Parents, Elders, and Marriage Approval

 By Pastor Benjamin Glaser - Posted at Thoughts From Parson Farms:

Good Morning,

Today’s look at the Directory of Public Worship provides a helpful window into what life was like when the book was written. It’s always neat to see how previous generations handled things like marriage and it is always worthwhile to see how we can apply those realities to our own way of life in 2025. We should be humble enough, and curious enough, to wonder and learn from those who have come before. Experience is ordinarily the best schoolmaster. There is little need for us to reinvent the wheel or act as if we were the first to deal with particular situations. In the section we’ll walk through today some of the subjects that will come up are: age of consent, the care of parents not to over-involved themselves in the process of marriage for their children while at the same time guarding, and providing for them as they seek a husband or a wife. There are also directions given to the pastor and the elders in encouraging young ones to seek marriage.

Let’s go ahead and read what they have to say in this morning’s DPW portion:

Before the solemnizing of marriage between any persons, the purpose of marriage shall be published by the minister three several sabbath-days, in the congregation, at the place or places of their most usual and constant abode, respectively. And of this publication the minister who is to join them in marriage shall have sufficient testimony, before he proceed to solemnize the marriage. Before that publication of such their purpose, (if the parties be under age,) the consent of the parents, or others under whose power they are, (in case the parents be dead,) is to be made known to the church officers of that congregation, to be recorded.

The like is to be observed in the proceedings of all others, although of age, whose parents are living, for their first marriage. And, in after marriages of either of those parties, they shall be exhorted not to contract marriage without first acquainting their parents with it, (if with conveniency it may be done,) endeavouring to obtain their consent. Parents ought not to force their children to marry without their free consent, nor deny their own consent without just cause.

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