Churches With No Policy On The Unions
The United Church of Christ has no formal rules requiring or prohibiting solemnization of wedding vows, but owing to its Congregational polity and constitution, each Local Church is "autonomous in the management of its own affairs" and has the "right to operate in the way customary to it"; it cannot be "abridge or impair" by other UCC agencies, and so each congregation has the freedom to bless or prohibit any kind of marriage or relationship in whatever way they discern appropriate. Thus a congregation may choose at their discretion to solemnise same-sex marriages, to bless same-sex unions, or refuse to perform any ceremony for same-sex couples, or refuse to perform any kind of marriage for anyone. There are no available statistics on how many UCC congregations solemnize same-sex relationships, but there are documented cases where this happens and documented cases where congregations have taken stands against marriage between same-gender couples.
Read more about this topic: Blessing Of Same-sex Unions In Christian Churches
Famous quotes containing the words churches, policy and/or unions:
“Universities are, of course, hostile to geniuses, which seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.”
—Karl Von Clausewitz (1780–1831)
“The newly-formed clothing unions are ready to welcome her; but woman shrinks back from organization, Heaven knows why! It is perhaps because in organization one find the truest freedom, and woman has been a slave too long to know what freedom means.”
—Katharine Pearson Woods (1853–1923)