Do Fundies Ever Divorce?

[Sister Mary Savage]

Okay, we know that fundies are some of the most anti-divorce people out there. However, what would happen if you were a fundie, submissive, subservient, and naive helpmate who one day was tossed to the curb because your patriarch decided "Fuck the wedding vows". What would one do in this situation?

[lawfulevil]

Be blamed for your headship leaving because you didn't submit enough. Starve.

[genericJname]

I can't remember the name or where to find the story but there was a big case where this happened. It was a woman who ran a homeschool newsletter and was a popular christian speaker who left her abusive husband and then started dating someone. A group of people in the industry colluded to get her blacklisted and destroyed her career, so the whole thing went to court.

[Witsec7]

Okay, we know that fundies are some of the most anti-divorce people out there. However, what would happen if you were a fundie, submissive, subservient, and naive helpmate who one day was tossed to the curb because your patriarch decided "Fuck the wedding vows". What would one do in this situation?

Adultery is the only excuse. Seppi's daughter is courting a divorced man with a child. Seppi did his own investigation and IIRC spoke to the mans minister to ensure that it was justifiable/legitimate under the heading of adultery. I think Sproul goes on and on about this in on of his writings.

[virginmojito]

Okay, we know that fundies are some of the most anti-divorce people out there. However, what would happen if you were a fundie, submissive, subservient, and naive helpmate who one day was tossed to the curb because your patriarch decided "Fuck the wedding vows". What would one do in this situation?

Everybody would blame YOU. Your fault if husband cheats on you. You were not obedient enough. You a re a failure as a wife. Bad example for your children! This, this all from all sides, friends turn against you, relatives look down on you, and even though it's you that has been unappreciated, cheated on, etc. Ultimately, the blame will be put on you!

I have seen this in plain non-religious families too. I just have to multiply it by approx. 150000 and that's the approx amt of guilt put on a woman who is left by her patriarch.

[Anxious Girl]

Fundie: Divorce? Good Christians don't divorce. It's just like Puritanical America. If your husband/wife dies, then you become a widow. Oh, but if you're a big strong patriarchal man whose wife has died, you get to remarry a young girl who's half your age.

[Austin]

Just an FYI: Sister Mary Savage is a sockpuppet of Luckylassie's. Another sockpuppet she had was kynzie_obannon.

[virginmojito]

Fundie: Divorce? Good Christians don't divorce. It's just like Puritanical America. If your husband/wife dies, then you become a widow. Oh, but if you're a big strong patriarchal man whose wife has died, you get to remarry a young girl who's half your age.

Ha... in many countries, STILL if a man leaves a woman, the woman IS expected to fight for him, want him to return, and think about how BADLY she did as a wife, how she failed.

[ADoyle90815]

I also think the woman would get all the blame, as she wasn't submissive enough so her husband decided to cheat. The woman would be shunned by both her church and her entire family as she's brought shame to everyone. It would have been better if the wife died because of complications from a homebirth or ectopic pregnancy than to shame everyone through divorce.

[Daenerys]

What about if your husband turned out to be having secret gay affairs? Would you be justified in leaving him then?

[GenerationCedarchip]

I can't remember the name or where to find the story but there was a big case where this happened. It was a woman who ran a homeschool newsletter and was a popular christian speaker who left her abusive husband and then started dating someone. A group of people in the industry colluded to get her blacklisted and destroyed her career, so the whole thing went to court.

That whole story was covered pretty well in Quiverfull by Kathryn Joyce. If I remember the name correctly, the woman was Cheryl Lindsey (now Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff). The vicious way that she was treated by Mary Pride and others really shocked me. There were folks from my old fundie church who were pretty deep into Mary Pride's circle and that whole episode was a side of things that you rarely see out in the open.

And yeah, I saw a few divorces in fundieland. Unless the guy was both cheating and a real jerk in the eyes of session (i.e. also beating the children, not coming to church, etc..), the wife was going to get looked down on big time. And if there was even an accusation that wife was cheating, she could get excommunicated.

[Austin]

Both James and Stacy McDonald, self-proclaimed paragons of fundie virtue, have been divorced from other people before this current marriage. They tried to play this down for years and look like shiny, happy, QF family. lol

[virginmojito]

What about if your husband turned out to be having secret gay affairs? Would you be justified in leaving him then?

Even if he had any kind of affairs. If he was a sadistic wacko who would beat his kids with a belt in high heels, or molest the children, the woman had to shut up, cover for him and make sure the kids shut up. The more respected the patriarch is, the more the people expect the mother to stick by him, even if he harms the children or is infidele.

[AnnieC 305]

Stacy McDonald says that divorced women should be considered the same as widows and be treated as such by the church.

yoursacredcalling.com/blog/2011/06/grace-widows-hope-and-healing-for-the-forsaken-part-1/

Which only proves to me that the bible can be used to justify anything.

[wtylcf]

Of the few very public examples of fundie divorce I've seen, there's usually an accompanying social ostracism and in some cases, a loss of faith or a radical redefinition of faith. Remember Bethany Torode? She's blogged frankly about the reasons for her divorce, which were due to spousal sexual abuse, and while she does still identify as Christian, she certainly isn't the conservative NFP advocate she once was.

