Posted on 10/04/2010 12:49:37 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
While the campaign by social conservatives against gay marriage has grabbed headlines and consumed millions of lobbying dollars from religious groups, the wider crisis of divorce among straight couples -- especially evangelicals and often their leaders and political icons -- has been largely ignored by Christian conservatives.
That may be changing, however, with the latest evidence coming in a powerful essay published on Sept. 29 titled "Divorce -- The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience," by R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and one of the most prominent conservative Christian voices in America.
In the column on his website, Mohler reiterates that the fight against abortion remains a priority, and that battling same-sex marriage "demands our attention and involvement as well."
"But," he continues, "divorce harms many more lives than will be touched by homosexual marriage."
"The real scandal," Mohler writes, "is the fact that evangelical Protestants divorce at rates at least as high as the rest of the public. Needless to say, this creates a significant credibility crisis when evangelicals then rise to speak in defense of marriage."
The touchstone for Mohler's jeremiad is an essay by Mark A. Smith of the University of Washington titled, "Religion, Divorce, and the Missing Culture War in America," which was published in the Spring edition of Political Science Quarterly.
Smith, an associate professor of political science who is completing a book on religion and the culture war in America, writes that in the 1960s evangelicals and social conservatives accepted the reality of divorce like most Americans. That was well before no-fault divorce laws -- usually pinned as the culprit for the rising divorce rate -- took effect.
Moreover, even as the Religious Right organized in the 1970s and began notching political victories in the 1980s, divorce was virtually ignored while issues such as abortion, school prayer, the Equal Rights Amendment and other hot button topics were emphasized as the real threats to society.
This occurred even though, as Smith writes, divorce, which is clearly and strongly condemned in the Bible, was prevalent among conservative Christians. His findings show that 43 percent of evangelical Protestants divorce, higher than almost any other religious group and above the national average of 38 percent. (Other surveys show the divorce rate is highest in Red States and actually lowest in Blue States.)
Smith also notes that "divorce seems to carry a more direct connection to the daily realities of families than do the bellwether culture war issues of abortion and homosexuality."
Smith further argues that when divorce or strengthening marriage were mentioned by organizations associated with the Religious Right, it was in the context of private, spiritual improvement rather than the kind of public policy initiatives that were pushed as solutions to other problems. Occasional policy proposals to reduce divorce, such as the covenant marriage movement designed to pass laws mandating pre-marital counseling and make it more difficult for couples to divorce, drew little support from church leaders or members.
Smith also argued that excluding divorce as a priority reflected the political reality that to do otherwise would have alienated too many members of the Religious Right's constituency. All of these are conclusions Mohler does not dispute.
"That logic is an indictment of evangelical failure and a monumental scandal of the evangelical conscience," Mohler writes.
Mohler's focus on divorce is important because of his own bona fides as a Christian conservative and because it seems to reflect a debate about the future of evangelicalism and how to move beyond the political agenda of the Religious Right in order to affect society.
Certainly, the fight against gay marriage seems to be a losing battle in the culture wars, given that younger believers are far more gay-friendly than their parents and grandparents, and as pop icons like Christian music artist Jennifer Knapp come out of the closet.
"Ten years from now, the issue of same-sex marriage will probably no longer be on the table," says sociologist of religion D. Michael Lindsay, author of "Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite."
Moreover, the reality of divorce within conservative Christian communities is the elephant in the room that can no longer be ignored. At their annual meeting in Orlando this year, leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention -- the largest Protestant body in the United States with 16 million members -- adopted a resolution called, "On the Scandal of Southern Baptist Divorce."
Indeed, the problem of Christian divorce is growing larger as the evangelical profile against gay marriage gets higher.
"We cannot very well argue for the sanctity of marriage as a crucial social institution while we blithely go about divorcing and approving of remarriage at a rate that destabilizes marriage," Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today, the flagship evangelical magazine, wrote in August after the court ruling invalidating Proposition 8, the California ballot measure banning gay marriage. "In short, we have been perfect hypocrites on this issue. Until we admit that, and take steps to amend our ways, our cries of alarm about gay marriage will echo off into oblivion."
In a roundtable response to the Prop 8 decision at Christianity Today's website, many of the 13 evangelical voices also argued that it was time for Christians to look after their own houses in order to truly change U.S. culture -- an argument also set forth in a recent book by sociologist James Davison Hunter, who coined the culture wars meme in the early 1990s.
Conservative pundits like Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter are pushing versions of that view as well, while traditional political champions of the Christian Right, like Mississippi's GOP Gov. Haley Barbour, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, also a Republican, and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, have said the party should downplay culture war issues.
