Undoubtedly, you've noticed that the American family is splintering. Divorce now affects every family. Even if you are fortunate enough to have a long-term marriage, you undoubtedly have children or siblings who do not.
Inevitably, most of us feel helpless in seeing a couple whose relationship is headed for the rocks. And the church, which is supposed to help families form life-long bonds, is floundering. Divorce appears to be as high among those active in their faith as among secular people.
But there is hope. There are suggestions you can offer to your children or friends considering marriage that can, in effect, give them virtual "divorce insurance." And there are steps that all couples can take to strengthen their relationships. Finally, there are ways to save even those marriages that are in deep trouble. Most of these initiatives can best be taken under the umbrella of your local church. So, if you help your church take the steps outlined here, perhaps you could help not only those close to you, but also contribute to the saving of dozens of marriages!
First, however, you must understand the scale of the problem.
The Pain of Divorce
"Two-thirds of recent first marriages are likely to end in separation or divorce," reports the National Survey of Families and Households. "The United States has the highest divorce rate in the world," adds the recent report of the National Commission on Children. No event in the lives of men and women is more traumatic. For millions, divorce is like "a death without a funeral." For some, the pain never ends. Most remarry, but they are as likely to divorce a second time.
No one is hurt more than the children. Each year more than a million children are affected. Most kids in the United States will live with only one parent by age 18. These children are six times as likely to be poor" as those who are a part of intact families, said the commission. Divorce devastates children. "Depression, trouble getting along with parents and peers, misbehavior stemming from anger, and declining school performance are common," and "continue or worsen" as they get older. And of those who see their parents divorce, half will see a second divorce before age 18!
The Church is Partly to Blame
It is time to acknowledge that the church is partly responsible for the breakup of families. Consider two facts:
1. In 1960, four-fifths of first marriages were blessed by the church, and there were 393,000 divorces.
2. In 1990, three-quarters of first marriages were blessed by the church, and there were 1,175,000 divorces.
Too many churches are failing to teach teenagers why or how to be sexually abstinent. Then, when they come to be married, churches are blessing machines. They focus on the wedding, which lasts only a day, rather than helping the couple create a marriage "till death do us part." True, many United Methodist churches require couples to attend one to three counseling sessions. But is the process rigorous enough to persuade couples with shaky relationships to break their engagements? Probably not. It seems as if the church would prefer broken marriages to broken engagements.
And from a church policy point of view, United Methodists don't seem to be interested in strengthening marriages. While sex seemed to be on the minds of those attending UM annual conferences in 1991, it was the wrong kind. More than 50 conferences debated the blessing of "same sex unions" and ordination of homosexuals rather than discussing how to improve marital sex. While homosexuality was widely rejected, I wonder why not one conference even suggested steps to deal with the splintering of the American family. There was even a call from the Pacific Northwest to "recognize forms of domestic partnership other than marriage," and by Southern New England "to affirm sexual activity in conventional relationships," outside of marriage. Not even Hugh Hefner would have dreamed that any Christian leaders would want to bless fornication of cohabitating couples! Then, without any sense of irony, a number of annual conferences debated what to do about AIDS and abortion—consequences of the very sexual promiscuity that some "progressive" United Methodists want to bless!
The church needs different strategies for different age groups, starting with teenagers, then seriously dating couples, the engaged, and the already married. In the next issue of Good News, I'll focus on answers for those whose marriages are headed toward divorce.
Teens: Training In Abstinence
The National Sunday School Association's Youth Survey asked 3,000 teenagers what kind of help they wanted from their churches. Counseling for sexual problems ranked first among 21 items. Sexual pressure is at an all-time high. But it is sex without consequences, says Josh McDowell, who has spoken to perhaps 10 million college students in person. "Have you ever seen anyone get sexually transmitted disease on TV?" he asks. Few hands go up.
Or have you ever seen a TV show depicting this situation, described by a girl in a letter to McDowell: "Can you help me? I'm thirteen and I've just ruined my life. I thought Mike really loved me, but last night we had sex for the first time and this morning he told my girl friend that he did not want to see me any more. I thought giving Mike what he wanted would make him happy and he'd love me more. What if I'm pregnant?"
