Poet Jeanne Walker talks the business of poetry in an interview

by Peter Menkin

Poet & Teacher Jeanne Walker with grandchildren in St. Louis

Another in the series of ongoing interviews with American poets. This interview with University of Delaware Professor Jeanne Walker is part of the special subset in this series called American Anglican poets. This writer talked by phone in June, 2011 with Jeanne from his home office north of San Francisco to Jeanne, who was in that morning time at her home in the Philadelphia, PA area. We spoke for an hour, and the poet was forthcoming about her work as a poet, and as an experienced University Professor of English (35 years). About being a teacher she says, “I’m fortunate not to live only with my peer group; I get to know people who are twenty-one and twenty-two. I go to class on Tuesday afternoon and it’s the only Tuesday afternoon we have. It’s our real life, and I talk with them about what they think about the text. The text is a meeting place for us to talk about what’s important.”

1. 1. Your email note of this week to me says,” At my most recent poetry reading I went back to read from older books–a decade old. Then I read some poems I had been working on in the last several months. It was a very sympathetic audience. I always find out something about the poems by reading them to an audience.” In looking over your University of Delaware notices regarding you as Professor and poet, I see you will be giving poetry readings at the University in September (the 29^th, in fact). Intrigued as I am by the artistic and creative process, talk to us some about how a reading is done. For example, when reading before students and faculty mostly, do you choose different works than other readings? Tell us what you may read in September, and if you work on a specific oral style that you can describe when reading?

I choose poems that mean something to the group I’m reading for. I usually don’t decide what I’m reading until several hours before, because then I generally have a better idea of whose going to be in the audience. I’ve read my own poems often enough so that I don’t need rehearsal. Above all, I think a poem should be clear to the audience. Getting the music into their ears involves reading slowly, pausing frequently, and annunciating clearly.







I’ve…to tell the truth…I’ve learned a great deal from the actors I work with in the theatre. I usually introduce each of the poems with a story, or an explanation of some kind. That gives the audience time to reflect between poems. It also gives them a sense of who wrote the poem and why. Poetry reading should be fun…not fun…but they should give pleasure. You want to connect with the audience, so they know it’s as human…they know there’s a connection to you. A poetry reading should give the audience time to ponder the great truths like: love, death, redemption, the mysteries of time and eternity. Because we live such fast lives, we don’t get much time to reflect on what we’re doing or why we’re doing it. In the end what’s more important than that kind of reflection?







Let me give you an example of a reading I did on Whidbey Island, (off the coast of Seattle, WA USA). I was reading to students and faculty in the Seattle Pacific Masters of Fine Arts Program, which is the low residency program where I teach. We know each other very well. It’s a small elite program with about 7 faculty members, and about 50 students. So I read poems that I had recently been working on. I told the audience that they’re new. That’s unusual. I don’t read new poems to a general audience, but I sometimes do read them to my students. I’m always reading and commenting on what they’re writing and they get a kick out of hearing and commenting on what their mentors are doing.







Here’s one of the poems I read, which may not, even now, be in its final draft:







FAULTS







Then my mother became my child.



I’d felt so light on the teeter-totter



that I was surprised by sudden power,



holding someone so important



in the sky with nothing but my weight



on the other side. It was kind of thrilling,



kind of strange. And I noticed the earth



is jagged with faults and fractures.



Grass staggers in uneven dirt and



the shoreline zigs and zags. You



can never glue the two uneven pieces



of a broken teacup perfectly together.







When she died, I worried about her



as if I’d driven her to her first day



of school and left her there alone.



For weeks I wondered, did she find



her class room? Is she making friends



in heaven? I’m trying to glue pieces



of the cup together. Heaven is roughly



what I mean. If God ever used that word,



he spoke in Hebrew. Nothing, it turns out,



has a simple surface. Maybe it’s the



missing and the faults we have to love.

1. 2. In our conversation by phone this week in June, 2011, we talked a little about the business of poetry. After all, poetry books are written to be published, and published to be read, but also to be sold. You mentioned some of the general numbers various poetry books of kinds sell. Tell us a little about that, and do mention some of your own successes with their titles? Mostly, though, explain if poetry is a business to you, or if it is a business of writing and as in the book you worked on by Abilene Christian University Press, is the business of literature and poetry for the writer like you a matter of, “Shadow & Light: Literature and the Life of Faith?”

Poetry doesn’t make any business sense in this culture. Most books of poetry are published in small press runs usually not over 3,000 copies. There’s no mass market for poetry. Most small presses that publish poetry don’t even have marketing departments. And the trade presses that publish poetry don’t pitch it to the public, even if they have big marketing budgets. Although children naturally use metaphors and they love wordplay, by the time they get to junior high, that’s mostly been educated out of them. We tend to think of English as a practical affair. In hip hop that kind of razzle-dazzle wordplay has come back, but basically English in this country is for ordering pizza.







In places like Romania, and Iran, and even in Sweden, vast numbers of normal people read poetry. And they memorize it. There is a saying in Romania: Every Romanian is a poet.

Second Edition. Jeanne Walker is working on the 3rd Edition at this time of publication

Shadow & Light: Literature and the Life of Faith, is an anthology of spiritual literature written between the English renaissance and about the year 2000. I agreed to help edit that volume, because a collection like that didn’t exist. We’re working on a third edition now. I believe we need that kind of collection in our culture. It reveals the quest for God in a number of cultures and religious traditions. It’s startling to read John Donne, for example, writing in the early 17^th century about his very problematic faith, sounding almost like a contemporary.

1. 3. You say in an email to me, “I’ve taught for my whole career at The University of Delaware. That’s 35 years.” When it comes to teaching University students, what advice have you both for your students and for younger poets on the practice and the writing of poetry? Please offer something tangible when answering, like “create a chapbook” and what a chapbook means to you as an artist. If not a chapbook, how a book in its development has meaning for you, and what is some process of its beginning work.

The most important advice I give my students is to read, to read everything they can get their hands on. I tell them to go back to the Anglo Saxon poets. Read Beowulf, and move forward through the tradition. Once you finish the English and American traditions and poetry from Canada, start reading in other languages. If you can’t read in the other languages, then read in translation. Read poems aloud. Think about the sounds and the rhythms and be aware of the metaphors. Take the poems you love apart, to see how they’re made. Use them as models to sit down and write from. Work seriously, and revise.







I would say, the same kind of work goes into a poem as goes into a musician’s performance of a violin concerto. Like a musician, a poet needs to practice her scales. Then in the middle of all that work, the muse might show up and you can move toward a real poem. The books come later. That’s not so difficult. It’s the writing that’s the real work. A lot of poets want to skip that part. You work hard and you practice, then you hide all the work and make it look effortless.

1. 4. This writer notes that you’ve a number of poetry books published, and the usual question for a writer can be, “What is your favorite of the lot?” Have you a particular poem in that book you’d like to tell us about, as it is an expression of the creative spirit, the Holy Spirit, and shows how it as literature reflects the poets life?

I don’t have a favorite book. They’re all my children. This summer and fall I will be putting together a new and selected volume which will be brought out by WordFarm Press next year. It’s a small press whose editors have all worked at other presses. They knew one another and liked each other and decided to start this press to fill a niche. They have a wonderful taste and the work they publish is good. They make beautiful books.







Yes, I do feel dependent on something when I am writing well. Like Milton and Spenser, I think of it as the Holy Spirit. But I am not sure the mystery is much different for poetry than for anything we do. How do our ideas spin out? How do the words keep materializing from nowhere? How do we keep breathing, even when we’re not thinking about it? The fact that we can name the parts of our brains that are doing the work doesn’t mean we can control them. The fact that we’re here at all is a mystery. God is perpetually engaged in the act of creation.







I believe everyday events are sacramental. It isn’t just the bread we eat on Sunday or the ashes on Ash Wednesday. The world is full of objects that are signs: Like signposts that point to meaning beyond themselves.







I remember with sitting with a senior chemistry major in my office at the University of Delaware, where I teach. He gestured at a very big tree on the mall; it’s not solid he told me. It’s made of rapidly moving atoms. In the end, poetry and chemistry may come down to the same thing—the mystery that lies at the center of our existence. It makes you believe there’s got to be a creator, doesn’t it?

1. 5. Are you a believer? Is your faith something that informs your life? How so? But mostly, tell readers how your faith informs your poetry, especially the more devotional work like that you sent me for consideration as part of the Addendum to this interview-article? The interest basics of this series of interviews are also directed at how you as a poet view God, and I assume as a Christian, how you see Christ acting in your life in your art? By this I mean, not only Christ’s presence, but influence of the Gospels and importantly your life in its devotion and worship? Your personable response is welcomed.

Yes. I’m a believer. And I am a member of St. Peter’s Episcopal in Philadelphia. It’s a church which is 250 years old, with a graveyard around it, so those of us who walk into the church every Sunday have some contact with “the great cloud of witnesses” who came before us. It is a wonderful place to sit and reflect. With a group of about 50 people at St. Peter’s I’m reading the Bible in 90 days this summer. I’ve read it

Her official picture as Professor at University of Delaware

many times, but it’s wonderful to go through it again. We’re in Leviticus now, and moving towards the great history books.







I think of poetry as particularly … well, let me see … in America we love what we can hold onto:. A new blazer, keys to a house, and especially money. Poetry is inherently about a world that isn’t certain in that way. It isn’t literal. Poetry is at its heart, metaphor. Jesus taught in metaphor. He called himself the “bread of life”, for instance. You say, how can that be? How can a guy walking around with his friends in Galilee be bread? Well, poetry uses metaphor, exactly like the metaphor of Jesus’ bread.







