marriageI’m in a spirited email discussion with a theist, who claims that the government co-opted marriage from religion, which originated it. I’m reasonably sure this is backwards: marriage started as a civil business arrangement, outside religious sacraments or blessings, and eventually the ceremonies were added on top and have now become the focus. Where can I find some data to back me up?
While not an authoritative source, according to the research playwright Jeff Goode did while preparing a script for the Renaissance Festival of Kansas City,
...the tradition of marriage-as-we-know-it simply did not exist in those days. Almost everything we have come to associate with marriage and weddings -- the white dress, the holy vows, the fancy cake and the birdseed -- dates back a mere 50 or 100 years at the most. In many cases less.
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It turns out that marriage, in days of old, was a barbaric custom which was little more than a crude exchange of livestock at its most civilized, and a little less than ritualized abduction at its worst. That's why you'll find no reference to white weddings in the Bible, or the union of one man and one woman. Because up until fairly recently, there was nothing religious about it.
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The truth is that marriage has always been more a secular tradition rather than a religious one. Up until the early Renaissance, in fact, couples were traditionally married on the church's front doorstep, because wedding ceremonies were considered too vulgar to be performed inside the building: After all, there was implied sex in the vows and shameless public displays of affection. No clergyman in his right mind would have allowed such an unholy abomination on the premises.
And then there's this gem:
...in the 1800s when the sole purpose of marriage was procreation and housekeeping, marriage between an older man and a hard-working tween girl was considered perfectly normal. Today we call it pedophilia.
The article has some more detail, but unfortunately no references.
Your mistake is thinking that there was a difference, back in the day. The separation of church and state is a modern idea. In the past they were often the same thing, so the religious ceremony was legally binding.
If you want to be pedantic (which, of course, you do), you could argue that ‘marriage’ pre-dates religion and ‘the law’ by far, if you are willing to divest the term of any of the hand-waving and spell-muttering that religion has festooned it with. Humans formed life-long mating pairs for thousands of years before religion came along. What is marriage if not a life-long pairing?
Marriage was a Biblical issue LONG before it was a political one
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