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Churches enact battle plan to fight divorce

By Ron Barnett - STAFF WRITER
rbarnett@greenvillenews.com
(Source: G’ville News)

Chuck and Crystal Emory have a good marriage. They found out recently, though, that it wasn't quite as good as they thought.

They took an "intimacy inventory" as part of a marriage enrichment program they were learning so they could help other couples at their church, and discovered that there were things left unsaid between them.

"Even in the course of one day, we found ourselves talking about things that we otherwise really don't talk about," said Chuck Emory, a 35-year-old attorney. "By the time I work all day, and she works all day raising our (18-month-old) daughter and keeping things straight, there's a tendency, I think, especially for men, to go home and just kind of clam up."

Sound familiar?

Programs such as "Marriage Savers," in which the Emorys are training, are becoming increasingly a part of local church ministries. There's good reason: The divorce rate is higher among members of some denominations than among those with no religious affiliation, according to a survey by the evangelical California-based pollster the Barna Group.

The new programs use mentor couples, rather than pastors or traditional counselors, to help couples sort out the issues they may face in marriage. They also help couples whose marriages are in trouble to work through their problems on a real-life basis.

So does Mike McManus, co-founder and president of Marriage Savers and a syndicated columnist on ethics and religion. Part of his plan is to get clergy across the denominations in a city to agree to a "Community Marriage Policy." They would agree to not perform marriages without first requiring in-depth counseling to the couple over a period of several months.

McManus has numbers to back his claim that the policy works.

Although the divorce rate nationally has fallen in recent years, the rate in 114 cities where his program has been adopted fell by an average of 17.5 percent over seven years, compared to a 9.4 percent decline in other cities, according to a study for Marriage Savers by the Institute for Research and Evaluation.

"The secret is that in every church there are couples in good marriages who could be of help to other couples," McManus said. "But they've never been asked, never been inspired, never been trained."

Crystal Emory said she sees the needs even in her church, Covenant Presbyterian (PCA) in Powdersville.

"The marriage enrichment thing, I think, is really what our church needs most," she said, "because it's sad to say that there are so many couples in our own church that are struggling."

Although Catholics and most mainline denominations, such as Lutherans and Episcopalians, already require premarital counseling before performing nuptials, many churches are essentially "wedding factories," McManus says.

While the divorce rate is going down nationally, it has risen in recent years in South Carolina, according to vital statistics from the state.

The number of divorces in the state fell by nearly 1,200 between 1994 and 2002, the latest year from which figures are available, but the number of marriages fell by 13,357, raising the annual rate from 29.4 percent to 36.5 percent.

The Barna survey of 4,000 adults showed 25 percent of adults nationwide have been divorced, but the rate for Baptists was 29 percent and, for members of nondenominational Protestant churches, it was 34 percent. Catholics and Lutherans had the lowest rate, 21 percent.

McManus and his wife, Harriet, were in Greenville last month to train couples from Presbyterian, Southern Baptist, independent Baptist and Episcopal churches and to lay groundwork for a Community Marriage Policy.

Carole Walters of Heritage Community Services in Easley, a statewide organization that focuses on reducing sexual activity among teens, said her group is working to get clergy in Greenville and Easley to agree to the policy.

"It's a lot like preventative maintenance," said Casey Ross, assistant pastor for family ministries at Edwards Road Baptist, who was trained in the Marriage Savers program. "Instead of dealing with the problem as it's happening and there's high emotions and a lot going on, they try to deal with things before they happen."

Brookwood Community Church, a contemporary Southern Baptist congregation in Greenville, has been using the Marriage Savers program for several months after using tapes from McManus for training.

Part of the reason for the rise of the divorce rate since the 1950's is the liberalization of divorce laws, said Kinly Sturkie, head of the sociology department at Clemson University.

"One of the things we have certainly learned over time is that if you make it easier for people to get out of a relationship, they'll in fact take advantage of the opportunity," he said.

South Carolina law allows divorce for reasons of adultery, desertion for one year, physical cruelty, habitual drunkenness or drug abuse - or "on the application of either party if and when the husband and wife have lived separate and apart without cohabitation for a period of one year."

The pendulum is swinging the other direction in many of the states that first instituted no-fault divorce, with some requiring premarital counseling for young couples, Sturkie said.

He didn't have an explanation for why Baptists and nondenominationals would have a slightly higher rate than others.

Sturkie recommends that couples at least take a compatibility inventory, such as can be found online at RelateSurvey.byu.edu, before marrying.

"A lot of people say, well, we're so in love we don't have to worry about that. Well, obviously, when you're so in love, that's exactly when you should do it," he said.

The marriage enrichment program at Valley Brook Outreach Baptist is even broader than Marriage Savers. In addition to holding open forums on issues and men's and women's group sessions, couples take cruises and have balls and dinners to try to rekindle the romance in their marriages.

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