It is often remarked by church historians that the authentic development of theological doctrine does not occur until it is challenged by the advent of a new heresy. Something similar might be said about the development of traditional moral wisdom—such wisdom doesn’t translate itself into explicit philosophical argument until it is forced to do so by some unsound innovation which challenges it.

Perhaps the most striking consequence of this challenge—for those who are willing to listen—is the cogency and persuasiveness of the growing intellectual defense of traditional marriage: reasoned argument on behalf of what was once tacit moral consensus. The best of this intellectual defense is on display in a recent book, The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, and Morals (Spence Publishing, 2006, 316 pp.) edited by University of Chicago professor of social and political ethics, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Princeton University professor of jurisprudence, Robert P. George.

The book is the result of a conference held at Princeton in 2005, organized by the dynamic new scholarly think-tank, the Witherspoon Institute. The Meaning of Marriage comprises eleven essays by an interdisciplinary team of leading academics. Together the essays consider the institution of marriage from a variety of fields, including history, ethics, public policy, law, economics, philosophy, sociology, and political science. As the book shows, the advent of legalized same-sex unions in recent years is only the culmination of a destabilizing trend which began at least five decades ago, and it is as much the result of unprecedented structural changes in the everyday life of modern societies as it is the result of ideological shifts in sexual morality.

In her introduction to the book, Professor Elshtain laments the shallowness of much of the contemporary public debate regarding marriage. Her complaint is surely correct, and in this regard the serious and measured arguments put forth in The Meaning of Marriage are a welcome change. Elshtain’s introduction also provides a succinct summary of each essay, helpfully highlighting the key points. One of the most interesting (but demanding) essays is "Sacrilege and Sacrament" by British philosopher Roger Scruton. As Elshtain puts it,

... Scruton addresses marriage from a far-reaching humanistic perspective, highlighting important methodological considerations in the study of human practices. Scruton begins by contrasting the external, detached stance assumed by social science, and the internal, first-person perspective of lived human experience. Considered from the viewpoint of the former, marriage provides essential social functions for perpetuating society over time, and from the viewpoint of the latter, marriage sanctifies our sexual desire by elevating it into existential commitment to another person.

Social scientist Elizabeth Marquardt and University of Chicago professor Don S. Browning, in their essay "What about the Children? Liberal Cautions on Same-Sex Marriage," sketch a "philosophical anthropology" of marriage. They explore, as Elshtain puts it, "the similarities between the traditional views of Aristotle and Aquinas on the one hand, and contemporary evolutionary psychology on the other. These disparate sources concur on the importance of ‘kin altruism’ for effective child rearing, an insight overlooked by most same-sex marriage proponents." Another fascinating essay is "Changing Dynamics of the Family in Recent European History" by Princeton economic historian Harold James. Again, Elshtain:

John Maynard Keynes famously remarked, "In the long run we are all dead anyway." True enough for us the living, but not so for society’s future generations—they are the long run. Economists, therefore, often search for ‘inter-generational equity’ and social mechanisms that can make reliable and legitimate transfers between generations…. Harold James argues the family is perhaps the only social institution capable of achieving inter-generational and inter-temporal equity. A living generation’s concern for society’s future stems largely from concern for the prospects of its own children. This concern provides the present generation with incentives to undertake projects and activities whose benefits they will never see, but which their descendants will enjoy.

James’ essay provides a penetrating lens through which to see the current depopulation crisis plaguing Western Europe and Japan (and for that matter, "blue state America" as well): abandonment of the traditional family undermines the economic and political viability of entire societies.

Frequent tothesource writer Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse contributes a provocative essay entitled "Why Unilateral Divorce Has No Place in a Free Society." She analyzes rival conceptions of marriage and the family in economic terms and shows how a divorce culture, and a fortiori a same-sex union culture, diminishes personal liberty and enhances the scope of state power. In effect, Morse presents the libertarian argument for traditional marriage.

Maggie Gallagher and University of Virginia professor, W. Bradford Wilcox, each address marriage from a sociological perspective. Gallagher’s piece "(How) Does Marriage Protect Child Well-Being" sketches the present state of marriage research and provides a helpful summary of the sociological data which demonstrate the superiority of traditional marriage for children. Wilcox’s "Suffer the Little Children: Marriage, the Poor, and the Commonweal" details a sociological history of the family since the 1960s, stressing the destructive consequences of abortion and widespread contraception, and shows how divorce and broken families lead to material poverty. From this conclusion Elshtain points to an important lesson: "Wilcox’s argument should dispel the common assumption that the plight of today’s poor is simply a result of economic inequality and the cultural values and family structure are of secondary importance." On the contrary, cultural values and family structure are perhaps the dominant contributors to poverty.

