Browning on marriage

Marriage and the Family

"Changing Families" report goes through more changes [12-18-03]

The latest draft of a much-contested policy paper on families has a new name, a new theological backbone, and a new emphasis on what it calls the "marital-biological" relationship between a man and a woman as the ideal foundation for the Christian family. Its key assertion is that it is "preferable, on the whole," for children to be raised by a mother and a father who are married to each other and live in the same home. It also repeats the key assertion of the original, controversial version, that "God works through all kinds of families" -- but takes pains to point out that some kinds are better than others.

Web Sites for Parents, Christian Educators, and Pastors
[5-19-03]

Christian Family Week ended on Saturday (May 17). But presumably families will continue, in one form or another. In support of Christian Family Week, Bruce & Carolyn Winfrey Gillette have updated Freda Gardner's ecumenical resource for teaching parenting skills in churches with a helpful list to over 30 web sites on academic centers for family ministry, spiritual disciplines for families, online devotionals, Bible games for children, children's health, parent advice, advocacy groups and much more: http://www.firstpresby.org/ResourcesForFamilies.htm

Does Divorce Make People Happy? [7-16-02]

A recent study by the Institute for American Values, widely reported in the press, suggests that people who leave unhappy marriages don't end up any happier. And the study also concludes that people who "stick it out" in those unhappy situations often end up happier.

Here's a summary of the study. Take a look and share your views with us!

Deadline extended for "Changing Families" study document [3-4-02]

ACSWP provides more time for feedback on church's evolving policy.

Further comments are invited on the church-wide study document, Changing Families [and Witherspooners may want to offer comments, notes your WebWeaver].

Marriage in the New Millennium

by Don Browning, Director of the Religion, Culture, and Family Project at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Click here for more about the author.

[10-26-01]

Browning summarizes his essay: "I argue that marriage will not be strengthened by education alone, as important as that is. Nor will it come about alone by a retrieval of the Christian heritage on these matters, as important as that is. We live in a new globalized society. The deepening and strengthening of marriage must come about through a new interfaith dialogue about sexuality, marriage, and family. The great religions of the world must enter this dialogue. Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism will contribute, along with Judaism and Christianity."

This essay was written for Threshold, an Australian journal dedicated to marriage education and related family topics. The journal can be ordered by email <thresh@rie.net.au>.

We must not only think about the shape of marriage in the new millennium, we must also consider our language about marriage. Many of us are grateful for the new worldwide concern about the status and health of marriage. But we should pause and reflect about the nature and logic of the discourses we are now using to speak about marriage. This new interest in marriage increasingly is being dominated by the language of policy. Policy language is, for the most part, the language of health and economics. It is the language of costs and benefits and contains the utilitarian logic of means to desired ends. Governments are becoming concerned because they have learned that marital and family disruption correlate with poverty, crime, and poor health. When these increase, governments are required to intervene, and such action increases bureaucracies, costs, and taxes. Furthermore, remedial interventions by the state are often limited in their benefits, adding to further tensions and dissatisfactions in the body politic.

The language of policy is often infused with the language of health. Marriage, we have recently learned, is on average good for health. Married couples live longer, drink and smoke less, indulge in less risky behavior, have more satisfying sex, save more money, and are generally more satisfied with their lives than single and divorced persons. Hence, the logic goes, if you want these good things, then possibly you should get married and stay married.

The really surprising item in this list, at least to me, is the good of wealth. In spite of the costs of children, married couples still over time accumulate more wealth. They enjoy economies of scale, think more about the future, and indulge less in their personal gratifications. Since they live longer and healthier lives, their infirmities cost society less. Since they are wealthier, they are less likely to cost society in the form of welfare checks and food stamps. Marriage makes it possible to lower taxes and direct government money to education, beautification, or cleaner air and water. Marriage pays. Because of this, our discourse about marriage is increasingly being infused with the language of economics. Marriage is a rational choice in the economic sense of rationality.

