When ministers tell prospective couples 'I won't'

Rev. Luke Witte has said it to mixed-faith couples and to those too young for lifelong decisions. Rev. Virginia McDaniel has said it to couples who don't communicate well. And Rabbi Richard Address has said it when the topic of children becomes a lighting rod for an otherwise happy pair.

"No," say these gatekeepers of holy matrimony to stunned couples in the throes of engagement. "I cannot marry you."

The judgment comes down like a gauntlet on those select occasions when clergy feel they have no alternative. Each of these clergy has seen their negative assessments of a relationship lead to canceled wedding plans within the month.

And yet, despite the heartache and rage that sometimes ensues, clerical marriagemakers are feeling good about doing more to prevent those that seem doomed to fail.

"In retrospect, I wished I'd acted on my gut more often in the past," said Ms. McDaniel, Pastor of Christ Church United in Lowell, Mass. "When I find out that a wedding was called off after I said No, I think things probably worked out for the best."

Pastors haven't always felt so good about denying nuptial rites. Many, in the name of tolerance, purposefully made church weddings easier to get by relaxing requirements over the past three decades, according to Donald Browning, author of "Marriage and Modernization" (Eerdmans, 2003) and professor of Religious Ethics and Social Sciences at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Yet in a climate charged by same-sex marriage cases in the courts, questions of who should get married are once again on the minds of the institution's religious gatekeepers, who perform more than 80 percent of America's 1.1 million weddings each year. And as half of the nation's new marriages continue to end in divorce, some pastors feel it is high time to ask certain couples to reconsider.

"There's quite a movement growing for churches to get on the ball and revisit the trend for marriages to happen as soon as the couple wants it," Professor Browning says. "Pastors are asking themselves, 'Did we adapt too quickly to the culture around us? Did we do young people a favor by adapting to the consumer mind-set?' Some are saying, 'Maybe we should have maintained our heritage a little more strongly.' "

Among the signs of a raised bar is increased usage of premarital inventory tools among clergy who counsel couples. In 1993, just 100,000 couples took such tests measuring communication skills and compatibility in such areas as finances, sex, children, and religion. Today, about 800,000 use such an inventory, according to Michael McManus, founder of the national marriage strengthening project, Marriage Savers.

Since 10 percent of inventories come back with a "don't proceed" message, 80,000 couples a year find their wedding plans facing a red light. Clergy seem increasingly willing to deliver the bad news, with hopes of preventing future disaster.

"You're seeing more pastors saying no [to the couple wanting to marry] because the inventories suggest it," Mr. McManus said. "Most churches have become wedding factories. Organized religion has some responsibility here that it has not borne."

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