This from a pastor-friend of mine. Note it's dated 1925--a fact I missed the first time around:
The Sanctity of Marriage Association launched a movement yesterday to bar absolutely the marriage of divorced persons in the Protestant Episcopal Church. The Sanctity of Marriage Association is headed by the Rev. Dr. Milo H. Gates, vicar of the Chapel of the Intercession, Trinity Parish, and its Executive Committee includes, among others, Bishop William T. Manning, Bishop Frederick Burgess of Long Island and Bishop Paul Matthews of New Jersey.
The proposed law is:
No minister, knowingly after due inquiry, shall solemnize the marriage of any person who has been or is the husband or the wife of any person living from whom he or she has been divorced for any cause arising after marriage. Nor shall it be lawful for any member of this Church to enter upon a marriage when either of the contracting parties is the husband or the wife of any other person then living from whom he or she has been divorced for any cause arising after marriage.
The association gives the following reasons why in its judgment the one 'exception' should be repealed:
The association gives the following reasons why in its judgment the one 'exception' should be repealed:
Because nowhere in the New Testament is there a single word in support of re-marriage of either party after 'putting away' during the lifetime of the other. Because nowhere either in the Old or the New Testament is there any assumption, much less assertion, of the modern theory that adultery, or any other sin, ipso facto, dissolves a marriage, which is not a mere contract but a state or condition. Because nowhere in the history of the first three centuries, when the Church was suffering persecution and was free from all entanglements with the State, can there be found a single author who interprets the exceptive clauses of St. Matthew about 'putting away' as reason for re-marriage during the life of the other party. Because nowhere since the fourth century, in the whole Western Church, down to the year 1868 was there any canonical allowance for the re-marriage of the so-called 'innocent party.' Because, in accordance with our Lord's pragmatic test, 'by their fruits ye shall know them,' the census reports for the United States, with their forty-eight codes and fifty-two causes for sundering the bond, show the most rapid increase of divorces of any country, pagan or Christian, in the world.
(New York Times, July 6, 1925.)