I would say good poetry always reveals the world of what we can’t see and touch. It’s the spiritual world that lies in us and around us, that patiently woos us all our lives, and tries to get us to pay attention. Most of us, I think, feel a deep longing for something. We don’t know what. It isn’t going to be satisfied by a new blazer, or a lifetime achievement award. That kind of longing [for the spiritual world] is in itself hopeful. I think it’s planted in us as a sign-post, an arrow, pointing us to what we need. Wasn’t it Augustine who said, “Our hearts are restless until we come to rest in You?”







Poetry…good poetry…always talks about that world. The world that’s not literal. I don’t think it delivers dogma or theology. It’s not about doctrine. Explaining doctrine is the job of priests and pastors and theologians. Poetry bears witness to the way of seeing that’s not literal and not dogmatic. Since Americans tend to be so literal and materialistic, poetry is fairly radical in this culture.

1. 6. In a recent interview with poet Luci Shaw, you said, “I think finally writing poetry is an act of prayer, or certainly an act of faith.” Let’s talk about faith again. In our era, in this American nation, it seems faith is in short supply. Is it the poet’s job to tell us something about faith and Christian hope, too? Speak to us about the poet’s job: in its various dimensions, as you’ve known it.

The poet’s job is to be aware of that other spiritual world. And to be able to talk about it in terms of images our bodies experience—smells, sounds, sights. It’s a matter of making the spiritual world plausible to the reader. In order to do that a writer has to hone her craft by writing and reading.







There are many craft issues. But perhaps the three most important areas, the big craft issues, are how to write metaphor, how to use rhythm, and how to pick up music in the lines you write. There are exercises that can make a writer better at all of these. To become more aware of the “music” in the language, for example there are ear training exercises. In addition to exercises, when a poet is reading in the tradition, it’s important to notice how the great poets have managed metaphor and rhythm and music in their work.







More recently, I’ve come to believe that part of the job of a poet is to argue for poetry in the public square. This goes back to something we were talking about earlier. Poetry by its very nature argues against the speed of the culture, argues that we need quiet, we need reflection. Human beings need poetry to help us think deeply about what matters. In America we need poetry because we have such an infatuation with surfaces. Poetry argues for deeper thinking, for quiet and reflection to think beyond the surface.







As a poet, I do a lot of things other than sitting and composing poetry. But when I’m at home, I do go to work. I sit down in a chair in my office early in the morning and work the same way anybody else does, all day. What do I do? I write craft lectures for my classes, do interviews, draft talks and lectures, and answer letters and emails from readers. Today I’m writing cover copy for the first books of two fine young poets who were my students. I’ve just finished writing a 300 page book of prose, which has taken over a year. I revise poetry, email editors, and get ready to run writing workshops. Sometimes I’m on the road; I travel to speak around the country and do readings. (Email Jeanne here: jwalker@udel.edu ).







Being a poet is a job like any other job in the sense that you do it whether you’re excited about it on any given day or not. You’ve made a commitment. If you don’t make a commitment, if you don’t fulfill the promise you’ve made to actually do the work, you find yourself thinking a lot about writing, but not writing.

1. 7. Your Vita is so long and detailed, it tells of a healthy and productive life in literature, a strong interest in other poets, and many, many years as a teacher at the University of Delaware. To my surprise, you translate Romanian poetry. What about it interests you? Tell us something of this unusual, at least to my ears, work: How it informs your own poetry, both the work of a poet and the poetry, as well as living a life of faith?

One of Jeanne Walker's poetry books. This published by University of Illinois Press, who will soon publish an E-book of the work.

I’m not really a translator. At the request of a Romanian poet, I traveled with [the poet] Luci Shaw to Cluj about five years ago to meet with about 20 or 30 young poets who gathered there from all over Romania.







First Luci and I flew to Vienna, then drove through Hungary to western Romania. That was a harrowing trip. We passed through three country’s border controls. We were nervous because we had in our suitcases 200 disposable syringes for one of the poets who required a daily injection for hepatitis. I also brought along 20 pairs of jeans. People all over the world love jeans and they’re expensive in Romania.







Luci and I absolutely fell in love with those poets. We wanted to make their work available in English. We asked the translators who had worked with us at the conference to give us rough translations of their poems.







When we got home, Luci and I sat down at my dining room table and argued out the translations together. We both enjoyed it enormously. Most of those poems have been published over here. In its international issue, Image magazine brought out a poem by Ionatan Pirosca, for example, who was the head of the conference. This is part of Ionatan’s poem:







On the expecting sidewalk



the garland of the cross is growing



you pick it up and slowly



it becomes all that you have



and you don’t understand



how come so suddenly



the sky has cleared.







That explains why I’ve translated from Romanian, even though I’m not, actually, a translator.

1. 8. In the event I’ve left something out, or missed something, or you want to add some words, please do.

I can’t think of anything more. But thank you for this interview, Peter. It’s been a pleasure talking.





ADDENDUM



PORTRAIT OF THE VIRGIN WHO SAID NO TO GABRIEL



This is the one Giotto never painted.



She looked up from baking that morning, hearing

his feathers settle and his voice scatter like gold coins

on the floor. He told her, his forehead sweaty

from the long trip. Me? she breathed, Oh sure!



But after he walked away, she couldn’t forget his look,

the strange way his feet rang like horseshoes on the stones.

What she’d been wanting before he interrupted

was not the Bach Magnificat, I can tell you, not stained

glass. Nothing risky. Just to keep her good name.



Small as she was, how could she keep in her heart

those centuries of praise? But I praise her,

anyway, for wanting a decent wedding

with napkins folded like hats and a good Italian wine.

I praise her name, Lenora. I praise the way



she would practice carefully, making the L

like a little porch, where she could imagine standing

to throw a red ball to some children she loved.

I praise the way, year by year, she let herself see

who that visitor was. Think of her collecting



belief slowly, the way a bird builds her nest

in an olive tree. Then finally how one year,

after the leaves fell, she was an old woman

looking at the truth, outlined against

the salmon sky, knowing it was true.



For not despising her own caution then, I praise her.

For never feeling envy. And for the way, once,

she stepped past her fear to hand a cup of water

to a thirsty carpenter fainting by her door.



In every room of this gallery I think I see her picture.



-for Henry William Griffin



Wheaton Magazine

A Deed to the Light





STAYING POWER

In appreciation of Maxim Gorky at the International
Convention of Atheists. 1929

Like Gorky, I sometimes follow my doubts
outside and question the metal sky,
longing to have the fight settled, thinking
I can’t go on like this, and finally I say

all right, it is improbable, all right, there
is no God. And then as if I’m focusing
a magnifying glass on dry leaves, God blazes up.
It’s the attention, maybe, to what isn’t

there that makes the notion flare like
a forest fire until I have to spend the afternoon
dragging the hose to put it out. Even
on an ordinary day when a friend calls,

tells me they’ve found melanoma,
complains that the hospital is cold, I say God.
God, I say as my heart turns inside out.
Pick up any language by the scruff of its neck,

wipe its face, set it down on the lawn,
and I bet it will toddle right into the godfire
again, which–though they say it doesn’t
exist—can send you straight to the burn unit.

Oh, we have only so many words to think with.
Say God’s not fire, say anything, say God’s
a phone, maybe. You know you didn’t order a phone,
but there it is. It rings. You don’t know who it could be.

You don’t want to talk, so you pull out
the plug. It rings. You smash it with a hammer
till it bleeds springs and coils and clobbered up
metal bits. It rings again. You pick it up

and a voice you love whispers hello.

–Originally published in Poetry







JESUS AND THE CABBAGE



His friend Martha’s making soup, because you still

have to eat. Meanwhile, back in the Garden



cave, the same Garden where he prayed to let

this cup pass from him, He comes to Himself lying



on a stone shelf in the cool dark, all 200 pounds

of Him, only changed. Minus mass, maybe,



or impervious to gravity. He doesn’t understand this

as a physics problem. He lifts his hand and stares



at it. In town Martha’s trying to keep her tears out

of the soup. The cabbage offers her its tough pale green



handles to steady her wobble. She strips its layers

down to the heart, while Jesus—whoo-ee! His astonished face,



chisel it in marble!—lasers through the swaddling

grave clothes. Heaven’s volatile physics draws him up.



In the deepest dark of winter when I hold a cabbage,

peel off its outer leaves, before I plunge the knife in,



I think when I take that kind of journey,

I might light my path with this green moon.





Sojourners







GESTURE UPWARDS



I have promised to pray for a friend

the way one promises when there are no solutions.

Here in Vermont the cold is slowing things down–

the way a squad car parked along the shoulder

slows traffic. The birches are migrating

to precincts of yellow. From there

they’ll take their permanent leave.

I pull into a lane to study how they do it.

Beside the road a cat stretches, pouring herself

towards her paws. Birds scatter, fanning out

as if flung into the sky, as if someone

wants to demonstrate the physics of motion,

nothing about bones and muscles, just a flawless

gesture upward. The leaves float down so slowly

it feels as if my car is sinking under water.

I am a fish, watching the sea turn

gold. Like the sole of a foot, a yellow leaf

steps on the windshield, then another,

and another, like feet, walking on water.



Anglican Theological Review

New Tracks, Night Falling







BERGMAN



I am at the movies, practicing the discipline

of the sane, taking the characters

to my heart, while reminding myself

they’re not me. Red scarf flying against snow

like a flag of happiness. Their looks meeting

across a table in the café. That blessing of first love,

to have your gaze returned. Then later,

the misunderstanding, that bewildering

shift. His face looming big as a baseball field,

his eyebrows flying like hysterical seagulls.

