An Opening Case
You have been “going together” since college and living together for the last year. You decide to broach the topic of marriage with your girlfriend. To your surprise, she says: “I am never going to get married. I love living with you, but I don’t ever want to marry.” She reminds you that her parents had been miserable together for many years and their divorce was equally messy. She doesn’t want to risk ever going through a trauma like that again!
What are the upsides of getting married? The downsides? Do you think there are any good reasons for people who love each other to get married? Are there any faith-based reasons for seeing marriage as morally preferable to living together?
For the first time in recent history, the percentage of adults in the United States who are married has dropped below 50 percent. The reasons for this are several, but financial issues are key in some people’s minds. Clearly many women no longer have a financial incentive to marry. Like some of their seniors, many young adults find that their financial situation can be improved by simply cohabiting and sharing expenses. Why risk pooling all their resources or becoming legally liable for one another’s debts? And yet, marriage strikes others as more than just a legal technicality that makes breaking up hard to do or a social institution that binds together unhappy couples. There is something important about declaring our love publicly—before God and the world—and making a commitment to keep on loving one another into the unknown future—“for better or worse, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.” Unlike those who opt to live together, couples who marry ask their families and friends to help hold them to their promises.
As the articles in chapter 4 suggest, our discussion of sexuality inevitably leads us to consider our relationships, for we come to know ourselves most powerfully when we are in relation with others. The word relational is key to our self-understanding, not only because it is descriptively accurate but also because it is value-laden. It points to an aspect of what it means to be authentically human, namely, to be in relationship with others in ways that are mutually respectful rather than exploitive or oppressive. Loving and faithful are terms that have traditionally expressed Christian ideals for interpersonal interactions, whether we are single or married.
It is difficult to interpret what is happening to the institution of marriage and within family life among Christians in North America. A small but significant number of people are opting to remain single indefinitely. Because more women than men are attending and graduating from college, some twentysomething women already earn more than the men in their age group. Many of these women have almost no economic reason to marry. Young adults are certainly delaying their “first” marriage. Some are cohabiting instead of getting married, while others are cohabiting on the way to marriage. In their essay, which opens this chapter, Michael Lawler and Gail Risch propose that Christians should begin to liturgically recognize and to bless those in this latter group, who are betrothed.
The Christian failure to live in accord with its ideal of just, loving, and faithful relationships is evidenced in broken marriages of all types, but perhaps most dramatically in what social scientists label high-conflict marriages characterized by physical violence, emotional abuse, serious and frequent quarreling, and various forms of injustice that we now finally recognize plague some Christian households. The brief sermon by Judith Ewing included in this chapter gives voice to a growing consensus among Christians about the moral necessity of separation, if not divorce, in cases of serious domestic abuse.
However, as the interview with Elizabeth Marquardt indicates, two-thirds of all divorces in the United States today end what are more aptly labeled “low-conflict” marriages. From the perspective of the children involved in these marriages, there is often no good divorce. In such cases, the moral permissibility of divorce is still debated among some Christians. Despite some notable exceptions, we know that in general children who grow up in intact, two-parent families with both parents present do better on a wide range of outcomes than children who grow up in single-parent families.
While the divorce rate has declined in recent decades, it remains high. Christians are divided in this regard. On the one hand, the Roman Catholic Church teaches that a marriage between two Christians is indissoluble. When necessary, Christian couples may legally separate or even obtain a civil divorce, but before God they remain married. Thus remarriage within the Catholic Church under such circumstances is not possible apart from a declaration by the church of the annulment of the previous marriage. On the other hand, even conservative Protestants, as evidenced in the essay by David Instone-Brewer in this chapter, interpret the Bible as permitting divorce and remarriage under at least some circumstances. Many of those who divorce get remarried and create “blended” families.
In general, Christians want to affirm marriage and family life as good for most spouses and most children most of the time, but it is clear that marriage and family are in need of renewal. Roman Catholic and some evangelical Christian groups have taken the lead in constructing “marriage encounter” or “family life” retreats for their constituencies, but similar efforts have appeared in virtually all denominations. There is little consensus, however, among Christians about what kind of marriage and family structures to nurture.
Far from being settled, one topic of debate concerns gender roles in heterosexual marriages and within the parenting process. Several denominations seek to articulate a new conception of the Christian family ethic, one that fits the necessity for two-income, more egalitarian marriages and that will provide a better foundation for sustaining the commitments to family life. This ethic of “equal regard” should avoid the excesses of self-sacrificing (potentially exploitative) and self-actualizing (potentially self-centered) interpretations of love. While the skit by Patti Ricotta takes a light-hearted look at arguments for the necessity of hierarchical forms of complementarity in relationships, embedded in its humor is an argument for what many Christians call “biblical equality.” Finally Benjamin J. Dueholm offers a reading of Dan Savage’s infamous advice column, “Savage Love,” and puts its many fans into conversation with traditional Christian affirmations of monogamy and proscriptions against adultery.
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Consider two unmarried couples who are living together. The first couple, 25-year-old Tom and 23-year-old Sharon, have no plans to marry. He lived with two previous girlfriends, while she lived with her ex-husband before they married, which was just before their first child was born. The second couple, 28-year-old Frank and 24-year-old Molly, are engaged to be married. They are living together for six months while engaged.
Many Catholics believe living together before marriage is “living in sin” and associate premarital cohabitation with an increased divorce rate, but recent research reports a more detailed picture of the relationship between cohabitation and marital instability.
If the first couple, Tom and Sharon, were to get married, they would be at far greater risk for marital instability than the second couple, Frank and Molly. Couples who live together with no definite plan to marry are in a completely different situation from cohabiting couples already committed to marrying one another. Those already committed to one another and planning to marry look and act like already-married couples in most ways. For committed cohabiting couples, living together is a step on the path to marriage; for couples who are not committed, cohabitation is a social arrangement inferior to marriage.
The sharp increase in premarital cohabitation is one of the most fundamental social changes in Western countries today. Between 1960 and 2004, the number of unmarried couples living together in the United States increased tenfold from less than 500,000 to more than 5 million. Cohabitation has become, even for Catholics, more and more a conventional and socially endorsed reality.
Recent focus groups of young Catholic adults on “problematic aspects of church teaching” found that they disagreed with church teaching on premarital sex and cohabitation and do not see a fundamental difference in a loving relationship before and after a wedding. Our experience with young adults leads us to doubt the claim that they are living in sin. It would appear closer to the truth that they are growing, perhaps slowly but nonetheless surely, into grace.
The most recent and respected marriage research identifies two kinds of cohabitors: those who are not committed to marriage, whom we name “non-nuptial cohabitors,” and those already committed to marriage, perhaps even engaged, whom we name “nuptial cohabitors.”
