Source: The Detroit News
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090305/LIFESTYLE04/903050404/1041/LIFESTYLE04
An interfaith coalition of religious leaders is launching a marriage offensive in Michigan over the next 48 hours.
Convinced that stubborn rates of divorce will yield to marriage counseling and patience, a group of more than a dozen ministers, priests, rabbis, imams and laity have scheduled a series of meetings today and Friday to introduce marriage-saving programs to Metro Detroit couples, lobby legislators for mandatory waiting periods for divorce and commit Macomb County to a Community Marriage Policy, which 223 communities across the country have adopted.
"Michigan's divorce rate is among the highest in the Midwest," said Michael McManus, president of Marriage Savers, a nonprofit that is one of several groups participating in the effort to prolong marriages in Michigan. "We need to save some of these families and stop the harm that happens to children of divorce, who have many more problems in life with poverty, incarceration and more bad marriages."
The advocates will use the meetings to promote peer ministry, in which couples who averted divorce counsel troubled couples. They also will lobby legislators at a Legislative Marriage Summit in Lansing today. Other meetings will take place today and Friday at churches in Birmingham, Highland Park and Roseville and a mosque in Dearborn Heights. Local clergy, legal professionals and civic leaders will sign what is billed as the largest Community Marriage Policy in the country, Friday at Sacred Heart Church in Roseville.