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Consequently, pastoral support for stepfamilies is lacking and a trail of the divorced and remarried exiting the church is apparent. According to W. Bradford Wilcox, professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, from 1972 to 2002 the percentage of Americans attending church or synagogue on any given weekend declined from 41 percent to 31 percent. Nearly one-third (28 percent) of this decline is attributable to changes in the composition of families, mostly due to fewer first-time married couples with children.

Single-parent families and stepfamilies are less inclined to attend church. Some divorced and remarried families report feeling unwelcome at church; others talk about time pressures or feeling out of place when sermons and parenting classes fail to connect with their family experience. For a multitude of reasons, divorced and remarried people frequently find themselves disconnected from God and marginalized from the church.

But the demographics of stepfamily homes should give churches pause. Half of all children in the U.S. will have a stepparent during their lifetime, and 40 percent of women are predicted to either be a stepparent or be married to one at some point. Approximately 30 percent of weddings in America today give birth to a stepfamily. By contrast, for the first time in our country's history, the 2002 Current Population Survey reported that the number of first-marriage, nuclear-family homes in America dropped to 23 percent, while the number of functional stepfamily homes is estimated to be between 25 and 30 percent, with single-parent or single-adult households rounding out the balance.

Social research suggests that over time, divorce erodes children's confidence in the institution of marriage. Approximately one-fourth of U.S. children will watch at least one parent divorce twice. The net result is a series of broken relationships and a generational weakening of marriage—and, since church attendance is highly correlated with intact, married families, a decline in church attendance as well.

All in all, this massive social phenomenon represents millions of people who need ministry from the church.

Fortunately, many churches are offering themselves to these hurting people. They realize that as Moses made allowances for human failure, so must we. As Rubel Shelly says in his new book, Divorce and Remarriage: A Redemptive Theology:

By grace, people who have failed at marriage and who have divorced for the worst or most trivial of reasons may be redeemed from guilt. People who have destroyed marriages through their adulteries can be pardoned. People whose hearts and behaviors have been cold, hard, and unfeeling can be made whole. And this is by forgiveness and renewal from above—not through another divorce, not by the penance of celibacy, and not by unringing the bell of harm already done. What law cannot do, grace accomplishes. What law cannot undo, Christ's blood forgives. What our legalistic interpretations have confused, the redemptive presence of the Holy Spirit can sanctify.

The church can offer redemptive hope to divorced and remarried people. Even though stepfamilies have different needs than first-time families, very few churches have created ministries for the remarried. Some fear that by so doing, they will communicate a conflicting message: "Don't divorce, but if you do, you can count on us to help." To some, this feels not like mercy but like cheap grace.

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October 2007, Vol. 51, No. 10