Marriage

A rainbow flag is seen on the wall of a Catholic church in Cologne, Germany as the building is open for same-sex couples to receive a blessing. REUTERS/Thilo Schmuelgen/File Photo

The Vatican on Thursday moved to calm Catholic bishops in some countries who have balked over last month's approval of blessings for same-sex couples, telling them that the measure is not “heretical” or “blasphemous.” In a five-page statement, the Vatican's doctrinal office also acknowledged that such blessings could be “imprudent” in some countries where people who receive them might become targets of violence, or risk prison or even death.

Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) speaks during a news conference following the weekly Democratic caucus luncheon at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Nov. 29, 2022. REUTERS/Sarah Silbiger

The Senate passed a bill on Tuesday that would protect federal recognition of same-sex marriage, a measure taken up in response to worries the Supreme Court could overturn a 2015 decision that legalized it nationwide.

Krispin Mayfield 12-29-2021
Illustration of pink hands with a wedding band folded in prayer among flowers, birds, and bees

Illustration by Jordan Kay

Note: This article contains references to sexual trauma.

IT WASN'T SHEILA Wray Gregoire’s initial plan to make a career of writing about the intimate lives of evangelicals. But when she began her “mom blog,” To Love, Honor, and Vacuum, in 2008, she found her readers responded most when she wrote about sex.

Four years later, Gregoire wrote The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex and quickly found herself as a keynote speaker at conferences and churches throughout the United States and her home country, Canada. Recently, with her daughter Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach and statistician Joanna Sawatsky, she wrote The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended to free women from toxic messages about sex and marriage often promoted in the church.

Gregoire told Sojourners she initially wasn’t aware of how pervasive these toxic teachings were. But after hearing from women that Love and Respect, a marriage advice book by popular Christian speaker Emerson Eggerichs (which boasts more than 2 million copies in sales), had been harmful, she read it for herself. She was horrified to find that the entire chapter on sex was addressed solely to women, instructing them to care for their husbands’ sexual needs. “Until then, we were working with blinders on as we created helpful resources to improve people’s marriages and sex lives,” Gregoire wrote in The Great Sex Rescue. “Once we read it, we realized that we needed to do far more.”

Sex as control

AS A CHRISTIAN couples therapist, I’ve been following Gregoire’s work and the backlash she has faced from some conservative evangelical men. Gregoire believes the teachings on women’s sexual obligations are due in part to who writes the books on sex and marriage popular in white evangelical churches: namely men, such as Eggerichs and Gary Thomas, author of Sacred Marriage. Other commonly read books are co-authored by couples, such as The Meaning of Marriage by Tim and Kathy Keller and The Act of Marriage by Tim and Beverly LaHaye.

As Lindenbach told Sojourners, “When you look at the best-selling books, when you look at who is running the organizations like Focus [on the Family] and Christianity Today, when you look at the people who are the most influential voices in evangelical Christianity, they are [mainly] men.” This influences how the church thinks about sex, she explains. “Most of the time, even the women who have influential voices are speaking on behalf of men.”

In writing The Great Sex Rescue, Gregoire, Lindenbach, and Sawatsky analyzed the popular marriage and sex books commonly read by evangelicals. They began with the top 10 Christian marriage books on Amazon, excluding those that did not significantly discuss sex. They also included other influential Christian books about sex, such as Every Man’s Battle by Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker, and added a top-selling secular book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John M. Gottman and Nan Silver, for comparison.

While not all the books they reviewed were problematic, several contained harmful messages, such as viewing sex as a physical need only men have, rather than a mutual experience of intimacy, or blaming women for their husbands’ pornography use or affairs. Gregoire, Lindenbach, and Sawatsky also found exhortations that wives should maintain their appearance or weight as it was when they got married, arguing that failing to do so would be sinful. Many taught that women were prohibited from saying no to sex unless it was for a time of prayer and fasting approved by the husband. Of all the Christian books studied, none mentioned consent.

The cover of "Blessed Union" shows a heart scratched into a wooden table.

