A question that has bugged me for a while is what exactly constitues a marriage ‘before God’?
Modern western society accepts marriages performed by the clergy and recognised celebrants. Historically speaking to my knowledge (christian) marriage was always performed by a member of the church.
Yet, there is no reference in the bible that I have seen that dictates a marriage ceremony must be either a certain format or that it even needs to be performed by a priest/member of the church or by anyone at all.
Am I suffering from a bad case of ignorance, can somone set me straight? Or can a marriage be recognised ‘in the eyes of God’ by simply a religious commitment?
My understanding - and I stand to be corrected - is that the couple “marry” each other. IOW, the couple themselves are the ministers of their own wedding ceremony. The priest and the congregation are there as witnesses, nothing more. But as such, they are essential to the process - to the extent that the doors of the building are traditionally left open so that in theory, anyone passing could also witness what was taking place. All this, of course refers to the religious part of the ceremony, there is also a civil section, which requires a licenced “minister” (priest, judge, etc) to sign the correct documents.
In this day and age, the two are no longer seperable in many people’s minds - which is what makes the debate over SSM’s more emotive - while most people would agree that long-term partners (of whatever type/gender/etc) deserve some sort of legal recognition/protection, to call it “marriage” makes it much harder to accept, as that carries the implication of religious acceptance/blessing, which for some is not possible.
Obviuosly different religions will have different takes on this, but so far as the Christian perspective goes what grimpixie says is right; the spouses marry each other.
But an important part of the notion of marriage is that it’s public. The marriage vows are made for the benefit not just of the couple but of society at large, and society at large is expected to take note of, and accept, them.
For a long period of history Christianity didn’t really distinguish between the church and society at large. In the ideal society, everyone was a Christian and they all belonged to one big happy church. So a commitment to the church community was pretty much the same thing as a commitment to society at large. And those who withheld their commitment from the church community were either denying the nature of marriage as a God-ordained institution, or were simply refusing to make their vows before the community. Hence the growth of the practice of marriages celebrated in church, before a church official, and the tendency to deny the validity of marriages celebrated otherwise.
But at no time was this ever absolutely essential to the validity of a marriage. Missionaries who brought Christianity to societies that had never previously heard of it, for instance, would often find the institution of marriage as understood by Christians - a public exclusive heterosexual lifelong conjugal union - already existing. Obviously no church and no minister had been involved in celebrating these marriages, but I don’t think that any church took the view that these marriages were invalid, or nullities, or fictions.
In the modern era – since the Protestant reformation, say – there has been a growth in accptance of the idea of the separation of church and state, and a corresponding growth in the idea that a commitment to the community can be validly and effectively made before the civil authorities, even in relation to an essentially religious matter. Hence many Christian churches do accept as valid purely civil marriages celebrated even between two members of that church. Others are more reserved, discouraging civil marriage and denying recognition in cases where the couple could have been expected to have a religious marriage. As a crude generalisation, the more “Protestant” a church is the more comfortable it is likely to be with the idea of its members celebrating purely civil marriages, and the more recognition it is likely to afford them.