Although only non-nuptial cohabitation is linked to an increased likelihood of divorce after marriage, the fact that many Catholics believe otherwise leaves current pastoral responses to cohabiting couples both uninformed and outdated. It also raises questions about church documents based on old research and the pastoral approaches they recommend. Church documents continue to lump all cohabitors together, focus narrowly on the sexual dimension of relationships, and ignore the variety and complexity of the intentions, situations, and meanings couples give to cohabitation and its morality.
Given the current research that demonstrates that not all cohabitors are alike, we propose the re-introduction of an ancient ritual of betrothal for nuptial cohabitors, followed by intensive marriage preparation in the Catholic pastoral tradition.
In his 1981 encyclical Familiaris Consortio (On the Family), Pope John Paul II taught that conjugal love “aims at a deeply personal unity, the unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to fanning one heart and soul; it demands indissolubility and faithfulness in definitive mutual giving; and it is open to fertility.” This describes the commitment not only of married spouses but also of nuptial cohabitors who have definitively committed to a loving relationship with one another but who have not yet celebrated their wedding. They come to the church to be married precisely to celebrate the gift of their love for each other and to give it a religious, sacramental permanence.
We define commitment as a freely chosen and faithful devotion to a person. Applied to relationships, including marriage, commitment as dedication is twofold: commitment to the partner and commitment to the relationship. Commitment to the partner entails those characteristics John Paul lists or implies, namely love, fidelity, loyalty, and fortitude in the trials and messiness of the relationship. Commitment to the relationship entails exclusivity, indissolubility, and fertility as fruitfulness.
Couples who share this double commitment manifest it in various ways, including a strong couple identity, a strong sense of “us” and “we,” the maintenance of their partner and their marriage as a high priority, a protection of their relationship against attraction to others, a readiness to sacrifice for one another without resentment, and an investment of themselves personally in building a future together. Such double commitment is the surest path to marital intimacy.
Couples with such double commitment reveal their deepest desires, failings, and hurts to one another. They do not think about possible alternatives to their partner, and they are satisfied with their relationship in general and their sex life in particular. They are willing to give up things important to them for the sake of their relationship, and they report higher levels of happiness and stability than do couples who do not regularly sacrifice for the sake of their relationship. These happy couples have a strong sense of their future together and they are more likely to speak of that future than of their past conflicts, failures, and disappointments.
It is such commitment, we suggest, that nuptial cohabitors exhibit, albeit in seed at the beginning of their cohabitation but in full flower when they come to the church to be married. It is precisely the seedling love and commitment becoming flower that needs to be ritually celebrated and realized in the betrothal.
In the 12th century, Gratian, the master of the school of law at the Catholic University of Bologna, introduced a compromise in the debate between the Romans and the northern Europeans over what brought about marriage. That compromise, still embodied in the Code of Canon Law (canon 1061), is that mutual consent makes a marriage ratified and valid, and sexual intercourse makes it ratified and consummated and, therefore, indissoluble.
Consent could be given in either the future tense or the present tense. When it was given in the future tense, the result was called betrothal or sponsalia, that is, the couple became spouses. When it was given in the present tense, the result was called marriage or nuptialia, that is, the couple became wedded. The first sexual intercourse between the spouses usually followed the betrothal—a fact of the Catholic tradition that has been obscured by the now-taken for granted sequence of wedding, marriage, sexual intercourse.
It was not, however, until the Council of Trent in the 16th century that the Catholic Church prescribed that sequence and decreed that marriage resulted from the nuptials or ceremonial wedding. But for over half of Catholic couples in the modern West, the sequence has reverted to the pre-Tridentine sequence: cohabitation and sexual intercourse, then the wedding. The parallel between the pre-Tridentine and the modern practices is striking. Pre-Tridentine betrothal led to fun sexual relations and pregnancy, which then led to indissoluble marriage. Modern nuptial cohabitation leads to full sexual relations then to indissoluble marriage, with or without pregnancy.
We underscore again that we are focused only on nuptial cohabitation, cohabitation grounded in the commitment to marry. Nothing we say applies to non-nuptial cohabitation. The sexual intercourse practiced by betrothed couples in pre-Tridentine times was firmly grounded in the intention to marry. It is only those nuptial cohabitors with an equally firm intention to marry who are our concern here. . . .
Our pastoral proposal is straightforward: a return to the marital sequence of betrothal (with appropriate ritual to ensure community involvement), sexual intercourse, possible fertility, then ritual wedding to acknowledge and mark the consummation of both valid marriage and sacrament.
Since these couples will have already initiated their marriage through betrothal, their intercourse would not be premarital but marital, as it was in the pre-Tridentine Catholic Church. We envision a marital process initiated by mutual commitment and consent lived in love, justice, equality, intimacy, and fulfillment in a nuptial cohabitation pointed to a wedding that consummates the process of becoming married in a public manner. Such a process would meet the legitimate Catholic and social requirement that the sexual act must take place only within a stable relationship.
The process would be:
Betrothal: The couple’s betrothal, which would involve a public ritual highlighting free consent to wed in the future, would be witnessed and blessed on behalf of the church community. The betrothal ritual would differ from the present wedding ceremony in that the consent would be to marry in the future. Such betrothal, as it did in earlier Catholic tradition, would confer on the couple the status of committed spouses with all the rights that the church grants to spouses, including the right to sexual intercourse.
Nuptial cohabitation: During this period the couple would live together as spouses, enjoying the approval and support of the community, and continuing the lifelong process of establishing their marital relationship as one of love, justice, equality, intimacy, and mutual flourishing. During this time the church would assist the couple with ongoing marriage education aimed precisely at clarifying and deepening their relationship.
Sex/Fertility: This is the part of our proposal that may cause the most unease. Catholics who believe that all premarital sex is wrong believe that the ritual requirement of a wedding has always been the norm in the Catholic tradition. It has not. Since betrothal is already part of the Catholic tradition, it cannot be argued that it is antithetical to the tradition.
Today those couples whom we call nuptial cohabitors are beginning their stable, marital, sexual relationship prior to their wedding ceremony. They fully intend to marry when the restrictions—social, economic, educational, and professional—that contemporary society imposes on them are removed. Their nuptial cohabitation is the first step available to them toward a future marriage.
In the canonical words of the received tradition, their engagement or betrothal initiates their marriage; their subsequent ritual wedding, before or after the birth of a child, consummates their marriage and makes it indissoluble. Since their betrothal—however expressed, preferably in a public ritual—initiates their marriage, their cohabitation is not premarital. It is certainly pre-ceremonial, though that could be remedied by the introduction of a church betrothal ceremony.
Wedding: There will come a time when the committed nuptial cohabitors have overcome the issues that compelled them to cohabit rather than to marry—issues related to economics, career, and experience or fear of divorce—and when their relationship has reached such a plateau of interpersonal communion that they will decide to ceremonialize it. That is the time for their wedding.
With their families, friends, and Christian community, they will affirm their consent and celebrate their union for what it has become, namely, a symbol or sacrament of the loving union between God and God’s people, between Christ and Christ’s church.
