Saturday, April 4, 1998

Premarriage counseling grows in churches

By ERVIN DYER / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Dan Erickson grew up in a family that let the dinner dishes languish. The mission after supper was to enjoy each other's company and not to worry if a small mountain of plates was sitting in the sink.

In Angela Ruby's family, though, the rule was: Absolutely no leisure until the dishes were washed, dried and reshelved.

It's a small matter, perhaps, but one of the many that can trouble the waters in a marriage if it's not resolved.

So, before their wedding 2 1/2 years ago, Dan, 29, and Angela, 25, agreed they would try it Dan's way. Angela has discovered that she likes it. Sometimes, she'll even let the dishes sit overnight.

The decision, along with scores of others they made about the exigencies of daily life together, has helped the young couple keep the peace in their marriage.

But the Ericksons, who live in Modesto, Calif., didn't deal with such issues on their own. They got help from a program known as Marriage Savers, which encourages churches to require several weeks of premarital counseling before a couple can be wed in the church.

Marriage Savers was founded in the mid-1980s by syndicated religion and ethics columnist Michael McManus, who heads the nonprofit Marriage Savers Institute in Bethesda, Md. McManus was in Pittsburgh in January, trying to ignite the movement there, as he has in more than 70 other communities.

Twelve years ago, Modesto, in central California, became the first community in the nation in which a large number of churches established a Marriage Savers policy, or covenant, as it is sometimes called.

There, 100 clergy representing 60 churches signed on with the program, and McManus claimed it helped to sharply reduce the local divorce rate. A newspaper analysis showed that the divorce rate in Modesto's county had fallen by nearly 30 percent in the 12-year span, dropping from 6.2 divorces per 1,000 residents to 4.4 divorces per 1,000, which is close to the national average.

Marriage Savers asks churches to make premarital counseling mandatory, believing that it leads to stronger and more lasting unions. The program advocates the use of a written compatibility test known as PREPARE. To encourage pastors to give the program a try, it advocates using a church's married couples as "mentors" to do the premarital counseling, so the minister doesn't have to bear the whole burden.

The program asks for a mandatory waiting period -- in most areas, two months -- before a couple exchange vows. It asks the couple to avoid any sexual relationship before marriage, and it frowns on cohabitation.

The Marriage Savers movement doesn't appear to be a threat to the profession of marriage counselors -- largely because they rarely do premarital counseling.

Even though marriage therapists have offered premarital programs for nearly 50 years, most couples didn't take advantage of them. The basic perception in America, many counselors say, is that you don't seek out a therapist until a marriage is in distress.

Before the wedding, said David Olsen, a University of Minnesota professor who developed the PREPARE inventory, couples "don't want to shake up the relationship too much. They're in love and they think that's all they need to know."

Couples who have sought premarital counseling, Olsen added, are usually glad they did and recommend it to others.

But the reluctance of most engaged couples to go to marriage therapists has opened the way for religious groups like Marriage Savers to pioneer the expansion of premarital counseling.

Marriage Savers had 32 programs in as many communities in 1995, McManus said. Three years later, it's taken hold in 72 cities across the United States. Minneapolis-St. Paul, with more than 300 churches involved, has one of the largest community marriage covenants.

Across the nation, Marriage Savers has mainly attracted evangelical Protestant congregations, although a smattering of rabbis and mainline church ministers have signed on.

Since 74 percent of marriages are performed by clergy, McManus said, the goal is to recruit as many clergy as possible to stop churches from becoming "blessing machines and wedding factories."

When churches sign Marriage Savers covenants, their ministers agree that they will perform weddings only for couples who undergo premarital counseling. The more clergy who participate, program leaders say, the less chance there is for a couple to avoid the counseling by going to another church.

Many of the programs use PREPARE (Premarital Personal Relationship Evaluation), the 160-question inventory created by Olsen, who is a family and social sciences researcher at the University of Minnesota. The detailed questionnaire -- which costs the couple $30 -- is designed to determine compatibility.

Users claim it is more than 80 percent accurate in detecting potential problems, because it examines everything from handling finances to communicating.

The Ericksons took PREPARE and participated in the eight 1 1/2-hour counseling sessions that followed. The classes helped the couple settle on far more than when they would do the dishes.

Before they began the counseling, Angela was hesitant. Why did she need counseling? Her parents had divorced and she was determined that her marriage would not fail.

"But," she discovered, "counseling gives you tools."

One important issue it helped them work out was what to do when they had children. Angela didn't want to work once she had their first child, who is due next month. Knowing this early on enabled the Ericksons to establish a savings plan that has allowed Angela to step down from her job as secretary in the church office.

The societal drumbeat that forms the backdrop for Marriage Savers is the nation's high divorce rate.

In 1995, the most recent year for which figures are available, the national rate was 4.5 divorces per 1,000 people, adding up to 1,184,000 divorces, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)