What were the common practices of Protestant Churches re: divorce, pre-1945?

[flameburns623]

Hi folks!

The year was rather arbitrary, but a friend of mine is very critical of the CC’s position on divorce and says that Protestants have never made such a big deal about this issue. I am fairly certain this is incorrect and that prior to the middle of the 20th century or so, most Protestant churches had pretty strict rules about divorces. They might have ‘allowed’ divorces for the injured party in some denominations for abandonment or adultery–but the person who had abandoned or cheated on their spouse was often subject to church discipline.

(BTW, it was typical in Protestant understandings of marriage that divorce/remarriage was a one-time offense, not an on-going offense as it is in the RCC. That is–in the Catholic Church, if someone remarries after a divorce, every day that person remains married to the second party is continued an ongoing sin, unless the remarried parties resolve to live together celibately. Protestants have in my lifetime at least seen the initial remarriage possibly a violation of the original vows, but not a perpetuating sinful act. We don’t need to explore this issue, I just felt it was important to define a distinction in how Protestants and Catholics see the sin of remarriage).

It was my understanding, almost NO church would allow a divorced man to serve as pastor or elder in a church.

Does anyone have resources to suggest which discuss this matter?

 

[First_of_9]

Legal divorce was rather rare in society in general, and was quite difficult until the 20th century. In some states in the 19th century, divorce could only be granted by passage of a special bill by the state legislature, and in all cases grounds for divorce were limited–usually only adultery (which was also illegal in many states) or desertion. (I think New York, for example, only allowed divorce for infidelity until the 1950s or early 1960s.)

Divorce became more common and lost some of its social stigma beginning in the 1920s.

In mainline Protestant churches, remarriage in the church often was only available to the “innocent” party. My wife’s parents were divorced in the mid 1950’s, and she experienced some shunning by classmates in her Missouri Synod Lutheran grade school because of it.

 

[1ke]

Hi folks!

The year was rather arbitrary, but a friend of mine is very critical of the CC’s position on divorce and says that Protestants have never made such a big deal about this issue.

Actually, this is quite true.

The Protestant understanding of marriage was historically quite different from the Catholic understanding. While various reformers differed on the continuum, they did allow divorce and remarriage. Right from the beginning of the Reformation divorce and remarriage became part of the Protestant churches teachings-- from Luther who only allowed it for adultery or desertion and a few other reasons to Zwigli who allowed it for *many *reasons and Bucer who allowed divorce by “mutual consent” (forerunner of today’s “not fault” divorce). Only a few groups like the Anabaptists allowed divorce but not remarriage.

While the Catholic Church maintained authority over marriage in its Church, the Protestant churches did not-- it became a civil matter only. This was due directly to Luther’s teaching that it was a civil matter and other Reformers also teaching this. They denied its Sacramental character, which had a whole host of implications… this being the major one.

The Protestant churches themselves have no binding laws or doctrines on divorce and remarriage.

There are a some individual “evangelical” churches that teach against divorce/remarriage, but they have no unified authority or structure.