Their wedding can then be considered the consummation of their marriage, the consummation of a relationship that they have sought to make as humane and as Christian as possible. The process of marrying would then be complete. In the legal words of canon law, their marriage would become both “ratified and consummated.” Again, according to canon law, the marriage initiated in the betrothal ceremony would be valid but not yet indissoluble. Indissolubility would follow from its consummation in the wedding ceremony.
For those nuptial cohabitors who do not proceed to a wedding, their martial relationship begun at betrothal would not be consummated and would therefore be dissoluble according to Canon 1142.
Since the most recent research shows that all cohabitors are not alike and that nuptial cohabitation prior to a wedding does not lessen the stability of marriage, in our experience with young adults, nuptial cohabitation fits into the process of their becoming married. And if it fits into the process of becoming married, it fits also into the process by which their marriage becomes sacrament.
Church teaching is sometimes slow to respond to social change and to sift out its beneficial aspects and thus sometimes can appear detached from real experience. That is what young adults tell us and what they also told various focus groups.
We invite the Catholic Church to be a leader, rather than an adversary, in acknowledging and nurturing nuptial cohabiting relationships as just and loving relationships and pathways to grace. We also invite Catholics to be ready to assist cohabiting nuptial couples to discover the presence of God in their lives and to live into that grace throughout their present cohabiting and future married lives.
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It seems that at every turn the Pharisees were testing Jesus. Why do you allow your disciples to pick corn on the Sabbath? Why do they eat with defiled hands? Why do you heal people on the Sabbath? Why do you eat with sinners and tax collectors? The testing questions were relentless.
Here is another one: Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?
The Pharisees knew very well that divorce was commonly allowed. Deuteronomy 24:1-4, the only mention of divorce in the Torah, states that a man can divorce his wife simply by handing her a certificate of divorce and sending her away. For the Pharisees, the real issue was the debate on what were the grounds for divorce. The school of Shammai held that sexual misconduct was the only grounds for divorce. The followers of Hillel allowed divorce for anything that displeased the husband, no matter how trivial. The Pharisees wanted to see on which side of the fence Jesus would fall.
Instead, he answers the question with a question: What did Moses command you? In Deuteronomy 24:1-4, Moses only addresses a situation where a man wants to remarry a woman he had previously divorced.
Jesus then takes the answer back to Genesis when God provides Adam with a helper as his partner. Twice that partnership is mentioned. God provided a fitting helper. Their relationship is to be one of equal and complementary, mutual companionship. What God has joined together, let no one separate. An equal and complementary, mutual companionship that neither party would want to tear apart.
I want us to look at that relationship in the context of the here and now. October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. This year it was launched with the most tragic event we have experienced in many years: the murder of a wife and her four children by her husband. On the steps of the State House in Columbia, on October 2, thirty-three life-sized cutouts depicting the thirty-two people who had lost their lives due to domestic violence and one to honor those who are unknown victims, were held by family and friends to honor the memory of those who had died. Our attorney general heralded in this Break the Silence Memorial again this year. Thirty-two people died by the hands of someone who professed to love them. Because of this, it would be very remiss of me if I did not speak on this difficult topic in relation to the Scriptures.
For four years I counseled the perpetrators of domestic violence and had regular contact with their partners. For this reason, the first sight of these Scriptures troubled me. When we hear “What God has joined together let no one separate,” what does that mean to us when we see so many marriages and relationships that contain abuse, violence and, at the very worst, death?
Six months ago a young woman came to see me; her husband was becoming increasingly abusive. It started with name-calling, and then came screaming, shouting, threatening and intimidation. She was scared he was going to be violent towards her and her children. She told me she had read her Bible and knew that marriage was a commitment until death do us part and she didn’t want to break that. She would not leave him. I established that she had a safety plan.
Later she called me; he had threatened her again and lost control, breaking a door down. The next day he was very apologetic; he was stressed. They would go for marriage counseling.
Three days later she said that although she was still apprehensive about him she would do what she could to improve their relationship. She felt she was to blame for his behavior and it was up to her to make the marriage work.
Two days later she called the police after he had beaten her savagely. Where was the equal and complementary, mutual companionship?
Domestic abuse is insidious; it escalates sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly. So often the abused party cries in silence, suffers in private.
Partner violence is largely caused by a need for power and control. After each abusive behavior the partner is often deeply apologetic. In this honeymoon period, he or she apologizes profusely and tries to justify the action.
“I don’t know what came over me.”
“I just lost it.”
“I blacked out.”
“I shouldn’t have had those last few drinks.”
“Buying all that stuff from Wal-Mart made me mad. I’m under a lot of pressure at work—it built up.”
“You made me very angry.”
“It’s all your fault; you pushed my buttons.”
Then comes the apology.
“Please forgive me, I’ll never do that again.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“I love you.”
Gradually, after the honeymoon period is over, the pressure builds up again, the verbal abuse grows, the threats intensify, and the violence explodes. I am telling you this because we all need to be aware of the signs.
Jesus, when he spoke of “What God has joined together, let no one separate,” did not intend for anyone to remain in an abusive relationship. His intent for us is relationships that are equal and complementary for mutual companionship. He calls us to be fitting helpers for each other.
God loves us. He loves us so much that he gave his only son for us. Jesus loves us. He loves us so much that he was willing to die for us.
He calls us to love one another as he loves us. He does not call us to remain in a relationship where one party is heading down a road that is destructive for both parties. He does not call us to remain in a relationship that is abusive and dangerous. We all need to work on our relationships, but that work has to be mutual. Both parties must be motivated to be fitting helpers for each other.
What are we, as a community, to do when we see a relationship that is fractured or threatening? Do we turn a blind eye? Do we try not to get involved? Do we encourage people to stay together no matter what the cost?
It is estimated that abuse of one kind or another occurs in more than half of all marriages or domestic relationships. We live in a broken world; the Christian community is called to respond with love, understanding and compassion towards shattered relationships.
If you are in an abusive relationship, or know of someone that you suspect may be in an abusive relationship, my prayer is that you get the appropriate help.
Domestic abuse counseling is a specialized field. We cannot rebuild a relationship shattered by abuse with the wrong kind of bricks.
Jesus understands our frailty. He loves us and wants us to be safe. The letter from Paul to the Hebrews reminds us that because Jesus himself was tested by what he suffered, He is able to help those who are tested.
We live in a violent world. Violence is endemic; violence is addictive.
Our Christian response must be to do all we can to stop and prevent violence and we can do that, one person, one situation at a time. Let us now pray for those who are the victims of violence, the children, the survivors, the partners who will always bear the wounds. Let us pray that Jesus will comfort them and open our hearts to receive them with compassion, love, acceptance and understanding. Let us pray for those who are violent that Jesus may put on their heart the desire and the ability to change. Let us pray for all who we know personally who are being abused, that they may find the help they need to live in a safe environment. Let us pray for an end to violence in our community.
Amen.
