In my post back in September on divorce and the impact it has on children I promised to create a separate post to acknowledge those churches which had made solid headway on the issue of divorce:
I’ll devote a separate post to sharing these success stories, so please include the name of the church and the (low) congregation divorce rate you were able to achieve.
Marriage is sacred to the church, and solving the crisis of divorce is a matter of great urgency to churches across the country. This is the post I will place those examples in.
These aren’t the lukewarm churches which want to talk about the issue but not take concrete action. These are the churches on fire with the spirit which have converted their fire into real results and are eager to tell the world about this. Check back often as I will update it whenever a new example is offered in the comments section.
While we are waiting for the examples to flood in, I thought the following totally unrelated video might help pass the time:
OT, sorta: how odd the poster shows a grasshopper picture to accompany the cricket chirping, but then, grasshoppers are better-looking creatures than crickets, I guess.
(By poster, I meant the person who posted the clip above at YouTube.)
I hope someone can come up with an example — because I will attend that Church!
Well, remember that story I told about the woman in my parents’ church who taught at the same school as my mom and left her husband, then neglected to marry her live-in boyfriend lest she lose out on alimony? Excommunicated.
I have been to one single church where the head priest gave a sermon that all the priest at that church will no longer be performing weddings unless they can be convinced the marriage will last. He did state that a 70% divorce rate was unacceptable in our society and they were not going to be a part of the problem any longer. Hallelujah but sadly that was only one church in the traditional catholic church comunity that regularly gets trashed by the media and the catholic church at large as a bunch of extremist. Go figure. I suggest you men stay away from marriage until all churches start kicking some bitch ass on this issue.
Ahhhhh I see what you did there Dalrock!
Hmmm…
My church isn’t on the list! It’s okay, though because I’m not at all convinced that it should be, although we regularly are reminded of the seriousness of the marriage vows we take. There is however, a noticeable ansence of the correlating issue: the gravity of the sin of divorce.
I guess what would be helpful here is what you would consider “concrete action against divorce.” I truly believe that many churches don’t know exactly what that should look like.
I meant a noticeable absence of teaching on the gravity of divorce. I hate typos, yet I post so many!
LOL. When I read this post I honestly thought you’d at least have a couple churches in mind to list in the comment section….but apparently not.
I was raised Baptist (the hardcore kind) but have been out of the church since I was 18 (now 27). In recent years I’ve considered going back…but I can’t find any compelling reason to aside from my own internal motivation. I honestly haven’t noticed any difference between the Christian women I meet and any other women. Or between the church and most other secular social institutions.
I guess what would be helpful here is what you would consider “concrete action against divorce.”
Yeah, what would this look like?
I know that my church (Catholic) requires that the couple takes a marriage prep course and to book the church a year in advance, which presumably gives a good bit of time to make sure it’s a serious commitment. They also offer counselling for troubled marriages, so I suppose that might be what you mean by concrete action against divorce. The associate pastor told me that they don’t don’t recognize civil divorce but they will do annulments in some cases. Seems pretty much in line with what’s in the Catechism. The problem is that now the church has to bow to the state where marriage is concerned and most of them have given up on sacramental marriage.
“I honestly haven’t noticed any difference between the Christian women I meet and any other women. Or between the church and most other secular social institutions.”
This was a huge debate at the Halo this week. Seasoned gamers will tell you that by and large religious girls are just as susceptible to game as secular ones, sometimes even easier if you find one you can work the contrast-repression angle with. SolomonII extracting naked photos from the deacon’s daughter is exhibit A. (I also can’t count the number of Catholic women I know who swear off birth control because the church says so, but have premarital sex which the church also looks down on).
Except for a small minority unusually dedicated to the cause, young women are young women, subject to the same social and attraction triggers that PUAs learn to push with great skill. I long ago gave up the notion I would find a “better” woman in a church – I can just find a woman who gets up early on Sundays.
Churches are in a real prisoner’s dilemma – they can cater to their customers (mostly women), or they can toughen their message and the women will stop coming, and either way the guys are at home watching NFL football.
