On my mind today is marriage. Actually, marriage is on my mind on a regular basis, as anyone who knows me and my girl would know; today, my specific thought is on the topic of marriage in relation to separation of Church and State. This is not a thought I spontaneously came up with, it's more what I would consider a suggestion to a blog written by a buddy of mine, Kevin, who was responding to a blog post by Tony Jones, a prominent pastor in the Emerging Church movement. Now Kevin and myself agree on many theological issues as far as I am aware, and neither one of us is usually in agreement with Tony Jones or that movement in general, but Jones did bring up a legitimate point in his blog.
In that blog post, he stated that he believes that pastors should give up the right to perform legal marriages. For Kevin's comment on the post, click here. The point in question is that while we are commanded by Romans 13 to obey the government as far as is possible, it is hard to challenge it when necessary when you are an agent of said government, which is exactly what clergy and the church becomes when you are granted the power to legitimize legal marriages.
Now, I will not go out of my way to fully explain what the others articulated in their posts, since it would be easier for you to go and read them yourselves. But I do have a suggestion as to a possible solution, and I'll leave it to you reading to decide its merit and comment accordingly, since this was a random, spontaneous thought while headbanging to As I Lay Dying. It would go as follows:
(In case you didn't notice, I do enjoy numbers and lists)
1. Obtain a legal marriage license.
Since we are to obey the government, a couple would go to a Justice and become legally married.
2. Enter into Sacramental marriage.
Obviously, what culture defines as a marriage and what scripture defines as a marriage differ. Therefore, after becoming legally married, the couple would have a sacramental wedding. What I would propose (and I realize this may all seem horribly redundant to state but in case it isn't I'm posting it anyways) is that the couple would go through the wedding ceremony the same as they do, except instead of signing a marriage license, they would sign, along with the pastor and usual witnesses, a covenant agreement for their marriage, much like churches do with those becoming members. In the covenant would be the agreement on what the Bible defines as true sacramental marriage, the Biblical definitions of the roles in marriage, each spouse's responsibilities to the other, and agreeing to open themselves to church discipline in their marriage if needed.
Now obviously this is a little rough, unspecific, and I'm sure there are many "what if"s and "what about"s that could arise from this process, particularly since I mentioned nothing about the processes leading up to marriage, but that is, in a sense, why I'm posting this in the first place: feedback.
