Washington Office director opposes Bush’s marriage plan
The Layman Online, May 17, 2002
President George W. Bush wants Congress to authorize $300 million in federal grants to promote marriage among single mothers who are welfare recipients, but Eleanor Giddings Ivory, executive director of the Washington Office of the Presbyterian Church (USA), disagrees.
Speaking as a panelist at a May 7 Pew Foundation Forum on “Religion, the Marriage Movement & Marriage Policy,” Ivory argued that the Bible presents an inconsistent view of marriage and singleness – including the circumstances of Jesus’ birth. She warned against government using its persuasive powers to coax people to marry.
“We see that Mary, mother of Jesus, did not marry Joseph before the pregnancy happened, before the Christ child was conceived,” she said. “There was a purpose and an ultimate outcome to that particular situation that led to 2,000 years of the Christian faith.” Later in her remarks, Giddings asked, “Did government demand that Joseph and Mary marry?”
Ivory also cited the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar as another example of Biblical inconsistency on families. “Abraham fathered children by both his 90-year-old wife, Sarah, and her slave girl, Hagar. This appears to have been God’s plan. Are we to be selective about which Biblical stories and which Biblical emphasis we represent as we choose how to deal with situations that families find themselves in? Or are we to come to understand God’s plan and that God’s ideal may be to foster varying forms of the family for varying purposes?”
Ivory introduced herself to the Pew Forum by saying she is “a former welfare recipient myself, and I am divorced, having raised two children, and was able to get myself through school and have a master’s degree from Harvard. So that’s not too bad to be able to speak to this issue from that vantage point.” In her closing remarks, she traced her ancestry to South Carolina slaves who gave birth to children fathered by a white plantation owner.
Ivory quotes from a 1980 Presbyterian Church (U.S.) study titled “Nature and Purpose of Human Sexuality,” including this sentence: “Only God can ultimately judge the degrees of moral responsibility of particular acts and decisions.” She does not quote the next sentence in the report: “We do well to remember, however, that the personal and social consequences of lifestyles which justify the separation of sex from marriage cannot be known in advance or simply over the short-term.”
The study does not propose alternatives to the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman.
Rather than the government encouraging poor, single mothers to marry, Ivory said, it should be providing ample public support – especially for mothers with children in school.
The text of Ivory’s remarks is on the Pew Forum Web site.