HOW DO WE love someone with a mental illness? In a NAMI blog post titled “How To Love Someone With A Mental Illness,” the writer notes, “Choosing to love someone who acts or feels unlovable can be part of what helps them see they are valued as a whole person, they are not the sum total of their pain … Mental illnesses are illnesses, and sometimes they can change someone’s circumstances … they can even change their personalities for a time, change their interests, their spirit. But they are the same person you have always loved, and they need you to see that person in them—even when they can’t see themselves clearly” (emphasis mine).

After all, mental illness does not change the fact we are beloved children of God. Even though they are the same person you have always loved, it can be hard to recognize them. Looking through God’s eyes helps us to see past the label and the diagnosis.

A great example of “choosing to love” came to me through a story from my friend Monique. Over lunch, I asked Monique what I thought was a philosophical question about marriage and mental illness. The conversation turned personal very quickly, however.

Monique shared with me that her vision for her marriage is to flourish, knowing both she and her partner have mental illness. She said flourishing for their marriage happens when they are up front with each other about their mental health status, can state their needs, and can get the support they need.

Reprinted with permission by Chalice Press.

Hannah Pape 10-09-2019

Photo by Andrew Itaga on Unsplash

As people of faith, our blood should boil when we hear people try to say our God is for marriage segregation.

Juliet Vedral 3-11-2019

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash.

Alicia Akins, a writer based in Washington, D.C., decided to take some of the most painful questions single women seeking marriage ask and seek answers for in scripture. Her ‘Single Ladies Catechism’ consists of 31 questions, one for each day of the month, with answers rooted in the Bible.

Naila Inayat 6-07-2017

Image via RNS/Reuters/Khuram Parvez

Masih recently filed for divorce from a husband she said “frequently beats me up” and a mother-in-law who she said burned her leg with coal.

But under the country’s laws, she must produce a witness who would testify to committing adultery with her husband. As a result, she’s now reluctantly planning to renounce her faith.

Juliet Vedral 3-04-2016

Image via /Shutterstock.com

I am a Christian woman in my mid-30s, and I am single. And though I enjoy a life that I would consider abundant — full of friends and family, great professional opportunities, a decent level of financial freedom, and above all else, an extremely deep spiritual relationship with the Creator of the Universe — I recognize that to many younger women, I’m a cautionary tale. Because I am single.

Image via Drop of Light / Shutterstock.com

There is intense anticipation in the Catholic Church — and no small amount of anxiety for traditionalists — over what Pope Francis will say about communion for divorced and remarried Catholics in a key document expected in the coming weeks. But Francis has already made an intriguing change in this area, albeit one that only concerns the Vatican’s arcane diplomatic protocol and a very, very select group: Catholic heads of state.

Kirsten Lamb 2-17-2016

Every time my husband and I talk about having a third child, I cry. I uggggly cry. He thought we were just talking about hopes and dreams for the future and third-row seating. Boy was he wrong.

The emotion that welled up inside of me (and still does) is hard to put into words, but I will try.

Still Life With Fruit, Caravaggio / Wikimedia Commons

Still Life With Fruit, Caravaggio / Wikimedia Commons

IN MY 20s, I came to the unsettling conclusion that God was calling me to have a baby. Familiar with Frederick Buechner’s declaration that vocation “is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet,” I believed that my visceral yearning for children pointed toward my deep gladness. How my desire for children would meet the world’s great need, however, was far from clear, particularly in my small urban church where people routinely made great sacrifices in response to poverty and injustice.

In my progressive circles, childbearing can also be cast as ethically questionable, contributing to overpopulation and environmental degradation. In 2006, Katharine Jefferts Schori, then the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, summed up this view when she told an interviewer that “Episcopalians tend to be better-educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than some other denominations. ... We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion.” More crudely, proponents of a growing “childfree” movement dismissed parents as self-absorbed “breeders.”

I was also leery of claiming a call to motherhood because within some strains of Christianity, a woman’s vocation to motherhood is assumed, regardless of her circumstances or predilections. Many evangelical and Catholic Christians uphold the traditional nuclear family of husband, wife,

and children as the God-ordained bedrock of society and the church. Writing for the Family Research Council, Dr. Andreas J. Kostenberger of the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary writes, “The Bible defines ‘family’ in a narrow sense as the union of one man and one woman in matrimony which is normally blessed with one or several natural or adopted children” (emphasis in original). I feared that by claiming motherhood as my vocation, I might inadvertently support a limited vision that idolizes traditional families and sees childbearing as every woman’s primary calling.

