Yet another Holy Man is peeved that fewer couples want to get married in church or, even, want a pastor present to solemnize the marriage. Unusually, he is frank about the reason:
Since the 1960s, social expectations concerning sex, cohabitation, childbearing and marriage have quietly undergone profound changes.
Religion is the great loser in that revolution, not only ceding its cultural influence, but also struggling to govern the lifestyle choices of its own adherents.
Clergy and churches, once gatekeepers to the social respectability that marriage afforded, are now often reduced to paid extras and photo ops.
As I’ve said in the past, marriage is a vehicle for church control and power:
Like the cult-like Christian teachings about marriage itself, it’s all about control — and the pastor’s peevishness is about the loss of control.
It is not a coincidence that evangelicals have the highest divorce rate in society. How else could it be when the church’s teaching is that they — Oh, wait, I mean Our Invisible Friend! — have first dibs on your life, and your family gets no more than the leftovers?
Bruce Gerencser, a pastor turned atheist, has written extensively and with rare honesty about the malignant effect of this teaching upon his own marriage; he’s well worth paying attention to.
My children and Polly have long since forgiven me for not giving them the time they deserved. They understand why I worked like I did, but I have a hard time forgiving myself for putting God, Jesus, the church, preaching, and winning souls before my family. No matter how often I talk about this with my counselor, the guilt and sense of loss remain.
When taken seriously, Christian teaching makes marriage no more than an exercise in animal husbandry, an institution for procreation and growing the cult; it is not — Repeat, NOT — about mutual loyalty, shared ambitions, building satisfying lives together. Any preacher will tell you: Those things are presumptions upon the absolutely sovereignty of The Creator Of The Whole Big Universe, who alone is worthy of your loyalty, and who will tell you what are your ambitions.
So it pleases me to encounter yet another preacher who is complaining about his loss of influence, his struggles to control the lifestyle choices of young members of his congregation, that he is no longer a gatekeeper; those complaints are a waypoint on our cultural trip out of decadence. Good for us, then.