How should Reformed Christians conduct weddings and funerals in an age when everything, even ancient rituals, has deconstructed? The American impulse is to start from scratch, as though no one has ever thought about these things before. Scholars describe this way of doing things as biblicism. The Christian instinct, however, should be (and historically has been) to read the Scripture with the church. The major theological and ecclesiogical issue is whether functions such as weddings and funerals belong to the church or whether they are private, family events. On this there is a difference of opinion among the confessional Presbyterian and Reformed churches. The Dutch Reformed churches descending from the Afscheiding (separating) of 1834 in the Netherlands have tended to treat these events as private or family events in which a minister presides but which are not properly ecclesiastical in nature. How one resolves this question will affect significantly how these events are conducted and when (e.g. on the Lord’s Day or not).
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