Family Issues in Policy and Culture

Divorce: Bible-Belt Style

Amy Grant's on No. 2. Newt, No. 3. While liberal activists on both coasts are attempting to radically redefine marriage, what's happening in fly-over country is just as dire.

By Glenn T. Stanton

The hardest thing Nashville baker Leland Riggan faced in getting ready for the big wedding was crafting a six-tier almond amaretto cake, festooned with 2,500 miniature white-chocolate grapes, all on a two-and-a-half week deadline. But that was nothing compared to the hurdles the bride and groom overcame in preparation for their special day.

Christian music megastar Amy Grant and country crooner Vince Gill both had to dispose of existing marriages before their latest nuptials could take place. The couple was married earlier this year in an outdoor service, with an intimate gathering of friends and family, on a rural piece of Grant-owned property near Nashville.

The cake was perfect.

Grant's theology of marriage was not.

Grant said she recognized that God hates divorce, but she also realized a more personal and freeing truth. In August 1998, after undergoing what she called "tons of marital counseling," she went to the pastors with whom she had sought guidance and to her then-husband, singer/songwriter Gary Chapman, and told them all, "I believe and trust that I've been released from this [marriage]. And I say that knowing that even the Bible says the heart is deceitful."

She further explained how she knew this was God's will, and "to the best of my level of peace, I had a very settled, unshakable feeling about the path that I was going to follow."

Some advice from another counselor added to her blessed assurance. Amy recalled her counselor's words: "He said, 'Amy, God made marriage for people. He didn't make people for marriage. . . . He provided this so that people could enjoy each other to the fullest. I say if you have two people that are not thriving healthily in a situation, I say remove the marriage.' "

A fine counselor, don't you think? One who views marriage as a life enhancement, a mere adornment or utility, rather than a sacred institution to be honored and worked at.

Promises, promises

In 1992, a United States congressman from Atlanta, Ga., jotted a note to himself detailing his plan to become the primary advocate of Western civilization, a teacher of the rules of civilization and a leader of its civilizing forces. This vision, scrawled on a scrap of paper, would propel him to his perch as Speaker of the House, the architect of the Republican Revolution of 1994 and the "Contract with America."

On Jan. 4, 1995, the biggest day of his life, his historic installation as the first Republican speaker of the House in 40 years, Newt Gingrich honored his wife, Marianne, by focusing the country's attention upon her as she sat proudly in the balcony. He praised her as his "best friend and closest adviser."

Fast-forward to May 1999: Gingrich phoned his best friend and closest adviser, who was visiting her mother's house on her birthday. His mother-in-law answered the phone and he dutifully wished her a happy birthday, then asked to speak to Marianne. He calmly announced that their 18-year marriage was over and he wanted out.

The marriage was over because Newt had been conducting an affair since 1993 with a congressional staffer young enough to be his daughter. (Details are sketchy on whether "Get a girlfriend!" was one of the agenda items on his 1992 civilization-molding memo-to-self.)

Marianne couldn't have been completely in the dark about the speaker's ability to honor a marriage vow. After all, she was once the "other woman." In 1981, Gingrich served Jackie, his first wife and the mother of his two daughters, with divorce papers as she lay in a hospital bed recovering from ovarian cancer. This cleared the way for a 30-year-old Ms. Marianne Ginther to become Mrs. Marianne Gingrich a few months later.

As The Weekly Standard's David Brooks facetiously observed, "Why should the leader of the civilizing forces worry about anything as puny as a marriage vow?" Indeed.

In the world, of the world

It is more than coincidental that these two high-profile marital betrayals feature high-profile, "pro-family" citizens (one Christian, the other a political conservative) residing in the so-called Bible Belt. Recent data from several leading demographic agencies indicate that no region of the nation has a higher divorce rate than the Bible Belt.

The American Southeast is loaded with churches, and flush with conservative values, but for some reason, overflowing with divorce. At this news, the left-leaning, online magazine Salon took delight in sarcastically quipping that the Bible Belt is "where families pray together, but apparently can't stay together."

This sad reality grows darker under the light of a major study released late last year by the Barna Research Group. Barna found that professing Christians have at least moderately higher divorce rates than the general population, including atheists and agnostics. Twenty-seven percent of those describing themselves as "born-again Christians" are currently or have previously been divorced compared to 24 percent of the general population.

