The orders of the protestant wedding in the light of a transforming culture and law of marriage

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jan Hermelink
• Subject Area: Protestant Theology
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 248414384

The practice of protestant wedding ceremonies in Germany is changing heavily within the last decades. Statistically, the number of church weddings is decreasing since the 1970s, far more than the number of overall marriages. Culturally, the trend of celebrating the wedding as a big event, has an increasing influence also on the expectations concerning the church ceremonies, its location and its staging. Last but not least, the church´s practice is affected by changes in common marriage law, e.g. regarding divorce or the marriage of gay couples: Should these partnerships also be blessed publicly in the churches?The cultural, also the religious change in the general field of rites of passage may be studied especially by looking on the practice of church wedding. The legal orders of church wedding are of special importance here. In the respective church laws, in its regulations and rules of implementation, it can be seen clearly how the institution of church, over the last decades, has been ready to accept the general transformation in marriage culture - and where the institution chose to resist to that legal and cultural changings. In this respect, not least the specific law of ministry, with regard to the marriage regulations for the pastors, is quite instructive.The intricate relationship between the common social practice of wedding on the one hand and the church institution on the other hand, will be analyzed here not so much - as usually - with regard to the worship orders or the pastoral rules of wedding, but with regard to its legal orders and regulations. Additionally, the debates in church synods, in administration and in pastoral councils will come into the focus of research. The respective archive documents of selected state churches, in east and west Germany, will be investigated concerning the following questions: Which kinds of arguments, which way of dogmatic, pastoral or organisational reasoning is used in church debates to assimilate the wedding practice to important legal changes, e.g. concerning divorce or gay marriage? And what arguments are used with respect to religious changes, e.g. concerning marriages between members of different churches or even of different religions? How is the theological profile of protestant wedding expressed in the respective debates, how are gender relations seen here?By that research, also the status of church law in generally can be clarified: What is the degree of compulsion of the wedding law (and the law of Passage Rites in general), especially in the so called Lebensordnungen (orders of christian life) which churches invented since the 1950s? The research on the orders of protestant wedding will thereby lead to a more intense cooperation between Practical Theology and the disciplines of Church Law and Marriage Law.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants