For the Sake of Christian Marriage Abolish Church Weddings

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Over the last decades an ever-growing gap has developed between traditional marriage and the officiation of it as a church wedding because of the expenses involved in a proper church wedding. These are not demanded by the churches but by common social expectations. Irrespective of whether a church sees marriage as a sacrament or as a civil order much emphasis is put on it by the churches and by society. Many churches exclude those not properly married from the sacraments. But why should the churches put so much emphasis on their church wed-dings a ritual not found in the New Testament and which came into the church only almost a thousand years later?</span></p>