The other essays in the book are also engaging, and each offers a distinct vantage point on marriage. Legal scholar David F. Forte’s "The Framers’ Idea of Marriage and Family" addresses how the American founding generation saw the importance of marriage and the family. Amherst political philosopher Hadley Arkes argues in "The Family and the Law" that legal endorsement of same-sex unions will likely mark the end of any public regulation of sexuality at all—even perhaps pedophilia. Once a principle is enshrined in law, he writes, it works itself out to its logical conclusion.

Robert P. George’s essay, "What’s Sex Got to Do with It? Marriage, Morality, and Rationality," makes a philosophical argument for the immorality of homosexual activity. George contends that only in the biological and psychological complementarity shared by a man and a woman can actual "one-flesh" unity be achieved. Sexual activity outside this context violates the basic good of marriage.

The contemporary situation in family law and its historical roots are the subjects of law professor Katherine Shaw Spaht’s essay, "The Current Crisis in Marriage Law, Its Origins, and Its Impact." Political theorist Seana Sugrue rounds out the collection with "Soft-Despotism and Same-Sex Marriage," in which she addresses the family as a bulwark of civil society, drawing upon the work of Alexis de Tocqueville.

The Meaning of Marriage should be required reading for anyone who wishes to think seriously about the nature of marriage and the family and about their role in contributing to individual and social well-being. Proponents of same-sex unions and other inheritors of the sexual revolution will be confronted by a stiff challenge. Defenders of traditional marriage and family life will acquire a potent set of arguments on their behalf, none of which is dependent upon religious claims. In either case, Elshtain and George’s The Meaning of Marriage will provoke.

Happy Mother's Day

If I am Thy child, O God, it is because Thou gavest me such a mother. - St. Augustine

The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom. - H.W. Beecher

Motherhood: All love begins and ends there. - Robert Browning

All that I am or hope to be I owe to my angel mother. I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life. - Abraham Lincoln

The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother. - Henry Ward Beecher

“Unilateral Divorce:” a rhetorical contribution of this volume

I participated in the conference that produced The Meaning of Marriage. In “Why Unilateral Divorce Has No Place in a Free Society,” I objected to the term “no-fault divorce” and introduced the term “unilateral divorce.” Under current divorce rules in most states, one party can end the marriage independently of the wishes of the other party. In no other area of law is the “sanctity of contract” treated in such a cavalier manner.

I have been gratified to see other people begin to use this term. Albert Mohler used his weekly column to comment on my article. “The very fact that easy divorce, facilitated by law and virtually uncontestable in court, was labeled “no-fault” in the first place was a significant concession to the divorce culture.”

New York is one of the few states which still has a fault-based divorce system. Recently some prominent judges argued that New York should switch to no-fault. Surprisingly, the President of the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women has opposed this change. Her reason? New York already has what she calls “bilateral no-fault.” In other words, if both parties agree to separate without accusing the other party of marital misconduct, they can get a divorce. The proposed switch is really a change to unilateral divorce.

She points out this legal rule reduces the bargaining power of the weaker spouse. As you might expect from the president of NOW, she thinks the woman is always the weaker spouse. I don’t believe that is universally true. Be that as it may, the “no-fault” divorce regime is responsible for many injustices, to women, to men and certainly to children. The term “unilateral” divorce is more accurate.

Jennifer Roback Morse

Lauren Winner's, Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity, challenges the modern emphasis on radical autonomy in matters of sexuality

In the chapter entitled “Communal Sex (Or Why Your Neighbor Has Any Business Asking You What You Did Last Night),” Winner prescribes a biblical approach to addressing the needs singles are mentioning. And the Church is called to be very much involved.

“I was trying to suggest that here we live in this hyper-individualized society and we really have in America this pervasive notion that what I do with my body is really no one’s business as long as I’m not hurting anyone; this is really a private decision. Even the Church has absorbed that radical individualism. This myth of individualism and the idea that my body and what I do with it is my own business really underlies almost everything else that we think and do about sex."

