for his desired bride and at other times he served the bride’s father for an agreed period of time. Jacob working for Laban to get his daughter is the first Biblical example. Of course, Jacob got more than he expected. He had to work fourteen years to get the girl he wanted. In Genesis 29 when Jacob told Laban, his future father-in-law, that he wanted his wife, Laban called for his neighbors and friends to come to a feast after which Jacob took her to his bedroom. The same thing happened in Judges 14 when Samson was married and had a feast for his friends but Samson didn’t get her to his bed, but his best friend did!

Then there were festival times when it was acceptable for a girl to capture the husband of her dreams by “netting” him usually while he was asleep. The modern custom of females proposing to men during Leap Year is a carry-over of this custom.

It was also normal to get a wife by purchase as in the case of Jacob, Ruth, and Hosea. David also purchased Michal, King Saul’s daughter, with 200 Philistine foreskins according to I Samuel 18! Kings often gave their daughters to other kings (or their sons) to cement their national relationships thereby guaranteeing peace. No doubt many of Solomon’s marriages were political marriages. Of course, those multiple, heathen marriages were wrong whatever the reasons.

Some men got wives for their acts of valor as in the case of David. It was promised that whoever killed Goliath would get many rewards including the daughter of King Saul.

When a girl left her home to be a wife, her family was given a dowry since they were losing a major asset who provided labor (income) to the family. So the man got a wife and the wife’s family got the dowry. It was not looked upon as a wedding gift. Everyone was happy.

Couples married very young in the Old Testament days, always with parents’ permission, but by the New Testament times, regulations required the boy to be 13 and the girl 12. If a young husband died, his wife was taken in marriage by his brother or close relative. You may remember that this is the foundation for Ruth and Boaz. Such an arrangement is known as levirate marriage. That was worthy in that place and time.

Starcke and Westermarck, confirmed earlier conclusions that “marriage or pairing between one man and one woman, though the union be often transitory and the rule frequently violated, is the typical form of sexual union from the infancy of the human race” (History of Matrimonial Institutions, I, pp. 90, 91). So it is incorrect for apostles of permissiveness to suggest that marriage of a man and woman are of recent origin. They go back to the Garden of Eden!

So even less than perfect marriages (and there is no such thing as a perfect marriage) are the norm back to the beginning of time. That takes into account unhappy marriages and those that don’t last. The ideal is ideal.

Yes, some marriage ceremonies are wacky, some wrong, and worthy! What kind was yours?

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In the fourth century, fearful of the world’s influence and thinking they were obedient to God, some Christians gathered into monasteries never seeing another person outside the cloister for years. Others worked in the fields while still others begged in the towns. They thought that if they tortured themselves it would produce holiness but it only produced pain. They totally withdrew from the world (culture) and that was wrong. We are to engage the culture without it changing us.

We must understand that there is no efficacy in punishing oneself, wearing ragged or squalid clothing, having a dirty face, body odor, unbrushed teeth, offensive personal habits, or living in filth and defilement. Such things drive people away from Christ rather than to Him. Some people are impressed by those weirdoes who fled society and lived in the desert, refused to marry, slept on the floor or hard bunks, ate turnip soup and hard bread and beat themselves from time to time. We are not impressed! That nonsense is fleeing the world not confronting the world. As often happens, humans have a tendency to go to extremes.

The culture laughs at biblical beliefs and practices as quaint, if not archaic. (Note that these are the people who butcher babies; preach perversion as good and desirable; puncture and print words and images on their bodies; watch debased, despicable, and disgraceful television and movies; think nothing of going to bed with strangers; etc.) They smile when we suggest that the common practice of dating is demeaning, destructive, even devastating to youth. They laugh out loud when we recommend that a young man actually court a young lady after requesting permission from the parents! Dating has proved a failure; courtship works.

A young man shows interest in a young lady. He is impressed with her character, charm, courtesy, but mainly her commitment to Christ. She would be an ideal lifetime spouse so he approaches her father for permission to court her. (That raucous laughter you hear from sea to shining sea is a reaction but not a rebuttal. There is a difference.)

With the fathers’ permission, the courting starts and may last many months until the couple and the parents agree that the match is well-made and meets the Bible’s qualifications. The dates will be supervised by a parent or sibling! (as eyes roll across the fruited plain.) A wedding date is set a couple months in the future after consulting with their pastor.

