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Though I agree with your point, the issue under discussion (context here) has nothing to do with Christianity or with the scripture. So, I would think Biblical command/instruction is not relevant to the people practicing "marriage by kidnapped".
Yes... the mode of acquiring is what I would take issue with. 
"Men seized at gunpoint"
But I realize that it is probably more common and accepted there. People can get used to anything, as evidenced by our own apparent acceptance of abortion as a nation.
"Men seized at gunpoint"
But I realize that it is probably more common and accepted there. People can get used to anything, as evidenced by our own apparent acceptance of abortion as a nation.
Here is an excerpt from Kathleen Gough's write up about their marriages-
"Nayars seem to have treated marriage apart from sex and economic relations between men and women.The basic household unit is called the taravad which is matrilineal.The term enangar is applied to a matrilineal lineage.
A ritual marriage called the thali kettu kalyanam in which a man tied a gold chain around the neck of his bride was conducted in a public ceremony.This marriage was performed before puberty or at about that stage in the life of a girl. A girl was married in this manner to a man who belonged to an enangar other than hers. After attainment of puberty by the bride she was required to live together with her ritual husband for three days in a continuous succession. After this brief period of cohabitation a ritual bath was given to the couple after which the loin cloth of the bride was ritually torn into two halves to establish that the ritual husband did not have any exclusive sexual rights over her from that moment onwards. He neither had any more responsibilites with regard to her.Sometimes he never see her again.
Now the woman who customarily live in large taravad was exposed to free cohabitation with men coming from the enangars of her ritual husband or from other higher caste groups particularly the Namboodiri Brahmins.These men were called the visiting husbands and they had sexual relations with the woman but no responsibilities or support to the woman or the children. However during the period of her pregnancy one of these visiting husbands usually came forward to give gifts in order to finance the child birth expenditures. But it should not be assumed that this person served as father to the children born because it was irrelevant in the matrilineal society. A child only socially belonged to the matrilineage and the matrilineal household of the mother."
I wish I could agree with you and say ''Yes, yes it's like this and accepted over here!" because its so much fun to scare a few Americans, but I don't think that's right
) My comment on acceptance was in reference to Sanglina, who said:More information on kidnapped marriage that is more or less in line with my post ^^
-Between 1995 and 2000,845 men were kidnapped, of whom 566 were forced to marry at gunpoint. According to police reports, only 299 marriages were successful; the rest were either broken or the grooms were killed because they did not accept the
dowryless matrimony. The grieving families sought justice in court, but received no effective relief. Eventually they accepted what occurred as their fate, even though the court’s verdict was in their favour.
This method of arranging marriages at gunpoint has become increasingly prevalent in certain communities. By its inaction, perhaps the administration has also given its silent assent to this practice.
Sourcehttp://www.manushi-india.org/pdfs_is...0Gunpoint.pdf)
-Ultimately, official apathy and Bihar's social mores, dominated exclusively by caste, leads to the victim and his parents compromising and accepting the bride as part of their family.
Source: Shotgun Weddings With A Sinister Difference
PS: On a side note, the movie "You may not kiss the bride" is the hollywood equivalent of Kidnapped (forced) marriage.
-Between 1995 and 2000,845 men were kidnapped, of whom 566 were forced to marry at gunpoint. According to police reports, only 299 marriages were successful; the rest were either broken or the grooms were killed because they did not accept the
dowryless matrimony. The grieving families sought justice in court, but received no effective relief. Eventually they accepted what occurred as their fate, even though the court’s verdict was in their favour.
This method of arranging marriages at gunpoint has become increasingly prevalent in certain communities. By its inaction, perhaps the administration has also given its silent assent to this practice.
Sourcehttp://www.manushi-india.org/pdfs_is...0Gunpoint.pdf)
-Ultimately, official apathy and Bihar's social mores, dominated exclusively by caste, leads to the victim and his parents compromising and accepting the bride as part of their family.
Source: Shotgun Weddings With A Sinister Difference
PS: On a side note, the movie "You may not kiss the bride" is the hollywood equivalent of Kidnapped (forced) marriage.
S
One of the more fascinating reads I had on arranged marriage (not the kidnapping bit) was by philosopher Robert Fulghum. This is a chapter from his third (maybe his fourth?) book, Maybe (Maybe Not) and it deals with the foreign-to-the-west concept of arranged marriages, as well as the euphemism 'making love.'
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One of the wisest men I know, Alexander Papaderos, is the director of the Orthodox Academy of Crete. Unfortunately for me, he lives ten time zones and thousands of miles away from Seattle. Even when we are together, we are separated by the subtleties of language. His English is far better than my Greek, but we are both seriously limited by lack of common cultural experience. We get by in English on most mundane topics, but when we reach for deeper understandings, we must be careful, lest we assume we are communicating when in fact we are not.
