A Crusade to Save Marriages

Halfway into a counseling session with a couple who want to marry, Pastor Michael Douglass drew a coffee mug to his lips, peered over its rim and popped the question.

“In your mind is divorce an option?”

John Mangum, a thin, quiet man of 40, struggled to answer.

“There are certain circumstances . . . where I don’t know if I could stick it out,” he began. “I’m talking about the most extreme thing, if she became a mass murderer or something like that. I just don’t know if I could.”

That drew only silence from Douglass, who was a police officer before he became pastor of Big Valley Grace Community Church. So the husband-to-be squirmed some more, beating a verbal retreat.

“No, divorce isn’t an option, that’s true,” he said. Then he hedged. “I don’t know. It’s tough. . . . I would work through most anything. . . .”

The pastor leaned forward against his desk and shifted his gaze to Mangum’s fiancee, Linda Freckleton, 46. Her answer was unequivocal.

“No,” she said, “it is not an option.”

That was the answer Douglass wanted.

“In this ministry there is zero tolerance for divorce,” he declared, tapping his pencil on an open Bible. “If there’s any doubt in someone’s mind that divorce is not an option I won’t marry them.”

Neither will nearly 100 other pastors from 60 churches in the Modesto area, the vanguard of a religiously based national movement whose goal is to “save” what used to be called holy matrimony.

Eleven years ago, Modesto churches became the first in the nation to band together to adopt a “community marriage policy” that puts engaged couples through rigorous premarital counseling, sets a mandatory waiting period before they tie the knot and says that, until the union is blessed, sex is not.

Ministers here count it as a victory that one in 10 couples break their engagement as a result of the prenuptial boot camp. As they say, better now than later.

The national guru of the “Marriage Savers” movement delights in pointing out that the divorce rate in Stanislaus County was nearly 40% lower in 1995 than it was in 1986, the year Modesto started all this.

Such statistics are hard to gauge. Divorce rates have dipped nationally over the last decade. But Michael J. McManus, president of nonprofit Marriage Savers Institute in Bethesda, Md., is ready to take partial credit for that too, trumpeting the results in locales from Quincy, Ill., to Montgomery, Ala., other places that have embraced his Marriage Saver books, videotapes and Sunday school course guides.

“Isn’t it obvious that something is happening that isn’t happening someplace else?” he asked.

Premarital counseling is not new. Many Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish clerics have long required engaged couples to undergo reflection before their weddings, as well as meetings with clergy. Some, particularly Roman Catholic parishes, also ask the couple to take personality tests to assess their compatibility and wait up to six months before marrying.

But the Marriage Savers movement takes the mission to new levels.

Family Breakdown

It is driven in part by national angst over broken families. A Los Angeles Times poll in April found that more than 75% of Americans are dissatisfied with moral values, citing as a top concern “family breakdown.”

Determined to turn things around, preachers here and elsewhere have called for a renewed commitment to a biblical model of marriage and for taking a hard look at couples who believe that they have a marriage made in heaven.

“We’re trying to get rid of the ‘marrying Sams,’ ” is how McManus put it.

This month, Columbus, Ga., became the 58th city to adopt his group’s community marriage policy as 101 pastors, representing a cross-section of Protestant churches, signed on the dotted line.

The national advisory board for McManus’ group now includes such heavyweight figures as Cardinal William Keeler, past president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops; National Assn. of Evangelicals President Don Argue; pollster George Gallup, Jr.; the Rev. Jimmy Draper, president of the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board; Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches; and Rabbi Raphael Grossman, president of the Rabbinical Council of America, an Orthodox body.

Community contracts are not the only way such religious groups are trying to turn the tide. Many of the same advocates support controversial attempts in state legislatures to roll back “no-fault” divorce laws. Meanwhile, the fast-growing Promise Keepers movement fills stadiums with Christian men eager to find out how to be better husbands and fathers. “A man’s man is a godly man,” they are told.

But no place has taken the movement more to heart than this farming community of 182,000. With so many Modesto clergy participating, moonstruck couples may have to walk the extra mile--literally--to find a sympathetic cleric who will pronounce them husband and wife with no questions asked.

More than half of the area’s churches, representing a broad cross section of denominations--from liturgically minded Episcopal parishes to exuberant evangelical churches--have signed the marriage policy.