In his essay, Mohler offered no specific proposals -- either in terms of public policy or church-oriented programs -- to reverse the trends in divorce nationally or among Christians themselves. And it's highly unlikely that Christian conservatives are going to wave the white flag on gay marriage, or suddenly retreat into the enclave mentality that characterized fundamentalists after the Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925.
But the new focus on getting Christians to practice what they preach marks an important shift in the culture war front, and, if successful, could prove to be the most potent cultural argument evangelicals have ever deployed.
“When a marriage is messed up, there’s no closing that book and opening a new one.”
Why not?
You can not tell if someone is a Christian according to how often they go to church. There are many reasons why someone goes to church other than that they are a saved Christian. From my own experience, my ex-wife attended church with me every week. We were not Christians when we married. I began to follow Christ and to attend church with plans to raise our children in the church. My ex-wife attended with us and to the world we would appear as a Christian family. Obviously, my ex-wife knew otherwise and took steps to end the marriage.
My point is that our divorce would appear as a divorce of Christians, even a divorce of evangelicals of which I am one. All of the stats reported would include ours as a Christian divorce. The facts are otherwise. Very few people actually know the true facts about our divorce. Likewise, the true state of anyone’s apparent Christianity or the truth about the apparent Christianness of any couple’s marriage is purely speculative.
Fortunately for me, in time I became remarried a truly Christian woman. We have been enjoying a Christian marriage for 20 years. We expect to stay married for life and are seriously committed to our marriage. We have raised our children as Christians from their first day. My sense is that the rate of divorce for equally yoked Christian evangelicals is significantly lower than the rate of divorce for others including those who regularly attend church.
Tough issue. A church I go threatened to remove church membership of a couple that was getting divorced because of unhappiness (no cheating or physical abuse). The couple refused, left the church, patched things up ultimately and returned to the church. Very hard feelings for a while there though.
....This occurred even though, as Smith writes, divorce, which is clearly and strongly condemned in the Bible, was prevalent among conservative Christians. His findings show that 43 percent of evangelical Protestants divorce, higher than almost any other religious group and above the national average of 38 percent. (Other surveys show the divorce rate is highest in Red States and actually lowest in Blue States.)
Here's another set of results re divorce statistics that I found many years ago, interesting mainly because it breaks with statistics given in this article. The whole series makes for interesting reading, but here's the summary...
In the past several posts, I have presented data from various surveys regarding divorce rates among Christians compared to others. Here I would like to summarize these findings plus offer some qualifications about how much they tell us.1) Active Christians vs. non-active Christians. In each of the studies, those Christians, whether Protestant or Catholic, who attended church about once a week or more had substantially lower divorce rates than those Christians who did attended church less frequently.
2) Christians vs. members of other faiths. It's not clear that there are meaningful differences in divorce rates between Christians and members of other religions. Of all the issues analyzed here, this is the most ambiguous because of the inconsistent nature of the "other religion" data. The composition of "other religions" varied a lot across sample, and a clearer statement on this comparison would need to examine other religions individually.
3) Christians vs. people of no faith. Christians as a group, but especially those who were active, had substantially lower divorce rates than individuals professing no religious belief (e.g., atheism, agnosticism). Sometimes as much as half the rate.
4) Black versus white Christians. Black Protestants, or, in the case of the GSS data, individuals attending predominately black denominations, have much higher divorce rates than white Protestants or members of other religions. It's unclear if this is a simple race effect (i.e., blacks vs. whites regardless of religion) or a race by religion effect (the effect of religion varies by race).
5) Protestants versus Catholics. In some data sets active Catholics had somewhat lower divorce rates than protestants, in other data sets they had comparable rates. No consistent difference emerged across data sets.
6) Frequency of attendance. Divorce rates for Christians drop considerably when going from period attendance to weekly attendance. I.e., the functional form does not appear to be linear, rather it's a threshold effect at about one week.
****it looks like there will be very few couples who end up growing old together****
I think you are correct. What is even more depressing; I know of many parents and grandparents who have buried young adult family members from drugs, suicide and auto accidents. I just don’t ever remember so many children dying before their parents, except for serious illnesses.
I saw Al Mohler and Robert Godfrey at a conference last month and Robert Godfrey (from California) said he was asked his opinion about Proposition 8 on gay marriage. His response was, “where were all these concerned people when the divorce laws where being liberalized?” Clearly, he didn’t see divorce as something the church should have taken lightly.