He has just begun to shout when the film gets stuck,



the same ugly word, ugly word he can’t call back,

a word she can’t forgive. In the booth

a kid bends over the projector,

a god now, performing small maneuvers of love

as we stare at the palpitating hooha

of the man’s mouth, the cruelty in her eyes,



watching how habit can harden the heart, how

it’s possible to cross into a country beyond choice,

beyond remorse, beyond forgiveness,

how even Pharoah didn’t know exactly when,

between the first and tenth plagues,

he found himself inside the answer he could never

change, the way we are stuck in the film’s repeating



stutter. Until the boy cuts it. We go home early.

I turn the key in the lock, hearing the wind in the trees,

the sound of God weeping, His heart shattered on

the stubborn mystery of the human will.





Image

New Tracks, Night Falling









ADAM’S CHOICE



It must have been a windy night like this

the trees swaying and hissing,

tossing their hair in desperate gestures,



when he broke out of the spell

and realized it wasn’t fair.

He never chose her.



When he woke up, she stood before him

like a bright goblet filling up with water.

He was thirsty. How splendid



it can be to drink when you’re thirsty,

was what he thought. He was that young.

Now he realizes there is a stain



spreading on his heart, that the name

she gave the Yak chafes him

and she sings off key. He never chose



her. He’d like to grab his knife

and cut off her song

but rain is slanting down



and she is running toward him, her eyes terrified

under the bending, cracking maples

and a curtain pulls back in him



and he takes her into his arms

and begins the long journey toward

learning to love what he’s been given.





New Tracks, Night Falling









SILENT NIGHT



–for Marjorie Maddox



The holly bush stands by the peeling door

she stumbled through last night, under the stare

of curious eyes. She didn’t make it far



beyond the first stall, so she lay down there

to let her body have its way with her.

Rubbing her back, he braced himself against the door.



Maybe she wished that she could give it up–

the greeting of the angel on her stoop,

her yes, the thousand future paintings. She would swap



it all to stop this lava. Not to erupt

with God. To halt the bleeding of the Infinite

into that barn. Peaceful? Silent? It was abrupt,



loud, violent. She was blown apart. Body went

one way, she went another. Just to keep her blunt

place in the world, she sent her eyes hunting



the holly: that woman, sister, aunt, waiting

patiently outside to help. As God came ripping

through–a wild train–her eyes kept holding



that tree. She rests now. Wind is leaking

into the barn, the animals are sleeping.

Outside, the holy holly bough is breaking.



The Crux

New Tracks, Night Falling









LITTLE BLESSING FOR MY FLOATER



-After George Herbert



This tiny ruin in my eye, small

flaw in the fabric, little speck

of blood in the egg, deep chip

in the windshield, north star,

pole star, floater that doesn’t

float, spot where my hand is not,

little piton nailing every rock

I see, no matter if that image

turns to sand, or sand to sea,

I embrace you, piece of absence

that reminds me what I will be–

all dark some day unless God

rescues me, oh speck

that might still teach me how to see.



Poetry

Ruah

New Tracks, Night Falling









PRAYING FOR RAIN IN SANTA FE



–for Don Murdoch



This is the end of the world, slow motion, this burning,

burning till earth is parched, the cypress crisping,

cactus brown, brown grass, brown horizon.



Through the Cathedral hands of the faithful pass a candle.

Feel the pull of prayer in the hot dark.

Tell God nothing can live without water,



water, which is 70% of what you’re praying with,

rivers longing through you for more water.

That’s when it comes to you:



in prayer lies prayer’s answer. In the calling out,

the visitation. In the arrow lives the target’s eye.

So water rises from its knees, believing water



will come. When rain starts, a fat drop

joined by her sisters, the sound of dripping like

a shy nun sneezing, your heart stops with pleasure



and you pick up the cantaloupe you’ll have for dinner

to shake it. The promise inside: flesh

the color of sunset, the slosh of a whole ocean.





Commonweal

New Tracks, Night Falling
















FOREKNOWLEDGE



I think he planned it, sort of, from the start,

whether he knew they’d choose the fruit or not.

He scattered hints around the garden, what to do

in case they got themselves kicked out. A shirt

of fur around the lamb. The stream converting

water into syllables. Bamboo pipes.

The caps of mushrooms round as wheels.

Bluebirds composing tunes. He knew nothing

they started later would be new. Except he

didn’t factor in the thorns, how they would smart

as Adam—leaving–drove one through his foot.

How clever Romans would invent a crown.

He didn’t figure weeds could break His heart.



New Tracks, Night Falling







BELL

– Good Friday, 2004



Since time flies one way like an arrow,

the sugar can’t be stirred out of your oatmeal,

and no matter how long the murderer sobs

on the median strip—sorry!–she can’t reverse

her swerve, cannot rescind her drink



before the crash. Was Jesus heartsick

to find history’s not a zipper running both ways?

He who loved eternity–its roominess,

its reversibility—did he have to learn

as he grew up that he never could unsay a thing,



once said? And yet today, like all Good Fridays,

He hangs on the cross again. On altars

he hangs. On necklaces. His death is like an x

that rides the wheel of time, showing up again

in ritual, that miniature eternity, that spring



re-sprung. Dear God, there in your big eternity,

remember that your hands and feet can never

be unscarred again. Hear these words spoken

by a body that suffers, by a tongue

that will stiffen and be gone.



Have mercy on us who love time.

May this prayer be a tire that rolls

over every inch of whatever way

to find You. May it be a bell

which can never be unrung.



New Tracks, Night Falling









THANKS



–After Gerard Manley Hopkins



for September sun like a sharp thread

that strings and pulls me

down the footpath, nearly blind, toward

the dark woods, for the hawk kiting



on high sheen above the field

as I cross the footbridge.

For the water’s slather, for bittersweet,

stoneflowers, slagmire, silt, sediment



rushing into the slurp of gravity. Thanks even

for seek and cover, for the seam that

opens in the hay, mouse tail splitting the gold,

ears sleeked back, frozen against



the plummet, wings folding silent

as umbrellas, bill hooked, steel

cables grabbing, hauling up. Thanks

for fierce, fast, for finality,



for let-go, limp, at last. Thanks for not

covering up what I can’t grasp,

and for sunlight holding earth

to heaven, still as strong as harp strings.



Crux

New Tracks, Night Falling







CONNECTIONS



After against, among, around. How I admire

prepositions, small as they are, nothing

but safety pins, their lives given to

connecting. They are paid help,

maids in black uniforms who pass

hors d’oeuvres. Or better, they’re the joy

that leaps between us when we get to

know them. Without connection, what

can survive? Because the lawn

waits for the sun to wake it from

its winter nap, we say sunlight

lies on the grass. Even the simplest jar

connects—jar under moonlight, on

counter, jar in water. It was prepositions

in the Valley of Dry Bones that stitched

the femur to the heel, the heel to the foot bone.

And afterwards, they got up to dance.

Between, beside, within may yet keep

the chins and breasts from tumbling off

Picasso’s women. If I could, I would

make prepositions the stars of grammar

like the star which traveled the navy sky

that night sweet Jesus lay in his cradle,

pulling the wise and devious kings

toward Bethlehem, and us behind them,

trekking from the rim of history toward Him.





Christian Century

Books and Culture

New Tracks, Night Falling







HELPING THE MORNING



After the graveside, after the ride home, after

a winter of drought, the chain

and padlock on my heart,



morning shows up at my bedside,

almost too late, like a big sister

holding a glass of water



and I drink, glancing through the window

at the tiny red barn flung

into the lap of the brown valley below.



I am amazed at the silent, terrible wonder

of my health. I am giddy at the lack of war.

I want to help the morning.



I pray the bedpost, the windowpanes.

I put our children on two doorknobs,

Our sick friends in mirrors.



Like the aperture of a camera, the morning opens

and keeps opening until the room is filled

with rosy light and I could believe



anything: that grass might turn green again,

that cloud the size of my hand

might swell, might drift in, bringing rain.





Christian Century

New Tracks, Night Falling







LOOKING FOR RUBY EARRINGS ON PORTOBELLO ROAD



Not to want it all is a sort of defect–

the porcelain cows, socks made from flags,

scarves fluttering against the blue throat of the sky,

hot dogs, broaches made of forks, paper cockatoos,

an organ grinder with three blind cats,

a lover wrapped around a saxophone.

Listen as he coaxes it to love him.



The perfect earring, if I could find it, will tumble

through a sidewalk grate soon enough,

and yet I drift across the street, waiting

to be gulled, trying to catch fire again.

Then the notes of the full-throated sax

rise, and my eyes rise with them

to stones gleaming on black velvet

in a stall cluttered with celestial junk



and I laugh as the saxophone is laughing,

because the stone is the least of it–

cheap glass or plastic—just an instrument

to play on. And the holy river of desire

runs wide. I buy the earrings,

which call me to the world we can never keep

but must, nevertheless, adore,

it being all we know of eternity

"Is Marriage worth Defending?" a think-tank paper by Alan Wisdom of Institute on Religion & Democracy looked at in ten thousand words plus

by Peter Menkin 

Alan Wisdom, American think-tank staff member

“This is a comprehensive and well-researched paper that should encourage those working to preserve marriage as an institution that strengthens our society.”
Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I.
Archbishop of Chicago

The paper on marriage written by Alan Wisdom titled, “Is Marriage Worth Defending,” has been on my own interest-screen since January, 2011. This likeable and readable paper of some note and considerable interest on the subject of traditional marriage, with a section on Gay Marriage, was originally produced in 2009 by Institute on Religion and Democracy as one of its Mt. Nebo papers. The Institute, a conservative think-tank, produces a few papers and offers thoughts, press releases, and talks to groups and the press about religious issues like marriage—the traditional kind.

