Focus on the Family is approaching an unusually important crossroads. Jim Daly plans to step down in 2027 after more than two decades of leadership as president, and Focus is explicitly doing an executive search for a new president — the “next-gen leadership” capable of reaching parents in their 30s and 40s.
This would be a good time to make some changes to Focus on the Family.
The organization does not have to change dramatically to become better for parents and families.
In fact, Focus on the Family Canada has already made some of these reforms, providing a pathway for the U.S. organization. Focus on the Family Australia has also rejected or substantially revised some of the U.S. approach.
In This Article
- The Elephant in the Room
- Recognize abuse as covenant-breaking
- Stop making reconciliation the presumed goal in abusive marriages
- Clearly distinguish difficult marriages from destructive ones
- Recognize nonphysical abuse consistently
- Review old divorce-and-children content
- Make Hope Restored success claims fully transparent
- Publicly correct harmful teaching
- Subject marriage advice to modern professional standards
- The Focus on the Family Safety Scorecard
- This Is Not a Radical Proposal
The Elephant in the Room
The U.S. organization’s official position still does not recognize abuse—even life-threatening violence or murder threats—as an explicit ground for divorce.
Nowhere in its official marriage-and-divorce guidance does it clearly say that divorce can be a godly option due to abuse.
I know this is shocking to people, but I’ve been looking for an official statement to the contrary for five years—and even offered a reward of $200 (see details)—and it has never been found. Focus does say victims should seek safety and adopt “zero tolerance” for abuse, but its position stops short of saying that abuse can break the marriage covenant and that a victim is free to divorce with a clear conscience.
Focus on the Family Canada goes much further.
Most remarkably, one of their therapists quoted on their website says:
“The two people are more important than the marriage.”
That is the type of reform Focus on the Family USA needs.
Eight Reforms the Next President Could Make
1. Recognize abuse as covenant-breaking.
Update the official marriage-and-divorce position to say that serious abuse—physical, sexual, emotional, spiritual, financial, or coercively controlling—can constitute marital unfaithfulness, abandonment of marital obligations, and covenant-breaking.
FOTF Canada has already published this argument.
Its article “Divorce, hard hearts, and the image of God” says Christians have sometimes elevated marriage at the expense of the people in it and weaponized Scripture against abuse victims. It says marital unfaithfulness properly includes “adultery, abandonment and abuse in all its forms.” In those situations, the perpetrator has broken the covenant and the victim is free to leave.
2. Stop making reconciliation the presumed goal in abusive marriages.
Safety must come before preserving the marriage. FOTF Australia’s abuse guidance says reconciliation after genuine abuse should be regarded as a miracle, not an expected outcome. It also warns that quick pressure to forgive can harm victims.
3. Clearly distinguish difficult marriages from destructive ones.
Focus Canada says its counselors use Leslie Vernick’s distinction between “difficult, disappointing and destructive” marriages and regularly provide her resources to callers.
That distinction should appear throughout U.S. marriage content—not just in Vernick interviews and specialized abuse pages.
4. Recognize nonphysical abuse consistently.
Focus USA already defines domestic abuse as potentially physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, sexual, or financial.
Australia goes further, describing coercion, isolation, intimidation, economic abuse, spiritual abuse, threats, humiliation, and destruction of property.
The problem is no longer a lack of information. It is the failure to apply that information consistently to divorce and marriage-preservation advice.
5. Review old divorce-and-children content.
The U.S. website still hosts an Amy Desai article claiming that children “never get over divorce” and that full recovery is “nearly impossible,” selectively citing one or two Judith Wallerstein quotes while ignoring Wallerstein’s finding that 7 in 10 children of divorce turn out fine, with no serious long-term problems. This article is so misleading, other organizations have removed it from their links.
The next president should commission an independent review of old articles and remove or correct claims and misquotes — especially the Angela Bisignano misleading article “Is Divorce the Right Answer? 15 Questions Couples Should Ask” as well as the other articles with inaccuracies.
One of the most disturbing examples is Focus’s article on pedophilia in marriage. Even when the husband described in the article had violently sexually abused a child in the home, the piece turns back toward preserving and reconciling the marriage. It invokes “God hates divorce” while omitting Jesus’ severe warning about harming children, and it shifts some attention toward the wife’s supposed contribution to the marital problem. What the article never plainly says is the most important moral truth in the situation: God hates child sexual abuse.
The framing mutualizes something that is not mutual.