LOL it doesnt matter that you were raised to believe divorce is not an option if your partner wants a divorce. I too was raised that way yet had a wife that left me for another guy. I refused a divorce for a year then relented when I realized I was making it harder on the kids to string it out.
Wow, come to think of it, we’ve had the same experience.
Also the number of families with no grandchildren, primarily because the children only shacked up or never married.
Sociologically, we often focus on the nuclear family. But the extended family is in trouble, too.
I have no respect for anything that Barna publishes, and his USE of his divorce statistics are at the top of my no-respect list. He has really created the stir he wants in order to sell books.
If you can muddle through his data, you find that in reality the divorce rate among committed evangelicals is very much lower than the population in general. But you’d never know it from his palaver.
That doesn't make him a coward or a hypocrite.
A coward fears repercussions; a hypocrite pretends to a virtue he does not practice and does not intend to practice. There's no reason to think Mohler is being a coward or a hypocrite here.
Having known several people who were, or are Christians who have gone thru divorce I can with 100% certainty and absolute truth tell you all this:
The cause of the divorce was a spouse losing their faith, and subsequently taking their anger and hostility out on the spouse who remained a Bible believing Christian.
Agree 100%. I talked to a woman recently that said she told her husband that if they weren’t meant to be together that God would give her someone else. I told her, you are married and THAT means you are meant to be together.
Placemark for pingout!!!
Oh please...
Bemoaning divorce rates without exploring who is doing the lion's share of the divorcing is as disingenuous as condemning terrorism without mentioning islam.
Divorce, like terrorism, is a tactic: not a goal in, and of, itself. The question one must answer, unless the goal is nothing more than moral preening, is why does one particular group so disproportionately use this tactic?
I contend that puling about the problem apart from a serious investigation of "why," starting with "who," fulfills your definition of hypocrisy; at the same time, "why" the "who" is being ignored satisfies your requirements for cowardice.
You say you don’t want churches to remarry folks who get a “no-fault” divorce. But when my wife had an affair and moved out, my lawyer told me it made no difference in a settlement how I filed. As long as that doesn’t change, most divorces for cause will probably be labeled as no-fault.
And my own 2 cents on the matter is that everyone is just way too accepting of divorce. People go around breaking their vows, behave as cruel as possible to their soon to be ex-spouse and mess up their kid’s lives big time. And what consequence do they pay? Hey its all cool is what I found out. I just wanna be happy....we grew apart....I’m not in love with you anymore.....I didn’t mean to fall in love with another man/woman....its better for the kids to have their parents happy and divorced than fighting and married....these are just some of the common sayings that go with divorce. A large portion of our population will support ppl with the above reasons. As for the counter; I don’t see it. Causing your marriage to break up doesn’t seem to have much consequence anymore.
You still have no business accusing Mohler of hypocrisy and cowardice, which are serious judgments of moral lapse unsupported by evidence. You don't know whether Mohler dealt with just this male/female thing in the article before this one, the article after this one. Nor do you know whether his purpose was to compreehensively explore ggender differences, or just to lay the problem at the doorstep of the Christian churches (which seems to me the more likely case.)
I can certainly agree with you that wives more often initiate divorce proceedings than husbands do: that's verifiable. And sometimes it's all to do with the wife's restlessness, or selfishness, or ambition to ditch Husband #1 so she can extract all the economic assets available and move on to Husband #2. I've seen that happen, and it's pretty ugly.
On the other hand, the person who initiates and pursues the divorce is not always the person principally at fault. I've also seen it happen, that a husband who has emotionally abandoned his marriage (hardly knows his kids, has had a series of honeys on the side) nevertheless would have been perfectly content to remain "married" til death: in fact, the wife keeps his household livable, rescues his outward respectability, and keeps his current girlfriend off his back ("I'd marry you, Gloria honey, but you know, my wife...")
Meanwhile, his wife finds out about Gloria and decides that since the kids are now grown, it's time to stop doing the laundry and the dishes for this creep, and put an end to the farce: therefore she's "at fault" because she initiated the divorce?
But let's not continue with hypothetical "he said/she said" scenarios. Mohler didn't say all that could have possibly be said. Don't fault him for that. Feel free to start a thread and point the discussion in the direction you think it ought to go.
So a guy comes home with lipstick on his shirt, and empty condom wrappers in his briefcase and the wife says: I want a divorce.
Does that go into your 80% figure of women seeking divorce?
Of the 80% of women seeking divorce, what is the percentage of women seeking divorce ‘cuz I just don’t want to be married to you anymore’ versus those seeking divorce for a reason.
This sounds like a wise person — with a lot of facts. I was astounded by some of them.
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