Religious Conservatives Look to Get Out of the Civil Marriage Business

Public support for same-sex
marriage has
grown rapidly over the past decade. The once fringe position is
now held by a majority of Americans and fully 68 percent of
millennials. Seeing the writing on the wall, some religious
conservatives are now calling on Christian ministers to refuse to
perform any state-sanctioned marriages.
The Daily Caller reports:

Two Protestant pastors, concerned about rapidly-changing
government definitions of marriage, have started a movement
encouraging priests and ministers to refuse to perform civil
marriages.

Christopher Seitz and Ephraim Radner, Episcopal and Anglican
pastors respectively, launched “The Marriage
Pledge” at the conservative religious journal First Things on
Tuesday.

The pledge is unambiguous in calling for what amounts to a
bright-line separation between religious and state-sanctioned
marriage:

To continue with church practices that intertwine government
marriage with Christian marriage will implicate the Church in a
false definition of marriage.

Therefore, in our roles as Christian ministers, we, the
undersigned, commit ourselves to disengaging civil and Christian
marriage in the performance of
our pastoral duties. We will no longer serve as
agents of the state in marriage. We will no longer sign
government-provided marriage certificates. We will ask couples to
seek civil marriage separately from their church-related vows and
blessings. We will preside only at those weddings that
seek to establish a Christian marriage in accord with the
principles ­articulated and lived out from the beginning of the
Church’s life. [emphasis added]

Some may view this as a last ditch attempt to oppose the tide of
history, but libertarians ought to welcome it as a step toward the
removal of government from private relationships.

Marriage, after all, is in essence a private contract between
two individuals, and there is no reason why the government ought to
be able to determine who is eligible to enter into that contract
and who is not. Government involvement in marriage is a
relatively recent phenomenon. Previously, marriage was an
institution of civil society that was dealt with under the common
law. Even today, common law marriages—legally recognized unions
between people who have not obtained a formal marriage
license—continue to exist in a range of jurisdictions, including
several
U.S. states.

The effect of government involvement has been to politicize
marriage. It has turned a celebrated institution into a political
battleground by making its definition a zero sum game.

If we return marriage to civil society, individuals will be able
to create their own marriage contracts, and religious organizations
will be free to decide whose marriages they recognize and whose
they do not. Same-sex couples will be free to get married and have
their marriages recognized by any religious or civil society
organization that agrees to do so. Likewise, opponents of same-sex
marriage will not be forced to accept a definition they
fundamentally disagree with.

America’s founding fathers designed a system that includes the
separation of church and state. They did this to protect religious
freedom and avoid the sectarian clashes that had consumed much of
Europe. The separation of marriage and state would have a similar
effect, reducing political conflict and maximizing individual
freedom. The Protestant pastors’ marriage pledge is a step toward
such separation, and it should be both celebrated and
encouraged.