BY STACEY HAMBY

Divorce is more prevalent among Christians than the rest of the population, leaving broken hearts, shattered dreams and innocent children in its wake.

t didn't happen overnight. But James McClintock started noticing changes. His wife stopped wearing her wedding ring. She stopped talking to him. Then he received the divorce papers. Their five-year marriage was over.

"There was no second chance, no talking about it. She just shut down," recalled McClintock, 33, a member of Strong Tower Bible Church in Franklin, Tenn. "It … ripped my heart out. I loved my wife more than I loved anything in my life. She was my best friend. We did Bible studies. We were going to start a family. It went from that to the light switch going off. Then my entire vision vanished."

McClintock is not alone. Recent studies by the Barna Research Group reveal that 27 percent of born-again Christians have been divorced. That compares with 24 percent of adults who are not born-again.

Those statistics are sending Christian leaders scrambling for answers. Why are Christians, who believe marriage is sacred to God, divorcing at a higher rate than those who don't?

Great expectations
Some observers blame Christian idealism for giving couples unrealistic expectations of marriage. Others say divorce among Christians has little to do with faith at all.

David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., says the answer to that question has little to do with religion and more to do with education level and age at marriage.

"Born-again Christians have a somewhat lower level of education than the population as a whole, and this educational level is very highly associated with divorce -- the higher the education level, the lower the divorce rate," Popenoe says. "One reason is that people with a higher education level don't marry as young. And the age at marriage is extremely sensitive to the question of divorce -- the younger you are when you marry, the higher the divorce rate."

Others suggest that cohabitation, more prevalent among non-Christians, keeps some bad marriages from ever happening and skews the divorce rates. Since Christians are less likely to live together without marriage, their weak marriages become divorces, while cohabitors who split up don't show up in the statistics.

Counselor Pat Compton of Springfield, Mo., sees other forces at work -- such as human nature. "Christians ought to have this deeper understanding of what it means to take our vows. But on the other hand, we're still quite human," says Compton, an Episcopalian.

DivorceCare president Steve Grissom acknowledged that some of the most common reasons for Christian divorces are the same as those for non-Christians. "Some of the top rationalizations are: 'Our kids would be better off if they weren't exposed to this fighting all the time.' 'We just don't love each other any more.' 'I need to leave the marriage to find myself, realize my potential.' Or 'we've grown in different ways," says Grissom of Raleigh, N.C.

Counselor Ron Kemp agreed with Grissom and added that Christian marriages may fail more because the spouses' expectations of marriage were higher than those of non-Christians.

"People in the church tend to idealize things," says Kemp, a member of First Baptist Church, Bolivar, Mo. "Husbands are supposed to love their wives as Christ loved the church, and when wives find out a Christian husband can be just as much of a jerk as anybody else, they get disappointed. The same is true for men. They tend to idealize this Christian woman who is supposed to be loving and supportive, and they find out she can be just as critical as anybody."

But consultant Jim Talley says the reason for a higher divorce rate among Christians is simple. "The divorce rate is high because people are committing adultery, and the people in the church are committing adultery at a higher rate than outside the church," says Talley, president of Oklahoma City-based Relationship Resources and the web site www.drtalley.com.

Ounce of prevention
Barna's study isn't the only one showing a high number of Christian divorces. According to federal census numbers, the so-called Bible Belt states have the highest divorce rates in the nation. Except for Nevada, where fast divorces are traditionally easy to get, Arkansas, Alabama, Oklahoma and Tennessee lead the nation in divorces.

Anthony Jordan, executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma agreed with Popenoe that the age at marriage plays an important role in divorce.

"Getting married younger tends to put people of immaturity in a place where they are not ready to tackle the pressures marriage brings," Jordan says.

Clergy and state government leaders in Oklahoma are trying to curb the state's high divorce rate. Jordan and other faith leaders, along with the governor, recently signed a community marriage policy. The policy prevents a clergy member from marrying a couple that has not undergone premarital counseling.

"Since 75 percent of marriages are done in places of worship, our state initiative decided that if we're going to impact marriage, we've got to do it through the faith community," Jordan says. "The state realizes the social impact of divorce and the millions of dollars it takes to put Band-Aids on social ills."

"In our desire to be inclusive to reaching out to people in the hurt of divorce, sometimes the message gets mixed. The strong message of sanctity of marriage, that God hates divorce, gets watered down in our attempt to reach those that are in the pain of divorce."

From the other side
Two years after her divorce, it still pains Sheila Graham, 44, of Waco, Texas, to hear her ex-husband's voice on her answering machine. Graham, married 23 years and the mother of two grown sons, says the devastation of her husband's affair and divorce hit her so hard that she attempted suicide twice.

"The only thing that stopped me was that I didn't want to add pain to my boys," she recalled. "After being through this, I now understand that suicide is not a matter of distorted thinking. It's a matter of 'I don't want to feel anymore' -- anything -- because all you feel is the pain."

Suicide and other forms of destructive behavior are what divorce recovery groups aim to prevent. DivorceCare president Steve Grissom, who went through a divorce in 1987, says there are common characteristics between people who suffer divorce and those who suffer the death of a spouse.

"There is a deep, scarring loss in both cases, loneliness, depression, anger -- sometimes at God -- and a period where you try to rediscover who you are," he says.

Howard Finley, 40, a member of St. Ignatius Orthodox Christian Church in Franklin, Tenn., was a recovery-group participant.

"Before my divorce, I viewed divorce as something that was characterized as both a moral and spiritual failure," says Finley, a former pastor whose wife divorced him to pursue another relationship. "Divorce was something that happened to other people, weaker people, not me. I viewed divorce as very stigmatizing and damaging to one's reputation and influence, especially if he was a Christian."

Now he views divorce as only someone who has been through it can. "Divorce is an emotional car wreck that required spiritual intensive care and spiritual hospitalization," Finley says. "For about two years, I was in that condition. Through God's work, my family and DivorceCare, I feel that I am out of the hospital, but I'm still walking with a walker and in need of spiritual therapy."

Turning a corner
The experts say to allow up to five years to heal from divorce. Grissom says that's because of the emotional carnage left in divorce's wake. "It's the ripping of one flesh."

But time doesn't heal divorce's wounds -- Christ does, Steve McClintock says. "I felt like I was in the desert such a long time, but I had to wait on God's time." McClintock's divorce was finalized in March after more than a year of legal proceedings.

"Time is a journey God uses," he concluded. "If I didn't have Christ, I could not heal completely."

Though the divorce rate has remained high for the past 40 years, it seems to be slightly decreasing since it's peak in the mid-1980s, Popenoe says. "Some reasons for the decline are people are better educated now and marry later, but the fact is, the marriage rate is dropping and more and more people are just living together."

He cited a recent study, though, that may shed some hope on American marriages. "It showed that maybe people are just really working harder at staying married."