Even Pope Francis has harsh words for those who choose not to procreate. As reported by the Catholic News Service in June 2014, Pope Francis stated that among “things Jesus doesn’t like” are married couples “who don’t want children, who want to be without fruitfulness.” Such couples are convinced, he argued, that by remaining childless they “can see the world, be on vacation...have a fancy home in the country...be carefree.” He warned that such couples are doomed to a bitter, lonely old age. The stereotype of childless adults as embittered hedonists is so widespread that writer Meghan Daum titled her recent anthology of essays by childless writers Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed.

Megan McCabe 10-16-2015

Image via  / Shutterstock

Intimate partner violence is a pervasive problem in our society. Moreover, while intimate partner violence affects men in addition to women, it disproportionally victimizes women. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as many as 47.1% of women experience at least one act of psychological aggression in their lifetime. This aggression can turn physically violent: 31.5% of women experience physical violence in their lifetime, while 22.3% of women are victimized at least once by a severe act of violence. Intimate partners also perpetrate sexual violence. About 8.8% of women are raped and another 15.8% are sexually victimized by a partner in their lifetime. Finally, 9.2% of women are stalked by a partner to the point of fearing for their physical safety.

Given this reality, it is important to recognize that at any given time members of our congregations are suffering various forms of abuse. Such experiences of violence and abuse, past and present, are part of the background that inform the messages that individuals take away from Christian discussions of relationships and marriage — including reflections and sermons on Ephesians 5.

Image via /Shutterstock

The Ashley Madison hack — the public release of emails of wannabe adulterers — has now ensnared a theologian with a famous name in some Christian circles.

Robert Craig Sproul Jr., best known by his first initials, stepped up Aug. 31 to face his sorrow — and teach a lesson in God’s grace in the process.

new survey released from Pew Research Center, conducted in the lead-up to the pontiff’s visit, examined U.S. Catholics’ attitudes on family, marriage, and sexuality, as well as on issues close to the pope’s heart — concern for the poor, care for the environment, and forgiveness of sins. The results found Catholics “remarkably accepting of a wide variety of non-traditional families.”

This is not to say longstanding church teaching on marriage has changed — the church very much still upholds lifelong heterosexual monogamous marriage with children as the divine plan for coupleship, and nine-in-ten U.S. Catholics say this is the ideal arrangement. But large majorities now say other familial arrangements are acceptable, too.  

According to the survey of U.S. Catholics, 85 percent say it is acceptable for a man and woman to live together as a couple outside of marriage, and 84 percent say it is acceptable for raise children in this arrangement. Two-thirds say it is acceptable for same-sex couples to raise children. And 70 percent say married couples who choose to not have children are choosing a lifestyle that is just as good as any other.

Richard Wolf 9-01-2015

Image via Mike Wynn / The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal / RNS

The Supreme Court refused Aug. 31 to let a Kentucky county clerk deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples because of what she said were her religious beliefs.

The ruling, made without comment or any apparent dissents, is an early indication that while some pushback against gay marriage on religious grounds may be upheld, the justices won’t tolerate it from public officials.

David Gushee 8-19-2015

Image via graham tomlin/Shutterstock

A LifeWay Research survey released last week on the morality of divorce found that for most Americans, the reason an individual initiates divorce doesn’t matter in terms of how they morally evaluate the rightness or wrongness of that divorce. Pastors, though, still tend to draw moral distinctions between reasons for divorce.

Based on years of research on Christian tradition as it pertains to marriage and divorce, I can tell you what this finding means. The answer is not especially pretty: Routine divorce is now inevitable in American culture, including among religious people — with one possible exception.

Let’s take this problem apart.

Juliet Vedral 7-20-2015
Image via  isak55/Shutterstock

Image via  /Shutterstock

A few weeks ago, the single person’s lament was eloquently stated in The New York Times opinion pages, with a piece called "The Supreme Court’s Lonely Hearts’ Club" by Michael Cobb. Cobb articulated some of the pause that many of us singles have felt as the conversation has gone on about marriage, in particular how Justice Kennedy captured the spirit of the age by extolling the matrimony as the highest institution in the land.

