February 16, 2000

EDITORIAL:
Denial diminishes ability to help
___A recent article detailing American divorce rates touched a sensitive nerve for many Baptist Standard readers. "Baptist divorce rate higher than American average; churches urged to help" (Jan. 12) reported 27 percent of "born-again" Christian adults have been divorced, compared with 24 percent of adults who are not "born again." The article also noted Baptists have the second-highest divorce rate among all Christian groups, trailing only non-denominational Protestants.
___The article prompted numerous letters from readers, each disputing or attempting to explain away the findings of religion researcher George Barna. Almost all the letters cited three protests:
___First, many Baptist churches reach out to singles adults and specifically minister to hurting people, such as divorcees. Therefore, perhaps significant numbers of divorced or formerly divorced Baptists got divorced before they received the ministry of Baptist churches and became Christians.
___Second, they reasoned, some divorces were the result of Christians being "unequally yoked," or married to non-Christians who are antagonistic toward Christian beliefs.
___Third, many non-Christians co-habit, or live together outside wedlock, they theorized. So, co-habitors' separations would not show up as divorce, skewing the surveys.
___The Standard's letters weren't the only exceptions taken to the Barna survey. In fact, the protests prompted Barna to issue a response. He elaborated on the claims:
___ "We cannot dismiss the statistics on the basis that the Christians who have experienced divorce went through the divorce prior to accepting Christ as their Savior," he said. "Our research shows that nine out of 10 Christians who have been divorced went through the divorce process after they had accepted Christ."
___Coincidentally, other Barna research shows the vast majority of U.S. Christians made professions of faith before age 18. So, if most of the divorces were completed before the divorcees became Christians, then we'd be witnessing pandemic teen divorce.
___ "Dismissing the statistics on the basis of being 'unequally yoked' or in 'mixed marriages' or 'multi-faith marriages' doesn't make much sense," Barna added. "In the vast majority of cases, these believers were 'unequally yoked' when they got married; the disparity did not suddenly occur after they were married. We are told God hates divorce, whether we are married to a believer or not. If anything, the statistics simply show one reason why God instructs us not to marry someone who is not committed to Christ."
___ "Denying the validity of these statistics because non-Christians might co-habit and split rather than marry and divorce-- and thus skew the divorce statistics--is not a compelling reason to dismiss the statistics," he said. "The fact remains that more than one out of every four believers has been through at least one divorce, whether people co-habit or not. Even if co-habitation were responsible for some degree of distortion in the numbers, it would not change the fact that millions of believers have gone through a divorce."
___Barna speaks clearly to the issues. You have a right to receive his response, and he has a right to speak to his critics.
___Refutations and responses aside, this episode raises another troubling specter of American Christianity, for Baptists in particular. That is reflexive denial--the desire to denigrate bad or uncomfortable news. Rather than learn from Barna's study, many people want to castigate his method and motives. (Never mind that Barna is a respected researcher, passionate Christian, committed church leader and strong supporter of Baptists.) Rather than develop ministries to decrease the divorce rate in our churches, many people desire to downplay the problem and doubt the research.
___This crippling tendency harms us far beyond our ability to deal with the divorce rate. For if we are not willing to face our problems and shortcomings, we cannot learn from them. If we cannot learn from them, we cannot work to resolve and overcome them. And if we cannot resolve and overcome them, we cannot be whole people helping others to be whole. That's a tragedy.
___ --Marv Knox
Email the editor at marvknox@baptiststandard.com


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