Oct 16
Marriage: The State of Our Union - I
Guest: Mike McManus
Web Extras
- Marriage Savers
Website
- Prepare and Enrich
Website
- Divorce Equals Disease
Video
- Living Together (book: must leave Family Talk site)
Other
- Retrouvaille
Website
We’ve all heard that the divorce rates in the U.S. are abysmal — for those inside AND outside of the church. There are proactive things you can do for yourself, and for others in your community to increase the chances of having a marriage that lasts for a lifetime. Get great ideas for strengthening your marriage.
Mike & Harriet McManus are Co-Chairs of Marriage Savers, a ministry whose goal is to help churches and communities cut their divorce rate and raise their marriage rate. They have helped the clergy of more than 200 cities adopt a Community Marriage Policy, an agreement across denominational lines, to make marriage such a priority in their churches that divorce rates fall.
Mike, a Duke graduate, was TIME magazine's youngest correspondent in 1963. He worked in Latin America initially and then in Washington. Since 1981, he has written a weekly syndicated column, "Ethics & Religion." He wrote a book, "Marriage Savers: Helping Your Friends and Family Avoid Divorce," published in 1995. Its last chapter tells how one city, Modesto, CA, became the first city to adopt a "Community Marriage Policy", as the result of a speech Mike made in 1986 to local pastors, in which he suggested how the city could cut its divorce rate in half. That city's divorce rate has since plunged 50%. Other cities slashing divorce rates in half are Austin, TX, Kansas City, KS, Salem, OR and El Paso, TX. Mike has been married for 43 years to Harriet and in the spring of 2008 he and Harriet co-authored "Living Together: Myths, Risks and Answers," published by Howard Books.
