BATON ROUGE, La. (RNS) Only about 1 percent of Louisiana couples married between 1997-2007 chose covenant marriages that require premarital counseling and make divorces harder to obtain, according to state data.

The Department of Health and Hospitals, the state agency that keeps track of marriage licenses, said that in the 11-year period 390,893 marriage licenses were issued but only 4,112 — 1.05 percent — were for covenant marriages.

Louisiana was the first state to enact a covenant marriage law in 1997 and was followed by Arizona and Arkansas. Several states considered similar laws but have not passed them, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, a clearinghouse for legislative information.

Katherine Spaht, a professor emeritus at the Louisiana State University Law Center who helped draft the law 12 years ago, said “The numbers are not at all where they should be. . . . There has been a failure of the clergy to embrace it and promote it.”

Spaht and Gene Mills, director of the Family Forum of Louisiana, said the number may be higher because the state does not track the “converted licenses,” those issued to couples who had a traditional license but then got a covenant marriage license and had a second ceremony performed.

Mills said he may use his seat on Gov. Bobby Jindal’s Commission on Marriage and Family to promote covenant marriages and get clergy to refocus on it.

Sen. Sharon Weston Broome, D-Baton Rouge, who chairs the commission, said the law “should not be abandoned or scrapped.”

“If we have more of a unified effort from the ministers and the people who administer the license, we may have higher numbers,” she said.

When the bill was going through the Legislature 12 years ago, the Catholic bishops of the state did not endorse or oppose the bill, contending all marriages should be covenant marriages for life. They also reiterated the church’s opposition to divorce, which is still possible under a covenant marriage in some circumstances.

The state’s covenant marriage law requires couples to receive premarital instructions and undergo counseling before they can seek a divorce. A couple in most cases have to wait two years for the divorce to be final after they have been living apart, longer than the six months required for a traditional divorce.

A covenant marriage can be dissolved when one of the partners has committed adultery, there is a question of physical or sexual abuse of a child or spouse, one spouse has committed a felony or has been sentenced to death, or one of the spouses has abandoned the marriage for at least a year and refuses to return or seek counseling.