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In her book, Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce, Elizabeth Marquardt examines the impact of divorce on children. Her book is based on a survey of 1,500 young adults which allowed her to compare the experiences of children of divorced parents with the experiences of children of married parents. Marquardt, a graduate of the University of Chicago Divinity School and a researcher with the Institute for American Values, calls the study the most comprehensive ever undertaken on the subject. We talked to her about her findings and about the impact of divorce on children’s moral and spiritual lives.
The title of your book suggests one of its major themes: that in divorce a child is caught between two worlds. Why did you choose this metaphor and why is it so important a theme?
One of the big challenges for any marriage is to bring together two worlds—two people with different backgrounds and often different values. The rubbing together of these two worlds is often not neat or pretty, but some kind of unity is established.
After a divorce, the job of making sense of the two worlds and the conflicts that arise between them doesn’t go away—it gets handed from the adults to the child. The child has to negotiate by himself or herself the different beliefs and values and ways of living that the child finds in each world. And these two worlds often become more different as each year goes by and the divorced parents develop new relationships, new jobs, new interests.
You refer to children of divorce as “early moral forgers.” What do you mean by that?
Children who grow up traveling between two worlds feel early on the need to confront—alone—the big moral questions: What’s right and wrong? What do I believe? Where do I belong? Is there a God? What is true? They feel the need to confront these questions because they see dramatically contrasting answers in each parent’s world. In fact, they’re much more likely to see their parents as polar opposites even when they don’t fight. Any answer they glean from one world can be undermined by looking at the other.
Many people have noticed that children of divorce often seem independent. They tend to help around the house or travel between parents’ homes alone or take care of their younger siblings by themselves. They also have to become independent moral thinkers. Some people might say: Well, this need to be independent is a good thing. But while some children certainly can rise to the occasion, they lose their childhoods, and I think that that’s something that we should mourn, not celebrate.
And some children cannot rise to the task. This helps explain why children of divorce are two to three times more likely than other children to end up with very serious social and emotional problems. The ones who cannot handle the difficulty of making sense of two worlds might be the ones who numb their pain with addictions or early sexual activity, or who suffer from depression.
How has your own experience as a child of divorce shaped your investigation?
I’m now thirty-five. My parents split up when I was two years old. When I was in divinity school in the mid-1990’s I went looking for resources on the moral and spiritual impact of divorce on children. I found there were none. That was remarkable, given that the divorce rate had been quite high for quite some time. It seemed to me, as a child of divorce who was struggling with questions of faith, that there is a huge connection between one’s family experience and one’s approach to questions of faith, including the images and stories of the Christian faith.
A lot of the questions we asked in the national survey were ones that came from my experience. They were questions no one had asked these young people before—questions like: Did you feel like a different person with each of your parents? Did you see your parents as polar opposites? Did God become the father you never had in real life?
The survey results have given me the confidence to claim to speak for a generation that for the first time is telling the story of divorce from its own point of view. Until now the discussion has been conducted as if divorce is only about and for the parents.
What is the impact of divorce on children’s religious lives?
We discovered that children of divorce are far less likely when they grow up to say they are very or even fairly religious. They’re far less likely to attend a house of worship frequently. There is about a 14 percent difference in this area between children of divorce and children of intact families. They’re also less likely to be a member of a house of worship or to be a leader there.
Partly this is because the children are less likely to have been involved in a community of faith as a child. Divorce itself makes it difficult logistically for parents to stay connected to any kind of community.
But there are deeper issues. For example, when children of divorce hear that God is like a father or a parent because God’s always there for you, they experience a disconnect. For them, parental absence is as common an experience as parental presence.
It’s remarkable to talk to the children of divorce about the parable of the prodigal son, in which the father waits for his errant son to come home. They recognize the act of leaving home, but in their experience it was the parent who left, not the child. It was the parent who left the family, or who was always leaving to go to work or out on dates. If anyone was staying home waiting for someone to return, it was the child waiting for mom and dad to come home.
The parable is about the patient love of God. This means that children of divorce see themselves in the role of God in the story. What a scary, strange feeling that is for such children—especially if no one around them in the community of faith understands how they’re seeing it. These kinds of disconnects are what keep the children of divorce as they grow up more distant from church.
Yet the findings overall are somewhat complicated. Though generally the grown-up children of divorce are substantially less religious than those from intact families, a portion of them become much more religious. And I have heard anecdotally of many children of divorce who seek out the church because they’re looking for the meaning and stability they find there.
What would you say to pastors about ministering to children of divorce?
First, questions of truth and of belonging are central in the minds of these children. Even as young teenagers, even as preteens, they’re attuned in many ways to paradox, to suffering, to the deep questions of faith
I think the story of the exile is really powerful for children of divorce. Exile describes for them their sense of being fragmented inside, of feeling like divided selves, torn between two worlds. They feel like they have multiple places to call home, none of which really feels like home.
In the Christian tradition, exile is not the end of the story. Those in exile can come home to God and find healing and wholeness in God’s presence. Preach a good sermon on that theme and I guarantee that people will be touched.
Do you think a more realistic understanding of the impact of divorce on children would have a measurable effect on divorce rates?
I don’t think it would slash it in half or anything like that. But I do think we would see some correction in the divorce rate.
I think this understanding would encourage people to save marriages that could very well be saved without undue pain on the part of the adults. I’m thinking of marriages that are ending because of boredom or because of a desire for a new partner or not being sure you really love your partner, or because you feel that you’ve grown apart. Those issues are troubling to adults, but they are not that apparent to kids.
That’s where the “good divorce” language can be so damaging. It makes parents think that divorce won’t be a big deal so long as they do it right. There’s such a thing as necessary divorce, but there’s not such a thing as a good divorce.
Isn’t it important that a divorcing couple gets along amicably after divorce and that each parent stays involved in the child’s life?
Obviously it’s better for a divorced couple to get along and be involved in the child’s life. But from a child’s perspective, the fact that the divorced parents are getting along reasonably well and are staying involved makes the divorce in a sense more inexplicable. The child still feels the weight of a big burden—to make sense of two very different worlds—and if the burden feels overwhelming, the child feels that she has only herself to blame. That’s the moral drama that no one has ever talked about, and it’s a drama that faces children even when their divorced parents don’t fight a lot—and most of them don’t.
What qualifies as a “necessary” divorce?
There are high-conflict marriages characterized by abuse, violence, or serious and frequent quarreling in which divorce is a vital option. What most people don’t know is that two-thirds of divorces end low-conflict marriages.
Does the ending in divorce of many low-conflict marriages suggest that people have inappropriate expectations of marriage?
There is an interesting historical background to this issue. When the divorce revolution took off with the advent of no-fault divorce in the 1960s, experts predicted that marriages overall would be happier because all the unhappy people would get divorced. Studies have shown, however, that as the divorce rate grew, the marital happiness rate fell. As marriage became easier to get out of, the threshold of what constituted a problematic marriage was lowered.
