McChurch - The Institution of Marriage in the Holy American Empire

I’ve never been much of a fan of Emperor Constantine, who took a poll one day and determined that the Christians were outnumbering the lions, and he was likely to be voted out of office. Besides, my instincts are that the church does better under persecution than it does as the theology of choice by 51% of the people.

Bring on the persecution!

What followed the creation of the “Holy Roman Empire” were the Warring Popes, the Crusades, Martin Luther, Henry VIII and America, not necessarily in that order. I am a fan of Henry VIII, not because of the way I eat chicken, but because Henry upset the theocratic applecart.

Of course, my fondness for Henry is not quite impartial. One of my ancestors, Edmond Moody, saved Henry’s life on a fox hunt so that Henry could flaunt further mischief in the face of history. Henry’s horse, it seems, braked to a sudden stop at the edge of a stream, while Henry continued on, a bloated guided missile whose head became lodged underwater in the mud.

Henry wanted a divorce - that’s all. Just a simple divorce. So he created a new Christian church (Church of England) out of which has come some of the best apologetics for the faith in Christian history. You might say, as well, that Henry began the momentum that drove the Puritans to the shores of North America to form a theocracy in their own image - a theocracy that gave us the Salem Witch Trials and our religion-neutral republic.

God bless Henry, while we pause for a moment of silence for Anne Boleyn, a tragic casualty in the marriage melodrama.

Now here comes (or came, as the case may be) Maine Legislative Document, LD 779, a bill to return the sacrament of marriage back to the church from the state by exempting certain licensed marriage agents, the clergy, from mandatory filing of marriages with the Town Hall.

With a hasty rap of the gavel on Tuesday, March 13, the bill died in Committee, 13x0, no work session intended.

The Evangelical Right was up in arms over this intended breach of the cognition of marriage by government as a divine institution. The fact that Evangelicals now enjoy a slightly higher divorce rate than do the rest of society and that the lowest divorce rate in the US is liberal Massachusetts would, you would think, persuade them to take a closer look.

As an evangelical pastor who stands in the distinct minority with the brethren, I resent having to file paperwork so that the state can keep track of who is doing whom and who is entitled to what. “Let the couples file their own paperwork if they wish to be on the official record,” is what I say.

In the meantime, if one of my marriages goes south, my role as licensed agent of the state is zip. The church giveth, and the state taketh away! What God has joined together, Caesar puts asunder.

The “hidden agenda,” of course, if there indeed was one, was to pave the way for same-sex marriages, the closest thing to persecution that the evangelical church has yet faced. The prospect that a same-sex couple might move in next door in our suburban enclaves of upper middle class, white Christian families strikes horror in the hearts of many, myself excluded.

I tend to be more focused on whether or not evangelist John Hagee will be successful in escalating the War on Terror to Armageddon, thereby killing two gods with one prayer.

Instead, let’s broaden the “War on Terrorism,” to include marriage. In the meantime, the church had better be about its mission of honoring and protecting the sacrament. Otherwise we may find ourselves uncoupled with the flick of a mouse.

Divine institution indeed!