The idea is simple. If most weddings are performed by clergy, what better place is there to put marriages on a firm footing?

It starts with “minimum expectations” for unmarried couples. No topic is off limits--including the bedroom.

Sexual intercourse before marriage is taboo. Couples that “slip” are expected to tell their pastor and explore the underlying causes. But understanding goes only so far. Don’t expect to say “I do” in their churches if there are repeated assignations.

Although sexual abstinence is not explicitly spelled out in the pre-marriage policy, pastors are urged to teach that “sexual intimacy outside of marriage is sinful.”

“We state right up front if you’re living together, sign a covenant that you will not engage in premarital sex, or one move out,” said Father Stanley Collins, rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.

Revised just last month--to strengthen it--the community marriage policy in Modesto also requires a four-month waiting period between a couple’s first pastoral appointment and the wedding. Couples must attend at least two counseling sessions and take written personality “inventories” designed to help starry-eyed lovers objectively evaluate their compatibility.

Ignorance is definitely not bliss, said associate pastor Terry Benner of the First Baptist Church. “Ignorance is miserable. Ignorance is the instigator of a miserable existence down the road.”

Many churches here also require couples to complete a course that covers what they view as “God’s plan for marriage”--which emphasizes the husband’s role as head of the household--and sessions on everything from communication skills and conflict resolution to sexual expectations and household budgeting.

In cases of single parents wanting to marry again after the death of a spouse or a divorce, special courses are offered to prepare the new couple for the tensions that confront “blended families.”

The questions posed in premarital courses can be brutally awakening, as when Benner asks a single mother whether she would trust her future husband with her children if she were to die.

One of the inventories, known as PREPARE (Premarital Personal Relationship Evaluation), asks couples to respond to 160 statements on a five-point scale, from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” Among the statements: “We have some important disagreements that never seem to get resolved” and “I have some concerns about how my partner will be as a parent.”

Modesto’s First Baptist Church adds its own questionnaire, quizzing couples about their religious beliefs, their relationship with their mother and father and any history of addiction or mental illness.

Questions include: “Was there a sense of security and harmony in your home during the first 12 years of your life?” “What do you feel will be your fiance/fiancee’s greatest weakness as a spouse?” “List five reasons why you are choosing to marry this person.”

The answers of the man and woman are compared in 13 areas, such as communication and finances. The more they agree, the higher their score in each category. But there is no passing or failing grade--and churches leave the decision on whether to marry up to the couple.

Nevertheless, McManus said a tracking of 3,000 couples found that such measures are 86% accurate in predicting who will get divorced and 80% accurate in predicting who will have a good marriage.

Of course, some don’t even make it to the altar.

Personality Profile

Benner, who oversees “marriage ministries” at First Baptist, recalled how a man in his 20s broke his engagement after personality profiles indicated that his fiancee was overly attached to her parents, relying on them even in making “very intimate decisions.”

“She was really blind to seeing that,” Benner said. “That’s not an issue where we say, ‘Don’t get married.’ We say, ‘You’re going to struggle there’ . . . and we’re here to help you. But he backed out. He was very upset. She got angry at him--and us.”

Indeed, the bride not-to-be stormed out of the office.

“Sometimes we become the villains,” Benner noted.

On a recent afternoon, the one who risked playing that role was Pastor Douglass, the former policeman who has made a career of saving not only souls, but lives. He once was deputy chief of fire and rescue for California’s Office of Emergency Services and coordinated the state’s assistance to victims of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Part of his challenge on this day, as a pastor, was dealing with the fact that the couple before him--Mangum and Freckleton--had both been in failed marriages before.

“Let me ask you something: Have you fully forgiven your ex-spouses for whatever they might have done with you?” Douglass asked the pair, who had agreed to let a reporter sit in.

The pastor added: “If that has not happened, I would highly recommend that you spend some serious time in prayer. Allow God to allow you to forgive your ex-spouses.”

Freckleton, who runs a jewelry business from her home, admitted, “I felt I needed forgiveness from him (her ex) for leaving him.”

Her fiance, a dental technician, conceded that “there’s still a spark of anger” in him over his ex-wife, “but it’s nothing like it used to be.”

