Contract or Covenant?

Rev. Mimi McDowell


“Do you do weddings?” “My hairdresser/friend/cousin needs someone to do their wedding.” “We want to get married next weekend and need someone to do it.”

Anytime I hear a question like that I cringe. It isn’t that I don’t like weddings, or that I don’t want to perform them, but I always know when the question is posed in that way what the couple usually wants is just someone who is duly licensed to perform a ceremony. And I don’t do those types of weddings. In fact, I don’t “do weddings” at all – I perform Services of Christian Marriage.

As Lauren Winner accurately points out, “Christian wedding vows insist that marriage is a covenant, not a contract.” (p. 122) The United Methodist Book of Worship states, “Christian marriage is proclaimed as a sacred covenant reflecting the Baptismal Covenant. Everything about the service is designed to witness that this is a Christian marriage.” Yet in my experience, the people who ask me, off the cuff, to do a wedding are more focused on a legal contract than the sacredness of the covenant. Sometimes their reason for asking is that they want to get married quickly or because they want to skip the premarital counseling. Other times it is simply because they have no church home and don’t personally know any other minister. They sometimes try to sweeten the deal by offering to pay well for my services, but I can’t be bought. In those cases, I explain my parameters for performing weddings. If the couple chooses not to work within those parameters, then I gently direct them to a Justice of the Peace, a judge, or someone else who can legally marry them.

In 1997 the State of Louisiana passed a covenant marriage law. It was intended to strengthen families and reduce divorce rates. Unlike in a “standard” marriage, the couple must take special steps to execute a covenant marriage. Among other things, the couple must sign a recitation that says that they understand that a Covenant Marriage is for life, that they have received premarital counseling on the responsibilities of that covenant, and that if marriage difficulties arise they will make all reasonable efforts to preserve the marriage. In addition, a clergyperson or professional marriage counselor must sign an affidavit attesting that premarital counseling was provided.

I have never been asked to conduct a Covenant Marriage or to provide an affidavit to that effect. But I would assert that any wedding I have performed or will perform in the future is, in fact, a covenant marriage. Our Book of Worship says it is. Our Book of Disciplines mandates it. “The pastor’s “due counsel with the parties involved” includes premarital counseling as well as planning the actual service. And an important part of that counsel is discussing the covenant of Christian marriage and what that means. Personally, I can’t imagine why you ever choose to get married without seriously considering it as a sacred covenant.

So if you want a wedding that is a Service of Christian Marriage, focusing on the covenant of marriage established by God, let’s talk. If you want a marriage contract, you’re asking the wrong person.