This is something I’ve been proposing for a while, that churches need to “take back” marriage from the state. The way to do this is for Orthodox and conservative churches to reach a written agreement that they will only perform *and* recognize “sacramental” marriages. This agreement would have two parts.
1) Agreement on what is a Christian religious marriage, to include who can get married. And to keep and share records of married people amongst them.
and just as important,
2) Agreement to recognize in any way non-sacramental marriages, to “the great degree”. This means that when somebody goes to any of those churches claiming to be married, their marriage will be recognized only when certified. Even to the point of addressing them by their first names instead of Mr. and Mrs.
For their part, the churches must be indifferent to secular marriage, that it does not apply to their congregants, as long as they are sacramentally married.
I hear what you’re saying, and I definitely empathize with the view to just tell the government to go “stuff it”. But, stepping back and looking at marriage in the New Testament context - we must remember that the early Apostles were, outside of Israel, living in a pagan world. Pagan marriages were probably recognized, in general, even if they were not performed by Christian ministers or Jewish Rabbis.
It would have been very difficult for them to reach out to the pagan world while refusing to recognize ANY pagan marriages. The only stipulations that I see in the Bible where a marriage would NOT be recognized would be homosexuality or bestiality, etc. Paul says that Christians should not “be unequally yoked”, which by that he meant Christians should not marry unbelievers.
But, Paul does discuss the problem of husbands and wives who convert to Christianity, but their unbelieving husband or wife does not. He does not recommend that the Christian leave the unbelieving spouse - only that if the unbelieving spouse does not want to remain married to the Christian, then to let them go. This leads me to believe that the early Christians recognized pagan marriages as long as they weren’t violating a greater Biblical moral law (such as homosexuality, incest, etc.).
Therefore, I think that if Christian churches quit performing “legal” state recognized marriages, they should still recognize marriages performed outside of their respective congregations if that marriage does not violate the moral standards of the Scriptures.