Wedding Vows
I went to a lovely wedding today -great couple, highly intelligent and educated and very much in love, beautiful service etc, etc. It was held in a local evangelical church and lots of the regular members came to support them.
The one thing that made me uncomfortable was the wedding vows... identical except that he promised to 'lead' and she to 'submit'.
Is this still common in religious ceremonies? Or is it generally confined to certain sorts of churches?
The one thing that made me uncomfortable was the wedding vows... identical except that he promised to 'lead' and she to 'submit'.
Is this still common in religious ceremonies? Or is it generally confined to certain sorts of churches?
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How does this work in places where vows are a legal requirement?
I think "lead" and "submit" speaks to a very specific type of theology that "obey" as part of eg the BCP doesn't necessarily.
Absolutely.
Neither my wife nor I believed that when we got married. So we avoided the traditional “obey”, believing it was a denial of the essence of our relationship. We committed to a partnership of mutual respect, based on mutual love. Fifty seven and a half years later, that’s the commitment which has endured and we’re both very happy about that.
Such as?
Are vows a legal requirement?
I'd imagine if that were the case then that would be taken care of by the legal marriage 'contract' in whatever form that took.
I know of instances here in the UK where Orthodox clergy don't act as 'registrars' as such. That bit is done by the secular authorities.
Ex_Organist will know better than I do.
I'm attending an Orthodox wedding soon. First I'll have attended. I'll be interested to see how it's done.
Two options:
(1) There is a civil wedding at the Regitter Office some time before the church ceremony.
(2) If the church has chosen to be registered for marriages then the civil ceremony is added to the church ceremony (e.g. between the two parts of the service - after the exchange of rings and before the crowning or at the end.) The vows are administered by an "approved person" (not necessarily the priest) who subsequently completes the civil certificate of marriage and the entry in the register (with signatures of the required number of witnesses).
This matches what used to be the practice in some Roman Catholic churches around 70 years ago (the only time that I attended a Catholic marriage) when the Registrar attended in the church vestry for a civil ceremony immediately after the church ceremony. My undertanding is that in other Roman Catholic churches the civil ceremony was held at the Register Office before the church ceremony. I did hear of one mixed Catholic-Orthodox marriage where there were three ceremonies on the same day (in different locations) - civil, followed by Catholic, followed by Orthodox.
I have also come across an Anglican-Orthodox mixed marriage, where the Anglican ceremony (which covered the civil requirement) was followed by an Orthodox ceremony in the same church.
Vows are a legal requirement (and also must be gendered vows specifically, regardless of the genders being married - ie you must vow to take X as your husband or wife specifically) in England and Wales, *except* for Quaker weddings who specifically are able to perform legal weddings without vows. I'm not sure of the legal position of Quaker weddings in Scotland, but I know that in Scotland vows don't have to be gendered as they do in England and Wales and you can vow to take X as your spouse rather than a husband or wife.
In England and Wales a legal wedding without a separate registrar can be held in Anglican, Jewish, and Quaker places of worship.
I don't know you could really describe the process as vows. It goes "do you, ABC, take XYZ, here present, as spouse?" "Yes." Sign some papers. The end.
After that, you're free to have any kind of ceremony you like, religious or otherwise, but the law isn't remotely interested.
That's interesting. I thought the Orthodox insisted on weddings taking place only in Orthodox places of worship and without non-Orthodox elements involved.
I'm intrigued by this, and not simply out of 'academic' interest ...
Would you mind a PM @Ex_Organist?
Feel free.
Yeah, that's patriarchal con-evo nonsense. The 'lead' and 'submit' language is only something you'll find in the sort of places that preach male headship.
Despite making no claim to be an expert on this, I do not think some of what has been said on this thread is correct.
First of all, as I understand it, and subject to a major caveat below, it is not the vows that make the wedding. What makes a wedding a wedding is each party independently and their own free will saying that they take the other one as a wife/husband respectively. They have to do this in the presence of witnesses, because otherwise who can say whether it ever happened. Where the vows fit in is that the medieval church and CofE included them as a statement of what they thought the couple ought to be committing themselves to.
