SAVING MARRIAGES

As the United States begins to understand fully the legacy of lifestyle changes that began during the 1960s and continued through the 1970s and 1980s, it is apparent that so-called freedoms have come with a huge price tag. At the center of this understanding is the fact that families, the bedrock of society, have suffered the most. Failed marriages, spousal and child abuse, financial ruin, deterioration of parenting skills, teen-age pregnancies and drug and alcohol abuse are just a few of the symptoms of a permissive and promiscuous way of life that placed freedom with no strings ahead of the freedom to live and act responsibly.

Marriage has become too much a convenience and too little a commitment. Even geese make lifelong bonds with their mates at a much higher success rate than many humans. In the years since the counterculture of the 1960s, living together without benefit of marriage has become socially and, in some cases, legally acceptable for many couples.

The upshot of this permissiveness is that virtually every social institution in this nation has suffered enormous harm. But there are those who believe the damage isn't irreparable. And the record so far indicates that a strong commitment to marriage vows and responsibilities can prevent divorce and its attendant problems.

Against this backdrop, the Cape Girardeau Ministerial Alliance has undertaken a bold project to ensure that marriages blessed by local churches will have a good chance of being sound and longlasting. All but a handful of the churches have adopted a community marriage policy that includes premarital counseling and assessment that gives betrothed couples a pretty good idea if their match was made in heaven or is just a product of passion.

The policy breaks no new ground. Many churches already have a formal process for couples who intend to be married in the church. These programs have proven highly successful from one denomination to another. What the community marriage policy accomplishes is a concerted effort of unanimity, which in itself is a bedrock of faith and religious principles. Couples who are put off by the marriage policy will find little recourse in local churches. Pastors agree that it is better for soon-to-wed couples to face the realities of marriage than simply to anticipate the wedding reception and honeymoon.

The marriage policy requires couples to examine their own religious faith, their finances, their parenting roles and how they communicate with each other. In the 36 other communities nationwide where the policy is already in force, many couples have broken off their marriages as a result of the counseling rather than enter into a doomed union. And in every one of those communities, the divorce rate had declined.