The language of marriage education is increasingly being absorbed into the language of health and economics. Because marriage correlates with health and wealth, we are told that it is good to have the skills to communicate and cope with marital conflict. Marital communication is often portrayed as a skill, a tool, a techne, or a means for achieving health and wealth -- the goods of marriage. Like any other skill such as typing, playing the piano, or becoming an accountant, communication for marriage can be taught and learned. Marriage more and more is portrayed as an institution that is analogous to a public utility -- something generally useful such as electricity or the waterworks. Marriage education is unwittingly portrayed as analogous to becoming an electrician or a plumber.

These trends in the discourse about marriage have much to commend them. They have made it possible to gain new precision about the goods of marriage and some of the conditions that produce lasting unions. But these trends have dangers. The language of policy may not be a totally reliable language for guiding marriage and families into the new millennium. The discourse of policy needs to be balanced by the grand language about marriage from the classic religious traditions. Religious language about marriage should have a place in our public discourse as well as our private religious lives. In the past, religious language provided the dominant public language for marriage. In some earlier societies, it was in fact the only language for marriage. Religious language has increasingly become marginalized, even in the churches. Even there, the language of marriage is often the language of policy -- the discourse of health, economics, costs, benefits, and skills.

But the language of costs and benefits -- the utilitarian language of policy -- is a fragile moral language. There is little room in this discourse for the language of commitment, the language of obligation, or the language of treating the marital "other" as an end and never only as a personal or social means. In the language of policy, commitments are tied closely to the calculation of benefits. If the projected benefits turn negative, commitments should be renegotiated or terminated. Skills are only useful as long as they appear to work.

There are several reasons for the withdrawal of religious language from public discourse about marriage. Western societies are more secular; people do not know or understand this language as they once did. Western societies are more pluralistic. It is uncomfortable to use Christian language, whether Protestant or Catholic, when it is known that Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, endogenous, and secularists are listening as well.

But this timidity about the use of religious language in public talk about marriage comes with a great loss. Religious language, in various ways, provides a language about the intrinsic goods and sacred obligations of marriage. It is a discourse that breaks or subordinates the chain of costs and benefits in speech about marriage. The goods, comforts, and advantages of marriage do not disappear in religion language, but they are surrounded and contextualized by a deeper language of sacred gift and obligation. This is true whether it is the language of covenant or divine command (as it is in Judaism, Protestantism, and Islam) or the language of sacrament (as it is in Roman Catholicism and Hinduism). Many endogenous religions believe that the divine manifests itself through marriage, especially in the birth of a child.

The emerging world marriage movement must foster a new dialogue between the great religions of the world about the meaning of marriage. This dialogue should help the religions discover the points of analogy and difference between their respective languages about marriage and family. No one religious language from any specific faith can dominate the public language about marriage in modern, Western societies. But a world dialogue may discover analogies that can help balance and recontextualize the language of policy. Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and others should continue to investigate their respective marital traditions, but they also should converse together to discover their commonalities. They should very much be a part of the world marriage movement and actively contribute to it.

Marriage in the new millennium, to be successful, will be more equal, more mutual, more communicative, and more economically interdependent. But to endure, it must be more than a means to health and wealth and more than a public utility. Our public philosophies of marriage must learn to respect and make room for our various languages of sacrality.

Don Browning is Alexander Campbell Professor of Religious Ethics and the Social Sciences at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago and director of the Religion, Culture, and Family Project located at that university. He is the co-author of From Culture Wars to Common Ground: Religion and the American Family Debate (1997, 2000) and co-author with Gloria Rodriguez of the forthcoming book, Toward a Public Philosophy and Policy for Families: Reweaving the Social Tapestry, released through the American Assembly of Columbia University and published by W.W. Norton.

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The Religion, Culture, and Family Project is based at the University of Chicago Divinity School and conducts research into the religious dimensions of historical and contemporary family issues. More information about the project can be found at their website, <www.uchicago.edu/divinity/family>.

This essay has also been distributed through the Family Project e-mail newsletter, previous issues of which can be found at <www.uchicago.edu/divinity/family/backissues.html>.

The Religion, Culture and Family Project
The University of Chicago Divinity School
1025 E. 58th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
<www.uchicago.edu/divinity/family>
<Family-project@uchicago.edu>
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