Posted on 08/30/2004 5:58:47 AM PDT by Theodore R.
Michael McManus hopes to bring the Marriage Savers to Wyoming
By Cara Eastwood rep4@wyomingnews.com Published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle
CHEYENNE - Marriage in the United States is in trouble, and Michael McManus thinks he knows how to fix it.
The nationally-syndicated religion columnist has developed a program, called the Marriage Savers, that he says has helped drastically reduce divorce rates in more than 150 cities.
If a September meeting with local religious leaders goes well, Cheyenne might be the next city to join in the effort to help build stronger marriages.
The Rev. Kurt Borgaard of First Christian Church joined Kathleen Kelly of Faith Initiatives of Wyoming in inviting McManus to the state, and Borgaard said he's excited to see how a coalition of local clergy could help reduce the state's high divorce rate.
"Nationally the divorce rate is about 50 percent, and the rate in Wyoming is even worse than the national average. One of the things we could do is educate people in regard to the state of marriage. There are helpful things that we could do to make it more satisfying for couples and a safer place for kids to grow up," Borgaard said.
The premise behind the Marriage Savers is to recruit local religious leaders to commit themselves to working harder to save the troubled marriages in their congregations. Since churches marry 87 percent of married couples, religious leaders are in a position to directly influence policies related to marriage, McManus said.
The leaders sign a pact called a Community Marriage Policy that requires all involved clergy to stand together on issues such as pre-marital education and counseling, programs like Marriage Encounter that strengthen existing marriages and the recruitment of mature married couples to help mentor newly-married couples.
"In every congregation of every church or synagogue or mosque, there are couples in good marriages who could help other couples in struggling marriages," McManus said on Thursday from his home in Potomac, Md.
The Marriage Savers program trains couples to help at five stages of the relationship -preparation, enrichment, restoration, reconciliation and in the creation of step-families.
"There needs to be intervention at every stage," he said.
If Cheyenne adopts a Community Marriage Policy, it would be much more difficult for couples to "church shop" before getting married in order to evade an individual pastor's pre-marital requirements, Borgaard said.
"We want to see what we might be able to do to make some agreements among ourselves and possibly affect policy," he said.
McManus said he and his wife, Harriet, have trained more than 3,000 couples in 1,000 churches to act as mentors.
Of the couples who have gone through all the recommended pre-marital counseling and mentoring, McManus said he knows of only three divorces since 1992.
After Medesto, Calif. clergy clergy adopted a community marriage policy in 1986, the city's divorce rate dropped 50 percent, he said.
"This is a new day for marriage and an old day for divorce."
If Cheyenne were to adopt such a policy, it would send a signal go out to the rest of the mountain states, he said.
"Wyoming, Idaho, Utah and North Dakota have no marriage policies. Jesus said, 'You are the light of the world, a city on the hill.' Cheyenne could be an inspiration to cities across the Mountain West," he said.
McManus blames the increasing rates of cohabitation for the plummeting numbers of couples choosing to get married.
"The marriage rate has fallen since 1970. Cohabitation has risen to 5 million when we only have 2.2 million marriages. Marriage Savers is trying to be a counter-cultural force."
Sometimes the premarital counseling that the program requires influences couples to not get married, McManus said.
"The pre-marital inventory includes more than 150 statements and the mentoring couple can analyze a couple's behaviors and help give them a reason to end a bad marriage before it starts."
Borgaard agrees and said, "If you can discover before you get married that you're not compatible, that makes lots of sense."
The Marriage Savers meeting is scheduled for Sept. 23 and invitations have already been sent out to a select group of local clergy, Borgaard said.
If other clergy are interested, however, he said to contact First Christian Church to reserve a spot at the table.
"We need to get with folks who are like-minded in regard to trying to create healthy marriages and get with those who perform ceremonies to benefit the community," Borgaard said.
I understand that the western states have a higher divorce rate as a whole than the rest of the country, but AR at one time also had a high rate.
This is great. I hope they get to Phoenix soon. The divorce rate here is terrible.
This is freaking me out. This guy has my name. I'm Michael McManus - but I'm in Boston...sitting at my desk, painfully trying to get through a Monday morning here in Boston. It's not every day you see your name in "lights" up on Free Republic.
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