Arrangements are made for a series of counseling sessions to take place between the couple and the pastor and his wife. During those sessions, the couple is taught the basic facts about marriage. She is to be a chaste, gracious, thoughtful, obedient wife and he is to love, cherish and honor her. He is to provide for her and any future children and they will rear those children according to their agreed on rules. She will keep a clean, orderly home that he will be thrilled to return to each day.

The couple will discuss various aspects of marriage such as having children; how they are to be taught and disciplined; whether or not she will work outside the home; etc. They will agree that during disagreements, they will use the Bible as their guide Book. If there are differences that cannot be settled between them, they will seek Christian counselling. In the event of unfaithfulness they will not seek a divorce but will continue Christian counselling. If there is no possibility of reconciliation, they will wait six months before getting a divorce.

After the couple agrees on the basics of the understanding, they will choose their attendants, wedding attire, caterer, flower shop, etc. At the big day, the preacher will do the normal ceremony but at the end he will not say the wedding was done by the power of the state but by the authority of the family and maybe the local church officials. The happy couple will drive to the county courthouse and record the fact of their wedding, leave for their honeymoon, and return home to “set up housekeeping.” The wife will change her last name to that of her husband and inform everyone that she is his wife.

They will keep the wedding covenant as proof of their marriage, plus record it in the family Bible. Changes should be made on all insurance policies, wills, trusts, post office box, safety deposit box, and utilities. Everyone must know that the wedding has taken place.

There is a new family in town, joined by God not the state!

(Ninth of nine columns dealing with no state involvement in marriage.)

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“But what if a man wanted to marry his goat?” Well, other laws would kick in that would prohibit that. Most states have laws against bestiality or even animal rights laws would prevail! After all, how can an animal give permission? There are people who consider themselves married to their goat, horse, or dog at this present time.

My critics will argue that promiscuity, polygamy, polyandry, polyamory, and perversion would become widespread but taking the state out of marriages would not make it any worse than now. Everyone knows that millions of people are living promiscuously in a nation where an unmarried male could not be in a hotel room with an unmarried female only 60 years ago. Some couples change bed partners as often as they change their socks. Maybe more often.

As to polygamy, it is rather common (although illegal) in Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and other western states where Mormons have been influential for a hundred years. In recent years, Muslims have been added to the mix making multiple wives more common. Two ways to go with this issue: Let each state permit or prohibit polygamy in the interest of society. I predict that the U.S. Supreme Court will decide that any sexual arrangement will be permissible.

Less known is the act of polyandry where a woman has more than one husband. In some societies, a woman marries a man and gets all his brothers in the deal. Again, let states permit it or prohibit it in society’s interest. Whatever becomes legal, God will have the final word!

In recent years perversion has become acceptable, approved, even applauded in most states so what will preachers do when they are told that they must perform same-sex “marriages” since they perform natural marriages? They should stop doing any state-approved weddings and limit all weddings to couples they know. Preachers should not wait until they are kicked out of the wedding business by the state. We (for I did like everyone else for many years) never should have taken a license to perform weddings in the first place. If a grandchild asked me to perform his or her wedding approved by the state, I would refuse.

If a state has the authority to permit you to get married, they can tell you that you cannot. So will you obey them? You say it is God’s will for you to marry, then why ask the state? If a state prohibited members of a specific denomination from getting married, should they obey that law? No sane Christian would agree they should. One of my oldest friends was a missionary in Spain and told me that the government refused to permit Evangelicals and Fundamentalists to marry. Marriage licenses had to be approved by the Roman Catholic Church and such permission often took many months, if given at all, so the Christians simply had their wedding ceremonies, without a license, as they had been doing for centuries. Later, the government relented and anyone could get a license; however “they also had a civil ceremony before a judge.” If we agree with that, we have lost the battle.

Medieval Christians disregarded the law and married without any “required” approval from the state. In 1551, Baptists in Europe refused to be married by the clergy of the dominant church, but were united in marriage in the church of which they were a member. Their enemies charged them with encouraging licentiousness. Having unapproved marriages in their own church brought scorn and false accusations upon them but they refused to obey the government. John Bunyan and others in England went to jail rather than permit the government to license them to preach, baptize, marry, and bury the dead.

