MARRAIGE SOLUTION, a blessing...

The solution to all of the issues surrounding marriage today is simple: disallow the clergy from carrying out a legal state function. Clergy can not divorce, why permit them to marry.

Some churches have already questioned their participation in a state role. "We are looking at the function of our church in marriage ceremonies," says Anita Hill, a pastor at Saint Paul-Reformation, Saint Paul, MI. "We're not in the wedding business; we're in the blessing business."

Rev. Hill’s church joins dozens of congregations and clergy persons who now refuse to carry out a state function. All couples may use the church for blessings, this solution reasons. The only difference is that heterosexual couples take the added step of finding a court house to make their "contract" legal.

The United Church of Christ(UCC) says dozens of its churches across the country have begun to forsake the legal aspect of marriage and that individual clergy persons are refusing to sign marriage certificates. “When a law is not morally right, we are not going to follow it," says Reverend Don Portwood of Lyndale, MI.

“Jettisoning the legal portion of marriage has only reinforced the spiritual aspect,” Rev. Hill says. "As a congregation, we started coming back to the importance of marriage as an institution to the understanding of the importance of having a communal ritual."

All people need the essential aspects of faith communities; in particular persons broken by divorce. As it is today, marriage is a blessing and divorce a curse. Jesus did celebrate at his friend's wedding but his entire ministry is summed up in the story of the Good Samaritan.

Rethinking the legal aspect of marriage will clarify and enhance the roles both the church and government must play in a healthy society. The role of the church is to bless the union and pick up the broken hearted; the role of the government is to legally bind and dissolve a contact. Each should do their part well.