For born-again governor, love is a matter of faith

COLUMBIA, S.C. — In one especially soul-baring e-mail to his Argentine mistress, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford quoted from 1 Corinthians 13 about the nature of love.

It is patient and kind, he wrote. It is NOT jealous or boastful.

The Christian counselors Sanford sought out while trying to decide whether to stay with his wife or jump on a plane to South America advised him what else love is and isn’t.

” … their point is that love is not a feeling,” Sanford told The Associated Press in a tearful two-day confessional. “It’s a choice. It’s an action.”

That sentiment might seem cold to many Americans, but it is perfectly consistent with the born-again, Evangelical Christian world that Sanford inhabits, says sociologist John Bartowski.

“What evangelicals are doing is sort of carving out a subcultural view of love which is not so highly romanticized as we see in movies, that is at odds with the dominant view of love,” says Bartowski, a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio and author of the book, “Remaking the Godly Marriage: Gender Negotiation in Evangelical Families.”

That world view, he says, “divorces” love from emotion, because “feelings are fleeting and not to be trusted.”

“Love is something that is cultivated in the trenches of living a day-to-day relationship,” says Bartowski. “That is not a hallmark moment.”

So while there are countless romantics out there urging Sanford to follow his heart, he can expect mostly tough love from his own spiritual community.

“The emotions are the icing on the cake,” says Ben Witherington, a New Testament professor at Kentucky’s Asbury Theological Seminary. “They’re not the cake.”

Witherington says feelings are a “notoriously unreliable guide” in personal relationships because they tend to change with time. Marriage is not just a commitment of will, he says, but a commitment before God.

“That’s why, at a Christian wedding service, you don’t say, ‘I feel like’ and ‘I feel like.’ You say, ‘I will’ and ‘I will,’ ‘I do’ and ‘I do.’”

Sanford is a man writhing in agony as his emotions battle his sense of duty — to his wife, to their four sons, to his office.

In one e-mail to his lover, Maria Belen Chapur, Sanford said to “sleep soundly knowing that despite the best efforts of my head my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul.”

He told the AP on Tuesday that the past 8½ years have been an emotional “wrestling match,” a struggle “between one’s heart and one’s value system.”

“A whole lot more than a simple affair,” he said. “It’s a love story. A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day.”

That is not how he talks of his bond with Jenny Sanford.

“I do have a love for my wife,” he told AP. “I do have a love for my boys. I do have a love for the farm. I do have a love for the world of ideas and politics.”

What has also become clear over the past few days is that Sanford has decided — at least for now — to take his friends’ advice and try to repair his marriage. The friend whose words appear to echo loudest is Warren “Cubby” Culbertson.

The owner of a court reporting business, Culbertson, 51, is an influential Bible study leader and considered a pillar of the state capital’s Christian community. Sanford told him about the affair immediately after his wife discovered it in January, and Culbertson has been counseling the couple ever since — even holding a monthlong spiritual “boot camp” at the governor’s mansion.

Culbertson told the AP he believes that “everybody’s vulnerable, and there are no boundaries on darkness.” He does not dine alone with other women and keeps his office door open when he has a female visitor.

He says he has counseled many men “who have fallen in the position that Mark’s in.”

“Everybody starts with the same exact story: ‘We got to be friends. We started talking. I didn’t mean for anything to happen,’” he says. “That’s exactly where a sin begins.”

Many times during the past week, Sanford has quoted Culbertson and others almost verbatim in describing where things went astray.

“It was innocent,” he said of his first meeting on a beachside Uruguayan dance floor with Chapur. “That was the beginning of sin right there. … If you’re a married guy, at the end of the day, you shouldn’t be dancing with somebody else.”

Culbertson has advised Sanford to stay with his wife. If Sanford works diligently, he believes the couple can find an even “greater love” than they once had.

The Rev. Gary Chapman agrees.

A senior associate pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, N.C., Chapman has been a marriage counselor for 35 years. He has written several books, most notably “The Five Love Languages.”

Chapman says Sanford is in the throes of what he calls the “in-love experience.”

“It’s not that there is not emotion involved in love,” he says. “But the ‘in-love’ experience is super emotion. It’s very euphoric. It doesn’t take any effort. You’re just pushed along by your emotions.”

That high doesn’t last, Chapman warns. Rather than seek that high over and over, he counsels couples to stick with the commitment they’ve already made and learn how to “keep love alive.”

A faded love can be reborn, he says. But it takes time — and work.

“You don’t sit around waiting for the emotional love to come back.”