Pedophilia and child sexual abuse are not “marriage problems,” communication failures, or dysfunctional relationship cycles. The responsibility belongs to the offending spouse.
Focus should review all marriage content to ensure that abuse, predation, coercive control, chronic deception, and sexual exploitation are never reframed as problems both spouses somehow created together.
6. Make the Hope Restored Marriage Intensives success claims fully transparent.
Focus currently advertises that more than 80% of Hope Restored couples are still together two years later and describes the program as “proven.” But it has not been proven by a rigorous, independent, long-term empirical study of past participants. Focus’s own materials acknowledge significant limitations in its follow-up research.
If Focus wants to make research claims, it should publish enough information for outsiders to evaluate them: sample sizes, response rates, attrition, definitions of success, abuse screening, separation and divorce rates, and independent analysis.
It should also conduct systematic post-intensive safety follow-up. Staying married is not the only outcome that matters. Focus should ask whether abuse escalated, whether participants felt safer or less safe afterward, and whether vulnerable disclosures made during the intensive were later weaponized by a spouse.
Donors and desperate couples deserve the whole picture.
Transparency is especially important because Focus on the Family has benefited for decades from extraordinary loyalty within evangelical Christianity. That loyalty can make honest criticism difficult. Divorced Christians and people who had painful experiences at Hope Restored may hesitate to speak publicly because criticizing a prominent Christian ministry can feel like betraying “our side,” damaging the witness of Christianity, or giving ammunition to outsiders.
That silence has consequences.
Over the years, former Hope Restored participants have repeatedly told me they had assumed they were the exception—the one couple the program failed, or the only person who came away troubled by the experience.
Yet many of them already knew that other couples from their own small group had separated, divorced, or remained deeply troubled after the intensive.
That is what makes the isolation so remarkable. Even when participants could see that other marriages in their small group had not been “saved,” many still concluded that their own disappointing outcome must somehow be unusual.
When disappointing outcomes remain private while success stories and impressive percentages are amplified publicly, people can be left thinking:
Maybe it was just us.
7. Publicly correct harmful teaching.
A new president should not apologize for being Christian.
But Christian organizations should be unusually willing to repent when they get something wrong.
Where Focus already has reason to know that its parenting advice, marriage-preservation messages, divorce statistics, or counseling practices harmed families, it should say so plainly, correct the record, and change the material.
8. Bring marriage advice up to modern professional standards.
Focus should stop treating familiar Christian marriage concepts as proven simply because they have been taught for decades.
Popular frameworks—reactive cycles, love languages, personality differences, unmet needs, and communication techniques—may be useful in ordinary marriages. But they should not be applied indiscriminately to coercive control, chronic infidelity, addiction, deception, abandonment, or abuse.
Require Focus on the Family USA to do an independent review of all marriage-ministry materials to bring it up to professional ethical standards. Focus on the Family should bring in qualified outside experts who are not connected to the Smalley family and Robert Paul, its marriage programs, or the people who developed the existing materials. An independent review is especially important when evaluating teachings about abuse, coercive control, reconciliation, divorce, trauma, addiction, and child safety. The goal should be a genuine fresh look—not simply asking people within the same ministry network to evaluate one another’s work.
| Reform standard | Focus USA | Focus Canada | Focus Australia |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recognizes nonphysical/coercive abuse | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Explicitly puts human safety above preserving marriage | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| Warns against pressuring reconciliation after abuse | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Distinguishes destructive marriages from ordinary marital problems | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| Says abuse can break the marriage covenant | 0 | 1* | 0 |
| Clearly allows divorce because of abuse | 0 | 1* | 0 |
| Consistently integrates abuse teaching into divorce advice | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| TOTAL SAFETY SCORE | 5/14 | 10/14 | 8/14 |
| Percentage | 36% | 71% | 57% |
*Canada earns only partial credit because its strong article says abuse can break the covenant, while its official divorce position has not yet been changed.
This Is Not a Radical Proposal
That may be the most important point.
The next president does not need to adopt my view of the Bible and divorce, abandon conservative Christianity, or reinvent Focus on the Family.
He or she could simply take the best things Focus Canada and Focus Australia already say—and make them the consistent policy of Focus on the Family USA.
Focus has already written many of the words. The problem is inconsistency.
The next president has an unusual opportunity to make safety, truth, accountability, and sound evidence the rule rather than the exception.
:
:
Buy PDF