Coleman case brings up question of evangelical divorce
Religion writer Tim Townsend
06/13/2009
Police involved in the Coleman triple-murder case hit on a thorny theological question this week that goes back to the time of Jesus: Under what circumstances can Christians divorce? It's an important question in the case because divorce, or more specifically, an evangelical organization's prohibition of divorce among its employees may be one reason behind the murders. That question, of course, leads to others: When, and why, do religious organizations forbid their employees to divorce?Police have charged Christopher Coleman, a former employee of Joyce Meyer Ministries, with killing his wife and two children last month in their Columbia, Ill., home. A week after the murders, the Post-Dispatch disclosed that Coleman was having an affair. Soon after that, he resigned from his position working security with Joyce Meyer Ministries, a nonprofit evangelical organization based in Jefferson County. Coleman, 32, has pleaded not guilty.
Police disclosed Wednesday that on the day of the murders, Coleman told his girlfriend that his wife, Sheri Coleman, would be served with divorce papers. In sworn testimony Wednesday, Columbia Police Chief Joe Edwards said: "Joyce Meyer Ministry does not employ people who get divorced." He said if the Colemans had divorced, Christopher Coleman "would end up losing his job." Calls to the ministry's headquarters were not returned, and an attorney for the ministry refused to speak on the record about the ministry's policy about divorce. Last month, however, a ministry spokesman said "a violation of moral conduct" led to Coleman's resignation. Three former employees of the ministry described the no-divorce policy for the Post-Dispatch, though they couldn't say whether it was a written rule, or just an ingrained part of the Joyce Meyer Ministries culture. They said that people who have already gone through a divorce can be hired to work at the ministry, but that anyone divorced while working at the ministry is let go.The ministry "hires people who have broken lives, who are divorced, who've been drug addicts," said George Wise, who said he worked for Joyce Meyer Ministries from 2001 to 2003 as a video specialist. The ministry uses testimonials from believers to attract others to the organization, including one from a woman whose relationship "ended in a painful divorce." "I started to watch Joyce Meyer every chance I got," she writes. "God started to transform me and heal my broken heart."Wise said he'd been divorced twice by the time he was hired by Meyer and then married a colleague at the ministry. When that marriage didn't work out, he said, he was fired three days after his divorce was finalized."Everyone I ever knew that worked there and got divorced ... was fired," Wise said.
Professor Bradford Wilcox, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia who has written about religion and marriage, said a no-divorce policy is not unusual in Christian organizations whose employment guidelines are structured according to their faith."Some more traditional, typically evangelical Protestant or fundamentalist Protestant institutions ... have a policy relating to an employee's personal conduct," Wilcox said. "For some of those institutions that conduct can encompass marital infidelity or divorce, and you could be sanctioned as a consequence."All of which is completely legal. "There is no law in Missouri that forbids discrimination on the basis of marital status," said Mary Anne Sedey, an employment attorney at Sedey Harper.
Eric Sowers, an employment attorney at Sowers & Wolf, said he'd never heard of anyone at a secular organization fired over marital status. He said religious organizations are exempt from the Missouri Human Rights Act. Wilcox said the First Amendment gives religious institutions wide latitude "to shape their employment policies so they're consistent with their religious teachings."Church leaders use a handful of passages from the Old and New Testaments as the Scriptural basis for such policies, including verses from the Gospels in which Jesus, referencing Genesis, said married people "are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."Most Christian scholars believe that after taking into account all the relevant biblical passages, Jesus said divorce was acceptable only in cases of adultery. Christian leaders have struggled ever since with putting that message into practice, especially in clear cases of marital abuse."The big issues are the permitted grounds for divorce and whether or not one can remarry while the former spouse is alive," David Instone-Brewer, author of "Divorce And Remarriage in the Church," said in an e-mail message. "There are a few Christian teachers who would say that no believer may ever divorce, even if their spouse was committing constant adultery."Edwards, the Columbia police chief, testified Wednesday that Christopher Coleman has told authorities he had a good marriage, with a difficult period a year ago that was resolved with marriage counseling.