Surprisingly, as this writer spent some time talking via email and in person with others on the subject of marriage, it came to pass that most were obsessed with the subject of Gay Marriage, and they turned to that as their subject in conversations, ignoring the more traditional kind. This even if they themselves were married in a Church, under vows, the part of which offered their relationship as a couple as married in the eyes of Christ, even in Christ Himself, as well as in their Christian Church. I am not sure what this means, but no doubt it indicates again a pre-occupation on Gay Marriage. Nonetheless, this article has as subject, the paper, “Is Marriage Worth Defending,” whose theme is “Yes.” And as its subject, the interests of marriage in our American society and in the various Christian Churches that Alan Wisdom mentions in his paper.

As an example of various viewpoints on the paper, I asked people to comment. Here in the County where I live, north of San Francisco, I asked a family law attorney, a prominent woman in this local area, her thoughts on the paper. After a few drafts by her, one from an interview, this result came about—again emphasizing Gay Marriage. Of course, in San Francisco’s Bay Area, a liberal place, the subject holds tremendous interest and support. Marin County attorney Charlotte Huggins reveals more of the same that indicates the misery people hold regarding marriage itself and more so, the decline in their mind and lives of the institution itself as they hold it not dear.

Marin County in the USA is an affluent community with a strong sense of NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard). Homes are generally valued close to if not at the average price of a million dollars—even more than that is not so unusual. Low income is $35,000 a year or so. With that understood, let us turn to Attorney Huggins for her comment on the paper.

I am not a religious person. I am a family law attorney and I am an agnostic. I am looking at it [the paper by Alan Wisdom] from a non-religious standpoint. I think that marriage is defensible, but should not be strictly an act between a man and a woman. Anyone who wants to marry should be able to marry, either straight or gay. People like being married; there are a lot of emotional and legal benefits to being married. People like the fact that there is a legal sanction to their personal union. They like to be able to say they are married.
It’s the only union that has a ceremony attached to it. People like celebrations and the acceptance that is gained from others by getting married. I can guarantee that every person who gets married has an idea as to what is going to happen post-marriage, and how their marriage will be, but they have never discussed it with their partner.
In my experience, short term marriages of less than ten years have the most anger and resentment during the divorce. Their expectations of who their spouse was or would become didn’t materialize and those failed-expectations create a lot of anger and desire to punish the other partner.
I was looking at the conclusion [of the paper “Is Marriage Defensible,] where it goes through what is and what should be a consensus among Christians. Numbers 6 and 8 discuss how no union, other than marriage, confers its benefits, and why the state has a vital interest in marriage. Wisdom seems to be saying that only married people should be conferred the legal benefits of marriage, and that civil unions are not something that gay couples push for. I agree but that is because gay people don’t want a union that grants them fewer benefits than those granted to straight people. They already are treated like second class citizens. The idea that God only sanctions marriage between a man and a woman flies in the face of Christian teachings – that a good Christian should embrace all mankind, no matter how different than them. I believe that a church has every right to take a stand against gay marriage or anything else; what I do not believe they have to do is to interfere with the civil or legal rights of people to be treated the same outside the church. Mr. Wisdom’s Second Option of “admitting defeat in society but try somehow to maintain traditional teachings inside the church,” is the only way to square up the issue of separation of church and state and keep the church away from taking a religious position and politicizing it.
The “Marriage Savers” program is a good idea. I may be a divorce lawyer, but I don’t advocate divorce. If your church offers a program whereby a couple can have counseling before and after marriage, great. The point is, non-church goers will never do that and church going homosexuals find no comfort because according to Christian dogma they are sinners. I’m all for strengthening marriage but in order to do that you have to accept all marriages, and not use any god as a way to defend what is really just discrimination against someone who doesn’t think like you do.
The clients that I have represented who are religious, and this may seem a little presumptuous on my part, they seem to go through a worse time in their divorce. Since the Church sees divorce as a sin, they suffer greatly and rather than getting the help and support they need during the worst time of their lives, they often times are ostracized by their pastors and friends. Many change churches or drop out of practicing their religion altogether due to what they perceive as hypocritical philosophies.
Charlotte Huggins is a Certified Family Law Specialist who practices in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.

Alan Wisdom offers a definition of what the Mt. Nebo papers are trying to do, and in so doing tells us what his paper on marriage has as its goals for its readers. He writes this explanation in the beginning of the paper, and in doing so does at the same time tell us something of the good intent of the Institute for Religion and Democracy. Not everyone thinks the Institute for Religion and Democracy is doing a helpful job, and some denominations find them more than a pain in the side, and believe they are hostile to liberal mainline denominations. To wit, Episcopalians in the Diocese of New York passed a General Convention vote in their area to admonish and say how awful the Institute is in their work and hostility towards liberal decisions and plans. If memory serves correct, and I believe it does, that Diocese is suing the Institute for what they see as their bad works.

More than once this reporter asked the Diocese of New York to comment, and they declined, even refusing to send a copy of their General Convention statement regarding the Institute for Religion and Democracy. Presbyterians find the Institute not quite the pariah as the Episcopalians in New York do, but they, too have expressed distaste of strong kind for the conservative Institute.

I asked the Diocese of New York to comment on the Mt. Nebo paper by Alan Wisdom, “Is Marriage Worth Defending,” and they wrote via email:

Dear Mr. Menkin,

Thanks for your inquiry, but we will not be commenting on this at this time.

Yours truly,

Nicholas Richardson

Communications Officer and Editor, Episcopal New Yorker

The Episcopal Diocese of New York

Here is the intent of the papers as noted in the beginning of the work, so we can see what the Institute offers as their purpose and intent:

The papers offer a model of how thoughtful Christians should engage public policy issues. They start with a survey of relevant biblical teachings. They then look for guidance from church history and tradition. The papers next examine the perceived problem facing society. The pros and cons of several policy options are weighed. Attention is given to the positions adopted by church bodies and leaders of various Christian traditions. The papers conclude with a summary of matters on which all Christians should be in agreement, as contrasted with matters that should be left to the prudential judgment of individual believers. The name Mount Nebo is borrowed from the mountain, in present-day Jordan, from which Moses was permitted to view the Promised Land that he would not be able to enter (Deuteronomy 32:48-52). We find in this biblical incident an apt analogy for what we wish to accomplish in this series of papers. We are trying to take a broad view of large topics, gaining a sense of the “lay of the land.”



As we go through a few threads of the 48 page PDF of the paper, “Is Marriage Worth Defending,” let us turn towards the end and look at Alan Wisdom’s statements regarding different denomination policies regarding marriage. We will return to the Gay Marriage issue as a thread, not so much because it speaks to traditional marriage itself in a defining way as is argued, as it also argues in its desire to consider that Gay Marriage will help marriage in general and gives us new and better, more relevant, and contemporary ways to view the Bible, but because it is so much an American concern and pre-occupation. In the County of Marin where I live, a place north of San Francisco as was mentioned previously, Gay Marriage is the liberal topic of interest, the preoccupation, and in this County where the preponderance of citizens voted for Obama because he was either Black, the Republican was so bad a choice, or they thought him the likely strong candidate, politics goes hand in hand with the marriage issues here and in the United States.

But what binds the Christian to the Christian, what are a few of the matters that Christians have in common? One we can agree on as a bonding and binding fact is scripture, both New and Old Testament. Alan Wisdom thinks so too, and he offers this approach in his paper’s text:

The verses cited by Jesus come from the creation accounts of Genesis 1 and 2. Genesis 1:27-28 says: So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

These verses suggest a number of insights that are developed later in Scripture and Christian tradition. First, the division of humankind into male and female is no accident. It is, on the contrary, the first feature that the biblical writer mentions about humankind. Being “gendered,” having a male or female body, is a fundamental aspect of our humanity as God created it.

This sexual duality seems to be related somehow to the “image of God” that is found in humankind. Later Christian theologians have speculated that the communion of the three persons of the Trinity is reflected whenever distinct persons join together in community, as a man and woman do in marriage. Moreover, the creation of humans as male and female is linked to God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply.” Procreation is necessary if humankind is to fulfill its destiny of sharing in God’s gracious dominion over the earth. And, obviously, procreation occurs only through an act involving one man and one woman Genesis 2 tells how God brings the man and woman together.

God starts with the observation that “[i]t is not good that the man should be alone.” God then resolves to “make a helper for him as his partner.” After none of the animals is found to be suitable for this role: So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh…





Now that we note Biblical influence as a uniting factor in agreement among Christians on important and basic matters, like Religion with a capital “R,” Presbyterians see marriage this way, so Alan Wisdom reports.