“which presumably gives a good bit of time to make sure it’s a serious commitment”
I doubt this works the way it sounds. Have you ever met someone who stayed with somebody else when they didn’t want to, for months or even years? I have, several times. Sometimes it’s about not having a good reason to eject, sometimes it’s not having any other options, but I don’t believe time is a good marker of commitment seriousness.
“The associate pastor told me that they don’t don’t recognize civil divorce but they will do annulments in some cases.”
This is a really breathtaking statement. They don’t “recognize” civil divorces? What does that even mean? If two people get a civil divorce, they’re divorced – what is he going to do, lasso them with his vestments and pull them back into the church? I understand the right to re-marry in the Church may be suspended, but what does that matter to someone narcissistic enough to hack a frivolous divorce in the first place?
It bothers me when preachers advise against prenups and things like this on the basis that it shows lack of faith in marriage. I think they are playing an ostrich game, “if I pretend I don’t see it no one will notice.” The horse is out of the barn, they need to wake up and understand that divorces are happening all around us, and they need to be honest with their parishoners about the legal risks, not just the spiritual ones – they can’t pretend the couples they are counseling won’t go out into the world and be touched by secular madness.
“Render unto Caesar” does not apply here because divorce is not something that “happens” to a marriage, something forced on people like taxes or conscription. Marriage and divorce are both willed by at least one person in the marriage.
I think it’s time American pastors got out of the state marriage game entirely – stop the “by the power vested in me by the state” part of the process. If you are an actor of the state, you are an officer and a pawn of whatever the state has done to the institution of marriage. You don’t have the right to say “I don’t recognize civil divorce.” I just find that massively hypocritical, like waving the troops away to war but not being there when they come home wounded.
Frankly, I also think it’s time churches began having divorce ceremonies. If the couple won’t show up, “honor” them in absentia. If someone committed misconduct that broke the bond, speak it from the pulpit.
crickets heh
what is he going to do, lasso them with his vestments and pull them back into the church?
I don’t think that’s what he meant so much as from the POV of the church, assuming the couple entered into a Catholic marriage, they are still married in the eyes of God and if they choose to separate, they are supposed to remain chaste (I know, not likely, but strictly speaking….) and also that they will not be able to remarry in the church. I am paraphrasing what he said because I don’t remember the exact words.
http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2010/12/women-who-get-around-while-unmarried.html
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@Terry
I guess what would be helpful here is what you would consider “concrete action against divorce.” I truly believe that many churches don’t know exactly what that should look like.
Isn’t that the problem?
I have shared my own view of what concrete action is, including this quote from Old Rules or New:
“I’ve offered space on this blog to any congregation which wants to proclaim that they are living under the old rules and not the new. Since nearly every congregation will claim it is living under the old rules, I’ve asked the churches to provide their low divorce rates along with the name of the church. Bike Bubba referenced a great Demming quote on a post which I think applies perfectly:
Many of the commenters to this blog have described how they themselves live under the old rules. Fewer have described churches where it could be said the congregation still lived under the old rules. But none have been able to name a specific congregation eager to show the world that it still lives under the old rules. I believe that such congregations exist; I’ve even seen one. But they are on the fringe of Christianity.”
By the way, I hope I’m being clear enough that I understand that Christians like you and many others really are honoring marriage, even where the church itself and so many others aren’t. I admire your faith and your passion about marriage. I also admired your recent passionate defense of your husband.
Also, thanks for the link to your friend’s announcement of her book. It sounds like she will help a lot of women.
What about Mormons? Any Mormons out there able to shed light on the official LDS position (theoretical and actual) on divorce?
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http://lds.org/family/proclamation?lang=eng
here’s some concrete action.
and yes tarl I’m mormon. We believe that divorce is not something to be taken lightly at all and that a father and mother are obligated by solemn vows made together to strive to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. That link will tell you more about what we believe about the family!
=)
@Philip
As I wrote in another post, Most churches speak like Christ and act like Oprah when it comes to divorce. I can’t tell from that page if the Mormon church is different or not. This is why I am looking for a church which cares enough to track this themselves (so I can list it). From just a little searching, it seems that the estimates for Mormon divorce rates range from 13% to 30%.
