Representatives of Southern Baptists, evangelical Christians, mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics promised to strengthen their commitment to marriage in a statement released Nov. 14 in Washington.
“A Christian Declaration on Marriage,” which calls on churches to provide support for married couples in the face of high divorce and cohabitation rates, was the result of an unusual collaborative effort among leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention, National Association of Evangelicals, National Council of Churches and National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The group that produced the statement consisted of Richard Land, president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission; Kevin Mannoia, NAE president who initiated the project; Robert Edgar, the NCC’s general secretary and Anthony O’Connell, chairman of the NCCB’s committee on marriage and family life.
The statement affirms marriage is a “holy union of one man and one woman” for a lifetime.
Marriages that are faithful to God’s plan produce benefits not only for couples and families but also for the church and culture, the document states.
Church leaders have an “unprecedented need and responsibility” to strengthen marriages in the face of a “high divorce rate, a rise in cohabitation, a rise in nonmarital births, a decline in the marriage rate, and a diminishing interest in and readiness for marrying,” according to the statement.
“With three quarters of marriages performed by clergy, churches are uniquely positioned not only to call America to a stronger commitment to this holy union but to provide practical ministries and influence for reversing the course of our culture.”
The declaration calls for churches to strengthen marriage by, among other things, educating young people about its meaning, preparing engaged couples for marriage, providing mentor couples and upholding the institution of marriage in society
Statistics from the U.S. Census, Land said, show from 1970 to 1998 the number of children living with unmarried couples rose 665 percent, the rate of nonmarital births increased 224 percent and the number of single-parent families rose 190 percent.
The motivation for the document was primarily to seek to remedy the undermining of marriage, rather than to provide a response to the call by some for approval of homosexual marriage, Land and Keeler said. (BP)
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