The 2.9-million-member Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (PCUSA) is currently studying questions of marriage and sexuality. But its constitutional documents already contain much doctrine on these questions. The denomination’s “Directory for Worship” states:

Marriage is a gift God has given to all humankind for the well-being of the entire human family. Marriage is a civil contract between a woman and a man. For Christians marriage is a covenant through which a man and a woman are called to live out together before God their lives of discipleship.126 Among the PCUSA confessions, the Westminster Confession offers the most guidance on marriage. It teaches, “Christian marriage is an institution ordained of God, blessed by our Lord Jesus Christ, established and sanctified for the happiness and welfare of mankind, into which spiritual and physical union one man and one woman enter….” The confession explains, “Marriage is designed for the mutual help of husband and wife; for the safeguarding, undergirding, anddevelopment of their moral and spiritual character; for the propagation of children and the rearing of them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”



The conflicted Episcopal Church USA, with their 2012 convention looming so early on the horizon with its proposed issue of allowing Same Sex Blessings, an issue hard fought over by the homosexual contingent of the Church, (Integrity) apparently supported by the administration on a national basis as judged by the anecdotal evidence of attitude and stance of officials…and even the Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori, and certainly accepted as a kind of okay-thing to-do if-you-think-so attitude by some Episcopal Diocese, holds this denominational approach to marriage according to Alan Wisdom’s paper:

(Note it seems the Episcopal Church USA is approaching with seriousness a policy similar to that held by the United Church of Christ, hence the Episcopal Church policy is followed directly by that of the United Church of Christ.)

For the Episcopal Church, with 2.1 million members, the central document is probably the denomination’s Book of Common Prayer. The wedding liturgy in the most recent edition of that book begins with this statement by the priest: Dearly beloved: We have come together in the presence of God to witness and bless the joining together of this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony. The bond and covenant of marriage was established by God in creation, and our Lord Jesus Christ adorned this manner of life by his presence and first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. It signifies to us the mystery of the union between Christ and his Church, and Holy Scripture commends it to be honored among all people.

The union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and, when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord. This marriage ceremony is clearly intended for a man and a woman.

But at its 2003 General Convention, the Episcopal Church accepted “that local faith communities are operating within the bounds of our common life as they explore and experience liturgies celebrating and blessing same-sex unions.”

The 1.1-million-member United Church of Christ, at its 2005 General Synod, became the first—and so far the only—sizeable U.S. Christian denomination to endorse same-sex marriage. The UCC synod approved a resolution that “affirms equal marriage rights for couples regardless of gender and declares that the government should not interfere with couples regardless of gender who choose to marry and share fully and equally in the rights, responsibilities and commitment of legally recognized marriage.”

This writer attempts to balance the paper by Alan Wisdom, through a dialogue held by email between Alan Wisdom and The Reverend Doctor Jay Johnson of the Graduate Theological Union. The Reverend Doctor Jay Johnson, a popular figure among the homosexual community both in the Western States like California where Gay Marriage is so popular and its interest groups like the Episcopal interest group Integrity are so active, teaches Gay issues at a seminary. He’s quoted from time to time in The New York Times, making him something of a press-public figure and man to go to for a respected comment. The reputation he holds, says this is earned and he is a good figure as spokesman for Gay Marriage and Gay issues, besides his personal and professional popularity as a homosexual figure in America.

Hello, Peter!
My apologies for taking so long to get back to you. And thank you for thinking of me regarding this kind of issue.
I have read the attached article and have a few comments to make, which I’ll do here. If you want to follow up with a phone call, I can do that, but I’m headed out of town this week and won’t return until Saturday evening. I might be able to find some time tomorrow but things are very tightly scheduled these days. (Way too tightly scheduled for my taste!)
My initial comments on the article:
*Mr. Wisdom’s article implies that marriage has been a stable institution for many centuries prior to the modern period here in the U.S. This simply isn’t true. Marriage has taken a variety of forms and has carried a range of meanings (including for biblical writers).
* The article likewise implies that Christian traditions have always understood marriage to be the best way to reflect God’s own covenant with us in Christ. Again, this simply isn’t true. In fact, for the first few formative centuries of the Christian tradition, most Christians eschewed marriage entirely; one of the few good things they could find to say about it was that marriage was not necessarily a grave sin.
* The institutional church did not fully insert itself into the marriage relationship until rather late in its history; it was not understood as a “sacrament” of the church, for example, until the 13^th century, at the Fourth Lateran Council.
* Religious life (the vocation to monasticism) was considered for many centuries to reflect even better than marriage the ideal form of Christian commitment; it wasn’t until the Protestant Reformation in the 16^th century that marriage was understood to be as equally spiritually significant as vowed monastic life.
All of that is to say that Mr. Wisdom’s claims do not actually stand up very well to history or to biblical texts. The theological meaning he assigns to marriage is as well a significant departure from how most Christians have thought about marriage for most of Christian history. It’s a shame that we can’t talk today about the importance of marriage in our lives of faith without these historical and theological distortions.
Jay
The Rev. Jay E. Johnson, PhD

The Reverend Doctor Jay Johnson

Senior Director, Academic Research & Resources
The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry
Pacific School of Religion
Alan Wisdom: I am grateful to Dr. Johnson for his attention to my paper on marriage. I agree with many of his observations—for example, that “the vocation to monasticism was considered for many centuries to reflect even better than marriage the ideal form of Christian commitment.” Readers will find the same point expressed in my paper (pp. 9-10).
Dr. Johnson attributes to me categorical assertions that I tried to be careful to avoid—“straw men” that he then proceeds to knock down. I do not contend that “marriage has been a stable institution for many centuries.” The historical section of my paper, “The Church Changes the Culture,” notes many shifts in the understanding and practice of marriage: in the early Church, in the medieval period, during the Reformation, and in the modern era.
What I do contend, and try to illustrate by my narrative, is that there is a continuous tradition regarding marriage within Christianity and within almost every known human culture. There is a core meaning of marriage that is deeply rooted in human biology and human social patterns. I cited David Blankenhorn’s definition (p. 10): “In all or nearly all human societies, marriage is socially approved sexual intercourse between a woman and a man, conceived both as a personal relationship and as an institution, primarily such that any children resulting from the union are—and are understood by society to be—emotionally, morally, practically, and legally affiliated with both parents.” There are many and wide variations on that pattern—different emphases in different societies and different time periods—but the pattern run continously. Marriage is variable, but not infinitely variable.
The Christian tradition has a richer understanding of marriage that builds upon—in some cases extending, in some cases redirecting—that universal human heritage. On p. 8 of my paper, I list 11 central Christian understandings about marriage. It goes back to creation, uniting the two created sexes. It is a total and exclusive and unconditional union of bodies, goods, families, and social bonds, intended to be lifelong. Marriage is the normative institution that God has given for the right ordering of sexual relations. My section on “What Churches Are Saying about Marriage” shows that these common understandings are held through all major branches of the Christian faith.
I do not assert that “Christian traditions have always understood marriage to be the best way to reflect God’s own covenant with us in Christ.” Instead I would maintain that marriage is one particularly powerful way, among others, to reflect God’s covenant love. The Church Fathers had more than a “few good things” to say about marriage. I quote praise for marriage from Chrysostom in the East (p. 9) and Augustine in the West (pp. 10-12). Augustine concludes, contrary to what Dr. Johnson suggests, that “[m]arriage and fornication, therefore, are not two evils, one of which is worse, but marriage and continence are two goods, one of which is better.”
It is not plausible to claim that “most Christians eschewed marriage entirely.” If that had been the case, the Church would have died out quickly, as did the 19^th century Shaker movement. Monastics were always a small minority, admired but not imitated by the vast majority of Christians.
My paper concurs (p. 12) with Dr. Johnson that marriage was not categorized as a sacrament until the 13^th century. That is because the seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church were not systematized until that time. But the Church had a long prior relationship with marriage. Marital blessings can be found as early as the second century. Augustine referred to a “kind of sacramental quality” in marriage. What changed in the High Middle Ages was that the Church endeavored to control marriage by means of canon law.
Later, secular rulers attempted to control marriage through civil law. Now many argue that marriage should become an essentially private relationship controlled by neither the Church nor the State. I’m not sure that is a good idea. My paper is intended to engage that discussion. As Christians consider the different policy options, we need to ask whether those options build faithfully on the continuous tradition of Church teaching regarding marriage, and whether they accord with what history and social science teach us about the unique nature and functions of marriage as a central institution of human society.
I appreciated Mr. Wisdom’s responses – fair and insightful.
Responding adequately to all of the arguments and claims made in his paper, however, extends well beyond the scope of the comments I can make here. Generally, I would make these observations:
First, the executive summary is misleading given what is included in the main body of the paper. Just one example: The summary implies (and rather strongly) that “homosexuals” are seeking to change the institution of marriage. The implication here is that before now, the institution has not changed. In fact, it has undergone countless changes over the centuries. Since a good many people read only executive summaries carefully and often just skim the main body of a paper, I believe more care ought to be given to the kind of impressions such summaries create.
Second, I believe the paper combines both anthropological/sociological research on the one hand with biblical interpretation on the other in a way that confuses which kind of source is being cited. This is important to note for a number of reasons, not least is that neither the social science nor the biblical scholarship is nearly as clear-cut as Mr. Wisdom’s paper would otherwise suggest.
Concerning the former, I would note the sociological research done by Stephanie Coontz (among others) that offers a very different kind of narrative about the role of marriage and family in human history and cultures than the one presented by Mr. Wisdom. I would also note that nearly every professional association of scholars and researchers in the social sciences and medical fields (the AMA, the APA and many, many others) have strongly disavowed the kind of research Mr. Wisdom cites concerning the suitability of same-sex couples to raise children. To present such claims as if they were reputable science does a disservice to everyone.
Concerning the latter, the biblical scholarship, here again I scarcely have the space to list the dozens of books and hundreds of peer-reviewed articles that present a very different approach to Scripture than the one Mr. Wisdom presents. From that very long list of sources I could refer to here, I would just recommend “A Time to Embrace: Same-Gender Relationships in Religion, Law, and Politics” by William Stacy Johnson. I note this one in particular because Johnson (an Evangelical scholar at Princeton) offers a particular helpful analysis of the kind of overall argument Mr. Wisdom is trying to present and the kind of biblical, historical, and sociological flaws inherent to that argument.
In generally I would note that Mr. Wisdom’s paper stands in a long line of such arguments that have been circulating for more than four decades now. Merely repeating them does not actually address how they have been refuted by many scholars in many disciplines and for quite some time now.
Jay
Alan Wisdom: Dr. Johnson wonders whether my executive summary implies that same-sex advocates are trying to change a static institution of marriage. My summary makes clear that marriage, after its earlier evolutions, has also shifted its emphasis in the modern era. “Our society’s view of marriage, centered on mutual emotional satisfaction, is already far from classic Christian teaching,” I say.
And if marriage is really all about the emotional satisfaction of adults, then same-sex marriage is indeed a logical next step. After all, members of the same sex have emotional attachments just as much as members of the opposite sex. Heterosexuals justifying their non-marital relationships have set the stage for homosexuals to claim the same privilege. And the irresponsible heterosexuals have done far more damage to society and to children than the gay and lesbian minority ever could.
Nevertheless, same-sex marriage would be a further radical step in deconstructing the core features that have undergirded marriage through all the previous changes. Gone would be the intuition that marriage is about bringing together the two complementary sexes into which humanity is divided. Gone would be the understanding that marriage is a total union in which the two dissimilar bodies risk everything to become “one flesh.” Gone would be the link between marriage and the possible conception of children uniting forever the two genetic heritages. Gone would be marriage’s function as the setting promising children the lifelong joint care of their biological father and mother. There is no use in pretending that same-sex marriage would be anything other than a massive cultural shift. The question is whether it would be a change for the better. I think not.
Dr. Johnson raises a good question about the relationship between the biblical exposition and the social science evidence introduced in my paper. The two are intended to be independent but complementary. They point in the same general direction—the unique value of the marriage of man and woman—but they do not take us by the same route.
The social science points to marriage as, on average, the pattern of sexual relationship most conducive to a happy, healthy, productive life for both men and women, adults and children. This evidence suggests that society would be wise to prefer and encourage marriage. But it does not prove that marriage works out best in every case, as we all know from sad experience. It does not imply that we should prohibit or punish other sexual relationships. But it is poor policy to equate other relationships with marriage when they do deliver the same benefits.
The evidence for the superior social benefits of marriage is overwhelming and widely accepted. It is accessibly collected in a booklet entitled “Why Marriage Matters,” published by the Institute for American Values.
What is less certain is the research on children raised by same-sex couples. Some professional associations have endorsed same-sex parenting, but this posture is more a matter of ideological principle rather than hard scientific proof. The research to date shows some differences in children reared by same-sex couples, but not dramatic ones. Careful literature reviews, such as one published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, point out many shortcomings in this research so far. Samples are small and not random, and children have not yet been followed over the long term. Many children being reared by same-sex couples are products of previous heterosexual relationships that dissolved, thus further complicating the picture.
The fact is that in every previous comparison made, children separated from at least one of their biological parents have on average fared worse than children reared by their two biological parents married to one another. Is there any reason to expect that the result will be different with same-sex couples, which by definition cannot include both biological parents? Early studies of children of divorce in the 1970s suggested that the breakup of their parents’ marriage had little impact on the children. Later, more thorough and long-term studies showed that preliminary conclusion to be gravely mistaken. We now know that divorce is, in general, bad news for the children. Will we see the same trajectory of research regarding same-sex parenting?
For Christians the Bible has an authority more solid than the shifting sands of social science. Christians honor marriage because Jesus did (Matthew 19/Mark 10), and they would do so regardless of whether marriage conveyed any individual or social benefits. The marriage of man and woman was the normative channel for sexual relations in the Old Testament, and even more emphatically so in the New Testament.
All of the biblical passages dealing with homosexuality are negative toward the practice. This point is exhaustively established in Robert Gagnon’s magisterial The Bible and Homosexual Practice. None of the other scholars has refuted Gagnon’s reading of the passages. On the contrary, same-sex-affirming scholars like Stacy Johnson increasingly admit that the biblical authors uniformly disapproved. Their argument tends to be that the scriptural condemnations no longer apply because we moderns know better than the Bible. That is not an option that I believe should be available to an orthodox Christian seeking to stand within the tradition.
There is no doubt that Alan Wisdom has long answers to The Reverend Doctor Jay Johnson’s pithy criticisms. There is a kind of studied confidence in Jay Johnson’s responses, and this writer is grateful to both parties for being willing to engage in what is a dialogue rather than debate.

