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Wednesday, 05 July 2006 15:35 |
 | | Mark West |
Imagine a nation in which the state itself was in charge of baptisms.
The state, of course, would argue that that was the natural course of events; it was the way that things had always been, it kept the balance of society, kept variants of baptisms that might offend the majority from occurring. And any tax benefits, or other social goods, that would proceed from the state ceremony of baptism would remain under the control of the state, so that things would be orderly.
But
wouldn??t the effects be terrible? First, it would mean that the state,
rather than churches, would decide who could and could not get
baptized. That would mean that some majoritarian religious concept,
palatable to some but not to others, would determine eligibility.
Second, it would mean that people would feign religious beliefs to
receive the tax benefits of baptism.
Of course, this is all silly. No one would want a nation where the
state determined the criteria for baptism. Baptism is a religious
function, whose nature is determined by one??s church; your church and
mine may disagree on when, how, and why to get baptized; and that??s why
we attend different churches, or practice our spirituality in some
other location, or avoid the spiritual entirely.
It??s equally silly for the state to have a role in marriage.
Marriage, as it currently stands, is a mixture of two very different
things ?± a religious ceremony, in which certain tests are met according
to doctrinal beliefs, and then an event is held, at the end of which
the administering religious body is happy to certify that the
individuals involved are ceremonially bonded.
The definition of the nature of this bond and the rules concerning who
may and may not enter into it vary from church to church. The church my
parents attended had, in the remote past, a pastor who was quite strict
in his application of some verses in the New Testament which he
believed meant that people who were divorced could not remarry. In his
tenure, then, divorced people weren??t married in that church.
Well, of course, it did happen from time to time. I remember one couple
who wanted to marry and the pastor refused. So they were married at the
courthouse, and showed up the next Sunday as a married couple. I
suspect the pastor fumed in private, but even such a conservative as he
knew there wasn??t too much he could do about it.
But, while what a given church thinks about who can and can??t live
together might vary, what the state thinks about it shouldn??t. The
state is legally obliged to avoid discrimination on the basis of race,
creed, gender, or sexual orientation. And that includes civil unions ?±
or whatever a marriage is when it is conducted outside the boundaries
of religious sanction.
I think the best advice on this matter is found in the Scriptures and
it starts ?®Render unto Caesar what is Caesar??s.?∆ Caesar ?± in this case,
the state ?± determines civil matters, and as such is bound by a code of
non-discrimination. And that means, logically, that people can not be
prohibited from civil unions by their race or their gender.
Now marriage, as a religious sacrament, might be a different matter ?±
but that would be determined by individual churches. Your church might
hold that same-sex civil unions are not to be sanctified as marriages,
just as it might say that someone could not get baptized unless they
avoided strong drink, prostitutes and heroin. My church, on the other
hand, might be happy to marry any couple who wanted to be so blessed;
or it might not do marriages at all, thinking them to be somehow
non-canonical.
The point here
is that the wall of separation between church and state is more
egregiously broached by marriage than by anything else of which I can
think ?± and we would all be better off it we moved marriage, as a
sacrament, back to the church and left civil unions to the state.
?ÿ
Mark West is a professor of mass communications at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
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