Article XXI - Of the Marriage of Ministers
The ministers of Christ are not
commanded by God's law either to vow the estate of single life, or to abstain from marriage; therefore it is lawful
for them, as for all other Christians, to marry at their own discretion, as
they shall judge the same to serve best to godliness.
What the
Bible says about ministers and marriage and sex is pretty simple. What the church has practiced regarding
ministers, marriage, and sex--- well that’s complicated.
Official
Catholic doctrine says that clerical celibacy isn’t an official Catholic doctrine. It isn’t a doctrine. It is a discipline. A doctrine is an objective Biblical truth, a
command or mandate from God. A
discipline is a habit, a series of personal activities intended to help
internalize an objective truth. Doctrine
should lead to discipline. Disciplines
should never create to doctrine.
Jesus said
that men ought to always pray and not faint.
That’s doctrine. To internalized
the doctrine of prayer, I pray while taking my morning walk. The doctrine led me to make the morning prayer walk a discipline that works for me. If I issued a pastoral edict requiring
members of my congregation to walk no less than 2 miles every morning while reciting
the Lord’s Prayer, I would be creating a doctrine based on my personal
discipline. That might not work for
everybody, but they’d still try it because they’d think that God wanted them to
do what I did.
The Apostle
Paul abstained from marriage as an act of discipline to keep him focused
on the work of God. Over time Catholicism
made the mistake of requiring that same discipline of all its priests. They
took a discipline and turned it into a doctrine.
The Church
made the ministers-marriage-sex thing more complicated than it should’ve been.
The Bible
says that Jesus wasn’t married but that Peter, the leader of the apostles and
Jesus best friend, was. (Matthew 8: 14).
We also know that at least one of the first deacons, Phillip, was
married and had 4 daughters who were each called to the prophetic ministry
(Acts 21: 8, 9). From the beginning of the church that Jesus built marriage and
family were perfectly compatible with every level of ordained ministry. Of course, preferences varied.
The Apostle
Paul was a lifelong bachelor. “It is good for a man not to touch a
woman,” Paul wrote at the beginning of 1 Corinthians chapter 7. But in the rest of the chapter, he made it
clear that celibacy was his personal preference.
Oh, and it’s
worth emphasizing ----really worth it ---- that under the guidance of the Holy Spirit,
the virgin Paul declared that faithful marital sex is gooooodddd!
Let each man
have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband
render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her
husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does.
And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the
wife does. (1 Corinthians 7: 2-4)
Marriage is
honorable among all, and the bed undefiled (Hebrews 13: 4)
For the first
300 years or so of the Christian era, it was that simple; but then the church
became an institution. In the Roman Catholic
Church the age of apostles gave way to the age of professional theologians. The church became a tightly organized hierarchy
with massive political and economic interests, and the simplicity of Scripture
became ----- complicated
(Read the
timeline under A
Brief History of Celibacy in the Catholic Church .)
Based on the
arguments of highly esteemed theologians, popes issued decrees encouraging and
requiring unmarried priests to remain unmarried and married priests to stop
having sex with their wives. Today, Catholic
priests make a vow/ promise of celibacy, but there are exceptions, like the Episcopal priests who were married with children but wanted to converted to Catholicism
after their church embraced homosexual unions.
In 1980, the pope created a special Pastoral Provision so they could be
ordained without giving up marriage or sex.
(Read Father Jonathan Duncan’s
story.)
The Catholic Church
defends clerical celibacy like a doctrine, but makes exceptions to it because
it’s not doctrine; it’s discipline.
Like I said, complicated.
The Methodist
church came out of the Church of England which broke from the Catholic church. The 25 Methodist Articles of Religion derive
from the Thirty-Nine
Articles of the Anglican Chruch(Church
of England). Methodist doctrine on
marriage is a throwback to way back before we made it all so complicated.
Ministers can
get married, be married, or not. A married
ministers can (and should) have sex with his/her own spouse.
The
discipline required is the discipline of faithfulness to the marriage vow. Celibacy is for before marriage or by mutual
agreement between man and wife.
Basically: No marriage, no sex. Marriage, lots of sex.
Simple.
And sacred.
---Anderson T. Graves II is a writer, community
organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership
development.
Rev. Anderson T. Graves II
is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield,
Alabama; executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking
Organization (SAYNO); and director of
rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
#Awordtothewise
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P O Box 132
Fairfield, Al 35064
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