The United Methodist Church, with 7.9 million U.S. members, is the nation’s second largest Protestant denomination. The United Methodist “Social Principles” state: We affirm the sanctity of the marriage covenant that is expressed in love, mutual support, personal commitment, and shared fidelity between a man and a woman. We believe that God’s blessing rests upon such marriage, whether or not there are children of the union. We reject social norms that assume different standards for women than for men in marriage. We support laws in civil society that define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

The “Social Principles” go on to say: God’s plan is for lifelong, faithful marriage. The church must be on the forefront of premarital and postmarital counseling in order to create and preserve strong marriages. However, when a married couple is estranged beyond reconciliation, even after thoughtful consideration and counsel, divorce is a regrettable alternative in the midst of brokenness. We grieve over the devastating emotional, spiritual, and economic consequences of divorce for all involved….

The Methodist principles recognize sexuality as “God’s good gift to all persons,” but maintain that “sexual relations are affirmed only with the covenant of monogamy…





Some found the paper compelling, and this writer wrote:

Review of:
Alan F.H. Wisdom, “Is Marriage Worth Defending?” Mount Nebo Papers No. 2, Summer 2009 (Washington, DC: Institute on Religion and Democracy)

By Peter Sprigg,
Senior Fellow for Policy Studies, Family Research Council, Washington, DC
Alan Wisdom of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) in Washington has produced one of the most useful analyses I have seen of the institution of marriage from a Christian perspective. As part of IRD’s series the “Mount Nebo Papers,” Wisdom’s 2009 piece “Is Marriage Worth Defending?” provides a comprehensive treatment of marriage in both theological and sociological terms, and from both a historical and contemporary perspective.
I have read widely on the subject of marriage in my ten years at the Family Research Council, but I still learned things that were new and useful from Wisdom’s paper. For example, most evangelicals are familiar with the Biblical passages dealing with marriage—but they may not be as familiar with the writings of the early church fathers (such as Augustine’s declaration that marriage “in all nations exists for the same purpose, the procreation of children”).
His historical overview acknowledges the changing relationships between church, state, and marriage over time, while avoiding the selective readings of some leftist scholars such as Stephanie Coontz and Nancy Cott, whose denials of any common elements in marriage over time have been accepted uncritically by some American courts. Sources such as the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas (who called marriage “an office of nature”) and the reformer Martin Luther (who called it a “worldly matter”) shared the view that marriage has both religious and secular dimensions which cannot be neatly divided from one another.
Addressing the modern scene, Wisdom describes the impact of romantic ideals and individualism, and demonstrates cogently the harm done to society by the retreat from connecting “marriage, sex, and childbearing” as “a strong three-legged stool upholding society.” Sidebars on cohabitation and “same-sex marriage” show why these cannot be considered equivalent to the historical ideal of marriage.
Wisdom examines three options for going forward, including going with the cultural tide, or cloistering the church and its view of marriage from the rest of civil society. But one could hardly make a more compelling case than Wisdom has made for “Option C”—to “renew our appreciation of the biblical and traditional doctrines of marriage, and take practical steps so that more people may live out those doctrines in society.”

For a long time Unitarian Universalists (ten years or more) have been favorable to homosexual marriage. In a conversation with the Dean of the Stanford University Chapel the subject of Gay Marriage was unavoidable, for as The Reverend Scotty says:

THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE

By Scotty McLennan, Dean for Religious Life, Stanford University

March 17, 2011



(Adapted from his book Jesus Was a Liberal: Reclaiming Christianity for All

(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)

When thinking about the sanctity of marriage these days, we would do well to remember the story of Davis and Perez, who fell in love and tried to get married, only to be turned away by a county clerk who refused to issue them a marriage license simply because of who they were as a condition of their birth. A courageous state court in California became the first in the nation to find that clerk’s refusal unconstitutional.

“Marriage is something more than a civil contract, subject to regulation by the state. It is a fundamental right….” With those words in 1948 the California Supreme Court in Perez v. Sharp became the first in the nation to strike down an anti-miscegenation law, at a time when marriages between blacks and whites could not be performed in a majority of these United States. It took almost another 20 years for the United States Supreme Court to speak on this subject in a 1967 case, Loving v. Virginia. The state of Virginia had argued that the scientific evidence about black-white differences and their implications was still in doubt. Religion had a central role to play too, as the trial court judge cited scripture and wrote in his opinion: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay, and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

In the 1948 California decision, it was the Catholic Church, however, through its interracial Council in Los Angeles, that made a religious argument on behalf of the partners in the case, both of whom were Catholic. The claim was that Davis and Perez were being denied their right to participate fully in the sacraments of their church by being denied the right to marry. A number of churches and other religious bodies now defend and promote the sacred right of same-sex couples to marry. I predict that in twenty years most of us will be as astounded and appalled that there once were religious and legal objections to this form of marriage as we are now that there once were objections to marriages between the races.

Here is more of what surrounded the discussion of Gay Marriage in Reverend Scotty’s book.

