Sunday, June 2, 2013

Setting aside the discussion about same-sex weddings, let’s take a look at what’s happening on the male-female front. The New York Times for Sunday, June 2, 2013, has notices of 34 such weddings. The overwhelming majority of them were held at “event spaces.” The Roman Catholics are holding their own, as usual; three of the weddings were held at a Roman Catholic church with a priest presiding. Several rabbis presided at weddings held in various secular “venues.” There was only one wedding held at a church with the church pastor presiding, and that one–wouldn’t you know–was held in the South.

Most remarkable, though, is the long list of non-denominational officiants. They include numerous “Universal Life” ministers and “American Marriage Ministries” ministers (“a friend of the couple became a Universal Life minister for the event”), 2 ministers of the Church of Human Spiritualism, and a minister of the World Christianship Ministries (Google that one to get a shock).

Granted, the list of couples chosen for the New York Times is hardly representative of the rest of the country–or even the city itself. But given all the beautiful New York City churches that used to be the scenes for weddings, and all the hard-working clergy of this city, one would think that we could do a better job. Such is the power of the cultural trends. How did these Universal Life “ministers” achieve this status all of a sudden? How can anyone take that seriously? Wouldn’t you think that would be a joke?

During the 14 years that I was on the clergy staff at Grace Church in New York (1981-1995), I started counting the number of married couples who had met at the church. I stopped counting at 50. Most of them were married at Grace Church and all of them at a church somewhere. All were married by a member of the clergy (need I say legitimate clergy). Most–though, granted, not all–are still married. Am I bragging? not really, since the circumstances at Grace in those years were truly remarkable and God-given. However, I think a case can be made for the help given to couples by a strong grounding in the church.  This business of do-it-yourself weddings speaks volumes about the unmoored, self-created ethos of the institution of marriage today. This is a very serious matter for families and for our society as a whole. May God bless all those who are working hard to strengthen marriages in the context of religious faith and Christian community.