I enquir’d concerning the Moravian Marriages, whether the Report was true that were by Lot? I was told that Lots were us’d only in particular Cases. That generally when a young Man found himself dispos’d to marry, he inform’d the Elders of his Class, who consulted the Elder Ladies that govern’d the Young Women. As these Elders of the different Sexes were well acquainted with the Tempers & Dispositions of their respective Pupils, they could best judge what Matches were suitable and their Judgments were generally acquiesc’d in. But if for example it should happen that two or three young Women were found to be equally proper for the young Man, the Lot was then recurr’d to. I objected, If the Matches are not made by the mutual Choice of the Parties, some of them may chance to be very unhappy. And so they may, answer’d my Informer, if you let the Parties chuse for themselves .–Which indeed I could not deny.

I find the idea of courtship marriages in our society attractive but confusing. How does one work out the details? This Moravian approach would work well in a closed community in which everyone was in agreement about the process. However, I can’t see how to implement any kind of courtship model in our society where even Christians are not in agreement about how it should work. I do see many problems with the dating marriage model that I grew up taking for granted. I’ve read several books about idea of courtship and about the problems with serial romance (dating); however, I still don’t know how to work out the courtship ideal in practice. I don’t want to go as far as an arranged Moravian marriage partly because I don’t live in a Moravian-style community where many Elders would pool their wisdom to decide these things under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Anybody got a good courtship story to share?