Making Churches into Marriage Savers

by Chuck Colson                                                                                     Vol. VIII, No. 6, June/July 1995

The world suddenly seems to be waking up to the crucial role morality plays in public policy. First the sophisticated Atlantic magazine startled readers with an article announcing “Dan Quayle Was Right,” showing the harm that children suffer from family breakdown.

Then the Wall Street Journal published an article by social scientist Charles Murray, arguing that illegitimacy is the most reliable predictor of a host of social pathologies – poverty, crime, drug abuse, welfare dependency.

Most recently, columnist William Raspberry wrote that the family is not merely “changing,” as experts once reassured us; instead, it is “degenerating.” Raspberry cites a study comparing two groups: One group waited to have children until after they had finished high school, reached the age of 20, and got married; only eight percent of their children lived in poverty. The other group, which waited for none of those things, had a staggering 79 percent poverty rate.

All our vaunted poverty programs, welfare programs, and drug programs have less effect, it turns out, than decisions made by individual men and women to wait for marriage and maturity before having children. Our most pressing social problems stem from moral decisions made in the heart of family life.

For decades public policy was pursued as though it could ignore moral questions. But now policy makers recognize that when a society’s moral sense decays – particularly in regard to the family – the center cannot hold.

For the church, this represents a remarkable opportunity. By equipping Christians for strong marriages, we can set an example; demonstrating that there are answers to current social crises. A new book entitled Marriage Savers, by syndicated columnist Michael McManus, gives us the tools we need for the task.

Tragically, many churches have become what McManus calls “wedding factories,” preparing couples for a ceremony but not for a life-long marriage. The results are shocking: Although three-quarters of American weddings are blessed by a pastor, priest, or rabbi, six out of ten new marriages fail.

To be salt in a decaying society, McManus says, the church must boldly preach the biblical ethics of sex and marriage. A University of Maryland study found that those who engage in sexual relations before marriage are 71 percent more likely to divorce than those who are virgins on their wedding night.

Another study found that cohabitation before marriage increases the odds of divorce by 50 percent. The church ought to tell young people that premature sex stacks the deck against a successful marriage.

Second, churches should make use of programs that help build strong marriages. For teens, abstinence programs such as Why Wait? teach how to resist sexual temptation. For engaged couples, a premarital questionnaire called PREPARE spotlights problem areas in the relationship and can even predict with 86-percent accuracy who will divorce. Married couples can attend Marriage Encounter, an intense weekend retreat; 90 percent of participating couples say they fell back in love with each other. For deeply troubled marriages, a program called Retrouvaille (“Rediscovery”) has a proven track record; in one city, nearly half of the participants were already separated or divorced, yet 70 percent of those who attended restored their marriages.

Third, several churches have initiated Community Marriage Policies, agreements among pastors in a given city to set certain minimum requirements for couples requesting a church wedding: e.g., four months’ marriage preparation, a premarital inventory, counseling with a mentor couple. The Southern Baptist Convention and the Roman Catholic Church have cooperated in creating Community Marriage Policies in several cities.

Christians have long argued the importance of private morality in shaping public virtue. By becoming marriage savers, churches can make that point dramatically – while fighting the most virulent cancer at the heart of our culture.

[Reprinted from Jubilee, May 1994. Chuck Colson is Prison Fellowship chairman and “Breakpoint” radio commentator.]