Sex, Marriage and Family in World Religions Read Online Free PDF Page A

articles, maximally a great deal more. These property exchanges were not an absolute condition to the validity of a marriage.
    But breach of a contract to deliver property in consideration of marriage could often result in dissolution at least of the engagement contract.
    Seventh, each tradition developed marriage or wedding liturgies to celebrate the formation of a new marriage and the blending of two families. These could be extraordinary visual and verbal symphonies of prayers, oaths, songs, and blessings, sometimes followed by elaborate feasts. Other media complemented the liturgies—the beautiful artwork, iconography, and religious language of the marriage contracts themselves, the elaborate rituals and etiquette of courtship, consent, and communal involvement in establishing the new household, the impressive production of poems, household manuals, and books of etiquette detailing the ethics of love, marriage, and parentage of a faithful religious believer. All these media, and the ample theological and didactic writings on them, helped to confirm and celebrate that marriage was at heart a religious practice—in emulation of the leader of the faith (in the case of Islam), in implementation of moral instruction (in the case of Confucianism and Buddhism), in obedience to divine commandments (in the cases of Judaism, Christianity, and Hinduism).
    Eighth, each tradition gave the husband (and sometimes the wife) standing before religious tribunals (or sometimes secular tribunals that implemented religious laws) to press for the vindication of their marital rights. The right to support, protection, sexual intercourse, and care for the couple’s children were the most commonly litigated claims. But any number of other conjugal rights stipulated in the marriage contract or guaranteed by general religious law could be litigated. Included in most of these traditions was the right of the parties to seek dissolution of the marriage on discovery of an absolute impediment to its validity (such as incest) or on grounds of a fundamental breach of the marriage commitment (such as adultery).
    i n t r o d u c t i o n
    xxv
    Ninth, each tradition emphasized family continuity and the strengths of kin altruism, albeit with different forms and emphases. Family continuity, legacy, and connections between ancestors and present and future generations were very pronounced in Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and Confucianism. These came to particularly poignant expression in the burial and mourning rituals triggered by the deaths of parents, spouses, and children. Honor and exchange between the generations were emphasized as well, rendering intergenerational continuity and filial piety an enormously powerful welfare system with sacred sanction.
    Providing care and protection to needy children, parents, siblings, and even more extended family members were essential religious obligations in all six of these traditions. Even in Buddhism, which saw the family as a distraction, and in Christianity, which often viewed marriage and family life as a competitor with the Kingdom of God, family continuity and mutual support were still emphazed.
    Tenth, most of these traditions drew a distinction between natural and fictive families, though this varied in its articulation. In Buddhism and Christianity monastic groups were also fictive families. In Christianity congregations were fictive families. But, even then, there were often complex ways in which fictive families reinforced natural families. For instance, Buddhist monks would in-tervene with a natural family’s ancestors, praying for merit from ancestors to natural families—natural families that themselves supported the fictive family of the monastery in order to gain merit from monks and through them from their own ancestors. Although congregations could become fictive families in Christianity, they also generally included and reinforced the strength of the conjugal couple, their offspring, extended family,