The Reading Warehouse

Weddings have become a billion-dollar industry, with the average cost of a wedding estimated at $30,000. Taking into account dramatic shifts in attitudes toward marriage in recent years, many pastors are confused and frustrated about their role. This book offers a foundational understanding of marriage for today's North American church. Exploring current sociological analyses of marriage and the history of Christian marriage rites, Kimberly Bracken Long suggests that the church rethink its involvement in weddings and offers a distinctively Christian understanding of marriage. Today's church, Long contends, needs to reinterpret classic biblical metaphors and expand the range of scriptural sources that inform our understanding of marriage. Long also looks closely at each element of the wedding service and what makes a marriage liturgy faithful, inclusive, and sensitive to pastoral concerns. She provides practical suggestions for music and Scripture during wedding services as well as guidance on how to respond faithfully to those who are divorced or divorcing. Packed with constructive pastoral wisdom, From This Day ForwardRethinking the Christian Wedding delivers a practical theology of marriage that will be of help to clergy, seminarians, and others interested in this topic.

Kimberly Bracken Long is Associate Professor of Worship at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. She is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a leading expert in liturgy. Long is the coeditor of Inclusive Marriage Services: A Wedding Sourcebook, editor of the Feasting on the Word Worship Companion series, and author of The Worshiping Body: The Art of Leading Worship, all published by Westminster John Knox Press.