America has entered into an extended debate and experiment about civil marriage. We’ve been here before. The churches have been debating the meaning of marriage for a long time.

Ask any parish pastor what his or her least favorite activity of the week is and very, very often the answer will be presiding at weddings. Weddings are an emotional and societal flash point just now, and the awkward, painful and even bizarre things that go on reflect that. I’ve been the middle of arguments over where the twice-divorced parents of both bride and groom sit in relation to their current and former spouses. I’ve been bossed by hired wedding consultants. I regularly struggle to justify to my bishop my pastoral judgment that divorced parishioners get a second (or even third chance) at a sacramental blessing of marriage.

So what state courts and legislatures do is of interest, of course. But many of us live daily, on the religious ground, with the personal quandaries of those larger arguments.

We forget that until the U.S. Supreme Court applied the Full Faith and Credit clause to divorces and remarriages in the 1940s, it was possible to be divorced in one state and a criminal bigamist in another.

Recent studies have demonstrated that the divorce rates of the Biblically most conservative denominations are almost exactly as high as liberal churches, which are in turn about the national average in general.

We also forget that one reason there is any common understanding of what gay marriage might mean is that in the last 30 years (only) the advance of women’s rights have changed nearly everyone’s understanding of marriage. For a very long time, women were disadvantaged both in marriages and in divorce proceedings. What was once patriarchal and defined by the man is now essentially a picture of equal rights of both parties.

Some of us believe that one strain of Christian theology, emphasizing the mutuality of love and equality of all God’s children, had at least something to do with that change. I believe we might be able to contribute something to the evolving understanding of gay marriage as well.

But we’re in for the long debate. Even if laws change soon—as I hope they will—the meaning of marriage should be plumbed at deep levels in both sacred and secular spheres. The penchant for some religionists to assume their superiority, and to require their insights be imposed, will foster reactivity, not moral structure or understanding. Separation of discourse might be a preferable road to social consensus.

Meanwhile, that separation of functions might be the way to go for religion. Let the state define and perform marriages, and our various religious communities bless those they can really bless.