Yeah, it is always better to shun the divorced. It is especially good to shun the children of divorced and single parents.
Clearly a church is no place for sinners or those seeking to remedy their failings.
"Yeah, it is always better to shun the divorced. It is especially good to shun the children of divorced and single parents.
Clearly a church is no place for sinners or those seeking to remedy their failings."
The only way to remedy one's failings is to acknowledge that one has sinned and then to repent. The problem is, most churches, including most evangelical churches, would not teach that divorce is a per se sin. Rather they would teach that certain sins might make a divorce necessary, but, they would stop short of saying that the divorce itself is a sin. If they did so, of course, a large percentage of their congregation would be extremely offended.
Check out (this is the third time I have posted this link) this link to an excellent article on divorce:
http://www.desiringgod.org/library/topics/divorce_remarriage/dr_adultery.html
Jesus set the bar pretty high on divorce. The church should not presume to lower it....likewise with any other sin. Moreover, the church should strive to make sure that 0% of the members of that church on a going forward basis will be a party to a divorce. I don't particularly like that standard, but, that is the Biblical one. I didn't set the rules.
As for "shunning", I don't advocate that any sinners get shunned. I think all of our sins should be dealt with Biblically. Now, within the Body of Christ, some sins are functionally more disruptive than others...that is why the requirements for elders are higher (must not be a new convert and all that). This is proper and Biblical.
Shunning is out of the question. But pretending that the Biblical testimony on divorce as sin is nonexistent is particularly unhelpful, since the family is the main mechanism by which children come into the faith. Without the family, everything gets much more difficult. Sure, God's grace will often intervene dramatically. But we can't rely on that if we are departing from what He has already told us to do.