With the government legalizing same sex marriage, many Christians and their pastors are asking, what does marriage have to do with the state? It’s a religious institution. Let the church marry people and the state can stay out of it.
Some pastors are marrying couples who aren’t bothering to get a marriage license. In some cases, elderly couples are asking pastors to marry them “in the eyes of God, but not the state” so that they can avoid the legal entanglements and financial issues that come with an official, government sanctioned marriage.
But Rev. John Frahm explains why the church cannot marry people outside of the civil ordinances. If you are a Catholic, believing that marriage is a sacrament, that might work. But not if you are a Protestant. This was actually an issue during the Reformation. The church had so many restrictions and so much control over marriages that the Reformers pushed for the civil authorities to regulate and conduct marriages, which would then be blessed in a church service. (Or conducted in a church with the pastor functioning as an officer of the state. “By the power vested in me by the state of Oklahoma, I now pronounce you husband and wife.”)
Lutherans particularly cannot “leave the government out of marriage.” Their confessions and theology don’t let them.
This by no means diminishes the value or significance of marriage, which was established by God and which mirrors Christ and the Church. God is still the One who “joins together” (Matthew 19:6). It’s just that God uses the civil realm to bring men and women into this vocation.
But what if the state interferes with God’s design, as it is doing with same sex marriage, easy divorce laws, and the like? Pastors mustn’t cooperate with those. But that doesn’t negate the state’s general responsibility for marriage.
Read Rev. Frahm’s discussion after the jump.
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