This is the kind of scene depicted in Josh's "Why Wait?" video series, along with Scripture, humor, songs and common sense advice. Another theme: "I have been told all my life that sex before marriage was wrong, but no one ever told me why." Another is how to say no, how to deal with pressure lines: "All the other girls are doing it," says a boy on the video. His girlfriend replies, "Then you won't have any trouble finding someone else!" Youths watching it laugh and cheer.
Some 1.1 million U.S. teens get pregnant annually—seven times the per capita rate of Denmark, where church attendance is a quarter of that in the United States. Tragedy results. Half will end in abortion, and half will produce illegitimate babies—96 percent of whom will be kept by their teen mothers. The sex education offered in most public schools has actually helped push up the percent of sexually active teens. "Teenagers are sexually active," said a San Francisco educator. "If we emphasize abstinence, we lose credibility with them." Instead, they focus on contraception, and do not take a clear stand on what is right or wrong.
That's why your church should offer McDowell's "Why Wait?" video series. Actually, there is one for kids, and another for parents. An astonishing 60,000 churches have shown the youth series called "NO! The Positive Answer." A Nazarene pastor in Anderson, Indiana, told me, "It was by far the best thing we have ever done. The first night we had 30 kids, and by the end, it went to 70." And 30,000 churches have shown parents "How To Help Your Child Say NO to Sexual Pressure." One father told me, "It opened up an important path of communication for me with my daughter."
Too Close, Too Soon
What is the best way to build a relationship that leads to marriage? First, look at the world's answer: living together. According to the National Survey of Families, which interviewed 13,000 people in 100-minute segments, as recently as 1970 only 11 percent of marriages were preceded by the couple's cohabitation. By 1990, that had reached "two-thirds of recent marriages." That's a six-fold jump in less than a generation.
And what are the results? First, two-thirds of the couples living together break up without marrying, an experience that can be as painful as divorce. But is there a gain for those who do marry? Conventional wisdom is that it makes sense to "try on the shoe before you wear it." Is that right? Not according to the National Survey, which is conducted by the University of Wisconsin. It found that because these relationships begin with "a lower degree of personal commitment," those who marry continue to suffer from that uncertainty.
Result: "Marriages that are preceded by living together have a 50 percent higher disruption rate than marriages without premarital cohabitation" after a decade, says the National Survey.
This is secular evidence that the biblical position of Paul to the Corinthians is valid today: "Flee fornication." When was the last time you heard a sermon on "living together"? Have you ever shared with a cohabitating couple the numbers outlined here—only a one-in-three chance of marrying; and of those who do, a 50 percent higher divorce rate?
What is a better answer for the seriously dating couple? Dr. Jim Talley of First Baptist Church in Modesto, California, developed an innovation called "Relationship Instruction." In a sense, it is the exact opposite of living together. First, he asks couples to sign a contract in advance! Items:
That, to me, is astonishing. Why the tight time limit? "There must be time for romantic excitement to evaporate in the face of reality," Talley says. "And after 300 hours alone, a couple is going to be in bed. I'm trying to stretch that time out over Relationship Instruction and the engagement. Premarital sex creates instability in the relationship. It is like trying to build the second floor of a building on a few sticks in the ground. There is guilt and unrealistic expectation of marriage when neither made that commitment, and an intensity in the relationship without a foundation of friendship to hold it up."
Interestingly, many of the couples who have taken Relationship Instruction were not young couples, but those with one or both partners who had been divorced. "I goofed up once, and did not want to do so again," said a twice-divorced man. "I was glad to play by the rules."
The results? Of the dozens Talley has seen marry after completing the program, he knows of only three divorces or separations! That is as close to divorce insurance as you can get!
