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Columnist Michael McManus: Church Has Role Beyond "I Do"
Cheyenne Wyoming Tribune-Eagle ^ | 09-24-04 | Eastwood, Cara

Posted on 09/24/2004 11:16:56 AM PDT by Theodore R.

Church has role beyond 'I do' - speaker

By Cara Eastwood rep4@wyomingnews.com Published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle

CHEYENNE - According to the leaders of the Forum on the State of Marriage in Wyoming, healthy marriages are good for everyone - children, adults and the state of Wyoming.

On Thursday, the conference brought church and community leaders together to discuss the threatened existence of marriage in the state and to talk about potential solutions.

The divorce rate in Wyoming is the third worst in the nation, behind Nevada and Arkansas, said Michael McManus as he spoke to the group of about 40 people.

McManus is a nationally-syndicated religion columnist who has developed a program called Marriage Savers that he says has helped drastically reduce divorce rates in more than 150 cities.

"Each divorce is the death of a small civilization," McManus said to the group gathered at First Christian Church in Cheyenne.

Research shows that both children and adults feel, learn and grow better in married households, said Dr. Susan Blumberg, the Family, Life and Marriage Program Specialist for the Administration for Children and Families.

Although other relationship types also can offer children supportive and healthy upbringings, those who grow up in homes with two married parents have better school performance and fewer emotional and behavioral problems, Blumburg said. Married adults experience lower mortality, better health and greater financial well-being.

So why are so many people getting divorced?

McManus blames churches, synagogues and mosques for being "wedding factories" instead of creating lasting marriages.

Without the means to prepare couples for marriage, to strengthen existing marriages and to restore troubled marriages, McManus said religious institutions are failing the majority of Americans who get married in a house of worship.

"Churches are in the business of doing weddings, not marriages," he said.

The Marriage Savers idea involves using local religious leaders to work harder to save the troubled marriages in their congregations.

The leaders sign a pact called a Community Marriage Policy that unites them on issues such as pre-marital education and counseling, and the promotion of programs like Marriage Encounter that strengthen existing marriages.

McManus also stresses the importance of involving 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.

Mentors learn to intervene at five stages of the relationship -preparation, enrichment, restoration, reconciliation and in the creation of stepfamilies.

The program's goals are to reduce the divorce rate, improve the marriage rate, reduce cohabitation and help clergy set high standards for couples hoping to get married.

Additional resources for married couples are critical to promoting the institution, Blumburg said, which has been largely ignored in the past.

"We don't pay attention to marriage until it falls apart," she said. "We want to move toward having marriage education have the same positive place in our culture that parenting education now has."

Jim Elias, executive director of Faith Initiatives of Wyoming, said he plans to work closely with Blumburg and area faith leaders to develop a community marriage policy in Laramie County, and to create community activities like family nights and other events to help strengthen marriages.

"I knew (Wyoming's divorce rate) was bad, but I didn't know it was horrendous," Elias said in his closing remarks on Thursday.


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: ar; cheyenne; divorce; faithinitiatives; jimelias; marriage; michaelmcmanus; nv; weddingfactories; wy
I have often wondered why AR has led the nation for so many years in the rate of divorces. But NV and WY are right behind AR.
1 posted on 09/24/2004 11:17:00 AM PDT by Theodore R.
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To: Theodore R.

No crap the church has more to do. 50% of what the government does, the church is supposed to be doing!


2 posted on 09/24/2004 11:21:04 AM PDT by zide56
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To: Theodore R.

ping for later


3 posted on 09/24/2004 11:36:28 AM PDT by nina0113
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To: Theodore R.

Some of the factors that contribute to the high divorce rate in Arkansas are that 1) people tend to get married young in Arkansas; 2) Arkansas is a poor state and family income levels for most are far below national averages which contributes to marital tension; and, 3) It's easy to get divorced in Arkansas. Courts will grant divorces for pretty much anyone who asks for one for any reason and the waiting period before a court can grant a divorce is only thirty days after the divorce complaint has been filed. You get all these young people fighting over money problems or whatever who get mad and file for divorce and the marriage is over before they have a chance to cool off.


4 posted on 09/24/2004 12:14:04 PM PDT by TKDietz
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To: zide56

Agreed. Now, how do we get the churches the resources they need to do what government is doing? The churches can't legally require that each family donate 15% or more of their income to finance the requisite programs...

And how do we get the government to stop?

The fact is, the government is in a better position to:
1) monitor use and abuse of a program through national databases (whether they do it or not is another matter)

2) come up with enough money for the needy to live on for protracted periods (how many churches that you know of have the extra funds necessary to provide for long term, high cost nursing homes, etc.)

3) provide assistance in finding jobs (again, through the use of regional and national databases)

and provide any other number of charitable services that would fall through the cracks if local churches had to deal with charity cases on an on-going basis.

Granted, the government is grossly inefficient. But it is effective in providing for people's needs. I am sorry to say that the churches, if they ever had the ability to deal with these problems, dropped the ball a long time ago.


5 posted on 09/24/2004 12:24:54 PM PDT by TwoWolves (The only kind of control the liberals don't want is self control.)
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To: TKDietz

Well, thanks, you explained the high divorce rate in AR. This has been a phenomenon long before Bill Clinton took over that poor state.


6 posted on 09/24/2004 2:43:40 PM PDT by Theodore R.
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