Part of the reason why I am saying this is because prior to the Reformation the exchange I take/I take, in the presence of a witness, whether framed as answers to a question or as a simple statement, married a couple one to another, even if the church was not involved at all. It was also apparently possible that a betrothal 'I will take/I will take, again, whether as simple statements or in answer to questions, automatically became a marriage if the couple subsequently had sexual intercourse. However, a wedding not at the church door - i.e. not in the face of the church, did not fully create reciprocal property rights.
In a Registry Office, there is no requirement for vows. The only things that have to happen are that the couple must each declare individually that they are free to marry, i.e. not married to somebody else, and then that they take the other person as their partner. People can add vows provided they clear their form of words with the Registrar beforehand and the words contain no religious elements. They do not have to have them at all.
Over 50 years ago, I was at a wedding between a couple who belonged to a denomination which did not have clergy. There, the Registrar did not perform the ceremony. A respected friend of the couple did that. The Registrar sat in a room behind, having given the instructions that the celebrant and both husband and wife must say certain key words loudly enough for him to be able to hear them. After the ceremony, the couple then went into the room behind where the Registrar confirmed that they had got it right and issued the certificate.
The point about CofE and CinW weddings is that historically they have taken effect from the ceremony and not by any act of the state. Their forms of service do have vows which represent a traditional understanding of what Christian marriage, as distinct from any other sort of marriage ought to involve. The vows are not inherent to the concept of a marriage, but they were not optional and people could not choose their own. They set out what people at the time and for many generations thereafter assumed Christians marrying each other ought to be committing themselves to.
There has therefore always been a big question mark whether such a marriage is valid (i.e. 'works') if the service is not carried out correctly. The form of service in the 1662 prayer book prescribed the vows and they included the now controversial 'obey'. As I understand it, the 1928 prayer book would have given an option on this. However, that prayer book was never authorised. Some clergy went out on the limb, took the risk and used the 1928 format. Others refused to because they were worried that if they did, they might be performing weddings that were void. It would not be 'according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England'.
Divorce was less frequent in those days and as far as I know, the point was never tested in court.
The 1980 Alternative Service Book contained a marriage service and was authorised. As that included both an 'obey' and a non-'obey' option, it was taken from then onwards that the dilemma about validity no longer replied.
The Common Worship marriage service includes a wide range of options, including considerable flexibility in what order the key ingredients occur. However, I think it is generally assumed to be the case that there is still a serious risk for that a wedding that egregiously does not comply with Common Worship is not a wedding 'according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England'. It is therefore at risk of being void.
As examples of this,
As most shipmates in England will probably know, the law on how weddings are registered has been dramatically changed in recent years to bring the process more into line with that in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
We do regularly refer to marriage as a “covenant,” including in our wedding liturgies. We’re big on covenants.
The term sacramental refers to practices or objects that resemble sacraments but do not meet all three criteria. They may:
Be rituals or rites with spiritual significance (e.g., confirmation, marriage, ordination).
Be aids to devotion or teaching tools.
Lack Christ’s direct institution or the promise of grace.
Lutherans may celebrate these rites (often called “non-sacramental rites”) but do not consider them sacraments in the theological sense. For example:
Confirmation is a public affirmation of baptismal faith, not a sacrament.
Holy Matrimony and Holy Orders are honored but not universally treated as sacraments.
Whatever I said at the time, I've taken it to mean that I prioritise the care of my wife and then my growing family.
I regard my marriage as a fairly long and successful one, what I said in that nervous moment decades ago seems like something I did in a different life.
Thanks for the info, that all makes sense. All church weddings in England and Wales (except Anglican and Quaker) need an "approved person" in attendance iirc.
The required words (which I was including as "vows", as opposed to not having to say anything, eg in Quaker fashion) legally MUST be gendered in England and Wales - you must promise to take the other person as your husband or wife specifically, partner or spouse are not allowed terms. I know this because for nonbinary people who require a non-gendered version of a wedding service, the only legal version in England and Wales is a Quaker service which has no required words at all. In Scotland this is not the case and you may promise to take the other person as your spouse.
If two Quakers get married in a forest with nobody there to hear them does it make a sound?
Interesting, I was under the impression that the words were optional - do you know if "spouse" is a legally permitted term in Quaker ceremonies in England and Wales? I wonder if this is a new requirement because when I was looking at non-gendered wedding options for a friend a few years ago, there were not any specific required words.
