Do people who live together first actually get married in a church?

Question

I know when we got married, the church was very anamate that we were not living together before the wedding. My friend got married about a year later to a guy she was living with, and every church she talked to (including mine) wanted them to live apart for six months before they'd marry them. (they got married by a Justice of the Peace) My brother and his finacee are living together now, and plan to get married in a Catholic church. They claim they've never been asked for her address. Is this common? Is it a "don't ask, don't tell" thing?

Answer 1

Look, all the women are getting upset at this question--but the Bible and Jesus teaches us to NOT FORNICATE--hello???

They aren't "judgeing you", the preachers just want to make sure that you really love each other--not just each others pants.

My goodness, every time somebody asks you to do 1 thing for your religion--you start jumping up and down screaming about being judged.

Answer 2

If a couple wish to be married in a church, one would assume that they follow the religion practiced therein. What religion accepts living together without the covenant of marriage? What benefit is a church wedding? Does it make you more married? After living together, the church wedding must be for show, and not faith-based, since the couple has already ignored willingly the teachings of the church.
After all that, if the clergy will perform the ceremony, go for it if you wish.

Answer 3

I hope Sun Flower is joking.
As a Baptist pastor, I have married people who were living together. It depends on the circumstances, I guess.
Two people who have been living together and have been considering themselves to be man and wife (sometimes even having children), but then want to get married in the church - no problem at all. I don't see the point in asking them to separate for 6 months, or even for 24 hours.
Two young people who decide to "shack up", and then would ask me to marry them - well, in either case I insist on premarital counselling, as a pastor. (I always ask them first why they want a pastor instead of a justice of the peace, and if they will allow me to "pastor" them). In the case of 2 young people recently "shacked up" together, I might lead them to a decision in the direction of separating for a while. But I would rather have them make the decision than make it for them.
The problem is that if a young couple, say, of 18-20 years starts living together, they really haven't given themselves the opportunity, often, of knowing each other. They've started the whole relationship backward, and that would concern me as a pastor that was to marry them.
EDIT:
1) I think it would be awfully hypocritical to ask the couple to lie about their previous sexual relationship
2) Forgiveness is something that exists somewhere in Christian doctrine!!!
3) While it is not necessarily my practise, I don't see how anybody can complain or criticize about a Church establishing its conditions for performing a marriage. You can always go to a justice of the peace.
I do put some conditions - for instance a minimum of 6 premarital counselling meetings with me; and if there are some elements that really make it obvious that these 2 should not marry, I would say so. They would always be free to go somewhere else, but at least I would have warned them. However that would be quite rare.

Answer 4

My wife and I lived together before we were married. We refrained from having sex. We were able to test our compatability before we were married. Had there been issues between our living styles, we would have been able to rethink our position before marrying instead of just deciding it "isn't working out".

And...we got legally married by a justice of the peace on 11/22/05, but we consider 12/3/05 as our official wedding, as it was in a church.

Answer 5

It depends on the which state the people reside. With a civil ceremony they usually don't care. Living together before marriage these days is common. However, the Catholic church frown on this because in living with a future spouse is considered fornication, which is against the rules of the church and fornication (sexual) is considered a sin by the laws of the Bible.

Answer 6

<> Look at it this way - if the Church denied marrying the couple, they would still be living in sin. Would they not? What does that solve? Nothing. <> Do you know the couple well enough to know whether or not they repented of their sin? The fact they were living in sin may very well have given the couple the impetus to get married in the first place. <> The Bible teaches mercy and compassion. <> You seem to be placing too much emphasis on the Bible and not who Inspired the Bible.

Answer 7

My wife and I lived together before we got married. It's a commendable thing to remain seperate before marriage, but you also have to look at what a biblcal marriage is. You can't find a clergy-performed "wedding" anywhere in scripture. The consumation is the wedding. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying everyone should shack up before they get married. It's not the joining of the flesh that is wrong, it's the seperation that is what God didn't intend. Then again, if you truly believe that God forgives, a church is within their rights to reccomend, but no churh can say that premarital joining or divorce will damn you.

Answer 8

The answer is, it all depends on the minister. When I got married, I had wanted a friend of the family, he actually married my second cousin to do the the ceremony, he said he would be happy to do it, as long as I told him I had never had sex or was going to have sex with my fiancee until marriage. I thanked him for his time and never got back to him. We looked into doing a church ceremony but to have the priest do the marriage we would have to submit to their rules, in the end we had a former catholic priest, who was very open minded and was happy to marry us and even let us work out our own ceremony, (pick how religious we wanted it) and it worked out fine. What's so retarded about the whole thing, I know if we had just said all the right things to the pastors they would have married us, but I didn't think it was right to have to lie about something I did not feel guilty about in the least.

Answer 9

Most people who live together first do get married in a church. The Baptist or the Presbyterian church will probably not marry them at all. But most all liberal churches will do it. Look for a Methodist, United Church of Christ, Pentecostal, Charismatic, Anglican, Episcopal, Christian, Non-Denominational, interdenominational, and so on.

Answer 10

My wife and I lived together before we got married, and were never asked about it. That was 22 years ago and in Methodist Church.
I am now an Assemblies of God Pastor, and we will not marry a couple that is living together. In fact if we do we can lose our credentials.

Answer 11

First of all, it's ridiculous that someone reported this question.

I'm not familiar with the tenets of most churches, but I find it absurd that couples are asked to not live together before they get married. Do they think this cancels out whatever "sin" they've been living in?