In its December issue, the conservative Christian magazine First Things published “The Marriage Pledge,” by Christopher Seitz and Ephraim Radner, both Episcopal priests and theologians who teach at Wycliffe College in Toronto. The pledge commits clergy members not to sign “government-provided marriage certificates.” Its online version has attracted 370 signers.
“In many jurisdictions,” Dr. Seitz and Dr. Radner write, “including many of the United States, civil authorities have adopted a definition of marriage that explicitly rejects the age-old requirement of male-female pairing.” Therefore, to continue “with church practices that intertwine government marriage with Christian marriage will implicate the church in a false definition of marriage.”
The authors promise to “ask couples to seek civil marriage separately from their church-related vows and blessings.” And they “will preside only at those weddings that seek to establish a Christian marriage in accord with the principles articulated and lived out from the beginning of the church’s life.” In practice, they ask couples to be married in Christian rites with ministers or priests, then to have second services, with judges or justices of the peace, who will sign their state licenses.
R.R. Reno, a Catholic ethicist who edits First Things, said that he and fellow traditionalists had been mulling over such a statement for a while.
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