At one time, society made it too hard to get out of a horrendous marriage. But we have gone too far in the other direction. We have adopted a trickle-down notion of happiness: if the parents are happy, then the children will be happy. By that reasoning, if the parents need a divorce to be happy, that’s fine, because everybody will be happier if the parents are happy.
That idea has no bearing on children’s experience. Children’s happiness is not simply a product of adult happiness. Frankly, if theirs is not a high-conflict household, children in many ways aren’t all that concerned if their parents are happy.
Some people, including pastors and other church people, may be reluctant to raise the issue of children’s experience of divorce because they don’t want to add to the guilt or shame felt by divorced parents.
I know that people are sensitive about this issue. But even if we were to grant that every single divorce in this country is necessary, it would still be important to study the experience of children—just as we study the experience of heart patients after surgery. We don’t say, “Well, the surgery was necessary, so whatever happens afterward is irrelevant.”
Too often the debate on children of divorce gets turned into a debate on whether parents should be getting divorced in the first place. That move silences the experience of kids.
I imagined the first audience for my book being the grown children of divorce; it’s aimed at helping them understand and articulate their experience. The second audience I imagined is married parents who may have considered divorce. I want to help them understand not just what divorce does to a child, but what marriage does for a child. And finally, for divorced parents I think this book illuminates the inner experience of their child in ways they may not have considered. If they can better understand their child’s inner world, they can help their child feel less isolated.
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I was being interviewed for what would be my first church pastorate, and I was nervous and unsure what to expect. The twelve deacons sat in a row in front of me and took turns asking questions, which I answered as clearly as I could. All went smoothly until they posed this question: “What is your position on divorce and remarriage? Would you remarry a divorcée or divorced man?”
I didn’t know if this was a trick question or an honest one. There might have been a deep-seated pastoral need behind it, or it might have been a test of my orthodoxy. Either way, I didn’t think I could summarize my view in one sentence; when I thought about it further, I couldn’t decide exactly what my view was. I gave a deliberately vague reply. “Every case should be judged on its own merits.”
It worked; I got the job. But I made a mental note to study the subject of divorce, and to do it quickly. It’s a good thing I did. As it turned out, I was surrounded by people who needed answers to questions raised by divorce and remarriage. My Baptist church was located near an Anglican congregation and two Catholic churches. Divorced men and women from these congregations came asking if we would conduct their weddings, having been denied in their local churches. Then I found that some of my deacons had been divorced and remarried. Should I throw them out of church leadership? If I did, I would lose people I considered some of the most spiritual in the church, people with exemplary Christian homes and marriages.
The New Testament presents a problem in understanding both what the text says about divorce and its pastoral implications. Jesus appears to say that divorce is allowed only if adultery has occurred: “Whoever divorces a wife, except for sexual indecency, and remarries, commits adultery” (Matt. 19:9). However, this has been interpreted in many different ways. Most say that Jesus allows divorce only for adultery. But some argue that Jesus originally didn’t allow even that. Only in Matthew does he offer an out from marriage: “except for sexual indecency.” Beyond what Jesus says, Paul also allows divorce. He permits it for abandonment by a nonbeliever (1 Cor. 7:12-15). Many theologians add this as a second ground for divorce.
Yet some pastors have found this teaching difficult to accept, because it seems so impractical—even cruel in certain situations. It suggests there can be no divorce for physical or emotional abuse, and Paul even seems to forbid separation (1 Cor. 7:10).
As a result, some Christians quietly ignore this seemingly “impractical” biblical teaching or find ways around it. For example, they suggest that when Jesus talked about “sexual immorality,” perhaps he included other things like abuse. Or when Paul talked about abandonment by a nonbeliever, perhaps he included any behavior that is not supportive of the marriage or abandonment by anyone who is acting like a nonbeliever. Many have welcomed such stretching of Scripture because they couldn’t accept what they believed the text apparently said.
But does the literal text mean what we think it does? While doing doctoral studies at Cambridge, I likely read every surviving writing of the rabbis of Jesus’ time. I “got inside their heads” enough to begin to understand them. When I began working as a pastor and was confronted almost immediately with divorced men and women who wanted to remarry, my first response was to re-read the Bible. I’d read the biblical texts on divorce many times in the past, but I found something strange as I did so again. They now said something I hadn’t heard before I read the rabbis!
The texts hadn’t changed, but my knowledge of the language and culture in which they were written had. I was now reading them like a first-century Jew would have read them, and this time those confusing passages made more sense. My book, Divorce and Remarriage in the Church (InterVarsity Press), is a summary of several academic papers and books I began writing with this new understanding of what Jesus taught.
One of my most dramatic findings concerns a question the Pharisees asked Jesus: “Is it lawful to divorce a wife for any cause?” (Matt. 19:3). This question reminded me that a few decades before Jesus, some rabbis (the Hillelites) had invented a new form of divorce called the “any cause” divorce. By the time of Jesus, this “any cause” divorce had become so popular that almost no one relied on the literal Old Testament grounds for divorce.
The “any cause” divorce was invented from a single word in Deuteronomy 24:1. Moses allowed divorce for “a cause of immorality,” or, more literally, “a thing of nakedness.” Most Jews recognized that this unusual phrase was talking about adultery. But the Hillelite rabbis wondered why Moses had added the word “thing” or “cause” when he only needed to use the word “immorality.” They decided this extra word implied another ground for divorce—divorce for “a cause.” They argued that anything, including a burnt meal or wrinkles not there when you married your wife, could be a cause! The text, they said, taught that divorce was allowed both for adultery and for “any cause.”
Another group of rabbis (the Shammaites) disagreed with this interpretation. They said Moses’ words were a single phrase that referred to no type of divorce “except immorality”—and therefore the new “any cause” divorces were invalid. These opposing views were well known to all first-century Jews. And the Pharisees wanted to know where Jesus stood. “Is it lawful to divorce your wife for any cause?” they asked. In other words: “Is it lawful for us to use the ‘any cause’ divorce?”
When Jesus answered with a resounding no, he wasn’t condemning “divorce for any cause,” but rather the newly invented “any cause” divorce. Jesus agreed firmly with the second group that the phrase didn’t mean divorce was allowable for “immorality” and for “any cause,” but that Deuteronomy 24:1 referred to no type of divorce “except immorality.”
This was a shocking statement for the crowd and for the disciples. It meant they couldn’t get a divorce whenever they wanted it—there had to be a lawful cause. It also meant that virtually every divorced man or woman was not really divorced, because most of them had “any cause” divorces. Luke and Matthew summarized the whole debate in one sentence: Any divorced person who remarried was committing adultery (Matt. 5:32; Luke 16:18), because they were still married. The fact that they said “any divorced person” instead of “virtually all divorced people” is typical Jewish hyperbole—like Mark saying that “everyone” in Jerusalem came to be baptized by John (Mark 1:5). It may not be obvious to us, but their first readers understood clearly what they meant.