I don’t disagree about the importance of marriage, but I have a lot of concern about how it has been talked about and in many ways idolized in this country. Much of the church has led the way on this idolatry — on the policy end, claiming the need to defend marriage; on the spiritual side, treating marriage as a pseudo-salvation, as though being married means that in some way you’ve "arrived" spiritually.

A few weeks ago, the single person’s lament was eloquently stated in The New York Times opinion pages, with a piece called "The Supreme Court’s Lonely Hearts’ Club" by Michael Cobb. Cobb articulated some of the pause that many of us singles have felt as the conversation has gone on about marriage, in particular how Justice Kennedy captured the spirit of the age by extolling the matrimony as the highest institution in the land.

I don’t disagree about the importance of marriage, but I have a lot of concern about how it has been talked about and in many ways idolized in this country. Much of the church has led the way on this idolatry — on the policy end, claiming the need to defend marriage; on the spiritual side, treating marriage as a pseudo-salvation, as though being married means that in some way you’ve "arrived" spiritually.

A few weeks ago, the single person’s lament was eloquently stated in The New York Times opinion pages, with a piece called "The Supreme Court’s Lonely Hearts’ Club" by Michael Cobb. Cobb articulated some of the pause that many of us singles have felt as the conversation has gone on about marriage, in particular how Justice Kennedy captured the spirit of the age by extolling the matrimony as the highest institution in the land.

I don’t disagree about the importance of marriage, but I have a lot of concern about how it has been talked about and in many ways idolized in this country. Much of the church has led the way on this idolatry — on the policy end, claiming the need to defend marriage; on the spiritual side, treating marriage as a pseudo-salvation, as though being married means that in some way you’ve "arrived" spiritually.

Christian Piatt 7-14-2015
Image via Kichigin/Shutterstock

Image via /Shutterstock

“I believe Jesus would. I don’t have any verse in scripture. … I believe Jesus would approve gay marriage, but that’s just my own personal belief. I think Jesus would encourage any love affair if it was honest and sincere and was not damaging to anyone else, and I don’t see that gay marriage damages anyone else…” —Jimmy Carter, from his interview with Huffington Post Live

I grew up in Texas as a churchgoing Baptist. I memorized Bible verses as part of my “sword drills,” went to church camp, took part in the clown ministry and even helped in the nursery.

Then I was kicked out at age seventeen for asking too many questions. My youth minister actually threw a Bible at my head and, in a less than nuanced way, invited me to move on, lest I contaminate the minds and hearts of my friends with my doubt.

Some of my questions had to do with their biblical interpretation, which was literal — and their assertion that the texts we were memorizing were the perfect, infallible Word of God, straight from the mind of the Divine to the paper on which it was written.

I had questions.

Joe Kay 6-15-2015
Image via Syda Productions/shutterstock.com

Image via Syda Productions/shutterstock.com

When I reached high school and started dating, my relatives had a lot of questions: "This girl you’re going to the movies with: Is she Catholic? Slovak? What’s her family’s last name? What does her father do for a living?"

She had to be Catholic, of course. Preferably Slovak. If not, some other nearby nationality. Anything less would get disapproving comments. Those questions may sound odd now, but they mattered back then. The Catholic Church had only recently concluded Vatican II, which tried to bridge centuries of animosity between churches. Accepting Protestants as equals was something new. And many of the immigrants in my neighborhood were trying to preserve the culture and traditions that they brought from Europe. They were afraid of losing their heritage in the new land.

For them, traditional marriage meant choosing someone from the same faith, the same ethnic background. Simply put, they were afraid. Terrified, actually. They feared that if marriage changed, their world would fall apart. 

That's why to so many people, my relationship wasn’t about finding someone who fit me — it was more about me finding someone who fit them.

Photo via Cathleen Falsani / RNS

Pope Francis officiated the weddings of 20 couples at St. Peter’s Basilica in September 2014. Photo via Cathleen Falsani / RNS

The wedding season is in full swing, and Pope Francis used the occasion on May 27 to warn couples not to marry too quickly, while also reaffirming the Vatican’s opposition to gay nuptials.

Addressing crowds of followers at his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square, the pontiff urged couples to take their engagement seriously.

“Betrothal is, in other words, the time in which two people are called to work on love, a shared and profound task,” he said.