We start this book on the presupposition that our existence as a separate community is justified and right; we must maintain the same standpoint even at the critical point where intense personal feelings are involved.
Practical considerations point in general, the same way. To marry one of no faith, or a different faith, is inevitably to have torn loyalties. It may argue weakened loyalties from the very beginning, but it will in any case be much harder to maintain them afterwards. Some unbelieving partners will resent from the start the separate worship of their mate. It will be hard for that mate not to yield. Some will profess in the tolerant days of courtship that it is quite all right for the believer to worship in his or her own way: but this will not always survive the actual trial, and if it does, it will not be easy to avoid the loneliness it brings with it.
And the children, when they arrive, present a crucial problem. The non-Christadelphian may not be content that they should be taught in the Christadelphian way; even if he is, growing awareness will teach the child that the parents do not see eye to eye, and he might choose for either or for neither because of it. In either case he is bound in his turn to conclude that, for his parents, the question of faith was not so utterly important—for how then could they have married one another and unless he can reestablish for himself a standard he does not find in his home, the next compromise will be harder than ever for him to avoid. And when the time comes when that child contemplates marriage, can the Christadelphian parent deter him from the same step taken a generation ago by saying with a good conscience, “Marry only in the Lord. I ought never to have married your father?”
Of course good may sometimes come in spite of all written here. There are certainly many who have married an unconverted partner, and have later been able to introduce him or her to the faith, and numerous faithful brethren and sisters have to be acknowledged with gladness as having found the pearl of great price through the subsequent “‘chaste conversation” of their partners1. For this we must thank God for His mercy in so overriding the disastrous consequences which might have occurred instead. For disastrous consequences have all too often been: the number of them must heavily outweigh the number of happy endings. Whole ecclesias have disintegrated through an easy tolerance of marriages with those without: against the less stark background of our civilized surroundings, the experiences of Israel have been duplicated again and again.
This treatment leaves two matters undiscussed. One is how the ecclesia ought to react when marriage only in the Lord is violated; and the other is a sympathetic consideration of the very real problems with which unmarried sisters and brethren are faced.
III. Mainly (But Not Entirely) For Sisters
Nearly all religious communities have more women than men in their membership. One of the great blessings which women enjoy compared with men is that both their temperament and (though now less so than formerly) their associations render them less liable to rebellion against the discipline of the religious life, and more appreciative of the gentle blessings of worship. In general, the more emotional the religion, and the less matter of fact its theology, the greater will be the proportion of women in its membership (so that the disparity is huge in the case of Christian Seienee and Spiritualism), which means that our own community, with its carefully thought out system of doctrine, and its rather thorough confessions of faith, suffers less in this respect than most: but it suffers none the less, and it must be generally true that not less than 3 in every five members are sisters.
This brings its own peculiar problems in relation to the topic discussed in the previous chapter. It means that, if every brother in our community were to marry a sister already a member, at least one in every three of our marriageable sisters would be unable to find for her husband one already a brother. And the situation is made rather worse by the fact that even now (though to a small extent than ever before) brethren are on the whole more mobile than sisters, and somewhat more disposed to find friends outside the ecclesia. And even in the happy cases where these friends wholeheartedly accept the Truth before becoming the wives of brethren, this makes the situation of the sisters already with us the more difficult.
It would probably not be far from the truth to say that something like half our sisters of marriageable age come painfully in touch with the problem.
And since we have already come to the conclusion that marriage out of the faith is (to say the least) ill-advised, what good advice is there to put in its place?
Being strictly analytical for a moment, at least these possibilities exist. Those who cannot find husbands in the faith might (1) remain unmarried, perhaps for life; they might (2) bring about the true conversion of young men from outside the community, and accept the offers of marriage which might follow; they might (3)persuade such young men to go through a form of confession and baptism, so as to be able, as it were, to marry them within the letter of the rules; they might (4) ignore what has so far been said, and marry one not of our faith, possibly hoping that at some later time their husbands would come to believe and be baptized; or they might (5) deliberately postpone their own obedience to the faith until after their marriage to one without, so as to be able to claim technically that they had not been guilty, as believers, of marrying an unbeliever.
This last possibility would normally only be apparent to members of our Sunday Schools or Youth Circles. It has, no doubt, sometimes happened, and within the author’s experience, it has actually been recommended as a neat solution of the constitutional problems. It has even on one occasion at least worked out successfully, in that the couple both subsequently accepted baptism, and are living what appears to be a steadfast and loyal Christadelphian life. But although, as we have mentioned already, the mercy of God may sometimes bring good out of ill, nothing can really disguise the fact that this is a disreputable policy for which there is nothing good to be said. For what it amounts to is that one who is already convinced of the duty of obedience to the faith, and who knows that to be baptized and then married to one who is not a brother will be frowned upon, rearranges the timetable so as to render the ecclesial elders powerless. And whereas this can no doubt be successfully done, no such impotence can be imposed on our Maker, who sees what we are doing and knows why we are doing it, and judges according to the thoughts and intents of the heart. It may seem a light thing to achieve a diplomatic success in ecclesial life by careful planning, but it is hard to imagine that the Book of Life will contain a favorable report of the maneuver.
This escape route must be rejected.
The first choice, that of remaining unmarried, has, of course, often been taken. There are, no doubt, sad and lonely sisters, and some sad and lonely brethren, who have opted for spinsterhood or bachelorhood rather than an unfaithful marriage, and who have found little compensation in the life left to them. The desire for husband (or wife) and home is so much a part of our make-up that it is impossible not to feel true compassion in all such cases, and couple a sorrow at their solitude with an admiration of their steadfastness.
But, without suggesting that it has been easy to achieve, it is not difficult on looking around to see unmarried sisters and brethren who have come to accept their situation quite differently. There are those who have risen so high above the frustration of remaining unmarried, and have become so buoyantly happy in serving the Lord without encumbrance, (1) that those who have had the privilege of knowing them have been rebuked by their serenity and straightened by their example, even infected by their evident joy in the Lord.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One