ACLU sues over PA requirement that regular ministers preside over marriage
The ACLU’s press release begins:
The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania filed the first three lawsuits today in a planned statewide challenge of a recent judicial declaration stating that marriages are invalid if presided over by a minister who does not regularly serve a church or preach in a physical house of worship. The ruling potentially endangers thousands of marriages in Pennsylvania.
The press release links to the ACLU’s complaints. Law.com carried this October 29, 2007 report on the ruling that has triggered the suits, Heyer v. Hollerbush, No. 2007 SU 2132 Y08 (York Co., Pa., Ct. C.P).
One Comment
I have real concerns about ordinations as a minister by the so-called “Universal life Church,” which claimes in its linked rpess release to have ordained twenty million (20,000,000) ministers, much less ordination.org, and even more about “on-line” weddings except in very special circumstances like someone being shipped out to Iraq where proxy procedures have been used. I think these people are abusing First Amendment protections and precedents. To that extent, my first reaction was to think that this was one ACLU suit with which I could agree. However, the ACLU’s long history of hostility to religion, particularly Christianity, and their proposed requirement that a minister must serve a brick and mortar church, raises significant questions about what is really going on here. Nobody involved in creation of the Constitution or Bill of Rights would ever have dreamed of this problem or any attempt, under the guise of the First Amendment, to remove ministers from the process of weddings and marriage.
Protestants, including those in large denominations and churches, often speak of “the priesthood of all believers,” but, in my own personal theological opinion, that does not make us all “ministers” qualified to perform marriages. It does not, however, follow that one must be a full-time minister preaching sermons in a brick and mortar church to be qualified to performa marriage ceremonies. One could become a legitimate minister by correspondence, self-study with the aid of other knowledgeable people, etc., or at a seminary over which the courts have held the First Amendment deprives the state of any authority to decide or regulate who may and who may not be granted a theology degree after what is hopefully a legitimately rigorous course of study, but most of the many real ministers I have known or known about underwent substantial education both in the Bible and in other subjects likely to be encountered in ministering to people, including the challenges of marriage and life. I have been a member of large and small congregations, and state officer, in one denomination, a member of one of the largest congregations in another, a member and officer of others, and currently serve as our church’s lay delegate to the local Ministerial Alliance. I have known well-educated, qualified, and sincere ministers, some of whom were in full-time ministry in hospitals, para-church organizations reaching out to young people, running the interdenominational entity handling emergency care and aid, etc., just as I have well-educated, highly-qualified, ordained ministers in full time service to established brick and mortar churches of major denominations, including the one who married my wife and me in church, who, because of their and others’ assignments, do not regularly preach sermons because another minister in the large church usually does that. I have had vicars and worker-preacher ministers who, because another church of which I was, and am, a member was too small to pay him a living salary for full-time service, held another job, too. Our current, well-educated and qualified, minister serves two congregations. I recall once hearing an itinerant street preacher, who I suspect was wholly self-taught, express an insight and make a point I had not received before and needed to hear at the time. The early church, like the church in China and other countries today, functioned in “house churches” which often moved to avoid official and mob persecution, but would anyone challenge a marriage performed by one of the original Apostles or gospel writers?
Who has religious authority to define religious qualifications for ordination, ordain someone as a minister, or authorize them to perform marriages, is a matter the First Amendment puts beyond state control. It would, however, appear proper for the state to require that anyone who intended to perform marriage ceremonies as a minister register, and demonstrate basic familiarity with applicable state law, in advance. Our law also recognizes situations in which the temporal courts may determine whether someone who claims to be a minister, or some entity claims to be a church, etc., is telling the truth about that or trying to evade another law. Except for relatively rare emergency situations, it would appear that the person officiating at a wedding could and should be required by law to actually be there, along with the witnesses, whether they be acting as a minister, a justice of the peace, a judge, etc. Theoretically, a minister from out of state might register in the state where the wedding was planned, but justices and judges can only act within their jurisdictions. The whole purpose of this, as far as the law, as distinguished from the doctrines of a particular church, are concerned, is to provide solid documentation of the fact that somebody with some manner of authority pronounce the couple married and certify that fact to the state, for everyone’s protection. Surely nobody acting in good faith would challenge the right of Billy Graham, who carries his formal church membership in Dallas, has his headquarters in North Carolina, and has preached in and outside of church buildings all over the world, or the Pope, etc., to perform a wedding in Pennsylvania or Texas, or a chaplain to do so in a remote area. Ship captains used to have this authority when voyages took months.
By the way, there is a great, ancient, discussion of the validity of a marriage in “Silas Marner” which we all read in high school, which reads in part “It’s not the meaning or the words, it’s the register that does it.”
In Texas law, marriages by anyone who both spouses honestly and reasonably believed to be legally qualified, not to mention common-law marriages without ceremonies or recording, have long been recognized as valid in the absence of extrinsic fraud, etc., but, as one court put it, “an alleged common-law marriage allegedly contracted within walking distance of the county clerk’s office and within the sound of church bells requires convincing proof,” and more recent statutory changes may very well create a problem if a spouse abandons the other for two years. When I attended high school and college in Pennsylvania, they also recognized common-law marriages if the couple had openly lived together as husband and wife but, unlike Texas, required that this continue for two or three years, I forget which.
I know no state which does not indulge a strong presumption in favor of the validity of marriages.
We have discussed this at Ministerial Alliance, and, like the large church in which my wife and I were married, many churches and ministers are coming to require extensive pre-marital counseling, because it appears to help, and we know it helped us and wouldn’t take for ours, but that requires that the minister have some extra training and expertise and actually be with you more than once before the wedding, satisfy himself that the couple appears to know and be sincere about what they are getting into, etc. How can an “internet minister” do that. I’ve never heard of any arguably legitimate minister with a national TV or other following doing a wedding without being there and meeting the couple.
Why worry about this, from a legal standpoint, when, because, in the process of creating no-fault divorce, we actually created divorce on demand of either party, making it easier to get out of the marriage than the mortgage. The most searched name on the Internet may hold the record for the shortest marriage, 17 minutes, before or after which the couple had two children. The court granting an annulment or divorce, on any ground, would have the power and duty to provide for child support and make an equitable division of the marital estate as defined in all cases by state laws. Federal law, and laws mandated thereby and adopted in every state, require child support even if the couple were never married, much less if a marriage were annulled or terminated by divorce. This raises serious questions in my mind, as a retired lawyer with family law experience, about the accuracy and the honesty of some of what the ACLU alleged in its article to which you linked, but I don’t have ready access to the Pennsylvania case law involved.