When I was nine years old, my Southern Baptist preacher father divorced my mother. My world was shattered—economically, yes, but spiritually as well. I had watched my father preach on the evils of divorce, and here he was, involved with another woman and divorcing my mother.
It was a watershed event in my life. I still have my childhood Bible—a tattered “Living Bible” translation with Jesus gently holding a lamb on the cover—and all the passages against divorce are underlined. The fevered actions of a child trying to grasp the very adult situation of divorce and failing to understand how someone who preaches against something could then go ahead and do it himself.
The event caused me to deeply distrust religion, but also to completely distrust pastors. God has a wicked sense of humor, however—leading me down that path of temptation to become a minister myself. In all my sermons, though, I don’t think I’ve ever preached against divorce. In fact, I would counsel it for some couples when their differences become too great, or in the instance of abuse, or when their bitterness toward one another begins to poison those around them. Often, it’s better to part than to remain in a soul-killing relationship.
I do believe, however, that conservative religious people who preach against the evils of same-sex marriage have long needed to clean their own doorsteps before going off on gays and lesbians who want to marry. Jesus, who said nothing about homosexuality, had plenty to say about heterosexual couples who divorced. Throughout the Bible, divorce has been strongly condemned and only allowed under certain circumstances—mainly when the woman cheats (but not the husband)—but even then, divorce is a great source of shame for both parties.
A lot has changed in religious circles over the millennia. When my father divorced my mother, it was at a time when the Southern Baptist church had strict rules against divorce for men in the pulpit. My father never pastored another church after the divorce. He did a few tent revivals, but never again would he pastor a flock because of the shame he had brought upon himself and his family.
At least in those days, the Southern Baptists had a code about divorce, but these days, Southern Baptist churches are routinely led by divorced men—the most famous being Charles Stanley. Despite divorcing his wife in 2000, he remains the pastor at the mega-sized First Baptist Church in Atlanta.
Divorce has been a growing problem for the faithful. A Barna poll from 2008 revealed 33 percent of couples overall get divorced. Born-again Christians—while apparently prizing marriage—score no better with 32 percent reporting divorce. Divorce was lowest among atheists and agnostics (30 percent) and evangelical Christians (26 percent).
Finally, someone in conservative Christian leadership is taking notice and urging believers to do something about it. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, wrote last week about this growing crisis:
The real scandal 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.
While Mohler is not about to drop his crusade against same-sex marriage and abortion, he does finally admit one thing—divorce is more dangerous that gay marriage:
But divorce harms many more lives than will be touched by homosexual marriage. Children are left without fathers, wives without husbands, and homes are forever broken. Fathers are separated from their children, and marriage is irreparably undermined as divorce becomes routine and accepted. Divorce is not the unpardonable sin, but it is sin, and it is a sin that is condemned in no uncertain terms.
I give credit to Mohler for sounding the alarm. I have pointed out for decades the hypocrisy of the religious right on this issue. How dare they talk about the “sanctity of marriage” when they can’t keep their own houses in order? Bob Barr, the former US Representative from Georgia who wrote the Defense of Marriage Act, for example, is on his third wife. Which marriage was “sanctified,” exactly?
Mohler does not go into any prescriptions for saving marriage in his piece, however, so we are left to guess what steps he might advise conservative Christians to take. I suspect—being Southern Baptist—he might suggest something along the lines of “traditional” marriage advice: abstinence before marriage, then, once married, the woman “submits” to the “authority” of her husband.
As someone who married their same-sex spouse in Canada, I do not take marriage lightly. I intend for it to be a lifelong commitment—but the character of our union is one of equality, mutuality, and shared responsibility. No one “submits” to the “authority” of the other—we are in partnership, charting a life together. There must be give and take in any relationship, but marriage should always be about dreaming a life together; not giving in to the will of another because they supposedly “head” the household.
I suspect I’m not alone in this idea of marriage. Another interesting statistic shows that divorce rates are lowest in “blue” states—those states that generally tend to vote for liberals or progressives. The lowest divorce rate can be found in Massachusetts, where gays and lesbians have been able to marry since 2004.
The differing views of marriage between “red” and “blue” states are at the heart of those statistics, according to Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, who told the New York Times in 2004:
“In states with lots of evangelicals, the more individualistic Protestant religious faiths may actually also encourage more go-it-alone attitudes than communal ones,” Ms. Whitehead said. And these are also states where the culture encourages sexual abstinence before marriage, she said. “If your family or religious culture urges you not to have sex before you get married,” she said, “then one answer is to get married, and then you’re more likely to divorce.”
So, if Mohler is serious about saving marriage and reducing divorce, instead of reinforcing old ideas that don’t work, he’d do better to look across the cultural divide and advise his flock to use liberals—and gays and lesbians—as their model on how to make marriage work.
