Infanteer said:
I guess your right Bruce - I just want someone to give a perfectly good reason why it is necessary for the Church to put the stamp on someone so they can be married. I'm not talking about gays or anything, just the concept of marriage in general.
Why? Would you marry two people under God, if you felt they couldn't handle the commitment and
contract they are submitting to under God? The minister is kinda spiritually on the hook on that one. I wont
marry two people if I think they have problems. Let me tell you, the people who approach ministers to get
married have so many weird problems that they need to fix before getting married it isn't funny. (well it is)
from Caesar
No. I'm redefining (he-he) marriage to it's original and less confusing meaning. Marriage is religous, like it or not. A State certified marriage is a hanger-on from the days where there was no seperation between Church and State. I am proposing we continue to seperate Church and State by removing marriage from the State's domain, where it doesn't belong. This should have been done hundreds of years ago. Do you hear of State certified Baptisms? Of course not, but marriage is no less a religous 'rite' than baptism.
Acutally, I just finished a sacramental theology class. Marriage only became a real sacrament of the church around the 1600's. Marriage
up until then did not involve a minister performing the ceremony, but would sit in the crowd if one was in attendance. It was a civil union between two people. You could ask the minister to bless the marriage.. but thats about all the role he took.
We already re-defined what marriage is by including it into a religious sacrament. I don't disagree with it as I quite enjoy the sacrament
of marriage. However, marriage was a contract between two people. Granted, it was a man and a woman, but it was still two people.
You are going to have to go far to prove that marriage was invented by the [insert your faith here]. I don't feel I have to justify my marriage in the future to a sanctioned religious figure. Humans have always been coalescing into pairs (for whatever social and emotional reasons) - we've surrounded them in ritual, ceremony, and pageantry, but this in no way gives organized religious groups monopoly on the term "marriage".
I think I answered your question here. It wasn't invented by faith per say. It is now claimed by faith groups, but most faith
groups do not know the history of their own denomination which leads to mis-informed opinions.
Hope this helps clarify some points and helps steer the conversation a little neater.
Please guys.. you've been good.... but no knucklehead comments... this has been very enlightening
for some people.
but if they wished to have their marriage blessed, then the minister