Getting Married · Chapter
Christian Marriage explained
Shaw critiques the Christian Church's historical and contradictory stance on marriage, tracing its origins from a reaction against pagan sensuality and an expectation of the world's end, which led to a view of sex as obscene and a refusal t
What happens
Shaw critiques the Christian Church's historical and contradictory stance on marriage, tracing its origins from a reaction against pagan sensuality and an expectation of the world's end, which led to a view of sex as obscene and a refusal to solemnize marriage. He argues that this forced the Church to later sanctify marriage, but it did so while retaining its earlier Pauline doctrine and uncritically adopting commercial values from the slave trade, such as the premium placed on virginity, thus allowing Mammon to dominate the institution.
Themes in this chapter
Critique of Marriage as an Institution
Shaw argues that Christian marriage is a contradictory institution, born from a reaction against sex and later forced to sanctify a commercial slave-market practice.
Hypocrisy and Social Pretense
The Church's shift from condemning marriage to sanctifying it, while retaining its original Pauline doctrine and adopting commercial values, exemplifies institutional hypocrisy.
Key passages
“By far the most dangerous of these, because it is a blasphemy against life, and, to put it in Christian terms, an accusation of indecency against God, is the notion that sex, with all its operations, is in itself absolutely an obscene thing, and that an immaculate conception is a miracle.”
The most harmful Christian excess is the belief that sex is inherently obscene and that a virgin birth is a miracle, which Shaw calls an insult to life and God.
Shaw identifies the core Christian bias against sex as a dangerous and life-denying absurdity.
“The Church solemnized and sanctified marriage without ever giving up its original Pauline doctrine on the subject.”
The Church officially blessed marriage while still holding onto Saint Paul's earlier negative views on sex.
Highlights the Church's contradictory position of sanctifying marriage while maintaining a doctrine that devalues it.
“The slave-dealer having always asked more money for virginity, the Church, instead of detecting the money-changer and driving him out of the temple, took him for a sentimental and chivalrous lover, and, helped by its only half-discarded doctrine of celibacy, gave virginity a heavenly value to ennoble its commercial pretensions.”
The Church mistook the commercial premium on virginity for chivalry and sanctified it, thereby endorsing the slave-market values it should have rejected.
Shaw accuses the Church of failing to recognize and purge the commercial exploitation inherent in marriage practices.