Within a few decades, however, no one understood these terms any more. Language often changes quickly (as I found out when my children first heard the Flintstones sing about “a gay old time”). The early church, and even Jewish rabbis, forgot what the “any cause” divorce was, because soon after the days of Jesus, it became the only type of divorce on offer. It was simply called divorce. This meant that when Jesus condemned “divorce for ‘any cause,’ ” later generations thought he meant “divorce for any cause.”
Now that we know what Jesus did reject, we can also see what he didn’t reject. He wasn’t rejecting the Old Testament—he was rejecting a faulty Jewish interpretation of the Old Testament. He defended the true meaning of Deuteronomy 24:1. And there is one other surprising thing he didn’t reject: Jesus didn’t reject the other ground for divorce in the Old Testament, which all Jews accepted.
Although the church forgot the other cause for divorce, every Jew in Jesus’ day knew about Exodus 21:10-11, which allowed divorce for neglect. Before rabbis introduced the “any cause” divorce, this was probably the most common type. Exodus says that everyone, even a slave wife, had three rights within marriage—the rights to food, clothing, and love. If these were neglected, the wronged spouse had the right to seek freedom from that marriage. Even women could, and did, get divorces for neglect—though the man still had to write out the divorce certificate. Rabbis said he had to do it voluntarily, so if he resisted, the courts had him beaten till he volunteered!
These three rights became the basis of Jewish marriage vows—we find them listed in marriage certificates discovered near the Dead Sea. In later Jewish and Christian marriages, the language became more formal, such as “love, honor, and keep.” These vows, together with a vow of sexual faithfulness, have always been the basis for marriage. Thus, the vows we make when we marry correspond directly to the biblical grounds for divorce.
The three provisions of food, clothing, and love were understood literally by the Jews. The wife had to cook and sew, while the husband provided food and materials, or money. They both had to provide the emotional support of marital love, though they could abstain from sex for short periods. Paul taught the same thing. He said that married couples owed each other love (1 Cor. 7:3-5) and material support (1 Cor. 7:33-34). He didn’t say that neglect of these rights was the basis of divorce because he didn’t need to—it was stated on the marriage certificate. Anyone who was neglected, in terms of emotional support or physical support, could legally claim a divorce.
Divorce for neglect included divorce for abuse, because this was extreme neglect. There was no question about that end of the spectrum of neglect, but what about the other end? What about abandonment, which was merely a kind of passive neglect? This was an uncertain matter, so Paul deals with it. He says to all believers that they may not abandon their partners, and if they have done so, they should return (1 Cor. 7:10-11). In the case of someone who is abandoned by an unbeliever—someone who won’t obey the command to return—he says that the abandoned person is “no longer bound.”
Anyone in first-century Palestine reading this phrase would think immediately of the wording at the end of all Jewish, and most Roman, divorce certificates: “You are free to marry anyone you wish.”
Putting all this together gives us a clear and consistent set of rules for divorce and remarriage. Divorce is only allowed for a limited number of grounds that are found in the Old Testament and affirmed in the New Testament:
Jewish couples listed these biblical grounds for divorce in their marriage vows. We reiterate them as love, honor, and keep and be faithful to each other. When these vows were broken, it threatened to break up the marriage. As in any broken contract, the wronged party had the right to say, “I forgive you; let’s carry on,” or, “I can’t go on, because this marriage is broken.”
Therefore, while divorce should never happen, God allows it (and subsequent remarriage) when your partner breaks the marriage vows.
Reading the Bible and ancient Jewish documents side-by-side helped me understand much more of the Bible’s teaching about divorce and marriage, not all of which I can summarize here. Dusty scraps of parchment rescued from synagogue rubbish rooms, desert caves, and neglected scholarly collections shone fresh light on the New Testament. Theologians who have long felt that divorce should be allowed for abuse and abandonment may be vindicated. And, more importantly, victims of broken marriages can see that God’s law is both practical and loving.
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When I talk to complementarians about biblical equality, they all seem to believe that men and women are created equal in being, but that women are subordinate in role to men. They read the Scriptures and see hierarchy translating into family life where the husband is the primary leader, and has authority over his wife. It is the husband’s responsibility, they say, to make the final decisions for everything regarding the life of the family, and his wife is to graciously submit herself to his authority. Using the same passages they cite, I try to show them that mutual submission is God’s ideal translating into a constant and seamless flow of co-leadership and mutual agreement between husband and wife.
“But,” say the complementarians, “If you don’t have hierarchy, you will have its opposite.” And according to them, the opposite of hierarchy is power struggle, division, and disorder.
The skit below can be used to help people see the absurdity of putting two intimate equals in a relationship of hierarchy when mutual submission is what creates closeness and harmony. It can give men (especially men, but women too) the chance to feel what it would be like to live in a world where someone they care about has ultimate authority over them in every aspect of their relationships.
A living room setting with TV, coffee table set up with a bowl of snacks and some cold drinks on ice. Sound of a ball game pre-show on the TV and one man (Sam) sitting on a couch or in one of two chairs. He hears the doorbell ring and jumps up to greet his friend, grabbing a cold drink for him as he meets him at the door.
Sam: Hey Joe!
Joe: Wuz up, Sam? Why’d you want me to come this early before the game?
Sam: (Sam very excited) Joe, Joe, I have the most brilliant idea I’ve ever had!
Joe: (Joe starting to get excited) Yeah? What is it; lay it on me, man!
Sam: You know we’ve been friends—best buddies, since 8th grade . . .
Joe: (Joe interrupts with a correction) End of 7th grade when we both decided to roll the Thompson twins’ yard!
(Both men laugh and clank their soda cans together in triumph!)
Sam: Yeah, and then in 11th grade you went out with Julie Thompson . . .
Joe: And you went out with Sally Thompson.
Sam: Then you ended up with Sally . . .
Joe: And you ended up with Julie.
Both men mutter together: That was pure wisdom . . . you were right about that one . . . you knew what you were talking about . . . she was right for me, not you! Yeah . . . yeah . . .
Sam: (Coming back to the point) Man, we agonized together about which courses to study . . .
Joe: Which colleges to go to . . .
Sam: We got each other through the SATs.
Joe: The GREs.
Sam: (pointing at Joe) The MCATs.
Joe: (pointing at Sam) The LSATs! (Very excited now) Yeah man, from A to Z, man! From A to Z! We’ve been there for each other through everything! So, what’s this brilliant idea you’ve got, huh? I’m feelin it, I’m feelin it! What’s it gonna be?
Sam: So, here’s the thing. We’ve got a great thing going here (points back and forth between the two of them) right?
Joe: (still excited) You know it man, you know it!
Sam: (Sam animated and intense) And we don’t ever want anything to break this down, no divisions between us, right?
Joe: No way man, whatever it takes, whatever it takes!
