Jehovah's witness cannot perform marriages in Norway
by blondie 19 Replies latest jw friends
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Nathan Natas
Anticipating New Light on shacking up!
It was good enuff for judge Rutherford, it should be good enough for ALL of Jehovah's Faithful Servants!
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InquiryMan
Inasmuch i detest their shunning practices, I am inclined to their keeping that right and not be deregistered as they are now
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dropoffyourkeylee
Performing marriages (from a US perspective for me) is more of a legal function rather than a religious one. For this reason I would say that JWs should be able to perform a marriage, despite being deregistered as a religion per the Norway laws.
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blondie
I would say it is not a good idea to assume that the laws in the US are similar to Norway. Yes, in the US, performing a marriage may be a civil thing. In the US, a judge can perform a marriage or some other public official. In Norway, "Church weddings may be conducted by a clergyman of the Church of Norway or a priest or minister of a registered religious community. "This means that the WTS has to be licensed for a member to perform the wedding. (I will add the a person in the US can get official standing in some "legal" religion that issues documents that they are a member of that religion)
Thus as the following says' If the wedding is to take place in a religious community, this community must be registered and licensed to perform wedding ceremonies. .
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Anony Mous
It always surprises me that people are still surprised that freedom of religion and speech is not guaranteed in the EU because they never had a durable libertarian revolution before ‘uniting the states’.
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MeanMrMustard
What does it mean to "seal" the marriage?
If it's signing the license (document) after the fact, then won't they just contract out to some third party that can sign afterwards?
Or if "sealing" means conducting the part of marriage in which vows are exchanged, then I can see the elder doing the normal wedding talk, and then some third party contractor gets up and says 'Do you? Aaannnd do you? Etc'
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InquiryMan
This is often the case. One elder giving the wedding talk, and the one who officiates the exchange of vows and the paper work is another brother who has been through a course and authorized by state to do so.
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TonusOH
Can they still have the ceremony? In the USA, you can get married without a ceremony, just by signing legal documents. The ceremony can be just that, a bit of pomp and circumstance to celebrate the union. They could even exchange vows, though those wouldn't be legally binding. Couldn't they do all of that, even now?
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InquiryMan
Of course. Back in the days a talk like was given at the hall and the legal marriage was performed at the town hall/court house. These days I think it has even more to do with the withdrawal of that right being the only religious community not having this legal right. They feel they are discriminated against