Despite the concentrated effort to keep Christian marriages together, a 2008 study from the Barna Research Group shows evangelical, or "born again" Christians divorce at the same rate as the rest of the American population — about 33 percent of all marriages. Joyce Meyer said in her book she divorced her first husband, a part-time car salesman who cheated on her, in 1966 when she was 23. She calls it an "emotionally abusive first marriage" on her website. In an article on her ministry's website, Meyer wonders, "How many marriages could have been saved from divorce if husbands and wives had been willing to show love by serving one another."
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From Me
A staff member going through a divorce… I am not certain it is the biblical thing to fire this person. If you ran off all the sinners, you would have no church at all.. When you corner anyone into a bad situation with no hope of escape, how would you expect a fallen sinful person to behave?
Yes I believe the bible teaches that divorce is sin. We hear much about how in Malachi 2:16 God hates divorce, but we rarely hear the rest of the verse….
For the LORD God of Israel says That He hates divorce, For it covers one’s garment with violence,”Says the LORD of hosts. “ Therefore take heed to your spirit,That you do not deal treacherously.”
Jesus calls us to peace. Peace is the highest of higher calling. We are all sinners. We need to again, leave our stones in the dirt. We further should acknowledge that people, sin. Even Christians sin. We are fallen creatures and that is precisely why we so desperately need a savior. Also people in damaged marriages are wounded already. With the added religious pressure…we do no service to encourage them to fight to hold onto marriages, especially when the other person wants to leave. The apostle Paul wrote that a brother or a sister is not under bondage. Hyper religious people occasionally stay in marriages where they are abused and wrongly suffer not entirely because they love, but because they fear God and view themselves as "sufferring for Jesus" in a martyr complex. In our pharisaical efforts to push legalism onto individuals, we often forbid people who have truly messed up and irreconcilable differences to divorce. This does not acknowledge the frailty of men or that all have sinned. Divorce is a reality that is DEALT with in the bible. Those trapped like a caged animal, will sometimes act violently.
Jesus calls us to peace. Sometimes the only peace that can come is found by saying, “This is not what I would choose, but it is your choice, so ok. Go in peace.” Then we follow what is written in 1 Corinthians 7.
You could rightfully say, 'this man’s situation was a little different than irreconcilable differences. He was cheating on his wife with one of her friends. He deserved to get canned.' I would of agreed several years ago.
Today I believe differently. I could not say he deserved to get canned for what he was doing on his own time away from the workplace. No other employer in America, can get away with that type of intimate personal intrusion. You should not be able to pry into the private life of someone so far down into the organizational structure. To terminate a rent-a cop from his job for infidelity is absurd.. I do not think it’s a stretch to say that Joyce Meyer’s policies had no role to play.
From someone who loves Jesus and had to go through a divorce personally, conservative Christians put a lot of garbage on people that really, is not in the bible and simply should not be.. No…. murder certainly is not justifiable. However I will tell you, there are a lot of messed up ideas out there in the church that help to enslave and entrap peoples minds in the “name of Jesus.” We enslave instead of setting men free. We stress people out! If people of God were not made to feel quite so cornered… there might be fewer behaving so desperately..You simply don’t know what was going on between the husband and wife or what the circumstances were that led up to the affair and the tragedy..In some of my most desperate moments going through my divorce I know I could of snapped. Perhaps that is why God told me that night to get up and leave, because I was no longer safe. Was I in more danger from her, or from myself? Years later I still really don’t know..
I am not disagreeing with facts. Infidelity is wrong. Divorce is wrong and murder is wrong. To point to his sin and say ‘there is no excuse for it, and therefore he deserved __________’ is forgetting we are forgiven much. My POV comes from a different perspective. Based on what I have been through in ministry, it is not an unreasonable question to ask, ‘Did Joyce Meyer’s Ministry policy regarding divorce have a role in this tragedy.’ I believe it is VERY plausible.
Because of that our response should be different. If we are absolutely matter of fact condemning, we have not helped. We are no better than the Pharisees who brought the woman caught in adultery before Jesus to ask, “What say Ye?”
There should be grace, mercy and compassion for everyone…including the perpetrator. Every individual case needs to be taken into account. If you have a different POV that’s fine and alright. While I pray for a more understading compassionate church, I do pray and hope no one reading will ever see it from my perspective.
In Christ
Andrew