Sam: Well that’s just the thing. I’ve figured out a way that we can be tight (gestures by making a fist with each hand and bringing them down hard next to his sides) for the rest of our lives and never have to worry about power struggles ruining our friendship! Joe, to keep us from ever having disorder or divisions—which you know would wreck our friendship—I’ve decided we need somebody to be the servant-leader between us! (Pause) . . . And that is going to be me!
Joe: What? (Joe looks confused, but he is still listening intently.)
Sam: Hey man, you know you mean the world to me, so I will always prayerfully consider your opinions and your wishes whenever I need to make decisions about what we’re gonna do after work or on weekends. I will even put your needs above my own!
But, (grimaces a bit) after consulting God in prayer, there may be times when I can’t always agree with what youthink your needs are, or the direction you think we should go. So, you can see that I may have to make a decision for you, or for us that seems contrary to your ideas or goals, and you will need to submit to my decision.
But hey man, you know that my decisions will be for the good of our friendship.
Joe: (Still looking puzzled, but trying to comprehend) But Sam, we are equals, you know that.
Sam: I know, I know we are equal adults . . . in being . . . but one of us has to take on the authoritative role and one the subordinate role if we are going to always have true closeness and harmony. So Joe . . . bro, I will humbly take on the burden and responsibility of making the final decisions about everything we do so there will never be any power struggles between us!
Joe: (Still trying to get it.) Give me an example.
Sam: OK, for example, if we want to get out of town for a weekend, and you want to go camping and I want to go skiing; man, I will prayerfully consider your request. Hey, I may even choose to defer to you, ol’ buddy, and we will go camping. But just so you understand that a decision like that doesn’t undermine my authority as your servant leader, ya gotta be clear that even the choice to defer to you will be mine.
Got it? All right! (Says definitively) It’s settled then. . . . Hey, I just made my first decision as your servant-leader . . . Cool! (Slaps Joe on the back, hands him the bowl of chips, and motions for him to sit down as he notices the game is about to start)
Joe stares off into space with an incredulous and puzzled look on his face, while Sam begins to get excited about the game, takes the remote and turns the TV up as he watches the TV screen intently. The football game sounds get louder as the lights fade on the scene.
This scenario reminds people that some of their closest relationships work just fine without hierarchy. It helps them see the mutual submission in Ephesians 5:21 in a new and more meaningful light. Here Paul describes how a marriage relationship can be lived out within the oneness Christ prays for in John 17:20-23—a oneness that is based on equality and mutual submission.
I agree with the complementarians that if you do not have hierarchy in marriage, you do have the possibility of its opposite. But, the opposite of hierarchy is not division. Hierarchy is designed to create and preserve divisions between people. The opposite of hierarchy, therefore, is oneness!
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When Congressman Anthony Weiner resigned his seat over embarrassing online activities, the possibility that the revelations might shed light on the uses of the divine law in Reformation theology was not foremost in the national conversation. All the same, Weiner’s fall raised an interesting question about how a sex scandal can unfold without actual sexual contact. The biblical commandment “You shall not commit adultery” forbids only a narrow, if important, slice of sexual life: intercourse between two people, at least one of whom is married to someone else. Sending lewd pictures seems to fall outside of its jurisdiction.
Jesus, however, famously turns this commandment inward in the Sermon on the Mount, condemning even the desire that could lead to disrupting the bonds of marriage. By that more demanding standard, virtual affairs are forbidden. The original commandment can be thought of as corresponding to the first use of the law in Reformation theology: it restrains our destructive impulses for the sake of civil peace. Jesus’ elaboration corresponds to the second use of the law: it calls for a purity of motive that drives the sinful human to rely on the grace of God.
While violating provisions of the Torah or the Sermon on the Mount does not by itself constitute grounds for driving someone from office (even in the hive-mind of twenty-four-hour cable news), reactions to the Weiner scandal tended to borrow their moralism from these sources. Voices from inside politics and out, and across the political spectrum, were quickly raised in indignation. Even Weiner’s defenders tended to criticize his actions while insisting that they were private, legal and ultimately a distraction from serious public issues.
One prominent pundit went considerably further in defending Weiner: “Weiner does not have a problem. He has a computer. The whole world has Weiner’s problem: same old horniness, brand new box.” This incredulous voice of moral realism belongs to Dan Savage, longtime author of the “Savage Love” sex advice column and editorial director of Seattle’s alternative weekly The Stranger. With a column read by millions in alternative weeklies and online, a weekly podcast and a televised version of his ongoing question-and-answer tour on college campuses currently in the works, Savage has developed a vast following by dint of his willingness to talk about any sexual topic in the frankest terms available. He’s used his platform to write books on love, sex and family; his newest is based on the It Gets Better Project that he initiated to support LGBT youth who face bullying and isolation (and for which Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America created a video).
Preachers, teachers and counselors who aren’t listening to Dan Savage should be—he is one of the more interesting church substitutes in American culture. He started in the 1990’s answering questions on rarely discussed sexual practices, but he has since come to address a much wider range of concerns (including the moral and political implications of online affairs, whether by politicians or private citizens). When it comes to answering the ethical dilemmas and disappointments that persist even among those with knowing and disenchanted attitudes toward the how-to’s of intimate life, Savage’s authority has no peer.
Reading the exchanges in “Savage Love” for the first time can be a polar-bear plunge into the world of sexual diversity. A member of New York City’s fetish scene recently wrote in to ask how to skip a birthday party orgy (“I hate to decline because these are really good friends and good people”). Characteristically, Savage was unwilling to hold her hand or to dramatize what he views as entirely normal behavior. “If you’re old enough to be a part of the ‘scene,’ ” he advised her, “then you’re old enough to open your mouth” and tell your friends about your limits.
Yet for all the variety of behavior described in Savage’s columns, the same issues come up again and again. Interpreting the commandment against adultery is a preoccupation of both Savage and his readers. Savage, an atheist, wouldn’t put it that way—yet he considers questions about the nature and boundaries of monogamy with the precision of a rabbi or canon lawyer. Some cases are easy. Consider the fifty-year-old man who tells Savage that his heart and mind have been thrown “into a tailspin” by a twenty-five-year-old friend. Savage replies, citing the man’s letter: “You’re happily married, you’ve got kids, you have a great sex life—sorry . . . but you’re not gonna get an infidelity permission slip from me, not today.”
A marriage might survive an attack of bad judgment, he goes on, “but your marriage won’t survive if you make the mistake of confusing infatuation and/or lust for love.” Here Savage sounds a lot like an evangelical preacher: the heart is deceitful above all things.
Another letter raises a very different case. A man writes that his mother (“a beautiful woman with a lot of opportunities and social skills”) is having an affair without the knowledge of his father (who is “an antisocial psycho” and a “physical wreck”). His mother had kept her family together for religious and cultural reasons. The letter writer and his brother have been traumatized by news of the affair. Should they tell their father?
