I take Thee...the Radical notion of Quaker Marriage.

Earlier this month two friends of mine who have been together for 35 years married each other.  They have been together longer than any of my friends who are married.  They identify as atheists and anarchists.  Therefore they saw no reason to be spiritually or legally joined.  But as retirement came into view, and one person went over the handlebars of a bicycle and wound up unconscious in the hospital, the idea of being able to share one's social security post death with one's life long partner loomed larger.

When they went to look at the vows that the justice of  the peace would have them say they were distressed by certain verses which felt to them religious in nature.  But primarily they were distressed by the fact that the Judge would marry them to each other.   They both felt that they were marrying each other - that this is not something that another person could do "to" them.  Having known me all their adult lives and having attended my wedding they were both very aware that Quakers are married neither by a Judge or a minister which is what they wanted.   They began a dialogue with the CA Secretary of State about the fact that due to separation of state and church that the vows language could not be legal, nor could the requirement of either a Judge or minister to marry two people.   They pointed to the example of Quakers that the law did allow for an exception to those requirements, but that the exception could not fairly be applied to only one religion.   The Secretary's office wound up agreeing that this probably was not constitutional.  They were issued a license to get married and were allowed to marry each other in their living room with two witnesses.

Most Quakers I know will proudly say that nothing compares to a Quaker wedding.  I have to agree because their is something so beautiful and so democratic about any family or friend being able to speak of love, relationship, marriage, community and good wishes at a Quaker wedding.  There is something so deeply right about the couple rising out of the silence to face each other and to say in vows that have not changed over 300 years "I take thee".  What a joy to have a document hanging in one's home with the signatures of all the loved one who joined and witnessed your wedding!

But most Quakers do not know the actual history of Quaker weddings.  Since Quakers did not have ministers in made complete sense that a wedding would take place inside of a Meeting for Worship and that the intention to marry, already tested and confirmed by a clearness committee was a public witnessing/honoring by the congregation of a connection that was believed already forged by God. Thus Quakers believe a wedding is an acknowledgement of a partnership God has already created. George Fox said: "For the right joining in marriage is the work of the Lord only, and not the priests' or the magistrates'; for it is God's ordinance and not man's; and therefore Friends cannot consent that they should join them together: for we marry none; it is the Lord's work, and we are but witnesses" Therefore, when the laws of the society said that one had to marry before a preacher or a judge, Quakers saw no need to change their process to comply with marital laws.  They were  already use to going to jail for simply gathering to worship and used to being punished by the state for being faithful to their understanding of God.  They were willing, as in all things, to stand with the Truth as they knew it.

Thus Quakers would marry each other and go on with their lives, unconcerned with whether this was regarded to be legal by the cities they lived in.   But in the small towns and villages dotted across the US that they lived in, they were good neighbors and respected business people whose integrity and sincerity was well known to their fellow citizens.   It did not sit well with their neighbors to consider them "living in sin".   So not through their asking, many states passed "the Quaker exception" where instead of requiring them to be married by a minister, it was recognized that a ceremony witnessed by their congregation would be considered legally binding.  Also many states developed legal precedents of "common law marriage", for any two people who for whatever reason lived together for more than 7 years were considered to be for legal purposes married.  However, in the past decades common law marriages were swept away and domestic partnerships became a legal mechanism that allowed Gay and Lesbian couples, other wise unable to marry to share some of the legal advantages of marriage. In many states if Quakers want to be legally married they still have to go down to the court house and have their marriage officiated there.

My friends recent experience has caused me to reflect and to realize that Quaker Marriage is a case of what Gene Sharp, tactical non-violence expert, calls passive non-compliance.  Where the failure of large numbers of people to comply with a law forces the law to change or become uninforceable.  This is one  of the many ways Quakers radically changed the society around them.  The radical thing was that notion that we marry each other, that we are not married through some other authority figure.  The original radical thing about George Fox's message was that we needed no inter-mediator between ourselves and God - that we could know God directly.   And the radical thing about Quaker marriage is that it also says that we can know directly, discover inwardly God's intention for our lives and that we can live in the authority of that alone.