Apathetic Evangelicals Pushed toward acceptance on divorce*

By Adelle M. Banks, Religion News Service

When Pentecostal power couple Randy and Paula White recently announced
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.

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."

With the Whites' breakup, Randy White now leads the Without Walls
International Church in Tampa, and Paula White remains prominent in
Christian broadcasting. Not long after they announced their divorce,
Atlanta evangelist Juanita Bynum filed for divorce from her husband,
Bishop Thomas Weeks III, after he allegedly assaulted her in a hotel
parking lot.

Beyond the church, polls by the Pew Research Center for the People & the
Press indicate the divorce records of GOP presidential candidates Rudy
Giuliani, Fred Thompson and John McCain have not hindered their
popularity among white evangelical voters.

Christianity Today, a magazine that often serves as a barometer of
evangelical culture, published an October cover story called "When to
Separate What God Has Joined," in which David Instone-Brewer, a senior
research fellow at Tyndale House in Cambridge, England, concluded that
adultery, physical and emotional neglect, abuse and abandonment are all
biblically justified reasons for divorce.

Mark Galli, the magazine's managing editor, said there is a simultaneous
rejection of divorce in principle but acceptance in practice, in part
because almost everyone knows someone who's been there.

"I think conservative Christians are becoming more liberalized in the
sense of, I guess, making more room for the acceptance of divorce and
remarriage," he said. "You'll see a lot of churches that plunge right in
and have divorce ministries. ... Marriage is a really difficult thing in
our culture right now."

But the reaction to Instone-Brewer's article reflected a lingering
discomfort with divorce; Galli estimated that 60% of responding readers
had a negative reaction. Prominent author John Piper responded that he
found Instone-Brewer's reasoning "tragic" and an "astonishing extension
of the divorce license."

Statistics bear out that divorce affects conservative Christians just as
much as anyone else. A study this year by The Barna Group, a California
research firm, showed that 27% of "born-again"

Christians have been divorced, compared to 25% of non-born-again
Americans. In 2005, Phoenix-based Ellison Research found that 14% of
clergy have been divorced; the vast majority have remarried.

Paula White, in a recent interview, declined to go into detail about her
divorce, but stood by statements in her new book "You're All That!"

that God can mend any relationship "if both persons are willing to come
into alignment with his principles." She added that no other person's
love can be completely fulfilling.

"In fact, I say a healthy relationship is, 'I am free to be me, you are
free to be you, and together, we're us,'" she said. "So no one in life
can complete you. Nothing can complete you. Only God can absolutely
complete you."

Last month, Bynum said her recent marital strife may actually expand her
ministry's outreach.

"I believe it will absolutely, positively broaden my ability to reach
people that probably would not ever have come to a church," she said at
an appearance in Birmingham, Ala. "I'm able to teach on the subject of
suffering with experience behind it."

J. Lee Grady, the editor of charismatic and Pentecostal magazine
Charisma, said Bynum may have generated a "sympathy factor" because of
the alleged abuse, but the Whites are more unusual because there has
been no clear biblical reason given for their split.

That leads to a concern by some in charismatic and Pentecostal circles
that people can "just flippantly get divorced like you go get a
haircut," he said.

The Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination, recently changed its
rules to say that a marriage crisis should not permanently disqualify
someone from ministry. The church voted this summer to permit remarried
ministers if their divorce occurred because their spouse was unfaithful
or was an unbeliever who abandoned them.

Still, the church does not allow divorced ministers to serve under all
circumstances. "We have not permitted credentialing for those who simply
do not get along with one another," said the Rev. George O. Wood,
general superintendent of the Assemblies of God. "We feel that would be
a scriptural violation."

Bishop Noel Jones, a divorced Pentecostal pastor in Gardena, Calif., who
counts the Whites, Bynum and Weeks as friends, said judgment should be
withheld from both high-profile clergy and everyday worshippers going
through a divorce.

"I think that in Christian circles, people are more relaxed about the
reasons," said Jones, a spokesman for FaithMate, an online Christian
dating service. "I still think that divorce is pretty much a difficult
subject for anybody — and rightfully so, but ... we allow more rules,
more worldly concepts to prevail."