I recommended Talley's materials to one young man who discovered that his relationship broke up under the Talley discipline. But he's glad it happened now, rather than after two kids: "I knew we were in trouble when she did not want to read the book," he told me. "Even after looking through the book she had no interest in discussing it. My Mom had been drilling into me for years the fact that 'You can not make someone else happy, unless they are happy with themselves.' His book made that more real for me. She did not want to talk about her happiness. She was too lonely. While I did not agree with Talley's hard and fast four-hour limit on time (in the first month), I understood his point-that you have to have a life outside each other. You have to be secure by yourself, before you can be secure together. That's what she did not want to talk about."
Isn't it wonderful he made those discoveries in time?
The Engaged Couple in the Catholic Church
No one has been more creative in helping engaged couples prepare for marriage than the Roman Catholic Church. In most dioceses, regardless of which parish a couple may choose for their marriage, they learn there is a "Common Marriage Policy" that includes these elements:
United Methodists and other Protestants can learn from these Catholic innovations. Why not have a minimum period of marriage preparation of four to six months? For many couples this stretches out the engagement, which is healthy. Why not train older couples to work with engaged ones to pass on the wisdom of having survived as a couple for a quarter century? Paul, in writing to the Ephesians says the job of the pastor is "to equip the saints for the work of ministry." What more important ministry is there than saving marriages?
Engaged Encounter is such a profound experience that in the Seattle area alone, there are 1,200 couples a year who go to the weekend retreat before marriage. It will strengthen most relationships, while breaking some that probably would have broken later. Some mainline denominations, such as the Episcopal Church, have their own versions of Engaged Encounter.
A primary weakness of the Catholic's approach, in my judgement, is that Scripture relating to marriage, divorce, and morality is not taught. Also, the issue of "living together" is generally avoided (as it is in most churches).
Community Marriage Encounter
Whenever I am given the opportunity to speak to local groups of clergy, I have called for a "Community Marriage Policy" that puts together the best of these church-led reforms, to better prepare couples for marriage and to sustain them better in it.
"It should mean more in this town to get married in a church, than it does before the Justice of the Peace," I say. But that means you have to be willing to make demands of engaged couples. And you will need to learn from the best of the Protestant and Catholic traditions. There must be some minimum standards that all can agree upon:
My speeches had no impact on communities until I spoke in Modesto, California. One of those in the audience was Jim Talley, whom I described earlier as the inventor of Relationship Instruction. He took notes and drafted a one-page "Community Marriage Policy" that contained the elements noted above. Equally important, he wrote a brief introduction:
"Our concern as ministers of the gospel is to foster lasting marital unions under God, and to establish successful spiritual families. Almost 90 percent of all marriages are performed by pastors, and we are troubled by the nearly 50 percent divorce rate. Our hope is to radically reduce the divorce rate among those married in area churches.
"It is the responsibility of pastors to set minimum requirements to raise the quality of commitment in those we marry. We believe that couples who seriously participate in premarital testing and counseling will have a better understanding of what the marriage commitment involves. As agents of God, acting on His behalf, we feel it is our responsibility to encourage couples to set aside time for marriage preparation instead of concentrating only on wedding plans. We acknowledge that a wedding is but a day, a marriage is for a lifetime."
Many pastors have signed that covenant, making Modesto the first city in America whose clergy adopted a strategy to slash the divorce rate! Community Marriage Policies have spread to other cities where I have had an opportunity to speak: Fresno, California; Fairbanks, Alaska; Beaver, Pennsylvania; Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.
Take A Step
My prayer is that you would help your church take two steps. First, examine what you are now doing to help people understand the wisdom of God's plan for each of us in relation to the opposite sex. To be specific, how are you intervening at rent stages of life cycle:
Are there steps that your church can take to help save marriages?
Second, consider taking on the task of helping your neighborhood or community, or even an entire metropolitan area, to consider these same issues. Should there be a Community Marriage Policy in your area-a covenant by local churches to cooperate in preparing people better for marriage and sustaining them better in it?
May the Lord be with you in the sacred task of saving marriages!
Michael J. McManus writes a syndicated column on religious issues that appears in 130 newspapers. He and his wife Harriet have been married for 26 years.
This article was published in Good News magazine (September/October 1991).