Act of Mercy

Faced with a rise in divorce, the U.S. Protestant Episcopal Church in 1946 liberalized its marriage canon; bishops got authority to decide whether or not divorced people could be remarried in church. Faced with a similar divorce rise, the synod of Germany's United Evangelical Lutheran Church has decided to do just the opposite. Last week a new, more stringent set of marriage regulations went into effect for 18 million German Lutherans.

The new code bans church marriage for 1) anyone who has been divorced (barring "exceptional" cases); 2) couples in which one of the partners is not a member of a Christian church; 3) couples in which one partner (e.g., a Roman Catholic) proposes to educate the children in a different denomination.

"It is the task of the church," the synod proclaimed, "to give more expressive emphasis to matrimony as an existing order based on God's Word ... It is an act of mercy to meet disorder with order and stability."

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