Coming together: transcendent and immanent notions about the origin of relationships

Abstract

According to Charles Taylor, secularisation makes belief in God one option among others, providing people with an immanent frame in which they can understand their lives. In this contribution we explore notions about the origin of bridal couples' relationships from the angle of participants in church marriage rituals. Following Taylor and adopting the time and memory philosophy of Halbwachs and Assman, we come to a conception of temporal perspective that consists of two dimensions: a transcendental and an immanent perspective on the past. Our analyses show that the participants indeed make distinctions between a transcendental and immanent perspective on the origin of the relationship and that almost everyone agrees with the immanent perspective but only one third with the transcendent. Their agreement is mostly influenced by religious beliefs and their conceptions of marriage.