From a religious perspective, marriage of course has long been held to be sacred, and it’s often noted that, in the Gospel of John, Jesus’ very first miracle was performed at a wedding at Cana of Galilee… What can we learn… about the boundaries of the fundamental, sacred right to marry? In particular, what does the Bible teach us about how to approach this question as religious people, especially when very different conclusions seem to be drawn from the same Bible passage?

First of all, it should be noted that there are only a few references to homosexuality in the Bible, compared to a huge corpus, for example, that assumes and defends slavery. The abolitionists had much more of an uphill battle eliminating slavery in the face of its biblical defenders than the proponents of marriage equality for homosexuals should have in eliminating this form of discrimination. Jesus never references homosexuality. It’s not found in the Ten Commandments as adultery and covetousness are. The Old Testament Sodom and Gomorrah story refers not to consensual sex but to homosexual rape. The two references in Leviticus are in the context of setting Jews apart from their Gentile neighbors by avoiding so-called ritual impurities like eating pork, having tattoos, wearing clothes made of two different kinds of materials, and having sex with a woman who is menstruating. In the New Testament, homosexuality is referred to in three letters of the apostle Paul, in which it is likely that he was referring to pagan practices of prostitution and sex with children. In none of these cases was anything vaguely contemplated along the lines of a lifelong monogamous commitment between same-sex partners.

This is more of what surrounded Reverend Scotty’s discussion on his book. I add this here for the sake of argumentation regarding traditional marriage, and some key “love” references to why Gay Marriage is so good. Reverend Scotty wrote this as part of our email conversation and gave permission to quote from the email. Count this as part of the compilation made in regard to Alan Wisdom’s paper:



Jesus always went out of his way to bless those who are hated, excluded, reviled and defamed. He also blessed those who weep, who are hungry, who are impoverished. It seems to me that there are two central messages that Jesus tries to convey, again and again throughout the New Testament: first, a message of deep concern for those who are oppressed and, second, a message of profound love that passes all understanding. The scandal of Jesus’ ministry in its time, and today as well, is that he constantly stood with the outcast, those who were discriminated against, and those who suffered at the hands of the established principalities and powers of his day. Upon the oppressed he pronounced God’s blessing. Secondly, Jesus brought a lesson of love that turned the world on its ear. He went beyond the love represented between husband and wife at Cana of Galilee to ask us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and then beyond that to ask us even to love our enemies. The Apostle Paul explains, in a passage often read in marriage ceremonies, that “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal…Love is patient; love is kind…It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; …It endures all things.”

None of this helps us specifically to know what Jesus and his disciples would say about marriages between blacks and whites, and it’s possible to find a proof text in the Bible for virtually any claim, but for me the feel is clear. Instead of the judge’s proof-texting — “the fact that he [Almighty God] separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix” — the New Testament record as a whole leads me to believe that Jesus had a generous view of life-long, committed, monogamous, loving relationships between any two people who freely chose each other to marry…

On the other side of the question of social consensus lie those individuals who are deeply hurt and harmed by claims that they are inferior or sinful and that their marriage would be unnatural and productive of deplorable results. How horrible for them. Again, it seems to me that these are precisely the kinds of people whom Jesus always comforted and sanctified first: ”Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. I read the New Testament record as a whole as one which places a very generous conception of love at the very center of Jesus’ teaching and actions. Those are the criteria — standing with the oppressed, and a generous conception of love — on which I believe we should try to distinguish true prophets from false prophets….

By way of conclusion, though, on the issue of conscience, I must say that I’m haunted by the fact that it took the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, the Southern Baptists (which is the tradition of two recent American presidents) until 1995 to apologize for the role the denomination had played in the Biblical justification of slavery in the nineteenth century, and in the maintenance of a culture of racism in America in the twentieth century. It had used Biblical proof texts like the words of Paul I cited earlier or this one from the Letter to the Ephesians: ”Slaves, be obedient to those who are your earthly masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as to Christ.” The social historian C. Eric Lincoln wrote in 1995, after the church’s historic apology: ”Just think of all the violence and bitterness we might have been spared if the Southern Baptists had repudiated racism earlier.” To that I can only say Amen.



What of a Roman Catholic view? Here is a comment from a Roman Catholic organization on Alan Wisdom’s paper:

Contained at the heart [of the ruling] is a mistaken and dangerous claim that the marriage debate is primarily a religious squabble in which the state has no compelling interest other than to uphold state constitutional equal protection and non-discrimination statutes.
Although the Church has always understood that marriage is both a sacred union and natural institution, its natural meaning does not, and never has, originated from the state or Church. Marriage, from the beginning, exists naturally as the basic cell of society which protects and replenishes it with the next generation. Marriage attaches children to both a mother and father according to the child’s dignity. The societal stability this promotes is precisely why politicians and courts are obligated, not to redefine marriage or treat it as a religious question, but to protect and encourage it.
Proponents of same-sex marriage continue to decouple the meaning of marital love from its natural and divine purpose. As a result, the definitive expression of marital love, the sexual embrace, open to new life, is rendered sterile, devoid of natural meaning or expression. This, driven by Identity politics and judicial activism, must be resisted.
+Phil A. Webb Jr.
Director, Office of Marriage & Family Life
Archdiocese of Denver

http://www.archden.org/index.cfm/ID/4343

As this writer compiles some of the quotes and comments garnered for and about the paper, “Is Marriage Worth Defending,” it is worthwhile to continue with the various denominational definitions of marriage, for both interests sake and to get the record on where some Churches stand. Let us turn to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a group that is in Communion with the Episcopal Church USA and another of the mainline denominations that struggles and argues about Gay Marriage which tells us they, too, are concerned about the question of marriage in our times. Note ELCA addresses the subject of coitus.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), America’s fifth largest Protestant denomination with 4.7 million members, adopted a new policy

statement on human sexuality at its August 2009 Churchwide Assembly. “Marriage is a covenant of mutual promises, commitment, and hope authorized legally by the state and blessed by God,” the ELCA statement says. “The historic Christian tradition and

the Lutheran Confessions have recognized marriage as a covenant between a man and a woman, reflecting Mark 10:6-9 ….”



The statement appears to value the social functions of marriage more than its form: “The critical issue with respect to the family is not whether it has a conventional form, but how it performs indispensable individual and social tasks.” The new ELCA standard for Christian sexual behavior is not marriage but the vaguer concept of “social trust” manifested in relationships that are “loving,” “life-giving,” self-giving,” “fulfilling,”

“nurturing,” “truth-telling,” “faithful,” “committed,” “supportive,” “hospitable,” and “a blessing to society.” The ELCA policy affirms “that the greatest sexual intimacies, such as coitus, should be matched with and sheltered both by the highest level of binding commitment and by social and legal protection, such as found in marriage.” It “opposes non-monogamous, promiscuous, or casual sexual relationships.” But it stops short

of saying that all sex outside of marriage is wrong.



The ELCA “does not favor cohabitation arrangements…





The 5-million-member National Baptist Convention USA Inc., the fourth largest U.S. Protestant denomination, takes a similar view. Here is how the pro-homosexuality Human Rights Campaign describes the position of the black Baptist body: “Traditionally, however, the denomination has regarded homosexuality as sinful. It also forbids clergy to officiate at commitment ceremonies for same-sex couples.”

The New York Times in 2005 paraphrased the convention president, the Rev. Dr. William J. Shaw, as saying that “he does not believe that the Bible permits such [samesex] unions, but he pointedly rejects a government ban on them.



There is less evidence on the positions of historically black denominations. They tend to be more congregational, lacking large national structures with detailed policies. But all of the evidence available points to solid support for the traditional Christian understanding of marriage.



The 2.9-million-member Assemblies of God has a position paper on “Divorce and Remarriage.” The paper asserts: “Two sexes, male and female, are required to complete the divine image in humankind. Neither male nor female alone may procreate the race and fulfill the divine purposes.”

“Marriage is to be sexually consummated,” the paper says. “At the Creator’s command, the first man and woman were to ‘become one flesh’ for purposes of procreation, bonding, and mutual pleasure in a safe and loving relationship.” It adds that “[m]arriage is to be heterosexual,” “a permanent union,” “monogamous…



This kind of paper, “Is Marrage Worth Defending,” by Alan Wisdom of the Institute on Religion and Democracy of Washington, D.C. speaks to the subject of traditional marriage so very well. This writer commends it to readers, and hopes it receives a wider reading than it has so far. On asking Alan Wisdom by phone regarding the number of PDF copies downloaded from their website, he said there were no statistics kept.

The current obsession in America with Gay Marriage frequently overwhelms discussion of traditional marriage as sought by this writer. Jennifer Herdt, an ethicist from Yale University Divinity School says to this writer she has changed her mind from a stance for traditional marriage to this statement regarding the paper–specifically written for this article:

Alan Wisdom is right to resist reducing marriage to a private relationship defined in any way the parties so choose. Marriage is not just “a purely private affair involving the emotional attachment between two autonomous individuals” (30).

