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Evangelical stance on divorce is changing
By ADELLE M. BANKS
Religion News Service
When Pentecostal power couple Randy and Paula White announced last fall that they were headed to divorce court, the most remarkable part of the reaction was that there wasn't much reaction at all.
For increasing numbers of clergy, a divorce no longer generates the kind of career-killing hue and cry of decades ago, in part because plenty of people in the pews have experienced divorce themselves.
The shifting views on divorced clergy reflect a growing concession among rank-and-file conservative Christians that a failed marriage is no longer an unforgivable sin.
Acceptable reasons
For many evangelical Christians, the line seems to have shifted from a single acceptable reason for divorce -- adultery -- to a wider range of reasons that some say can be biblically justified.
"I am probably one of those evangelicals who would say it would be three A's for me," said Chris Bounds, a theologian at Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion, Ind. "Abuse, abandonment and adultery."Beyond the church, polls by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press indicate that the divorce records of GOP presidential candidates Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and John McCain did not hinder their popularity among white evangelical voters.
http://www.star-telegram.com/religion/story/504853.html
By ADELLE M. BANKS
Religion News Service
When Pentecostal power couple Randy and Paula White announced last fall that they were headed to divorce court, the most remarkable part of the reaction was that there wasn't much reaction at all.
For increasing numbers of clergy, a divorce no longer generates the kind of career-killing hue and cry of decades ago, in part because plenty of people in the pews have experienced divorce themselves.
The shifting views on divorced clergy reflect a growing concession among rank-and-file conservative Christians that a failed marriage is no longer an unforgivable sin.
Acceptable reasons
For many evangelical Christians, the line seems to have shifted from a single acceptable reason for divorce -- adultery -- to a wider range of reasons that some say can be biblically justified.
"I am probably one of those evangelicals who would say it would be three A's for me," said Chris Bounds, a theologian at Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion, Ind. "Abuse, abandonment and adultery."Beyond the church, polls by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press indicate that the divorce records of GOP presidential candidates Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and John McCain did not hinder their popularity among white evangelical voters.
http://www.star-telegram.com/religion/story/504853.html