'All of his emotional bags, you packed for him,' Bowers said during the sermon. | POLITICO Screen grab Graham foe: Women cause divorces

Det Bowers, a pastor challenging Lindsey Graham in the South Carolina GOP Senate primary, once blamed women for causing most divorces — even when husbands are unfaithful to their wives.

During a sermon on the Book of Peter delivered at the Christ Church of the Carolinas, Bowers said it was an “abominable idolatry” when wives love their children more than their husbands, arguing that’s what causes divorces most of the time. He added that in the “vast preponderance” of situations where men are adulterous, women are to blame because they have showered too much emotion on their children instead of their husbands.


“And yet, I find that in about 95 percent of broken marriages, though the husband’s the one that ran out on his wife, the wife loves her children more than she does her husband,” Bowers said in an audio recording obtained by POLITICO. “That is an abominable idolatry.”

( LISTEN: Det Bowers' full sermon)

Bowers added, his voice rising: “Do you hear me ladies? It is an abominable idolatry to love your children more than you love your husband, and it will ruin your marriage. And yet you blame it on him because he ran off with some other woman! He did run off with some other woman, and you packed his bags. All of his emotional bags, you packed for him. Is that true in every case? No, but it’s true in the vast preponderance of them.

“You just ran him off. You paid more attention to your children than you did to him,” he said. “‘Oh, he doesn’t need me?’ He needs you more than they do. He chose you, they didn’t. An abominable idolatry.”

He said an “abominable idolatry” meant an “unlawful worship.”

The 62-year-old Bowers, who practiced law for nearly two decades and spent about the same amount of time in Christian ministry, declined to be interviewed.

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In a statement, Bowers said he drew his conclusion about divorce based on what he learned counseling married couples, arguing that he has long tried to avoid “the destruction of a sacred union” of marriage.

“I wholeheartedly believe family is one of the cornerstones of our nation,” Bowers said. “As a pastor, steering my flock away from the destruction of the sacred union between husband and wife, mother and father, is one of my most important responsibilities — and a duty I will never shy away from. In this instance, I simply shared with the congregation the information I received from the couples I counseled.”

Bowers’ sermons used to be widely available online as podcasts when he ran a media ministry at the church but are getting more attention now, weeks ahead of the June 10 primary. They appear no longer to be available for downloading.

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From August 2000 until May 2012, Bowers was a pastor at the Columbia, S.C.-based Christ Church of the Carolinas. He is a non-denominational Christian.

Bowers’ son, Joel, said the sermon was delivered in 2001, nine months into his tenure as pastor of the church, pointing to comments he made in the recording referencing events from that year. However, in the full recording , Bowers referenced a Thursday banquet being held either on a Sept. 22 or 29 of that year. Of the years encompassing Bowers’ time as pastor, only in 2005 and 2011 did Sept. 22 or 29 correspond with a Thursday.

A representative said Bowers must have misspoken about the dates during his sermon.

As a Christian conservative in a Baptist-heavy state, Bowers could potentially end up in a runoff with Graham. While Graham is the heavy favorite to run away with his party’s nomination ahead of the primary, his six opponents are each vying to keep him under 50 percent of the vote and force him into a two-week runoff.

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Bowers raised $417,000 and has $384,000 in the bank since jumping into the race in February — a sizable haul in a short period of time but still only a fraction of the nearly $7 million Graham has left in his war chest.

Nevertheless, as the primary field has struggled to produce a viable challenger against Graham, some on the right have begun to look at Bowers.

“So Det Bowers is looking like he could be the strongest challenger to Lindsey Graham it seems,” Erick Erickson, founder of the conservative website Red State, tweeted on Thursday.

In a recent interview in Charleston, S.C., Graham wouldn’t talk specifically about his primary opponents. But he suggested that many of his opponents have baggage that could hurt other GOP candidates across the country — much the way Republican candidates Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana did last cycle when discussing their views on abortion and rape.

“Will they create an environment like we’ve had in Indiana and Missouri?” said Graham, who is vying for a third Senate term. “I think what people who would want to back them want to do is check them out. … I think the candidates — what I know about them — [prompt a] question for the party that is: Do they create issues for other candidates in other states? I’ll let individuals be the judge of that.”