Sex, Marriage and Family in World Religions (4 page)

Many perceptive commentators such as social scientists David Popenoe and James Q. Wilson feel that a new
cultural work
is required that will both support xxii introduction

and refashion the sexual and marital fields of life.7 But these scholars tend to bypass the resources of the world religions in their list of resources of the future. Scholars in family law, family economics, family medicine, and family sociology tend to hold the same point of view, that is, that religions can no longer inform our normative social and cultural visions of sex, marriage, and family.

The exclusion of religion may be shortsighted. First, it seems to assume that religious teachings and practices are so diverse, so contradictory, and so incom-mensurate that they provide no common grounds for social reconstruction. This may not be true. The six religions illustrated below are not
identical
on issues pertaining to sex, marriage, and family. But they are
not completely different
or contradictory. There are positive
analogies
between them that may contain genuine wisdom and stable points of cooperation for social and cultural reconstruction. Second, the strategy that would exclude the voice of the religious traditions overlooks their complexity. For instance, each of the main axial religious traditions adopted and adapted some marital and family patterns from antecedent and analogous cultures. Furthermore, secular and religious institutions and authorities have often worked hand in hand in contributing to and enforcing the preferred sexual, marital, and familial norms and habits carried by these religious traditions. To say it more simply:
a sexual or family pattern
carried by a religion may not have been narrowly religious in its origin
. Religious traditions almost always combine in subtle ways naturalistic, legal, moral, and metaphysical levels of thinking and reasoning. Just because an insight or pattern is wrapped in religion does not mean it was exclusively religious in its origin.

Nonetheless, a good deal of the genesis, genius, and generativity of viable and lasting marriage and the family norms may lay in the teachings and practices of the axial religions of the world. These teachings and practices may just be something of the genetic code of what marriage and the family have been and can be.

ANALOGIES AND DIFFERENCES

The texts included in this volume provide possible points on the map of these cultural genetic codes on sex, marriage, and the family. These codes differ in important ways, as you will see in reading these chapters, and they have ac-cordingly produced various domestic patterns throughout the world. But there is more convergence than conflict in the teachings on sex, marriage, and family of the six axial world religions. Here are a few points of convergence that are worth considering:

First, each of these religious traditions confirms marriage as a vital and valu-able institution and practice that lies at the heart of the family and at the foundation of broader society. To be sure, Confucianism and ancient Judaism permitted powerful men to have concubines. Christianity sometimes idealized i n t r o d u c t i o n

xxiii

the sexually abstinent marriage and, with Buddhism, commanded celibacy for some of its religious leaders. Islam permitted, sometimes encouraged, polygamous marriages, as did Judaism for a time and occasional Christian sects. All six traditions recognized that some adults were not physically, emotionally, or sexually suited for marriage. But all six religious traditions have long celebrated marriage as a public and community-recognized contract and religious commitment to which the vast majority of adults within the community are naturally inclined and religiously called.

Second, each tradition recognizes that marriage has inherent goods that lie beyond the preferences of the couple. One fundamental good of marriage, emphasized by Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Confucianism is that the husband and wife complete each other; indeed, they are transformed through marriage into a new person—a new
one-flesh
reality. Another fundamental good of marriage is the procreation and nurture of children. Children are sacred gifts to a married couple who carry forth not only the family name, lineage, and property but also the community’s religion, culture, and language. All these religions thus see a close relation between marriage and children, just as they saw a close relation, although not an identity, between marriage and sexual expression. And all these religions teach that stable marriages and families are essential to the well being of children.

Third, each tradition regards marriage as a special form of promise, oath, or contract. Indeed, these traditions have often made provision for two contracts— betrothals or future promises to marry and spousals or present promises to marry—with a mandatory waiting period between them. The point of this waiting period is to allow couples to weigh the depth and durability of their mutual love. It is also to invite others to weigh in on the maturity and compatibility of the couple, to offer them counsel and commodities, and to prepare for the celebration of their union and their life together thereafter.

Fourth, each tradition eventually came to insist that marriage depended in its essence on the mutual consent of the man and the woman. Even if the man and woman are represented by parents or guardians during the contract nego-tiation, their own consent is essential to the validity of their marriage. Jewish, Hindu, Confucian, and Muslim writers came to this insight early in the development of marriage. The Christian tradition reached this insight canonically only in the twelfth century, and Buddhism more recently still. All these traditions have long tolerated the practice of arranged marriages and child marriages, and this pattern persists among Hindus and Muslims today, even in diasporic communities. But the theory has always been that both the young man and the young woman reserved the right to dissent from the arrangement upon reaching the age of consent.

Fifth, each tradition emphasizes that persons are not free to marry just any-one. The divine and/or nature set a first limit to the freedom of marital contract.

Parties cannot marry relatives by blood or marriage, nor marry parties of the xxiv introduction

same sex—a tradition that is now being questioned in the liberal wing of some religions. Custom and culture set a second limit. The parties must be of suitable piety and modesty, of comparable social and economic status, and ideally (and, in some communities, indispensably) of the same faith and caste. The general law of contracts sets a third limit. Both parties must have the capacity and freedom to enter contracts and must follow proper contractual forms and cere-monies. Parents and guardians set a fourth limit. A valid marriage, at least for minors, requires the consent of both sets of parents or guardians—and sometimes as well the consent of political and/or spiritual authorities who stand in loco parentis.

