Are clergy helping to diminish wedding vows?
In his newly-released book Church: An Insider’s Look at How We Do It (Baker Books), John G. Stackhouse, Jr., says that, “if pastors are unwilling to stand in the mainstream of their tradition to call couples to something higher than themselves, to remind them that marriage isn’t just about the bride and groom but about the communities that support them and the God who instituted marriage in the first place, to offer them a vision of marriage that is higher than two individuals getting what they want out of it then can we be surprised at the rate of divorce? “Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, author of the widely noted book The Divorce Culture, is not surprised. When asked in an interview what the Christian church could do to help couples improve their marriages and avoid divorce, her first response was, ‘This may sound like a small thing, but I am critical of the current fashion of editing marriage vows.’ There is, she says, a very good reason why the traditional vows read, ‘For better, for wor