Savage replies: “You’re not going to confront her about this affair or any other affair that you might uncover between now and your father’s death, and you’re not going to tell your mom you snooped, and you and your brother are going to go right on defending your mother to your father, and you’re going to show a little respect—a little retroactive respect—for your mother’s privacy by pretending that you don’t know what you do know.”
“Your mom sounds like a lovely woman, and you and your brother should be happy that she managed to find a little solace, a little love and tenderness, in the arms of a man who isn’t a raving asshole. She deserves that, doesn’t she?”
People immersed in Christian sexual ethics are likely to have a hard time facing the latter scenario as directly and honestly as Savage does, much less with the confidence and authority he projects. Even more challenging are situations that fall between an obviously reckless infatuation, on the one hand, and a survival measure on the other.
Savage has, on request, laid out rules for cheating in the context of what he calls a “monogamous commitment,” rules for both the married person and the person on the side. “Cheating is permissible when it amounts to the least worst option,” he writes, i.e., when someone who made a monogamous commitment isn’t getting any at home (sick or disabled or withholding-without-cause spouse) and divorce isn’t an option (sick or disabled or withholding-without-cause-spouse-who-can’t-be-divorced-for-some-karma-imperiling-reason-or-other) and the sex on the side makes it possible for the cheater to stay married and stay sane.
A person who gets involved with a partnered individual in the absence of these conditions is, like the partnered individual, a “cheating piece of shit.” (Savage is liberal in general but strict when violations of mutual agreement are at stake.)
This advice, however, covers only deviations from ostensibly monogamous relationships. Savage has also been called in to manage the complications arising from deliberate non-monogamy. As he sees it, open relationships have to be open for both partners, and the degree of openness must be continually negotiated. After reasonable attempts to work out sexual incompatibility, an affair might be agreed to as a responsible and humane alternative to divorce.
“Ask to have a ‘safety valve’ installed on your marriage,” Savage advises a bored husband (before pointing out that it’s possible that his wife is just as bored and might leap at the prospect of some fresh adventures together). But Savage has also expressed some surprise and frustration when the mutual practice of non-monogamy proves as liable to abuse as the monogamy its practitioners have abandoned.
For better or for worse, Savage provides real-time exegesis of the commandment against adultery in dialogue with the immensely varied norms and habits of his readers. Modern monogamy faces manifold pressures. Travel, childcare, the arbitrary intrusion of old flames and newfound fetishes, the freshly expanded online world of anonymous exploration, the relative ease of hiding affairs, the moving target of marital expectations—all these turn up in questions asked of Savage.
Today more than ever, by the time people get married they have had a great number of prospective partners to choose from—and the freedom to be apprenticed into sexual and domestic life with them. Yet married people seem no less given to dissatisfaction. When such dissatisfaction arises in situations where children are involved, Savage—to his considerable credit—stresses family stability. (Children “deserve whatever stability and continuity you can provide for them between infidelities,” he advises a married person in the grip of a delusional fixation on an old lover.)
He also urges forgiveness wherever possible. To a correspondent whose spouse lapsed in a way that fell far short of adultery, Savage offers this: “A successful marriage is basically an endless cycle of wrongs committed, apologies offered, and forgiveness granted, all leavened by the occasional orgasm.”
In refereeing tough questions about monogamy and its variations, Savage arguably upholds the substance, if not the letter, of the adultery commandment. The frankness and realism with which he handles such questions provide a sharp contrast to the tepid affirmations and bashful silences that characterize much mainline preaching and thinking on sex.
Still, Savage’s work poses some difficulties. His basic ethic is dramatically individualistic. While the emphasis on personal autonomy, mutual exchange and sexual fulfillment may be refreshing to people who come from sexually inhibited or abusive backgrounds, it is shaped by the expectations of the market for goods and services. In the world of Savage’s advice, individuals act much like firms and intimate relationships are quasi-commercial transactions—initiated, maintained and dissolved for mutual benefit. Sexual fulfillment becomes a valuable commodity to be sought by whatever means a partner will accept. Neither monogamy nor polyamory is an idea derived from a vision of the good that transcends individual preferences; they are matters of contract. (Tellingly, Savage’s condemnation of bestiality is based not on the categorical indignity of the act but on the inability of animals to give consent.)
Such legal and commercial metaphors are defining more and more of our lives, public and private alike. To engage with these ideas theologically, we need to return to the distinction between law and gospel. The contemporary sexual ethics that Savage represents give some degree of order to intimate life; they help manage the human disaster. But such a goal is not enough for a Christian community called to explore the depths of God’s love as reflected and refracted through shared life. We also need sexual ethics to reveal our deeper needs and failings, to create space for the forgiveness of sins and to shape lives redeemed by grace.
As an instrument of familial and civil peace, the commandment against adultery needs a bottom line—something for which Savage has a sharp instinct. Counselors and pastors should expect temptation and infidelity to happen; lingering itches are likely to be scratched. Sex tends to be cloaked in superstition, and stripping this away allows us to regard sexual lapses as no less inevitable than any other sin. We tend to forgive serial monogamy more readily than deviations from stable monogamy. Perhaps this norm should be reconsidered.
Meanwhile, however, monogamy is no longer the default expectation for many couples (though it still correlates with relationship longevity). The church’s historic promotion of the dignity and fullness of the marriage bond might not enjoy cultural prestige for much longer.
In its civil use, the adultery commandment might function as a flat prohibition or as a pragmatic sliding scale. But in neither case does it touch on the drastic vulnerability of sexual intimacy, on its transcendence of otherness. A sexual liaison creates a little society, tinged like all societies with injustice, excess, covetousness and selfishness. Young adults may be armored against the slings and arrows of intimate life, but even the most casual affair can leave wounds.
In a curious way, then, American culture may be more open than it has been in recent memory to the theological uses of the commandment against adultery. Read in isolation, Jesus’ commandment against lust might lead either to a neurotic regimen of self-policing or to despair at our wretchedness. In the context of the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, however, it suggests the infinite value of one’s neighbor—whether enemy, beggar, creditor or spouse. It is not a dour and punitive standard but one that both kills and revives with its overwhelming idealism.
In this sense, monogamy does not consist of refraining from sex outside marriage any more than true worship consists of avoiding idols. Instead, undivided sexual intimacy is a sign or sacrament of a full and altruistic unity that touches every aspect of domestic life. This unity may be adulterated in countless ways short of sexual intercourse, from casual neglect to the dreaded Facebook affair. Most marriages experience such diminishment. Yet most marriages also offer opportunities for sanctification—for a heroic ethic of life together that not only manages the human disaster and perceives its true depths but also calls us to transcend it in the name of hope.
In his lectures on Genesis, Martin Luther calls the house of Abraham “the true church”—it is “nothing else than a kingdom of the forgiveness of sins and of grace.” The home, no less than the church, lives distinct from the world by the forgiveness of sins and the sharing of grace. In a society increasingly characterized by unconstrained choices and the devouring logic of consumption, perhaps monogamy is the most radical lifestyle choice of all.