As 1992 became 1993, we spent the New Year holidays together. For all the romantic images a summer trip to Greece may suggest, the island of Crete in winter is a cold, windy place. A time to sit indoors by an olive-wood fire, drink raki and retsina, eat prok sausage with fresh bread soaked in new-pressed olive oil, and talk late into the night of weighty matters. One evening we spoke of marriage. In Crete the custom of arranged marriage continues. Even when a marriage is not initiated by a family, the wisdom of family experience is brought to bear in a way Americans would find anachronistic. The Cretans think romance is nice enough when it happens, but it is not a particularly good basis for marriage.
Papaderos had stumbled over a concept he had found in Western literature. “Making love.” It confused him. “What is this making love?” I explained it was a popular euphemism for having sex- going to bed…whether married or not. He replied that for Cretans, “making love,” is a serious notion summarizing the process of marriage and family. When two families agree that a son and a daughter would suit one another, it is expected that over time the man and woman will work at becoming compatible partners in the same spirit one might work at achieving competence in a life’s vocation. This is making love. Time and experience mistakes and difficulties- are all part of the equation whose sum is a lasting relationship. Love is not something you fall into. Love and marriage are “made.” Thus in Cretan terms, when a married couple have been overheard arguing or fighting, the Cretans smile knowingly and say,“Ah, they are making love.”
During this same winter trip, Papaderos took my wife and me along as guests in the home of a Greek family on New Year’s Day. Though I hate to admit it, I am a closet football fan, and this was the first time in memory I could not be spending the day watching representatives of American universities struggle to resolve the great human crisis of who is Number One. Nor would I be in touch with the professional- football run-up to the Super Bowl. I was vaguely anxious. My youth and early manhood were permanently affected by Vince Lombardi, the coach of the legendary Green Bay Packers football team. Lombardi was about winning, Fair and square and by the rules- but winning. Winners worked harder and smarter. Winners were never wimps- when knocked down, they got up again. Winners played tough in the face of adversity, injury, and pain. Winners played hurt.
These thoughts floated in my mind as I coped with the unfamiliar traditions of a Cretan New Year meal. The old customs of the mountain villages prevailed. Instead of the Anglo-American whole roasted pig with an apple in its mouth, the Cretans celebrate with boiled sheeps’ heads. Yes. Skinned, simmered, and served with eyeballs intact, the head is split, and the brains are scooped out with a spoon. The tongues are sliced and eaten like Pate. The delicacies are savored by the grandparents and other senior members of the family, but not by the younger generation of Greeks. I watched the grandmother as she ate. Eighy-eight years old. Blind in one eye, deaf in one ear, and shriveled by time and a hard life. She helped herself to each dish as it passed her way. She ate carefully, thoughtfully, and with undisguised pleasure. I knew that she had survived mountain life, two world wars, the Greek civil war, and the repressions of the Dictatorship of the Colonels in the 1970′s. Her husband was taken into the army. She did not hear from him for almost seven years. Her village was leveled by the Nazis, and she was imprisoned and beaten. For two years she had lived in caves, eating roots and rabbits to stay alive. No home, no job, no income, no medical care or insurance, no retirement plan or Social Security. She had lived without electricity, running water, even without fire at times in her life.
At the end of the meal, she challenged the “children” at the other end of the table to a singing contest. The “children” were men and women of middle age- her nieces and nephews, cousins, and in-laws. She and her equally ancient husband began the keening drone of a Cretan mountain song. It worked like this: The challenger makes up a four-line rhyming verse, then everyone sings the common chorus, then someone from the opposing team makes up a four-line verse responding to the verse of the challenger, and again the chorus, and so on. It’s a can-you-top this contest in song. Extemporaneously and fast, it ends when one team or another cannot come up with the verse without missing a beat. Not easy. The old lady sang her opponents into exhaustion. She literally left them speechless. Her last verse contained a hope that this coming year would be even better than the last, and who knows, if the rest of them lived as well as she, they might be able to keep up with her in a singing contest, though she doubted it. They doubted it too. And so did I. Never mind the bowl games. This New Year’s Day I had seen a winner. If Lombardi had a backfield with her kind of stuff, the Green Bay Packers would still be winning. The lady was a champ. A winner of a lifetime contest. She had faithfully played her part despite injuries and sorrows. She played hurt- every day of her life. Football is only a game.
When the dinner was over, the old lady went into the kitchen insisting on helping with the dishes. She came to the kitchen door with a bag of garbage and barked at her husband of sixty years. He groaned up out of his chair to do his duty, and she barked at him some more and he groaned back some more.
“What’s going on?” I asked Papaderos.
“It seems her husband did not eat all of his salad and was singing off-key,” he explained. “They are still making love- it takes forever.”
-------
--------
One of the wisest men I know, Alexander Papaderos, is the director of the Orthodox Academy of Crete. Unfortunately for me, he lives ten time zones and thousands of miles away from Seattle. Even when we are together, we are separated by the subtleties of language. His English is far better than my Greek, but we are both seriously limited by lack of common cultural experience. We get by in English on most mundane topics, but when we reach for deeper understandings, we must be careful, lest we assume we are communicating when in fact we are not.
