From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition (Family, Religion, and Culture)

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In "From Sacrament to Contract," John Witte Jr. offers a study of five conflicting models of marriage--Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican, and Enlightenment--and their social and political impact over the last thousand years. In so doing, Witte shows how we arrived at the notion of marriage as contract.

The Family, Culture, and Religion series offers informed and responsible analyses of the state of the American family from a religious perspective and provides practical assistance for the family's revitalization.

The account begins with the development of the medieval Catholic canon law of marriage in an effort to combat the phenomenon of "secret marriage." Indeed, Witte reveals that prior to the systematization of the canon law and the sacraments, couples could proclaim themselves to be married with none of the public ceremonies, present witnesses, and festive celebrations that would become the classic wedding accoutrements in subsequent centuries. Given the disarray of the canon law and the sacramental system before this medieval synthesis, any couple who thought they were married probably were married.

The social and covenantal dimensions of marriage replaced the sacramental dimension as the hallmarks of the theology of the family in the Protestant Reformation, which Witte examines in its Lutheran and Calvinistic expressions. It was in this era that many of the trappings of the modern wedding, such as witnesses and church ceremonies, came into existence. The Anglican tradition encompassed the sacramental, social, and covenantal models in a commonwealth model that linked the common good of the couple, their children, the church, and the state in a model that became increasingly egalitarian and democratized, tracking political progress within the British commonwealth.

The ironic result of the development of marriage law and theology in the Christian West is that the move toward greater regulation and publicity in the Catholic, Reformation, and Anglican traditions was eventually largely overturned by the Enlightenment notions of contract and rights. Marriage came to be conceived largely as a private and completely voluntary contract--a bargain struck seemingly at arm's length by parties seeking the most intimate of associations. The Enlightenment model is, in essence, the model that is our legacy in the present day. It is this journey from sacrament to contract that characterizes marriage in the West and has led us to where we are today in the law and lore of marriage and family. Witte's work is a remarkable chronicle of the social practices, legal doctrines, and theological foundations encountered along the way.