A friend is going
through a divorce. Unlike when someone dies, she said, when a marriage dies
there is “no commemoration of a life that you lived, there is no respectful
acknowledgement of passage, and there is no announcement in the paper . . . it's
an odd thing for a Christian to have to grieve the death of marriage by
divorce. I feel very alone in the grief.” Actually, I told her, there are some
churches and other faith groups that are offering divorce ceremonies to people
whose marriages have ended, as I wrote about a number of years ago.
I’ve been to a lot of weddings in my life. But I’ve only
been to one divorce ceremony.
It happened a few years ago. I was visiting a Mennonite
church in Pennsylvania. Near the end of the service the pastor asked the
congregation to stand to read a “blessing of separation” for two members whose
marriage had sadly come to an end.
As a congregation, we read a litany that invoked God’s
blessing on the former couple as they went their separate ways. It was sad
occasion, yet hopeful at the same time.
Later, I was told that this couple had tried counseling.
They had worked on their issues. But in the end everyone agreed that divorce
was inevitable.
That Mennonite church is not unique. Methodist,
Presbyterian, Lutheran, United Church of Christ, Unitarian and Episcopalian
churches now offer blessing ceremonies or special prayers for people who are
getting divorced.
For some, any talk about blessing divorced people is
tantamount to surrendering to modern culture’s belief that nothing is permanent
and marriage vows are meaningless.
But none of these groups have abandoned their belief in
life-long marriage. They are simply coming to terms with reality—Christians get
divorced, too.
But it’s still a leap from there to actually conducting
divorce ceremonies. So why do it?
In their book A Healing Divorce, authors Phil and Barbara
Penningroth note that faith groups have lots of rituals to mark transitions
from one stage of life to another—christenings, baptisms, weddings and
funerals.
But there’s nothing for divorce, which is a huge transition for the
couple, their families and their friends.
“Whether one sees [divorce] as a failure or as a sin, it
is without question a major life transition for millions of couples and their
children,” they say.
For many this transition is “handled coldly and
impersonally by law and the courts,” leading to anger, bitterness and pain.
By “reframing divorce as a life transition and using
ritual to facilitate the divorce process,” they believe it can be an occasion
to “heal hearts and transform lives.”
Divorce ceremonies vary. In one, a couple simply repeats
their vows, replacing the words “I do” with “I’m sorry.”
In another, the couple confesses to each other about
where they failed, asked forgiveness and blessed each other as they began their
future apart. At that point, the pastor pronounced them free from their
marriage vows.
After a friend’s husband left her for another
relationship, she asked her pastor and some church members gathered in her home
to read scripture and pray.
During a short ceremony, she took off her wedding ring
and she replaced it with a new ring to symbolize a new beginning. “It was an
incredibly emotional” experience, she told me, “but healing as well.”
Couples who want help preserving their marriages often turn to the church. But where is the church when marriages end? Maybe the church needs to find a way to also provide healing
and care for people experiencing divorce.
Or, to put it another way, if marriages start in the
church, maybe they can end there, too.
