Arthur Dobrin D.S.W. psychologytoday.com
Am I Right?
What's Wrong With This Religious Wedding?
Couples marry even though they don't believe in the religion.
Posted Dec 07, 2017
In a short story I teach in both my undergraduate and graduate classes at
Hofstra University, the main characters, Marcus and Thea, decide to hold their
wedding ceremony in a church even though neither of them is especially
religious.
A question I ask students is whether they think it is right for the couple to
have gotten their blessing from an institution to which they were largely
indifferent.
Here are two typical responses:
“I think it was right for them to get married in a religious ceremony because
even if religion wasn’t particularly important to them, they knew it was
important to their families. They wanted to uphold the tradition, as well as
honor their families. There is nothing wrong with this in my opinion because how
they wanted to get married was their own decision and they seemed to be a very
happy couple. They weren’t forced to marry this way, this was just the way that
must have felt right for them.”
“There’s no problem with getting married via religious ceremony for the sake of
pleasing the people who raised you, as long as it isn’t against your beliefs
entirely. Thea and Marcus were not particularly religious but they also had
nothing against religion or their parents. I also don’t think a wedding ceremony
dictates the marriage.”
These responses, and hundreds of others like them, point to the notion that
religion isn’t about belief or faith but tradition. What’s more, it is often not
taking part in the tradition because one wants to carry on those connections
with the past but because they want to please others.
I understand my students’ reactions well. I did the same years ago when I got
married. My fiancé and I had a religious ceremony and even verbally agreed to
something that both of us knew we weren’t going to fulfill. This did it because
it was easier than bucking family pressure. We thought this was a small price to
pay for pleasing our parents.
With the benefit of hindsight, I realize how wrong we were. A clergyman
performing a religious service for us was a sham. I now also realize how
disrespectful it was to him and to the religion for which he stood.
If you understand religion in which tradition is subsidiary, not primary, then
there is a problem. Religions rest upon a set of beliefs and ask its adherents
to follow guidelines that promote ethical living.
Conscience and goodwill are intrinsic to religion but that’s not what my
students understand. They find it acceptable to participate in a ritual that is
meaningless to them—for the sake of pleasing their families.
But religious ceremonies ask participants to enunciate promises that are meant
to be binding. When they are uttered by the couple, they are meant to be
truthful statements regarding one’s beliefs and intentions. It is ironic that in
a setting in which honesty and integrity are supposed to be paramount instead
become occasions for fudging, deception and sometimes outright lies.
The desire to please one’s family is admirable, but if doing so means being
hypocritical regarding one’s religious convictions, the ceremony itself is
reduced to merely a show. This is not what most clergies intend and is probably
not what most who go through the motions without the content mean. But when this
is done repeatedly, as I suspect it is, and when few find it troubling, we are
witnessing one more step in reducing religion from its rightful place as a
center for ethical living to a lesser place that is something that further
erodes a society that doesn’t honor integrity very highly.
My response
Too often in society religion is about tradition and nobody has any regard for
principles. it is soft bigotry to refuse to take a religious vow seriously even
if the religion is just manmade. A religion is about being taken seriously. I
think church weddings in conservative Christian Churches insult the victims of
the degrading teachings these religions often have about women and marriage.
Catholicism lets 14 year old girls be married. The fact remains that many people
who read their Bibles and know their history is that "God's word" does indeed
fail to condemn child sex abuse in marriage relating to child brides. There are
condemnations of bestiality and adultery and gay sex and no mention of the
respect due to the sexual innocence of a child. Silence is consent anyway. But
silence is more consent in a holy book which claims the right to be obeyed as
the word of God and which encourages people to see that they must obey the book
just because it says they must do it. Those biblical cultures did accept men
having sex with girls whose bodies were not ready for sex or having babies. Men
married female children. There are several clues in the Bible that a man is
allowed to molest the child he "marries." The child at least should have the
right to get away from the husband who raped her and abused her and who could
divorce her to get his hands on a new child bride. Jesus reinforced these
doctrines by saying that a girl cannot divorce her husband or she becomes an
adulteress if she weds another. What is worse is he was being hypothetical for
women did not have a right to divorce in his society. Calling her an adulteress
was abusive in itself and was virtually calling for her murder for the Jewish
God had decreed death by stoning for adulteresses. (And Jesus made no attempt to
do away with stoning in his ministry. The adulteress who was brought to him for
stoning was brought to him as a test but even then he said she should be stoned
but only by worthy accusers. He did not stone her for it was not his place and
it was never done by one person. And it was a test anyway.) I repeat: the fact
remains that these women were forced into marriage, were too young as well and
had every right and perhaps the duty to leave their husbands.