This is GOLD!
Wow Dalrock, you continue to rock (pardon the pun). I’m new hear so I am slowly digging through everything I missed before this chance discovery.
How true with the “Most churches speak like Christ but act like Oprah when it comes to divorce”. As a practicing Catholic, I was appalled by my parish’s total apathy to my soon-to-be-ex-wife’s Eat/Pray/Love awakening. When I asked about how this is congruous with Church doctrine, I got a shrug of the shoulders and a tepid “sorry”.
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The Catholic Church is pretty damn serious about divorce. Of course, such a large church will have some branches (particularly in the West) that are lukewarm in practice. But overall, you have a church that will automatically excommunicate a man or woman who remarries (they don’t recognize the divorce, and remarriage is a grave variation of adultery). The last countries to hold out against legalized divorce did so under Catholic pressure. In the two most recent countries to legalize divorce, Chile and Malta, the Church went down fighting to keep divorce illegal to the very end. The only country wherein divorce is illegal (the Philippines) is a Catholic majority country.
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“he Catholic Church is pretty damn serious about divorce.” LOL. They may be strict about divorce but I see Catholic churches around here full of single mothers with 4+ kids from different fathers. It’s just serial monogamy without the formal marriage contract.
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A little bit late to the party, but perhaps check out the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, if you can find one. It is about as close to Puritanism as you can find in modern day America.
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The Orthodox Church allows divorce and remarriage, but you don’t want to go to an Orthodox second marriage ceremony. It is more like a funeral than a wedding.
Priests marry once. Period. If your wife dies or leaves and you want to remarry you choose between the woman and the priesthood. Period.
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As I understand it, the Catholic view on marriage is pretty tough, and it goes like this:
1. There are two kinds of marriage, civil and sacramental;
2. If a person is in a merely civil marriage, then in God’s eyes their marriage is a bit half-assed and not really what He inteneded or meant by “Christian marriage”;
3. It is possible to obtain a divorce from civil marriage, because in civil marriage, it is man’s law which has “put the two together,” and man’s law can also put them assunder;
4. In a sacramental marriage, divorce is impossible because “what God has put together, no man may put assunder”;
5. Therefore, if one enters into a sacramental marriage, one is married to that person in God’s eyes until one of you dies;
6. Therefore, if one enters simultaneously into sacramental and civil marriage (as is generally the case), one can obtain a civil divorce, but that does not make you divorced in God’s eyes;
7. Therefore, the church will not allow you to re-marry in the church, since they do not support bigamy and your original sacramental marriage only ends if your former spouse is dead;
8. Therefore, if one obtains a civil divorce and a new civil marriage, it is adultery in the eyes of the Church, and you are considered to be living in a state of sin, and are forbidden to receive communion until and unless you put aside your new civil wife, or at best live “as brother and sister” with her (i.e., no sexual relations);
9. All of this, when taught to the faithful, is couched in pastoral, soft-spoken, Hallmark-card language dripping with condescension and touchy-feely weasel-wording…but it is in fact the teaching of the Church;
10. One can, if one wishes to re-marry in the Catholic Church, argue that one’s original marriage was non-sacramental, and that one is therefore free to enter into a sacramental marriage and have that marriage “convalidated” (deemed sacramental) in the Church;
11. This argument is not automatically accepted by the Church; instead, a tribunal is convened to judge it, and an investigation, which can last from months to years, is conducted to determine whether the original marriage was or was not sacramental; and,
12. Reasons for deeming an original marriage non-sacramental include: (a.) One or both spouses were below the age of consent; (b.) There is reason to believe their consent was not informed consent; (c.) There was no intent to be open to children; (d.) There was no intent to be sexually exclusive; (e.) One or both spouses were unable to give consent for some other reason; e.g. mental illness.
It seems to me that if this teaching were firmly and fiercely taught and implemented among Catholics by the Catholic clergy, then:
(a.) There’d be fewer half-hearted Catholics, and possibly fewer Catholics overall; and,
(b.) Catholics would very rarely divorce.
