Licensing: With Historical Reference to Marriage and Clergy

I invite you to reflect with me about the importance of the license.

Various levels of government issue licenses for almost everything. It makes some sense, of course. It offers some legitimacy to the businesses with which we deal on a regular basis. Yes, you want your restaurant licensed. Lawyers, doctors, and teachers need some type of license. We get all that, I think. We live in a complex world. Licensing can help us wind through the complexity with a little more confidence.

An important license for most of us is the one that lets us drive. Early in your life, the driver’s license is a rite of passage, declaring you are on the way to responsible adulthood. After all, the license is not a rite, but a privilege.

Think of the licenses you might accrue in your life. Hunt, fish, software, business, pets, and marriage, all might require a license.

           

The marriage license has become quite a political matter today. I do not want to explore that issue. However, I like history. I discovered a little account of the wedding ceremony that I found interesting.

Before the government issued marriage licenses, there were marriage banns. "Bann" is a Middle English word for "proclamation." Before the invention of marriage licenses, the minister or priest would make an announcement in the parish church, noting the names of the two parties to an upcoming marriage. The priest would continue with the following question from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer: "If any of you know cause or just impediment why these two persons should not be joined together in Holy Matrimony, ye are to declare it." The law required three marriage banns, with the third proclamation occurring in the early part of the marriage ceremony itself.

For soap-opera writers and romance novelists, the third bann presents a nearly irresistible dramatic opportunity to throw a wedding ceremony off the rails. The most famous such incident occurs in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, when Rochester's brother-in-law reveals that the wealthy landowner is still married, and keeps his insane wife confined in the attic of the manor house.

Contrary to numerous movie and soap opera plot lines, marriage banns were never intended to test the integrity of a couple's emotional commitment. There is only one last-minute objection that could cause cancelling a wedding in this way -- as occurs in Jane Eyre. It is a purely legal obstacle: The revelation that one of the parties is married to someone else. In the years before government-issued marriage licenses, when the only marriage records were parish registers, marriage banns were the best defense against bigamy.

Although wedding banns disappeared from church service books nearly a century ago, they still turn up in soap opera and movie scripts with some regularity as a plot device.

Licenses demonstrate that some official agency has at least recognized and approved us as being technically competent to work or recreate safely and effectively.

Then we read in II Timothy 2:15 that we need licensing from God in order to perform certain Christian duties. Really?

Clergy require licensing from some religious body. The personal call from God is vital, of course. Yet, we as individuals need the confirmation of the Body of Christ that God is calling us. To reject the need for that confirmation is a potential sign of arrogance. In the United Methodist Church, we have licensing for all levels of preaching, serving, sacraments, and ordering the life of the church. Many of the licensing is for laity to serve in various capacities. Such licensing means that one has gone through the proper training. It shows some humility to submit oneself to the process that others have designed, sometimes for reasons you cannot fathom. The license is not a right, but a privilege.

As I said, I like history. I came across an article that revealed some of the early history of the freedom to preach in America.

A state government in America charged one person for preaching without a license. His name was Francis Makemie (ma-KEM-ee), and he was one of the first Presbyterian ministers in North America. Already famous for founding churches throughout the Middle Atlantic colonies, Makemie received an invitation in 1707 to preach to a group of Scottish settlers on Long Island. That was where the itinerant preacher got himself into trouble with the law. The Royal Governor of New York -- Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury -- was a staunch Anglican. As far as he was concerned, because New York was an English colony, it had but one recognized church: the Church of England. Friends warned Makemie about Cornbury. They advised him not to lead worship services on Long Island, but he went ahead and preached anyway. Cornbury had him arrested, along with an associate, John Hampton. The charge was "preaching without a license."

Authorities hauled Makemie before the governor for trial. In his defense, he cited Parliament's 1688 Act of Toleration, by which King William and Queen Mary had established religious freedom. Cornbury was not impressed. That law applied to England only, he declared, not to England's colonies in the New World. He threatened to throw Makemie into jail if he did not post bond for "good behavior" -- including, specifically, promising not to preach in New York. Makemie refused, invoking the name of the queen -- who, he went on to say, had clearly not limited his religious freedom as severely as the governor had. By implication, he was asking the governor if he thought himself wiser than he thought the queen. The governor had no choice but to sign an order for the prisoners' release. On his way out, Makemie asked the court clerk to show him the specific law that limited the Act of Toleration to England alone. The clerk held up a law book, but when Makemie offered to pay him to write out a copy of that paragraph, the clerk refused. There was no such paragraph, and Makemie knew it. The governor called out to the Presbyterian minister, as he was leaving, "You, sir, know law." It was a grudging gesture of respect. The acquittal of Makemie and Hampton established an important legal precedent for religious freedom.

Licensing is important. We need the confirmation of the calling from God from the Body of Christ. In it all, our concern is simple in that we want to present ourselves for approval from God.