I am not a lawyer but I think I remember reading that the Jewish and Quaker exceptions to English law were largely about venues. I think the Quakers do not have to register buildings unlike other religious organisations and can marry outside or anywhere else they like.
Everyone else needs a registered building.
I suspect historically this has been the status quo because there was a single authority for the Quakers who had generations of experience in making detailed minutes of things, so it was fairly straightforward to regulate it.
I'm not sure that the wording of vows in that context matters legally. I could be wrong.
Which brings up two other interesting points in my mind. First, historically Quakers were against making oaths (and I think even public promises and oaths were seen as unnecessary) which got them into a lot of trouble. So I wonder how far back the promises at a Quaker wedding go.
I could be misremembering, but I think the whole thing with the recognition of Quaker marriages occurred because the state tried to force them to confirm to English law (marriage in church) and they refused.
Second I wonder what would happen if there were different groups of Quakers. Presumably there are different groups of Jews for whom the Jewish exception applies, I wonder how that works. Maybe there's a central Jewish registration system.
That seems... incredibly unlikely.
But we also have a state supreme court case from the 1970s that said a wedding officiated by a mail-order minister was not valid. It was actually a bigamy prosecution; the court threw out the charge on the grounds that the second “marriage,” presided over by a friend with a mail-order Universal Life Church ordination, was not a valid marriage.
The state of things has been somewhat unclear since, in that it’s not exactly clear whether the ruling meant that no marriages performed by someone with mail-order (or online) credentials are recognized as complying with the law, or whether just that marriage was invalid. (The evidence showed that the friend who officiated was Catholic, and the court seemed to take the position that meant he could only be authorized by the Catholic Church, not by the Universal Life Church.)
The legislature seems to have assumed all such marriages were invalid, as they quickly passed a law legitimizing all marriages conducted by a Universal Life Church officiant up to the date of the court ruling. Notably, they didn’t say anything about after that date, nor did they change the law regarding who may officiate.
On the ground, lots of people here have friends obtain credentials online to marry them, and so far as I know, it hasn’t become an issue in any other case. I will admit I have occasionally had a word with people involved if I feel sufficiently close to them to butt in and if I can do so enough in advance of the wedding that they can fairly easily make reasonable adjustments, like plan a side trip to the courthouse. Otherwise, I keep my mouth shut.
The system here is pretty old and not really fit for the 21st century, but if it is found that someone is flouting it then the punishment is quite strong.
And a slight edit to what I said earlier; the relevant state supreme court decision was in 1980, not the 1970s.
In every marriage there is someone who is always right, the other person is the husband.
If a couple had wedding photos etc, and hadn't realised they were not legally married, it was straightford to confirm they had a common law marriage.
I was reading about Jewish marriage ceremonies earlier and apparently it is possible to be "accidentally" married. If you are in front of the correct person and you say/do the right things then you are officially married. Which might be important if you then want to get married to someone else as under Jewish law you might need to be officially divorced first.
I'm not sure how this might happen but I guess children playing at being married. Or maybe actors in a wedding scene.
That would go completely against a deeply embedded assumption that is not even just a modern one. It goes back to well before the Reformation that marriage is something which two people commit themselves to of their own free will. Marriage is not something a priest, a church or the state out of their benevolence confer on two people. It is something they give each other. The church or state's role is to recognise, endorse and in the church's case bless this.
Without some version of 'I take/I take', there is no way of demonstrating that this has happened. To put it bluntly, otherwise two innocent young people, who possibly did not even know each other, could find themselves emerging from a meeting married to each other whether they liked it or not.
I am not a Quaker, but from what I know of the Quaker view of life, that would also strike me as a particularly unQuakerlike way of looking at things.
To answer @Arethosemyfeet's question, they aren't married.
Also, it is not true that there would be no way of knowing whether people had married each other without the words being said because they would still have to sign the register. Nobody would be able to sign a marriage register by accident. Marriage is absolutely sonething that a state confers on people because it is only recognised by the state if it happens within certain parameters. If two people say the recognised words to each other outside of those parameters the state does not confer marriage upon them. That is the whole point of people fighting for gay marriage for eg. To act as if the state plays no role in assigning legally-recognised marriages seems like a strange position that is not borne out by the experiences of people whose marriages have not been legally permitted.