My suggestion: Take the state and federal government totally out of the wedding business. Permit any church to marry any couple who is willing to satisfy the church’s requirements, rules, and regulations. Then the state would recognize any church-approved weddings without any state approval. The couple could then record their marriage at the county courthouse thereby recognizing the legitimacy of any children, and protecting property of heirs, Social Security, insurance beneficiaries, retirement plans, etc.

Government officials could still perform weddings, usually of atheists or anti-religious individuals but they would be no more official than those performed by a pastor of a small store-front church in Harlem or Houston.

Astute thinkers are looking ahead and asking “But what about divorce?” First of all, most of the pastors I know who use a marriage covenant will not marry any couple who does not eschew divorce. Marriage is for a lifetime. However, in a broken world divorces happen. It would be no problem to expect state regulations to kick in although they would be as unfair, unreasonable, and unworkable as the present circumstances. The premise is that no government has authority to control marriage; but in breaking up a home, children and innocent parties must be protected by law just as the state is responsible to keep the peace, enforce contracts, protect the public, etc. In other words, continuing the massive failure that is taking place now.

To those who yell “inconsistent,” I reply that they have not thought the issue through. Slavery, concubines, and multiple wives were never approved by God but He did provide guidelines for those who broke His pattern of one man–one woman, for life. If a man held slaves, contrary to God’s will, the slave owner must treat the slaves well and set them free in the seventh year. So if men did not obey God, it was wrong; but they had to exist and God made provision for the innocent parties to survive.

Friends of mine who only marry couples with a “marriage covenant” usually give each couple a family Bible and record the fact of the marriage, date, and witnesses, along with signatures of witnesses as proof of their marriage. Such a record has always been valid in every state.

If two atheists or a same-sex “couple” choose to “marry,” the couple could announce their marriage in the local paper, have it recorded at the county court house and “set up housekeeping.” Again, no church or government would be involved or give permission.

If we the people take back authority from the states, especially concerning marriage, then same-sex “marriage” becomes a moot issue. However, that is not the reason for getting the state out of marriages but it is a very good consequence.

If the state can permit marriages, it can prohibit marriages. Would you obey?

(Seventh of nine columns dealing with no state involvement in marriage. Next column: “Biblical Marriage, Not Polygamy, Polyandry, Polyamory, Promiscuity or Perversion is Acceptable!”)

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Up until the reign of Justinian (527-565 AD), simply saying you were married was enough to establish a family. The famous Code of Justinian set some parameters for the family: any man could take a concubine but she had to be at least 12 years old. When a man lived with a free woman, it was not considered concubinage but genuine matrimony if she did not acquire financial gain by selling her body.

In 866 AD, Pope Nicholas I said “Let the simple consent of those whose wedding is in question be sufficient; if the consent be lacking in a marriage, all other celebrations, even should the union be consummated, are rendered void.” Consent was what made marriages valid and endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church, then a power throughout Europe. There was no church involvement in marriages until about the ninth century other than Pope Nicholas’ decree and after the twelfth century prayers were added to the ceremony often by the bride and groom.

Up to the twelfth century, a consummated marriage was considered valid if the couple had pledged their love and commitment to each other even without any civil or church involvement or approval. Roman Catholic Church leaders thought that such an arrangement was far better than concubinage or jumping from bed to bed like a deranged rabbit. A consummated and committed marriage would also tend to repel seducers.

Then in 1215 the Roman Catholic Church required all churches in England and Wales to publish banns (a proclamation) three Sundays before any wedding. That period of time permitted objections to be made such as an accusation that one of the two was already married or underage, or they were closely related, etc. Furthermore, the marriage had to be performed in their parish church. In the 1300s, if a couple wanted to marry quickly, the church instituted a license (permission) for the banns to be avoided. The license also permitted them to be married in another parish as well. Of course, there was a fee required accompanied by a sworn declaration that there was no canonical reason to prohibit the marriage.

Many then perceived marriage by banns as a second-class ceremony; consequently, that led to an increase in the number of marriages by license. Most of the marriages done with a license were for special purposes such as a wedding done outside the usual hours for weddings or in a church not normally approved for weddings. These weddings could be done quickly without waiting three weeks to have the marriage announced in church. Another perceived benefit was confidentiality since some people did not want the town to know that they did not have an approved wedding years earlier.

After the twelfth century, Church approval of marriages was required and after 1563 a priest was required at every wedding. Peasants in some European countries were required to have permission of the lord of the manor and in some places the lord reserved the right to spend the wedding night with the bride. Just one of his perks.

