“A wedding is a ceremony,” Molher said. “And, historically, those who have participated in the ceremony, and by that I mean, even just those who are in the congregation, they’re described as witnesses and celebrants to the wedding. That is to say they’re there to celebrate.”
“Affirmation of the union is, historically and I think biblically, crucial to what a wedding is all about,” Mohler added. “That’s one of the reasons why the most foundational language in terms of marriage and western civilization, the most foundational language in the English-speaking world, is the language of ‘The Book of Common Prayer.’”
Almost everyone will recognize the language spoken in that that book, Mohler said, which is, “If there be anyone here who knows any reason why these two should not be lawfully, wed let him speak now or forever hold his peace.”
The familiar phrase isn’t “unexpected” or “incidental” language, Mohler said.
“If you’re here, you’re here because you think this is right. If you’re here, you believe this is a marriage,” Mohler explained. “And when it comes to Christians looking at a same-sex ceremony, whatever they’re going to call it, we don’t believe that it’s right, we can’t celebrate it, and we actually don’t believe it’s marriage, so we can’t bear false witness about marriage.”
Mohler shared that he warned Christians in 2011 to think biblically on the issue of whether they should attend a same-sex wedding ceremony long before they were sent an invitation. “Not just about whether you should go or not, but why,” he said.
The theologian isn’t saying that Christians shouldn’t build relationships with people who identify as LGBTQ+, but he wanted to be clear that “there’s a category distinction between fostering a relationship” or “sharing meal in table fellowship” and “being a celebrant at a ceremony.”
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Mohler concluded by noting that witnesses must sign a marriage certificate to testify that a wedding is “legitimate and lawful.” He explained that those “who are attending are the larger circle of those who are in agreement with that.”
“And so I think that emphatically means that that’s the one place that Christians I think should not be, and I think we need to decide that up front,” Mohler added.
Mohler said he believes that a Christian attending an LGBTQ+ wedding ceremony “is not context-dependent.” In other words, Mohler said, “the moral distinction is not between that same-sex ceremony and this same-sex ceremony. The categorical distinction is between marriage and ceremonies that celebrate what is not marriage and can’t be from a Christian biblical perspective.”