REPORT FINDS CLERGY DIVORCES ON RISE.

Byline: J. Michael Parker San Antonio Express-News 

For 40 years, the Rev. Charles Stanley preached that any man who gets a divorce is unfit to be a pastor.

Then after 37 years of marriage, his wife filed for divorce.

Now Stanley, pastor at First Baptist Church in Atlanta, says God wants him to stay in the pulpit and he won't budge until God tells him to.

Regardless of the outcome of the case, which is expected to go to trial this spring, the fact that a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention and co-founder of the Moral Majority is going through a divorce continues to send spiritual shock waves through the evangelical community.

Unfortunately, observers say, clergy divorces are becoming more and more common.

Today, about 1,000 pastors leave the ministry every week, said the Rev. David Ferguson, founder of the Center for Marriage and Family Intimacy ministry in Austin.

"And 80 percent left because of marriage and family breakdown," he said.

A recent Hartford Seminary study found that pastors today are divorcing in about the same numbers as lay people.

Adair Lummis, co-author of the Hartford study, said if both spouses are ministers, divorce is even more likely.

"Stresses for clergy couples can be very great, especially if both spouses can't get jobs in the same area," she said.

Ferguson, who has helped 3,000 troubled clergy marriages in the past decade, agreed job stress is a major factor.

"Among the pastors we've counseled, 80 percent believe their ministry has negatively affected their families, 70 percent have no close friends in their congregations, 37 percent have been involved in an inappropriate sexual way with someone in their churches and 40 percent have had serious conflicts with church members within 30 days before seeking counseling," he said.

Unlike secular divorces, which traumatize family and friends, clergy divorces, like Stanley's, can impact even greater numbers of people.

"It undermines people's concept of God and what faith is when they see a clergy marriage fail or see a clergy member compromised sexually," Ferguson said.

And unlike in the secular world, a clergy divorce, especially in regions like the Deep South, can end an otherwise promising career.

"In many places," Lummis said, "if they divorce, they're not only out of a congregation, they're out of the entire judicatory (diocese, conference, presbytery or synod)."

One Baptist pastor who divorced, and against all odds stayed in the ministry, believes complete candor with his congregation was what made the difference.

The Rev. Browning Ware of First Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, said despite seeing two marriage counselors, he and his wife divorced in 1985 because of a serious family illness, the continued stress of his being a highly visible public figure living on a pedestal and the stifling of his wife's creativity.

"I was determined to be as forthcoming with my congregation as I could possibly be," Ware said. "I confessed that I'd been a liberal contributor to the divorce, both overtly and covertly, and that I'd sinned against my wife, against God and against these people, but also that I believed in God's grace.

"My position doesn't excuse divorce, but the Bible shows that the only people God has to work with are flawed people, and he's continued to fine-tune them and make saints out of them."

His congregation supported him and "decided they weren't going to shoot the wounded," Ware said.

But a pastor who is evasive, avoids responsibility and hasn't shared his pilgrimage with his congregation creates problems, he said.

Ware said he has never felt preachers' sins should keep them out of the ministry for life: "Charles (Stanley) is in a tight spot after preaching something for 40 years, but W.A. Criswell did, too, and his daughter's divorce changed his mind."

Criswell is pastor emeritus of First Baptist Church in Dallas.

As denominations struggle with the growing phenomenon, their stands on clergy divorce range from the rigid to the lax.

The Rev. George Wood, an Assemblies of God official in Springfield, Mo., said his denomination regards remarriage after a divorce for any reason except unfaithfulness as adultery. The policy is based on their interpretation of the Bible.