So the Catholic Church qualifies, in Dalrock’s view, as a church that’s serious about marriage…or at least it would qualify, if it would sternly live up to its own teaching and risk alienating people in the process.
Dalrock, the church isn’t supposed to be an executioner, nor a jailer. Christian churches are explicitly forbidden from the kind of thing you seem to expect. The most they are allowed is to put a person, leading a sinful life, out of the congregation.
My church’s members refused to let me join the church because I was living with my ex-wife, but that’s as far as it went or could go because the very purpose of that congregation was to support each other in living as good a life as each member could – and none were without sin. I was still permitted to attend services. They knew I was doing the best I could and I knew they couldn’t sanction what I was doing.
Would you rather be a Muslim? They go in for ‘enforcing’ marriage and whatnot.
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The Catholic Church does a pretty good job. Basically, they say, if you get a divorce you cannot get remarried in the Catholic church. If you get divorced and remarried you are committing adultery and are not eligible for communion. If you want an annulment, it is difficult and you have to go through a tribunal. The result is a divorce rate that is massively below the national average and far below that of most Protestants. This is an astonishing achievement considering that the Catholic Church covers such a sweeping range of society. What else could they do, besides excommunicate someone?
Here are the stats:
http://brewright.blogspot.com/2006/11/divorce-rates-by-religious-affiliation.html
Divorce rates by religious affiliation & attendance. General Social Survey, 2000, 2002, 2004 (N= 5,963)
58% Non-active Black Protestants
54% Non-active Evangelicals
51% No religious beliefs (e.g., atheists, agnostics)
48% Non-active other religions
48% All non-Christians
47% Active Black Protestants
42% All non-Christian religions
42% Non-active Mainline Protestants
41% All Christians
41% Non-active Catholics
39% Jewish
38% Active other religions
34% Active Evangelicals
32% Active Mainline Protestants
23% Active Catholics
To understand how gravely the Catholic Church treats remarriage after divorce, you must understand that the teaching of the Church is that someone who, in a sacramental marriage, divorces a spouse (or even was divorced by a spouse against his/her will) and then attempts to remarry while the first spouse still lives, is to be DENIED THE LAST RITES unless he/she swears off sexual relations with the paramour. The same penalty applies to someone who willfully enters into marriage or remains married and sexually active with a divorce(e) (unless the first spouse has since died). If you, having lived as an adulterer/adulteress by willfully entering a sham marriage, refuse to confess that lifestyle to be the adultery it is and promise that, should you recover, you will never again have sexual relations with that or any other paramour, the priest is not to absolve you, nor anoint you, nor give you Holy Communion even as you draw near to death. If you are in such a sham marriage now, repent while you still have breath in your body, and cease to live in adultery.
Mythbuster,
The Catholic Church does take a hard line on the surface at least. The problem as I understand it is while one hand is sternly wagging a finger, the other is handing out annulments. I know of two fellow bloggers who had the Catholic Church summarily end their long time marriage by providing the wife with the expectation of (and following through with) an annulment. I don’t have the link handy but can find it for you showing that something like 80% of the WW annulments for Catholics are given in the US, which has roughly 6% of the world’s Catholics. From where I stand (the US), the Catholic Church isn’t really that strong on marriage after all.
…a new civil marriage, it is adultery in the eyes of the Church, and you are considered to be living in a state of sin, and are forbidden to receive communion until and unless you put aside your new civil wife, or at best live “as brother and sister” with her (i.e., no sexual relations);
As I understand it, living “as brother and sister” is only encouraged if the illicitly remarried couple has had children; they are counseled to stay, in effect, “socially married” for their kids sake, to give them a stable home. But, they need to terminate their sex life as it is adultery. This must be very tough and I suspect many such couples “slip up” now and then, even with separate bedrooms et al.
In the absence of children, actual separation is presumably preferred, for just that reason.
Thorny question… if an ex-spouse illicitly remarries, and later repents — but, has kids with the 2nd partner and thus ends up in that “brother/sister” situation above… may that ex resume sex relations with the first, original, “real” spouse? “Gee, your 3rd baby looks just like your 1st husband!”