As 1992 became 1993, we spent the New Year holidays together. For all the romantic images a summer trip to Greece may suggest, the island of Crete in winter is a cold, windy place. A time to sit indoors by an olive-wood fire, drink raki and retsina, eat prok sausage with fresh bread soaked in new-pressed olive oil, and talk late into the night of weighty matters. One evening we spoke of marriage. In Crete the custom of arranged marriage continues. Even when a marriage is not initiated by a family, the wisdom of family experience is brought to bear in a way Americans would find anachronistic. The Cretans think romance is nice enough when it happens, but it is not a particularly good basis for marriage.
Papaderos had stumbled over a concept he had found in Western literature. “Making love.” It confused him. “What is this making love?” I explained it was a popular euphemism for having sex- going to bed…whether married or not. He replied that for Cretans, “making love,” is a serious notion summarizing the process of marriage and family. When two families agree that a son and a daughter would suit one another, it is expected that over time the man and woman will work at becoming compatible partners in the same spirit one might work at achieving competence in a life’s vocation. This is making love. Time and experience mistakes and difficulties- are all part of the equation whose sum is a lasting relationship. Love is not something you fall into. Love and marriage are “made.” Thus in Cretan terms, when a married couple have been overheard arguing or fighting, the Cretans smile knowingly and say,“Ah, they are making love.”
During this same winter trip, Papaderos took my wife and me along as guests in the home of a Greek family on New Year’s Day. Though I hate to admit it, I am a closet football fan, and this was the first time in memory I could not be spending the day watching representatives of American universities struggle to resolve the great human crisis of who is Number One. Nor would I be in touch with the professional- football run-up to the Super Bowl. I was vaguely anxious. My youth and early manhood were permanently affected by Vince Lombardi, the coach of the legendary Green Bay Packers football team. Lombardi was about winning, Fair and square and by the rules- but winning. Winners worked harder and smarter. Winners were never wimps- when knocked down, they got up again. Winners played tough in the face of adversity, injury, and pain. Winners played hurt.
These thoughts floated in my mind as I coped with the unfamiliar traditions of a Cretan New Year meal. The old customs of the mountain villages prevailed. Instead of the Anglo-American whole roasted pig with an apple in its mouth, the Cretans celebrate with boiled sheeps’ heads. Yes. Skinned, simmered, and served with eyeballs intact, the head is split, and the brains are scooped out with a spoon. The tongues are sliced and eaten like Pate. The delicacies are savored by the grandparents and other senior members of the family, but not by the younger generation of Greeks. I watched the grandmother as she ate. Eighy-eight years old. Blind in one eye, deaf in one ear, and shriveled by time and a hard life. She helped herself to each dish as it passed her way. She ate carefully, thoughtfully, and with undisguised pleasure. I knew that she had survived mountain life, two world wars, the Greek civil war, and the repressions of the Dictatorship of the Colonels in the 1970′s. Her husband was taken into the army. She did not hear from him for almost seven years. Her village was leveled by the Nazis, and she was imprisoned and beaten. For two years she had lived in caves, eating roots and rabbits to stay alive. No home, no job, no income, no medical care or insurance, no retirement plan or Social Security. She had lived without electricity, running water, even without fire at times in her life.
At the end of the meal, she challenged the “children” at the other end of the table to a singing contest. The “children” were men and women of middle age- her nieces and nephews, cousins, and in-laws. She and her equally ancient husband began the keening drone of a Cretan mountain song. It worked like this: The challenger makes up a four-line rhyming verse, then everyone sings the common chorus, then someone from the opposing team makes up a four-line verse responding to the verse of the challenger, and again the chorus, and so on. It’s a can-you-top this contest in song. Extemporaneously and fast, it ends when one team or another cannot come up with the verse without missing a beat. Not easy. The old lady sang her opponents into exhaustion. She literally left them speechless. Her last verse contained a hope that this coming year would be even better than the last, and who knows, if the rest of them lived as well as she, they might be able to keep up with her in a singing contest, though she doubted it. They doubted it too. And so did I. Never mind the bowl games. This New Year’s Day I had seen a winner. If Lombardi had a backfield with her kind of stuff, the Green Bay Packers would still be winning. The lady was a champ. A winner of a lifetime contest. She had faithfully played her part despite injuries and sorrows. She played hurt- every day of her life. Football is only a game.
When the dinner was over, the old lady went into the kitchen insisting on helping with the dishes. She came to the kitchen door with a bag of garbage and barked at her husband of sixty years. He groaned up out of his chair to do his duty, and she barked at him some more and he groaned back some more.
“What’s going on?” I asked Papaderos.
“It seems her husband did not eat all of his salad and was singing off-key,” he explained. “They are still making love- it takes forever.”
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