Local churches offer couples ways to prevent divorce

Roughly half of all marriages don't live happily ever after, and the Rev. Geoffrey V. Guns of Second Calvary Baptist Church in Norfolk is pushing to change that.

A Healthy Marriage/Healthy Families Conference on Saturday in Virginia Beach is being hosted by the Eastside Community Development Corp., a nonprofit founded by Guns and supported by his church.

"I don't think we give enough attention to healthy marriages and to marriage period," Guns said. "I think there's a role for us, the church, to play.

Wartime deployments and recession-induced family budget tightening are just two of the stresses on marriage that the conference will address.

Premarital and marriage counseling as well as married-couple retreats are staples in many South Hampton Roads churches.

However, concern about divorce is stirring several fresh faith-based initiatives aimed at keeping marriages intact.

In 2004 there were 3.7 divorces per 1,000 people nationally and 7.8 marriages per 1,000, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. That year in Virginia, there were 3.9 divorces and 8.3 marriages per 1,000 people.

In 2006, there were 31,087 divorces and 60,760 marriages in Virginia, according to the NCHS.

That rate of about one divorce for every two marriages has stayed roughly the same nationwide since the mid-1970s. There was one divorce for about every four marriages in 1960.

Seneca Bock, Eastside's president, said the conference can teach married and unmarried couples how to cope with stressors that can lead to marital crises.

Bock said churches concerned about family stability are natural partners in promoting Eastside's healthy-marriage message.

"There are relationships in the church that will enable us to tap into the intimate and personal spaces of the folks we're trying to reach," he said.

Heading off divorce is also the goal of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, which is beefing up its marriage preparation program for engaged couples. In the works is a full protocol involving meetings with clergy and married mentors and instruction in the theology of sexuality and birth control without contraception.

The six- to nine-month prepar-ation will be a prerequisite for getting married by a diocesan priest or deacon. Premarital preparation is required now, but standards often differ among parishes.

The Rev. J. Biber, one of the protocol's planners, said the seven-step process aims at building couples' commitment to marriage after the honeymoon period dissipates.

The course also will stress that natural family planning - celibacy during a woman's fertile periods - enhances marital bonds.

"One of the dangers I see with couples today is that with 'Friends' and 'Sex and the City,' sex is sort of cheapened," Biber said, referring to popular television shows.

Priests will not act as police by blocking weddings for couples who may, for example, disagree with Catholicism's ban on artificial contraception, Biber said.

"Some of it is, we're just planting seeds," sowing doctrine and practice that couples may adopt later.

Meanwhile, marriage proposals by the Family Foundation - an advocacy group with strong evangelical support - had mixed success in the General Assembly this year.

A bill that would have required the consent of both spouses in a no-fault divorce if children were involved was continued by legislators to

2009. In Virginia, either a wife or a husband may initiate divorce without cause.

However, the governor signed a law that allows up to 1 percent of federal welfare funding in Virginia to be spent on healthy-family and marriage programs. The funding is known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Both proposals were recommendations of a marriage commission the foundation formed last year to study divorce and state policies. The foundation has blamed no-fault divorce laws in particular for undermining marriage.

Steven G. Vegh, (757) 446-2417, steven.vegh@pilotonline.com