2 Wedding Traditions Egalitarians Should Rethink

It's time to realign our practice with our theology

I have three daughters. My girls are still fairly young, with my oldest only a few months away from being a teenager. But I would be lying if I said that, like most dads, I haven’t thought extensively about their wedding days.

There’s a mixed bag of emotions when it comes to the relationship between a father and his growing daughters, even for those of us who are decidedly outside of that brigade of machismo theobros who frequently share patriarchal opinions about women on Twitter. As an egalitarian father, I hold in tension a desire to raise strong, godly, independent women out of our daughters, while still holding this strong protectiveness over them—a protectiveness that is fully aware that the world is still just plainly a more difficult for women to thrive.

I note this because, before I suggest the shifts in wedding traditions I intend to suggest, I want to highlight how deeply I identify with the emotions fathers feel toward their daughters. I also want to note that I don’t think these traditions, the way they are most commonly practiced among Christians now, aren’t inherently wrong—as though I am implying that if you are a father who has a married daughters and observed these traditions that you were wrong in doing so. Hardly. One of the two traditions I mention herein (the latter of the two) is one that was a feature of Tara’s and my own wedding!

But, as I write in my book Your Daughters Shall Prophesy, those of us who are egalitarian in our theology—meaning that we hold that God sets apart women and men alike, equally, in every area of life, including both the home and the Church—must work on better aligning our practices and our theology. Often we function as mentally egalitarian, but practically allow patriarchal practices that communicate an inferiority of women, or even places barriers in front of women that inhibit their capacity to flourish in what God has called them to.

Part of aligning our life practices with our egalitarian theology is to look at important events like weddings. Weddings, even the most modern, are jammed packed with ritual elements that subtly communicate what we believe to be true, not only about marriage itself, but family, and even how women and men bear the image of God. These rituals have tremendous formation power (which is part of the reason we even have wedding ceremonies to begin with! They help us transition into new phases of life). So, without belaboring the point further, I want to suggest two traditions that have similar patriarchal undertones that egalitarians should rethink (and I offer suggestions on what to do instead).

Tradition #1: Asking a Father Permission for a Woman’s Hand in Marriage

By some accounts, the tradition of asking a father’s permission to marry his daughter dates back to ancient Rome, but I’m not convinced it is quite that clear cut. This ritual act is likely rooted in a series of customs across ancient cultures that practiced arranged marriages, especially those in which an adult man sought to be married to a girl not yet of marrying age.

In many cultures in the ancient world, women were considered as an equivalent to or only slightly more important than property (as I note in Your Daughters, the change in the placement of women between Exod. 20:17, and Deut. 5:21 forty years later likely indicates a shift in the value of women as the Hebrews were distanced from Egyptian culture). Marrying a man’s daughter was a financial and socio-political transaction in which women were little more than a commodity—thus, a marriage required the permission of the father and the appropriate arrangements to be made for a dowry and other culturally-specific exchanges. By the time Rome came around, Roman law likely required the consent of the would-be bride as well, but would have still required the approval of the father. Permission to marry was not only a means of making the necessary socio-economic arrangements between both families, but also bestowed the necessary honor upon the father and his house—in cultures where honor and shame had direct economic value.

Nowadays in the West, things don’t work that way. Seeking permission of a father to marry his daughter is, today, a ritual act that is procedural to demonstrate respect (to the father) and respectability (of the would-be groom). Most women get married well into adulthood—thus the father has no legal right to grant or deny permission, there is no financial transaction, and our culture does not (or at least absolutely should not) view women as akin to property. The little nugget of value then is the communication of respect and respectability. That is fundamentally why this tradition still exists.

But to request permission of a father over his adult daughter still harkens back to a time when men exerted that right over women. For egalitarian Christians, this is a breech of what we believe to be true of women and their right to walk out the call of God on their lives. So what do we do instead?

Solution: Ask for Blessing, not Permission

While this is increasingly common, asking for a blessing to marry rather than permission is a subtle but important act to acknowledge both the need to communicate respect and to demonstrate respectability, while still acknowledging a woman’s independence and right to give her own hand in marriage.

The caveat here is that I would suggest that this conversation happen with both parents, not just the father. A respectable egalitarian man should honor his future wife’s mother and father alike and by having the conversation with both, it nods to the fact that she as raised by both parents and therefore the honorable thing to do is to seek the blessing of both (obviously this is different in situations where one of the parents is not in the picture).

Tradition #2: The Father Giving Away the Bride

Here’s where I may step on some toes. This is a sacred moment for many fathers in a sacred ritual that our culture, like many cultures around the world, holds very dear. Whenever you make suggestions about altering sacred rituals, it is like altering the very fabric of reality for some. It is anathema. But hear me out.

If I’m to be honest, this was not something that had even dawned on me until a few months ago while in conversation with a pastor friend. But, similar to the first tradition I mentioned, the practice of the “giving away of the bride” is a ritualized nod back to a time where the bride was literally given away by her father in a wedding ceremony, as the necessary financial transactions had been completed to make the exchange. While I myself have thought a great deal about this moment with each of my girls, I cannot help but take a step back and examine what this is communicating about what we believe to be true—that my adult daughters are something I have a right, as a man, to give to another man, when God has created her, called her, and set her apart on her own with the right to present herself to her husband. Weddings are chuck full of memory-making moments, like father-daughter dances and more, and I am increasingly convinced that this tradition in its present form doesn’t align with what it means to view and uphold women as equals.

Solution: Create an Alternative

A host of possible alternatives for how the bride walks down the aisle are possible. Both parents could walk her down as a symbol of their support and agreement. The bride and groom could walk together, symbolizing their commitment to journey together in mutuality and interdependence. The bride could walk alone down the aisle—though admittedly I’m not keen on that one, as it reinforces our American penchant for hyper-individualism and denies the reality that marriage is not only the joining of two people, but the alignment of two families who are pledging to support and nurture the new couple in their infant marriage.

Conclusion

Again, I want to reinforce, lest I be tarred and feathered in the public square, that either of these traditions are inherently wrong, let alone sinful. Each couple should decide what works best for them and communicates what they want to communicate about their values as a couple. But when what we demonstrate—especially in something as sacred as a wedding ceremony—doesn’t align with what we believe, we must ask ourselves—do we continue with the ritual acts that contradict our beliefs or do we realign our rituals and ceremonies to reinforce and communicate our beliefs? I argue that the whole point of rituals, like weddings, is to do the latter. Thus, for egalitarians, the choice to examine how we communicate our beliefs in weddings is an important one to consider.