Baptists and nondenominational Protestant churches (which dominate the Bible Belt) included more adults who had been divorced (29 percent and 35 percent respectively) than any other Christian denomination, mainline or otherwise. Lutherans and Catholics had the lowest divorce rates at 21 percent. By contrast, the rate among atheists and agnostics was just 21 percent.

Certainly there are methodological problems; were the survey respondents Christians at the time of divorce, or did they make post-divorce professions of faith? The survey doesn't say. And besides, how is "born-again Christian" defined in the poll, as Christ meant it or as our culture currently understands it?

But there's no doubt that many churches have failed to prepare their flocks for marriage. And this is not news.

"While it may be alarming to discover that born-again Christians are more likely than others to experience a divorce, that pattern has been in place for quite some time," said George Barna, the group's president.

Marital radon

What should the Body of Christ in America make of these reports? Bible-believing Christians have been very concerned about threats to the sanctity of marriage launched from homosexual activists who seek to turn the definition of marriage on its head. They're arguing for "civil unions" or outright marriage. These are substantial threats and must be defeated.

But are we ignoring an even more substantial threat to marriage? Like radon gas seeping undetected into a home and threatening its inhabitants, has the church allowed a phantom leak into this glorious mansion called marriage (as G.K. Chesterton described it) that more fundamentally undermines its health and well-being?

Maybe Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., got it at least half right when he complained, "They're saying that my ability to marry another man somehow jeopardizes heterosexual marriage. Then they go out and cheat on their wives. That doesn't jeopardize heterosexual marriage?"

This is precisely what William Bennett, author of The Book of Virtues, recognized back in 1994 in a speech to the Christian Coalition's national convention.

"When the breakdown of marital commitment and fidelity starts with people who are supposed to be the model for other people, they allow the whole thing to spread as a conflagration through society," he explained. While recognizing the significant threat the homosexual agenda poses for our culture, Bennett challenged his audience to look at the issue in perspective.

"If you look in terms of damage done to the children of America, you cannot compare what the homosexual movement has done to what divorce has done to this society. In terms of consequences to children, it is not even close!"

Lost theology

There is a substantive and convincing body of research over the last couple decades supporting Bennett's claim that divorce harms children like nothing else. But he didn't take it far enough. The acceptance of divorce by our culture and the church has done damage at a far deeper level. Divorce redefines marriage! That's one reason why God hates it.

Dr. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., cited an Anglican leader's observation of his denomination's decline as evidence of divorce's corrosive effects.

"This man explained that the decision in the Anglican Church to ordain divorced men was the decision that cleared the way for them to ordain homosexuals." Mohler told Citizen, "The wisdom in what this man said was that once you decide that the integrity and sanctity of the marriage covenant doesn't really matter, you have redefined marriage yourself and then anything is possible."

Mohler said one reason why many churches have been such poor caretakers of marriage is because their leaders have lost the theology of marriage. Without such a theology, Mohler said, evangelical efforts to defend marriage against same-sex marriage and other perversions will be woefully inadequate.

"If we cannot explain why marriage really matters theologically, why maleness and femaleness have real meaning and how marriage is God's way of 'completing' these two sides of humanity," Mohler said, "then the only posture we will have to stand against the homosexual onslaught is one of personal prejudice."

Dr. Rick Perrin, senior pastor of Cornerstone Church (PCA) in Columbia, S.C., agreed with Mohler.

"A theology of marriage must be more than a sundry list of Scripture verses on the topic," Perrin said. "We must develop and draw from a comprehensive understanding of God's creation of male and female, why and how 'the two become one flesh' and how this 'mystery,' as Paul calls it, is so significant as to represent Christ's relationship with His church. If we do not live from this position, we are no different from the world around us, and maybe worse when it comes to divorce."

Me first

Sociologists attribute the Bible Belt's high divorce rate to lower household incomes in the South and couples marrying at younger ages. David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, pointed out that divorce rates are lower in the northeastern states, where household incomes are higher, a bit of data that seems to confirm the sociologists' views.

But Popenoe said many of his sociologist colleagues overlook the factor of theology. Catholic and Lutheran populations are larger in the Northeast and Midwest, both of which have the lowest divorce rates of all Christian denominations. Each possesses belief systems that are less tolerant of divorce than the Protestant denominations that populate the South.

