Minister of Education Report

What the Increase in Civil Marriages Mean

      USA Today, no friend to Christianity, reports that their analysis of marriage license statistics suggests that the rate of civil marriage is on the increase coast to coast. Actually there is no data about how many U.S. marriages are performed by clergy as compared to civil authority such as a notary, judge, or justice of the peace. Only 18 states have tracked this information since 1980. But these do show a ten percent increase over twenty years. The number of people who saw no need for the blessings of the church upon their union rose from thirty percent to forty percent. This is about the same number that responded that they have no religious identification in recent times.

      Sociologist Pepper Schwartz, author of “American Couples” and part of the University of Washington, sees the causes of increased civil marriages to be tied to high divorce and remarriage rates, interfaith marriages, and what she calls more personalized ideas of spirituality. As we have pointed out in the past, the reasons pointed to for this change in American behavior has a cause. This cause is the educational system that teaches humanistic and evolutionary ideals as the secular religion of their philosophy.

      The fruit of the lies we have allowed our children to be taught to believe has given us increased crime and more violent behavior in our society. It has fostered within them an ideal of self gratification that seizes the day for no more high and lofty purpose than the cravings of the flesh. People are disposable, even those you marry, therefore, the things that ministers have to say concerning marriage are not only irrelevant in their estimation, but to be avoided.

      Pepper Schwartz says Americans now believe in the “church of My Way,” in other words ultimate authority is shifted from God and church elders to what people want to think in their own vain imaginings. The spirit of this age is truly one of rebellion and self pleasing above all else. However I can assure her and any who feel that way that the ultimate accounting before a righteous God will not be concerned with what their opinion was on the matter.