{"id":50,"date":"2007-04-09T07:50:31","date_gmt":"2007-04-09T11:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/godandculture.wordpress.com\/2007\/04\/09\/divorce-american-evangelical-style\/"},"modified":"2007-04-09T07:50:31","modified_gmt":"2007-04-09T11:50:31","slug":"divorce-american-evangelical-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/divorce-american-evangelical-style","title":{"rendered":"Divorce: American (Evangelical) Style"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Instone-Brewer writing in the April 6 edition of the Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em> raises a compelling question relative to the evangelical right and the current field of Republican presidential candidates: “Why are evangelicals so willing to accept divorce among their political leaders?”\u00a0 Dr. Instone-Brewer points out:\u00a0 “[A]mong GOP presidential front-runners, only Mitt Romney is in his first marriage.”<\/p>\n

Dr. Instone-Brewer offers two answers to his question and a way out of the traditional strict interpretation of Jesus’ teaching on divorce (Matthew 19) which limits the cause for divorce to adultery:<\/p>\n

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  1. Many evangelicals have privately abandoned the Bible’s teaching on divorce.\u00a0 Instone-Brewer argues that modern realties (“reasons for divorce go well beyond adultery, and fairly rapid remarriage is common”) and American law have both contributed to the abandonment by evangelicals of what the Bible says about divorce.\u00a0 In was Ronald Reagan, himself divorced and yet also an icon for conservative evangelicals, who aided in shifting the cultural conversation away from marriage’s mutual obligations toward personal fulfillment when as governor of California he signed the nation’s first “no-fault” divorce law in 1970. The worldview of followers of Jesus in the 21st Century are informed more by\u00a0the realities of the cultural than by Jesus’ own words. Clearly Jesus offers only one exception for divorce in Matthew 19.<\/li>\n
  2. An emphasis on the rights of individuals encouraged by the current crop of evangelical preachers.\u00a0 This is an insightful observation.\u00a0 Instone-Brewers specifically mentions Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer with their emphasis “on promoting individual development,” which for some married persons may require they leave their spouse.\u00a0 If you are going to merely market the gospel rather than proclaim it, the message is highly dependent on the consumer. And if point number one above is true, the message is by necessity driven by the whims and desires of hearer.\u00a0 The prominent “pulpits” in America today look more to the culture than to the word of God for their authority.\u00a0 Success in ministry is defined more by audience response than by faithfulness to the character and calling of the Church, a character and calling defined by Scripture, not by polling data.\u00a0 The authoritative gospel is abandoned because it doesn’t play well to the focus groups.\u00a0 Personal fulfillment trumps moral obligation in the 21st Century.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    How can we have our cake and eat it to? How can we abandon the Bible’s teaching on divorce, fulfilling our own desires, while at the same time saying we have not abdonded the Bible’s teaching on divorce?\u00a0 Dr. Instone-Brewer offers this way out of the evangelical dilemma: “new scholarship.”<\/p>\n

    As it happens, new scholarship supports a slightly less strict biblical understanding of divorce than the traditional one. Scrolls found near the Dead Sea, which confirm indications found in ancient Jewish authors like Philo and Josephus, show that the key phrase “any cause” was actually the name of a type of divorce. That is, Jesus did not reject divorce for any cause but rather, he rejected “Any Cause” divorce.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    This “growing scholarly consensus” expands Jesus exception for divorce from adultery only to also include abuse, neglect and abandonment.\u00a0 In 1 Corinthians 7:15 Paul seems to support this view when he says that marriage partners who are abandoned by their spouses are “no longer bound.”<\/p>\n

    None of this quite explains why evangelicals are letting their divorced conservative candidates off the hook.\u00a0 Most, if not all, of the divorced candidates in the current presidential race – both Republican and Democrat – do not meet even the “new scholarships'” interpretation of the grounds for divorce.\u00a0 When\u00a0were Giuliani or Gingrich or McCain\u00a0“abused, neglected, or abandoned” by their spouses?<\/p>\n

    David Instone-Brewer is senior research fellow in rabbinics and the New Testament at Tyndale House in Cambridge and the author of Divorce And Remarriage in the Church: Biblical Solutions for Pastoral Realities<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(2006, Intervarsity Press).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    David Instone-Brewer writing in the April 6 edition of the Wall Street Journal raises a compelling question relative to the evangelical right and the current field of Republican presidential candidates: “Why are evangelicals so willing to accept divorce among their … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}