“He’s come a long way,” Freckleton agreed.

Of the pair, she--six years older--came out as the more assertive on their personality tests. Mangum admits that he is reticent to make fast judgments, worried that he will be wrong. One of their first arguments came when she characteristically made a prompt decision.

“He was angry at that,” she told Douglass, shifting in her chair in a light green pants suit. “My report to him was, well, at least I make one. To me it was just so obvious.”

Program Criticized

The dynamic leads to a lesson, the sort that often provokes outsiders to criticize such programs as promoting a view of marriage worthy of Ralph Kramden, the overbearing “king of the castle” husband played by Jackie Gleason on “The Honeymooners” of 1950s’ TV.

Except here, it’s scripture that drives the approach. Douglass quotes Ephesians 5:22, in which the Apostle Paul exhorts wives to submit to their husbands as they do to Christ. The husband, in turn, must rule “in a loving way,” as Christ loved the church.

“That’s not an option for you to be a leader,” he told Mangum. “That’s a mandate from God. . . . You’re the captain, John. You’re in charge.”

Mangum asked, “Can I delegate?” and all three laughed.

“No,” Douglass grinned.

But he couldn’t be more serious about what’s at stake. “Any time two people get married it’s a spiritual battle,” he said. “Satan’s put you in the cross hairs just like that.”--he snapped his fingers--”He’s sending his fiery darts at you and he’s hoping one sinks in. If you’re not up to speed with God’s expectations, one of those will start to drive you apart.”

To keep that from happening, the community marriage program does not stop on the wedding day.

Javier and Stephanie Gonzales, wed 2 1/2 years ago, still meet with an older mentoring couple who have had a successful marriage. The program suggests that newlyweds see such a couple at least four times in the first year to help them over the trials that follow the honeymoon.

Javier, 29, and Stephanie, 24, invited a reporter along as they visited John and Alberta Britton, who are in their early 50s.

Stephanie recalled one trick the program taught that was practical, not preachy--setting a weekly “date night” after marriage.

“You just think that when you’re dating it’s so easy to spend time with that person, every second, every minute that you have. When you get married time seems to just slip through your fingers like you wouldn’t believe,” she said. “Realistically we knew the bliss would fade away. But you don’t really think of what you need to do to keep it where it needs to be.”

Javier, who helps his family run a chain of restaurants, said the post-marital mentoring helped, as well, as when he could not understand why his wife didn’t always want sex when he did.

“John [Britton] was a saving grace in that,” he said. “We [men] are so ready all the time and our wives aren’t necessarily that way. What can we do? I learned I was not alone.”

It’s hard to quantify the impact of all this on the overall state of marriage in Stanislaus County--or on it’s counterpart, divorce.

It is true that, from a high of 6.3 divorces per 1,000 residents in 1986--the year the community marriage policy took effect--the divorce rate plummeted to 4 per 1,000 in 1996.

But the local rate has had its ups and downs in between. While stunningly low the last two, it was closer to the national average from 1991 through 1994--and actually higher in a couple of years.

Nationally, the rate was 4.5 divorces per 1,000 in 1995, translating into 1,184,000 divorces, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. That has been going down slightly in the last decade, though, and figures for California, though incomplete, reflect a similar decline.

Factors cited range from people waiting longer to wed to living together without marrying. Some folks here wonder whether the tough marriage programs may encourage a few couples to live together--and avoid all that scrutiny.

But even county court officials, nonchurch counselors and divorce lawyers say the community marriage policy can’t be a bad thing. Family therapists who see troubled couples say those who have been through a church course seem more open to seeking help.

“There was a lot more glue with those couples in terms of being able to work through problems, tolerating differences, and being committed and not just saying it’s not worth the hassle,” said psychologist Barry Olson, who describes himself as a churchgoing agnostic.

Still, the campaign to save marriages here still has work to do.

Dan Whitlock, chairman of the family law section of the Stanislaus County Bar Assn., who has practiced law 18 years in Modesto, said there have never been more divorce lawyers in town.

“From my own experience there’s certainly a lot of domestic work, not just dissolutions--modifications of custody, support modifications and a great many nonmarital actions such as paternity, custody and visitation considerations,” he said. “If anything, those have increased.”