Then the Council of Trent, organized as a frantic response to the Reformation in the mid-1500s, also took up the problem of secret or “clandestine” marriages without satisfying those people who were for or against. The French wanted to outlaw all secret marriages and marriages without parental approval, but the Council refused to make parental approval a requisite for valid marriages. Secret marriages were very popular because young people wanted to choose their own spouses rather than have parents choose. A young girl whose parents had arranged her marriage at birth, would say, “But, Mom, I was secretly married last year.” However, the Council did abolish secret marriages where only the bride and groom were present.

Such secret marriages had been recognized as “true marriages,” but there were problems. It was common for a man to secretly marry then change his mind after a few months or years. He met another woman and then publicly married her with all the necessary requirements met. However, he was already secretly married and had two children. What about his responsibilities to them? His former wife could not prove their secret marriage and was stranded up a creek in a leaking canoe without a paddle, along with two hungry, screaming children! How could a court hold a man accountable without some proof of the secret marriage? If the court came to her defense, supported only by her word, then all marriages could be in danger. An unscrupulous woman could choose an attractive married man and charge that he was her secret mate. It was a can of worms.

The problem was an old one. When a couple had problems and split, there was no way for the aggrieved party to prove his or her marriage by an independent witness. The Council sought to solve this oft-occurring problem by decreeing that if a couple admitted to a secret marriage it was considered a “grave sin” and they were required to renew their vows in the local church attended by three witnesses, one of them being the local priest. The priest did not make the marriage valid; the man and woman did that with vows of commitment. The priest was there as a representative of the Church and registered the marriage. The priest was often the only person in town who could read and write so he was a natural choice to keep a record of important events such as marriage.

The Council of Trent declared that people who had been secretly married would be considered married as long as the marriages were not invalidated by the Roman Catholic Church. Then the Council required that a marriage announcement must be published each Sunday for three consecutive weeks so that a planned marriage could be forbidden if anyone had a legitimate reason to prohibit the wedding. Finally the Council said that a marriage was not valid if anyone tried to be married without a priest (or his designate) as witness along with two other witnesses.

The Roman Church pushed its way further into the homes by requiring local priests to keep records of all baptisms and deaths as well as weddings. The grip was getting tighter and tighter and it must be remembered that in the Middle Ages in Europe, the Pope was literally over every person including the “sovereign” kings.

While the Council of Trent was agonizing with their decisions and trying to untie a Gordian Knot, the Protestant Reformers had declared that a public marriage was one that was consented to by the couples’ parents. If not, it was a clandestine or secret marriage and invalid. They took the position that a church was limited in its authority and that marriage is a fundamental right of an individual so only two people could create a marriage and did so by their public consent.

During the reign of England’s Henry VIII (1509 to 1547), marriage licenses were provided by the Archbishop of Canterbury (actually by King Henry) after 1534. Before that date, the Pope issued licenses. A common license permitted a couple to be married at their parish church while a special license permitted t a couple to be married any place. A special license was required for anyone not a member of an Anglican Church. Religious separatists were not pleased with that requirement and refused to obey it.

The Marriage Act of 1753 (full title, An Act for the Better Preventing of Clandestine Marriage) in England and Wales took control of marriage from the hands of family and vested it in the state. From the point at which the law took effect in 1754, marriages which had not taken place in the Church of England, Quaker Meetings or Jewish synagogues, were rendered invalid. This was the first time legislation required a formal marriage ceremony in England and Wales. This caused major problems with dissident Christians (Baptists) who held strong beliefs about marriage and strong reservations about state control and interference in their homes. The parents of an underage couple had to get a license from the government and the ceremony had to take place in a Church of England. Any future children were not permitted an inheritance if those conditions were not met by everyone, including Baptists.

This effectively did away with secret marriages and gave government more control which is common for all governments.

Baptists refused to obey the law that required marriages to be controlled by the state and Baptists and other groups are doing the same today: Government, stay out of our most important and sacred traditions. It is a legitimate marriage if there is consent, commitment, consummation, and communication in any little church in the dale and needs no one’s permission!

We don’t need or want, nor will we permit the government in our weddings.

(Fourth of nine columns dealing with no state involvement in marriage. Next column: “Marriage Makes Rude, Crude, and Lewd Men into Softies!”)

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