SELFISH INTENTIONS - K-REx - Kansas State University

its ministers and elders to review the church’s position on divorce. The church forbade divorce
except in cases of adultery. They also made it clear that ministers were not to marry someone
who was divorced unless they were the innocent party to an adulterous spouse or if the divorced
couple wanted to get remarried. The Methodist church also implored its members to petition
members of Congress to coordinate and consolidate state divorce laws. The conference report
explained, “We further urge upon our legislators and members of Congress the necessity of
securing the co-ordination of the laws of the several states regulating marriage, divorce, wife and
child desertion and other abuses of the marriage relation.” 103 The church argued that states
should have similar divorce laws. If the laws of Kansas were similar to her border states, then
the 1909 statute loophole which allowed nonresidents to get a fast divorce would be eliminated,
thus decreasing divorces in the state of Kansas.
Furthermore, the 1913 conference of the Methodist brethren reiterated its statement on
divorce. The conference report stated, “‘No divorce except adultery shall be regarded by the
church as lawful; and no minister shall solemnize marriage in any case where there be a divorced
husband or wife living, but this rule shall not be applied to the innocent party to a divorce for the
cause of adultery, not to divorced parties seeking to be reunited in marriage.’” 104 It is interesting
to note that following these pronouncements by the Methodist church in 1912 and 1913, divorces
in Riley County decreased from thirty-eight in 1912 to twenty-six in 1913 and then to sixteen in
1914. How much the church’s impact is reflected in these statutes is, of course, unknown.
What is clear is that the legal loophole created with the 1909 changes in the statutes
allowed for an increase in divorces. That increase came at a time when growing numbers of
103 th
Methodist Episcopal Church Kansas Conference Official Record and Minutes of the 57 Annual Session, 20-25
March 1912, Reforms Clause, 47.
104 th
Methodist Episcopal Church Kansas Conference Official Record and Minutes of the 58 Annual Session, 5-10
March 1913, Reforms Clause, 47.
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