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TechnoratiTim Morgan, an editor at Christianity Today magazine, sees it as a more organizational problem. "Quite a few of these independent churches feel they are beholden to God alone," he says.
Fewer Pentecostals in the United States belong to churches that are part of a Pentecostal denomination than those who identify with independent churches. According to The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 5 percent of the U.S. population are Pentecostals who identify with a denomination and 18 percent are Charismatics – those who describe themselves as charismatic or pentecostal but don't belong to a particular denomination.
Notably, divorce within the Assemblies of God – the largest Pentecostal denomination in the country – can jeopardize a pastor's job. The denomination requires that the pastor provide just cause for the divorce before ministerial credentials can continue, according to Hodges.
While the media has spotlighted Pentecostal figures and their struggles, Anthea Butler, professor of religion at the University of Rochester in New York, says the same sort of thing is happening to other Protestants such as Baptists and Presbyterians. But those other Protestants "are not media figures," she said, according to Time.
Bynum and Weeks married in a private ceremony in 2002 and again in a million-dollar, televised ceremony in 2003. The couple has been estranged since June.
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