The relationship between religion, marriage and government is rooted in history but has become quite problematic today.
In America, we separate church and state. Is it time – maybe past time – to apply that principle to marriage?
In an interesting article carried by the Associated Baptist Press (ABP) this week, Washington correspondent Rob Marus draws attention to the entanglement between religion and government inherent in the conflict over who should be allowed to marry.
“In all of America’s brouhaha over whether legalizing same-sex marriage will sully the institution’s sanctity,” Marus notes, “very few Christians are asking one important question: When – and why – did the government get into the sanctification business?
“When the preacher, at the end of a marriage ceremony, says, ‘By the power vested in me by the state of (fill-in-the-blank), I pronounce you husband and wife,’ is he or she acting as a minister of the gospel or a magistrate of the government – or both? How does that happen in a society with a First Amendment designed to guarantee functional separation between religion and government?”
In answer to that question, Americans United Executive Director Barry W. Lynn argues that the relationship between religion, marriage and government is rooted in history but has become quite problematic today. Lynn, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, says he has to apply for a license and become an officer of the court in Virginia to serve as an officiant at marriages there.
Lynn said it probably would be a good idea to separate religious marriages from the civil marriages (or civil unions) recognized by the state.
“I think we would eliminate some, but not all, of the cantankerous debate on same-sex marriage if we did what many of the nations in Europe do, which is to separate the civil aspects of marriage and the religious aspects,” Lynn said.
“I’ve talked to, over the years, some conservatives who … do think that is a respectable way to distinguish the sacred from the secular.”
Anti-gay crusader Maggie Gallagher was predictably unpersuaded.
“I’m not especially in favor of it,” she told ABP.
“A real alternative would be for government to recognize and enforce religiously distinctive marriage contracts so long as they serve the government’s interest – say, permanent ones for Catholics,” continued Gallagher. “But what people who talk about ‘separating marriage and state’ really propose to do is simply to refuse to recognize religious marriage contracts at all. This is not neutrality; it is a powerful intervention by the government into the lives of religious people.”
It sounds like Gallagher would make a bad situation worse. Is she really saying that the government should forbid Catholics to get a divorce in keeping with the tenets of her Catholic faith?
That just illustrates why America might want to consider moving in the other direction. Gallagher and her Religious Right cronies want American civil law to reflect religious doctrine. In a nation that respects freedom of conscience, it should not.
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