What is it about Christians in the Bible Belt that makes them more vulnerable to divorce than those in the general population who do not seek to live their lives by biblical principles? Perrin's answer: antinomianism.

This $20 theological word simply means that once we are justified by faith in Christ, we no longer have an obligation to the moral law, because Christ freed us from that. We are not bound by the law, but rather led by the Holy Spirit, which God gives us as a guide. This heresy holds that when the direction of the Spirit appears to conflict with God's law, this "Spirit-led guidance" trumps the law. Paul addressed this problem among the Corinthian Church (1 Corinthians 5-6).

"Not only do we believe that God's law does not bind us in any moral sense, we often discern God's direction by asking: 'Will it make me happy?' " Perrin said. "This is a discipleship of self-fulfillment rather than self-sacrifice, a pursuit of happiness rather than holiness. It is very individualistic, rampant in today's church and is the opposite of what Christ taught."

Mohler observes the same thing. "Unfortunately, we have accommodated ourselves to the spirit of the age where the highest good is the fulfillment of the individual," he said. "Most questions of moral decision-making revolve around the self without regard for the larger covenant community where believers are mutually accountable for their lives."

Perrin's observations echo those of author and sociologist Robert Bellah in his 1985 bestseller Habits of the Heart. As he examined American evangelical commitment and individualism in the 1980s, Bellah found "a visible tendency in many evangelical circles to thin the biblical language of sin and redemption to an idea of Jesus as the friend who helps us find happiness and self-fulfillment."

Compare these observations with Amy Grant's account of her divorce experience. While she recognized that God hates divorce, she also claimed He had exceptionally and personally released her from the relationship, even against the advice of her pastors. And how did she know this? She just felt it-and besides, her counselor had told her that God made marriage to serve her own happiness and fulfillment. And by the irresistible logic of a consumer society, if it's not meeting your desires, you get rid of it and find another one that will. Satisfaction guaranteed, right?

Grant knew this was God's will because, as she explained, she felt a peace, "a very settled, unshakable feeling" about the decision. In addition, her counselor told her "God did not make man for marriage," but rather, her marriage was a servant to her own happiness and fulfillment.

The very image of God

What should marriage look like? Well, it should be, as Sarah Hinlicky wrote in the journal First Things, "the very image of God. It is, for Christians, inherently trinitarian, a dynamic embodiment of love between man, woman and God. . . . Neither man nor woman alone is the complete image of God."

That's the message of Genesis 1:27,28:

And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them.

Just a few verses later, we read about God's motivation for creating women:

It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him. (Genesis 2:18)

God created beasts of the field and birds of the air for Adam, but they were not suitable helpmates. Eve was perfectly suitable because she alone fully completed Adam as an image bearer of God.

What's more, Adam's maleness meant nothing until it was completed in Eve's femaleness and vice versa. The two find their purpose and completion in the other. Homosexuals redefine marriage when they say maleness and femaleness don't matter.

And this union is not temporary, based on fleeting feelings of happiness or romance. It is permanent. Consider the words of both Genesis and Christ: "Man shall cleave to his wife," "The two shall become one flesh" and "What God has put together, let no man put asunder." (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:5,6). Marriage is an exclusive, lifelong union. Heterosexuals redefine marriage when they say this doesn't matter.

In Ephesians, Paul says the mystery of marriage is "great" and that the union between husband and wife is so sacred, so significant, so exclusive and so permanent that it represents nothing less than Christ's relationship with His church. This relationship is not disposable nor does it exist directly for the benefit of the self. It is established for the glory of God and His creation. It also exists for the benefit of the spouse and the children they share. Christians redefine marriage when they tolerate anything less than this holy ideal.

Whether they realize it or not, this is why our nation's leading researchers consistently find that as the ideal of marriage breaks down in society, people (adults and children) break down. Their communities break down also. Amy Grant's counselor got it wrong. God did create man and wo-man for marriage and humanity works and lives best when marriage is, as Hebrews tells us it should be, "honored by all."

Glenn T. Stanton is the author of Why Marriage Matters: Reasons to Believe in Marriage in Postmodern Society and is the executive family editor for Christianity.com. He lives in Lexington, S.C., with his one and only wife of 18 years and their five children.