Yale Ethicist Jennifer Herdt

Marriage is properly a social institution involving the public commitment of two persons to lifelong sexual fidelity in openness to the bearing and rearing of children, an institution which for Christians reflects the love of God for humankind and the love of Christ for the church. As such, it is worthy of defense and support, both from the churches and from society at large. But Wisdom is too quick to assume that marriage must be “reduced to just an attachment between any ‘two persons who love each other’” in order to accommodate same-sex marriage (31), and that a marriage between persons of the same sex cannot remain in substantial continuity with traditional Christian marriage in constituting a one-flesh union open to fertility, capable of embodying the traditional unitive and procreative goods of marriage.
True, the sexual union of same-sex couples cannot itself result in the conception of new life, but same-sex married couples could adopt children as do infertile couples of opposite sexes. As Wisdom’s account of the history of the marriage makes clear, it has hardly been a static institution. Christian reflection on marriage has evolved to require the explicit consent of both parties, to incorporate marriage more fully into the life of the church, to become a more public commitment, and to place increasing emphasis on its unitive goods.
If we acknowledge that developments of this kind can be legitimate and reflect more fully God’s purposes for humanity, should we not be open to the possibility that the same is true of same-sex marriage? Moreover, if same-sex marriage is prohibited, gays and lesbians have little choice but either to remain among the ranks of the unmarried, whose health and psychological problems Wisdom documents, or to enter into private relationships unsustained by church and community, the instability of which Wisdom deplores. How would this work to strengthen marriage?

Jennifer A. Herdt
Professor of Christian Ethics
Yale University
Divinity School
409 Prospect St.
New Haven, CT 06511

She writes via email:

Dear Peter,

I’m glad you find this useful. The issue has been a very challenging one for me to think through, and my own position has changed. I think we need many people thinking prayerfully about this. I hope you do hear from Cardinal George and others.

All best for your article,

Jennifer





The Yale Ethicist Jennifer Herdt well exemplifies this changing attitude and stance on marriage values. Though not quite revolutionary, it is an upheaval of kind that shakes traditional marriage and values that are so well outlined and defended, even, in Alan Wisdom’s paper.

Many schools, including more seminaries were approached for quote or comment on “Is Marriage Worth Defending.” Disappointingly, most if nearly all turned down the opportunity to comment on the paper.

After a while, this writer saw a pattern in the turndowns and with curiosity asked for a reason that schools and professors would not comment when contacting press officers. The response was this: The subject that interests them is the changing nature of marriage, how it is changing and why. This reveals that many sociologists and other academics, including the few psychologists who turned down the inquiry to help build a compilation and article of comment and reporting were not so interested in traditional marriage itself.

This is news on its own, as is the subject of traditional marriage, so well presented in the paper, “Is Marriage Worth Defending.” The answer is, Of course marriage is worth defending.

ADDENDUM I

In A News Release, Roman Catholic Archbishop Dolan speaks to the refusal of the Federal Government of the United States to speak to the Defense of Marriage Act. Here is the article in its entirety:

Archbishop Dolan Calls Refusal to Defend Defense of Marriage Act an ‘Alarming and Grave Injustice’

WASHINGTON (March 3, 2011)— “Our nation and government have the duty to recognize and protect marriage, not tamper with and redefine it, nor to caricature the deeply held beliefs of so many citizens as ‘discrimination,’” said Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). His statement followed the February 23 announcement that President Obama has instructed the Department of Justice to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a move Archbishop Dolan called an “alarming and grave injustice.”

Archbishop Dolan’s full statement follows:

The announcement on February 23 that the President has instructed the Department of Justice to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is an alarming and grave injustice. Marriage, the union of one man and one woman as husband and wife, is a singular and irreplaceable institution. Only a man and a woman are capable of the “two-in-one-flesh” union of husband and wife. Only a man and a woman have the ability to bring children into the world. Along with that ability comes responsibility, which society historically reinforces with laws that bind mothers and fathers to each other and their children. This family unit represents the most basic and vital cell of any society, protecting the right of children to know and be known by, to love and be loved by, their mother and father. Thus, marriage represents the bedrock of the common good of society, its very foundation and future.

Contrary to the Attorney General’s statement, DOMA does not single out people based on sexual “orientation” or inclination. Every person deserves to be treated with justice, compassion, and respect, a proposition of natural law and American law that we as Catholics vigorously promote. Unjust discrimination against any person is always wrong. But DOMA is not “unjust discrimination”; rather, it merely affirms and protects the time-tested and unalterable meaning of marriage. The suggestion that this definition amounts to “discrimination” is grossly false and represents an affront to millions of citizens in this country.

The decision also does not stand the test of common sense. It is hardly “discrimination” to say that a husband and a wife have a unique and singular relationship that two persons of the same sex—or any unmarried persons—simply do not and cannot have. Nor is it “discrimination” to believe that the union of husband and wife has a distinctive and exclusive significance worthy of promotion and protection by the state. It is not “discrimination” to say that having both a mother and a father matters to and benefits a child. Nor is it “discrimination” to say that the state has more than zero interest in ensuring that children will be intimately connected with and raised by their mother and father.

Protecting the definition of marriage is not merely permissible, but actually necessary as a matter of justice. Having laws that affirm the vital importance of mothers and fathers—laws that reinforce, rather than undermine, the ideal that children should be raised by their own mother and father—is essential for any just society. Those laws serve not only the good of the spouses and their children, but the common good. Those laws are now under relentless attack. If we forget the meaning of marriage, we forget what it means to be a human person, what it means to be a man or a woman. Have we wandered away so far in our society as to forget why men and women matter, and eroded the most central institution for our children and for our future?

The Administration’s current position is not only a grave threat to marriage, but to religious liberty and the integrity of our democracy as well. Our nation and government have the duty to recognize and protect marriage, not tamper with and redefine it, nor to caricature the deeply held beliefs of so many citizens as “discrimination.” On behalf of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, I express my deep disappointment over the Administration’s recent decision. I have written of these concerns to the President in separate correspondence, and I pray that he and the Department of Justice may yet make the right choice to carry out their constitutional responsibility, defending the irreplaceable institution of marriage, and in so doing protect the future generations of our children.

ADDENDUM II







Feb. 2, 2011

Column #1,536

Modesto’s Answer to Marital Breakdown

By Mike McManus



America’s central domestic issue, the breakdown of marriage, is ignored by politicians.



First, few are marrying. Indeed, the marriage rate has plunged 53% since 1970. There are only two million marriages a year, when there should be three million. Why? Many who were children of divorce, fear marriage. Cohabitation has soared 14-fold from 530,000 in 1970 to 7.5 million now. Couples believe they can test their compatibility in a “trial marriage,” to see if their relationship is strong enough for a full-fledged commitment.



Seems logical, but it’s a myth. As one marriage educator puts it, “You can’t practice permanence.” Of the 7.5 million couples living together, only 1.4 million marry. What about the 6 million who break up? They experience “premarital divorce,” which is so painful that never-married Americans tripled, from 21 million in 1970 to 63 million in 2008.



But those who marry after cohabiting have better marriages, right? Nope. Another myth. A Penn State study reports such couples are 63% more likely to divorce than those who remained apart.



That’s why the numbers of America’s divorces remained high even while marriage rates have plunged. Soaring cohabitation is the engine driving unwed births, which have exploded from 5% of all births to 41%. Children of non-marriage have the dimmest prospects in life. Example: they are 22 times more likely to be incarcerated than a child of married parents.



This is secular evidence Paul was right when he urged the Corinthians to “flee sexual immorality.”



Fortunately, there are answers. Twenty-five years ago last week, the clergy of Modesto, CA adopted America’s first Community Marriage Policy, which was ultimately signed by 95 Protestant pastors and Catholic priests plus one rabbi.



They were the first clergy to pledge, across denominational lines, to require all couples getting married in a city to take a premarital inventory to help them assess their relationship strengths, and where they needed to grow. The PREPARE-ENRICH inventory, for example, asks couples whether they agree or disagree on 150+ statements such as:

• · To end an argument, I tend to give in too quickly.
• · Sometimes I wish my partner were more careful about spending money.

Clergy also trained mentor couples in healthy marriages, to meet with premarital couples for 5-6 sessions over four months to discuss the issues identified on their inventory. These marriage mentors also taught skills of communication and conflict resolution.



The clergy set this new pastoral standard for Modesto in 1986 as a result of a speech I made in which I predicted that if they adopted these strategies, that the city’s divorce rate could be cut in half in five years. Within two years, the divorce rate was dropping. By 2001 the divorce rate had plunged by 57%. More important, for the entire past decade, the divorce rate has been about half of what it had been.



What difference has this Community Marriage Policy made? Look at the lives of Modesto children. For a decade the teen birth rate has been down 30%, and high school dropouts have fallen 18.4%. If more kids are brought up in homes by their own married parents, they will fare better in life.



Furthermore, the number of marriages has doubled from 1,300 to 2,600! Though that is due in part to an increase of population, there has been a genuine increase in the marriage rate, in sharp contrast to the 53% plunge in marriage rates nationally.



In the Modesto covenant, the clergy declared, “Our hope is to radically reduce the divorce rate of those married in area churches.” Clearly, more than that has been accomplished.



Modesto’s success encouraged me to research other answers. Four examples:

1. 1. Enriching marriages: “10 Great Dates” is a series of brief DVD talks on such topics as “Resolving Honest Conflict” and “Becoming an Encourager.” Couples come to church 10 evenings to watch them and then have a date to discuss the assigned issue.

1. 2. Restore distressed marriages by training couples whose own marriages once nearly failed to mentor those in current crisis, saving four out of five of them.

1. 3. Reconcile the separated with a course, “Marriage 911,” taken by a spouse whose partner wants out, typically with a same-gender friend. Result: half the marriages are saved.

1. 4. Help stepfamilies who divorce at a 70% rate, create a Stepfamily Support Group saving 80% of them

My wife and I have helped 10,000 clergy in 229 cities to implement these strategies in Community Marriage Policies. On average divorce rates have fallen 17.5% saving 100,000 marriages, cohabitation has decreased by a third, and marriage rates are rising.

Churches can cooperate to create a new marriage culture. How? Go To www.marriagesavers.org.

Mike McManus is President of Marriage Savers.