Attempts to Protect Marriage Can Work
by AFA Journal
June 29, 2004
(AgapePress) - A new study shows that when clergy in a community agree to work harder to preserve marriage, they can do just that.Ministers in 185 cities across the U.S. have signed on to a Community Marriage Policy (CMP), in which they make a commitment to make marriage preparation more intensive, enrich existing marriages, and aid troubled ones.
These CMPs are the brainchild of Mike and Harriet McManus, who began an organization called Marriage Savers in 1997, in an attempt to help churches halt the high number of divorces that afflict the Christian community.
The Institute for Research and Evaluation compared cities which had instituted CMPs with cities in which clergy had no such policy. Over a seven-year period, non-CMP cities saw their divorce rates fall 9.4 percent while CMP cities recorded an average 17.5 percent drop.
"The results are important, not because of their magnitude, which is modest, but because there are any results at all," said Dr. Stan Weed, president of the Institute. "The deck was stacked against finding a program effect. Community Marriage Policies depend on local volunteers of varying degrees of motivation, commitment, and ability and with high turnover. There's wide variation in program implementation. The proportion of signed congregations is often small, while the data is county-wide. Serious training of mentor couples began in 1998. Under these conditions, finding a significant program effect is actually pretty surprising."
Weed estimated that in the 114 cities studied, perhaps as many as 50,000 divorces were averted.
This article appeared in the July 2004 issue of AFA Journal, a monthly publication of the American Family Association. More information about Marriage Savers or Community Marriage Policies is available at the ministry's website.
