Baptists and Divorce

From an assignment I am currently reading for Russell Moore's class on sexual ethics.

"How can Southern Baptists and other evangelicals—whether on the right or the left of the political spectrum—speak to issues of social justice and the common good without addressing what is no doubt the leading cause of “widows and orphans” in our midst? Why would Southern Baptists think and speak in one way (“muted” and “ambiguous,” in Wilcox’s words) on the issue of divorce, and quite another (full volume and unambiguous) on an issue such as homosexuality? Wilcox suggests, and I think rightly, that Southern Baptists and other conservative  Protestants have been “far from untouched by the dramatic increases in divorce since the 1960s.” Wilcox writes: “It may well be that leaders and pastors are more comfortable confronting homosexuality, which probably does not affect many people in the pews, than confronting divorce, which does.” To put it bluntly, we have many more “out of the closet” multiple divorcees than “out of the closet” homosexuals in our churches. At issue here is pastoral courage. John the Baptist would put his head on a platter to speak truth to power that not even a king can have another man’s wife. John the Southern Baptist is too often not willing to put his retirement benefits on the table to say the same thing to a congregational business meeting."

 --Russell Moore, "Southern Baptist Sexual Revolutionaries," 

http://moodle.sbts.edu/file.php/14845/RDM_-_SWJT_-_Southern_Baptist_Sexual_Revolutionaries.pdf