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Fingers in Pagan history

Rings in Christian history

Origins of the wedding ring

The Adoption of the Wedding Ring.

The first mention of the wedding ring as an option in a marriage ceremony, occurs in the 1872 manual of the Methodist Church, known as Discipline: "If the parties desire it, the man shall here hand a ring to the minister, who shall return it to him and direct him to place it on the third finger of the woman’s left hand. And the man shall say to the woman, repeating after the minister, ‘With this ring I thee wed, and with my worldly goods I thee endow, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

One year later, in 1873, the Presbyterian Church followed the example of the Methodists by changing their manual to allow for the use of the ring in the marriage ceremony: "If they desire to pass a ring, the minister, here taking the ring, may deliver it to the man, to put it upon the fourth finger of the woman’s left hand. Gradually other denominations relaxed their standards of dress and ornaments, allowing the wearing of rings and jewelry in general.

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the use of the ring in wedding ceremonies became very popular in America. A book on etiquette published in 1881 says: "All the churches at present use the ring, and vary the sentiment of its adoption to suit the custom and ideas of their own rites."44 This statement is not quite accurate, because there were churches which did not use the ring in the wedding ceremony. The Seventh-day Adventist Church is a case in point.

It must be recognized, however, that even those churches which did not approve the wearing of the wedding ring had difficulty in preventing its use among their members. In writing about his own Mennonite church, Melvin Gingerich mentioned "instances of wedding rings being worn by wives in the church during the latter part of the nineteenth century from eastern Pennsylvania to Iowa and Missouri, although this was not the usual practice.

The Methodist Church upheld Wesley’s standard on dress and ornaments until 1852. After that date the Methodist manual no longer regulates the dress and jewelry of the clergy or the people. Several Methodist clergymen I consulted about this question have confirmed to me that jewelry has not been an issue in their church for many years now. No disciplinary measures are taken toward those who wear excessive jewelry. Dean Kelly, a Methodist scholar, goes as far as to say that "for decades there hasn’t been anything you could do that would get you drummed out of the Methodist Church