Sixth, in most of these traditions marriage promises were accompanied by exchanges of property. The prospective husband gave to his fianceé (and sometimes her father or family as well) a betrothal gift, on occasion a very elaborate and expensive gift. In some cultures husbands followed this by giving a wedding gift to the wife. The wife, in turn, brought into the marriage her dowry, which minimally covered her basic living articles, maximally a great deal more. These property exchanges were not an absolute condition to the validity of a marriage.

But breach of a contract to deliver property in consideration of marriage could often result in dissolution at least of the engagement contract.

Seventh, each tradition developed marriage or wedding liturgies to celebrate the formation of a new marriage and the blending of two families. These could be extraordinary visual and verbal symphonies of prayers, oaths, songs, and blessings, sometimes followed by elaborate feasts. Other media complemented the liturgies—the beautiful artwork, iconography, and religious language of the marriage contracts themselves, the elaborate rituals and etiquette of courtship, consent, and communal involvement in establishing the new household, the impressive production of poems, household manuals, and books of etiquette detailing the ethics of love, marriage, and parentage of a faithful religious believer. All these media, and the ample theological and didactic writings on them, helped to confirm and celebrate that marriage was at heart a religious practice—in emulation of the leader of the faith (in the case of Islam), in implementation of moral instruction (in the case of Confucianism and Buddhism), in obedience to divine commandments (in the cases of Judaism, Christianity, and Hinduism).

Eighth, each tradition gave the husband (and sometimes the wife) standing before religious tribunals (or sometimes secular tribunals that implemented religious laws) to press for the vindication of their marital rights. The right to support, protection, sexual intercourse, and care for the couple’s children were the most commonly litigated claims. But any number of other conjugal rights stipulated in the marriage contract or guaranteed by general religious law could be litigated. Included in most of these traditions was the right of the parties to seek dissolution of the marriage on discovery of an absolute impediment to its validity (such as incest) or on grounds of a fundamental breach of the marriage commitment (such as adultery).

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Ninth, each tradition emphasized family continuity and the strengths of kin altruism, albeit with different forms and emphases. Family continuity, legacy, and connections between ancestors and present and future generations were very pronounced in Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and Confucianism. These came to particularly poignant expression in the burial and mourning rituals triggered by the deaths of parents, spouses, and children. Honor and exchange between the generations were emphasized as well, rendering intergenerational continuity and filial piety an enormously powerful welfare system with sacred sanction.

Providing care and protection to needy children, parents, siblings, and even more extended family members were essential religious obligations in all six of these traditions. Even in Buddhism, which saw the family as a distraction, and in Christianity, which often viewed marriage and family life as a competitor with the Kingdom of God, family continuity and mutual support were still emphazed.

Tenth, most of these traditions drew a distinction between natural and fictive families, though this varied in its articulation. In Buddhism and Christianity monastic groups were also fictive families. In Christianity congregations were fictive families. But, even then, there were often complex ways in which fictive families reinforced natural families. For instance, Buddhist monks would in-tervene with a natural family’s ancestors, praying for merit from ancestors to natural families—natural families that themselves supported the fictive family of the monastery in order to gain merit from monks and through them from their own ancestors. Although congregations could become fictive families in Christianity, they also generally included and reinforced the strength of the conjugal couple, their offspring, extended family, and households.

Eleventh, most of these religions reinforced intergenerational honor and obligations, but they differed in degree and manner of this reinforcement. Confucianism and Hinduism gave special emphasis to this value, and Buddhism, which inherited many of its family values from Hinduism, followed suit, even though it also saw family as a distraction from higher spiritual pursuits. Even though Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all emphasized honoring parents (father and mother), Christianity warned that family obligations could conflict with the will of God and the demands of the kingdom.

Twelfth, these religions differ considerably on their respective views of sexuality and the erotic. Although all of these religions see sexuality as a potentially unruly force in human affairs, all affirm its rightful place when guided by certain constraints. They all viewed marriage, with few exceptions, as one of the most important such constraints, though this was no substitute for personal sexual discipline. Within marriage religions varied with regard to their appreciation for erotic enjoyment, with Islam and perhaps Hinduism being the most forthright in their affirmation, but Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Confucianism never completely losing an understanding of the role of mutual sexual satisfaction in marriage.

Thirteenth, each tradition kept an ample roll of sexual sins or crimes— incest, bestiality, sodomy, rape, and pedophilia being the most commonly pro-xxvi introduction hibited, with more variant treatment of concubinage, prostitution, and mastur-bation. A growing conflict in many religious communities today, particularly in North America and Western Europe, is whether to retain traditional prohibi-tions against homosexuality. Some denominations within western Christianity are now experimenting with the legitimation of same-sex unions, and comparable experiments are afoot in small segments of western communities of Judaism and Hinduism.

Fourteenth, each tradition draws a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children. Legitimate children are those born to a lawfully married couple. Illegitimate children are those born outside of lawful marriage—products of adultery, fornication, concubinage, rape, incest, and in some communities products of illicit relations between parties of different castes, races, or religions. Illegitimate children were historically stigmatized, sometimes se-verely, and formally precluded from holding or inheriting property, gaining various political, religious, or social positions, and attaining a variety of other public or private rights. In western societies, as well as in modern-day Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, and parts of southeast Asia, illegitimate children have gained constitutional protections and state welfare provisions and have benefited from the expansion of adoption. But in some Islamic, Hindu, and Confucian communities illegitimate children and their mothers still suffer ample social stigmatization, and they are still sometimes sentenced to “honor kill-ings” or mandatory abortions or infanticide.