“Also, Paul is pretty clear about this … that in Christianity, the individual is not the unit of ethical meaning. The community and the Body of Christ—all of our Christian metaphors are communal. We are the Body of Christ … so, I think this is one of the places where Christianity has something to offer the surrounding society—an alternate understanding that sex is not individualistic, that it is rather deeply communal.”

This understanding, says Winner, is for both married and single people alike.

“The purposes of marriage in the Christian story are communal purposes. In other words, God gave us marriage not simply so that my husband and I can enjoy each other’s company forever, but also because our marriage and everyone else’s marriage tells a story to the broader community about faithfulness and loyalty, and I think that’s part of why the New Testament so often uses marriage as an analogy in explaining Christ’s relationship to the church."

“Singleness, I think, also tells a story, a story to the Church, a story about dependence on God, and also a story about the eschatological moment wherein there will be a wedding feast between Christ and his Church, but an eschatological moment when I won’t be married to Griff. I will instead be in the fullest way possible his sister.”

After the loving - The collapse of marriage
(excerpt from book review of: Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz)

Where Coontz falls short is in explaining the unique marriage system that began to take shape in Western societies between the 12th and 17th centuries. The continued uniqueness of this marriage system may have had something to do with the economic and political success of Western democracies. Of crucial importance is the fact that the Roman Catholic Church took a stand against political marriages that were arranged against the will of the couples involved. Catholic canon law declared that the mutual consent of the couple, rather than the will and manipulations of powerful parents, was the defining essence of marriage.

The church put polygamy on the defensive as well, especially among ruling elites. This helped to democratize marriage by making more women available to poorer men rather than allowing wealthy men to hoard females in their harems. Families became smaller and more companionate. Rather than women always marrying older men, the age of the husband and wife became closer, and marriages occurred later in life. After working for a few years outside the home, often as servants to other families, young couples formed their own households rather than returning to live with parents in family compounds or under the same roof. All of these shifts in the Western marriage and family system have been well documented over the last 40 years in the research of Cambridge University social historian Peter Laslett and his colleagues.

Although Coontz alludes to these shifts, she misses some of the crucial reasons they came about. Mainly she argues that they were the result of social-systemic changes such as emerging commercial life, early capitalism and nascent industrialization. Societies became more fluid, patriarchal families lost control and young people earned incomes beyond the parentally controlled farm or craft. All of this is indeed part of the story of the emergence of modern marriage in Western democracies, but Coontz downplays the role of religion in this radical and unique transformation.

Scholars such as Max Weber, Alan Macfarlane, Steven Ozment, Jack Goody and Laslett would all say that elements of Judaism, early Christianity, Roman Catholic canon law and the Protestant Reformation—of both Luther and Calvin—provided much of the religiocultural value system that fueled this revolution in marriage. Coontz gives scant attention to these sources. Furthermore, she gives no attention at all to Genesis 1 and 2, which informed the marriage traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In a book of 430 pages, the role of Judaism gets no discussion whatsoever, early Christianity receives little more than two pages, and Luther and the Protestant Reformation appear on a meager three pages. Augustine and Aquinas, two of the greatest theorists of both Christian and Western marriage, appear nowhere in the book. Peter Lombard, who crafted the crucial Catholic canon-law emphasis on marital consent, gets only a few words. Calvin, who extensively influenced the city of Geneva's marriage law in both church and civil courts and subsequently the shape of marriage in Calvinist countries throughout the world, is not mentioned.

Building on the Catholic emphasis on the importance of free marital consent, Luther and Calvin developed further the covenantal understanding of marital commitment, elevated the status of women, emphasized the freedom of young adults to choose their partners, helped make marriage more companionate and established marriage as a civic institution regulated by secular law yet also blessed and given meaning by the church. These beliefs and values interacted with early capitalism and the emergence of the nation-state to give us the Western marriage system that Laslett describes and most of us assume.

Although Coontz neglects the role of religion in shaping Western marriage, she is on to something when she says that reducing marriage to romantic love and sexual satisfaction will contribute to its near collapse, if not its death. The last chapters of her book document the present decline of marriage through the disconnection of childbirth and child-rearing from marriage, the rise of cohabitation, and the increase in single people living their lives and organizing their sexuality outside of publicly identifiable relationships, whether marital or nonmarital.

Don Browning
The Christian Century

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