One of my gateway fundies was Natalie Nyquist, whose initial divorce was tolerated by her YLCF social group as it was instigated by her husband, not by her. But when she was remarried under circumstances the other women didn't agree with, she found herself scrubbed from their blog. When the circumstances of her falling-out with YLCF were discussed at FreeJinger, Ashleigh Baker actually showed up to cast doubt on Natalie's mental health as if to say everyone should just ignore what she was saying, which was a completely dirty move that didn't go over well with anyone on the board. Natalie seems to have found comfort in identifying as Orthodox nowadays.

It seems most fundies would rather stick their heads in the sand and deny that sometimes divorce happens to good people and that some people are better off divorced than in an unhappy relationship. Right, if we were all perfect and godly, bad things would never happen to us. Some of 'em need to have a good re-read of the book of Job.

[LadyBBR]

Just an FYI: Sister Mary Savage is a sockpuppet of Luckylassie's. Another sockpuppet she had was kynzie_obannon.

I have missed Lucky Lassie. IIRC everyone jumped all over her when she shared the plot of a book she wanted to write about fundies and then she stopped coming here.

[Deleted07]

That young girl with the blog Autumn? she divorced when the husband became abusive and such... But from what I've read it was more him that wanted the divorce outright and that she seemed to be quite prepared to try and sort things out which is the freaking scariest part!!!

[fundiefan]

Yes, they divorce. They just deal with it differently than non fundies. They spin it, turn it inside out, explain it, excuse it and justify it with bible verses. Or even, in the one case I've watched play out with a fundie friend, turn themselves upside down and inside out the the point of ruining their lives in order to make their god say it is ok and they are innocent victims and have not sinned or gone against their chosen beliefs.

It's very, very sad. Divorce always sucks, even when warranted. It sucks even harder for fundies because they MAKE it suck, going to the ends of the earth to find a loophole in their bible and with their god and among their crowd They find it, of course, but they don't get to that point without fucking everything else up and losing everything else and sacrificing everything else. But none of that matters as long as they find a way to make peace between themselves and their god.

[YPestis]

Divorce is bad and should result in exile of the woman unless it happens to YOU. That's the impression I get from judgmental fundies. People such as the Maxwells are extremely judgmental and would probably think poorly of any women who is divorced. As far as these fundies are concerned, it's only an exception if they find their own loved ones in such a situation. The only walk a mile in others' shoes wasn't taught in their version of Christianity.....

[breadprincess]

I'm reading a book called The Spirit and the Flesh by James M. Ault Jr. about a fundamentalist Baptist church he studied and lived with for three years, and he writes that it's common for fundies to denounce divorce as evil and a sin in God's eyes, but tolerate it within their communities because they care for the people involved, so suddenly it just becomes another transgression in Heavenly Father's eyes for which one can be forgiven. Sort of a love the sinner, hate the sin approach. Pretty hypocritical if you ask me.

[bananacat]

My mom was raised Catholic and in her town, they would deal with something like this by not allowing the wife to officially divorce a deadbeat man. If he simply left and refused to stay with her, she would live as basically a single mom but would never, ever be allowed to sign divorce papers. It was a working-class church so out of practically most women worked to some extent, whether happily married or not. So if a perfect wife found her husband refusing to support her and refusing to live with her, then she would work and manage financially however she could, and never date or marry someone else unless she found out the deadbeat had died. She'd be a single mom in every way except in name.

[Kaylee]

What about if your husband turned out to be having secret gay affairs? Would you be justified in leaving him then?

Then you're screwed either way. If you leave, you're still stigmatized because you're divorced and if you were a good enough wife you would have turned him straight. If you stay, then you're "condoning his sin" and also to blame, with a big assumption that he would have never been gay or had an affair if you were really a good submissive wife. Oh, and if you ask for help or mention that he may be gay or cheating, you're sinning because you are gossiping and disrespecting your husband.

As for the other stuff, it depends. I went to a pretty extreme IFB college for a while and the dean of women was divorced. Her husband had been sort of a hotshot on campus, looked up to, and they were this model couple, until he ran off with a student. She was allowed to stay in her position and remarried and everyone was cool with it, even the head honchos at the school and the church it was attached to. OTOH, I have a relative who was part of this same crowd, graduated from the same college, and divorced her husband after he went to jail for molesting his mentally retarded adult sister - he was physically abusive to his wife and her children, cheated on her and gave her an STD, and was just all around scum. She was treated like dirt, lost most of her friends, was shunned at church and told it was her fault for marrying a man with poor character.

To be fair though, I've also seen fundie men treated pretty badly after divorce. One guy I know of was a preacher and fairly well known in certain circles. He pastored a church, was published in a lot of newsletters, and did a lot of preaching at revivals and things. He was also a genuinely nice guy and wasn't as judgmental as he was probably expected to be - he stood by another friend of mine who left fundamentalism and got into all sorts of things for a while, because he knew friendship was more important than trying to bully him into living his way. Anyway, the man's wife left him and he lost his job and most of his friends because he was now divorced.

Another guy I know is one of those people who probably should have been a pastor, and he wanted to (he cares a lot for people and he is really smart and has a better grasp of theology than a lot of people in ministry) and says he even felt called to at one time, but he married his high school sweetheart and she left him. This was 15+ years ago, and he is now married with a family, but would never be able to do any sort of ministry in the type of church he grew up in because he is divorced.

[koolmom]

I can't remember the name or where to find the story but there was a big case where this happened. It was a woman who ran a homeschool newsletter and was a popular christian speaker who left her abusive husband and then started dating someone. A group of people in the industry colluded to get her blacklisted and destroyed her career, so the whole thing went to court.

I think that might have been Cheryl (middle name unknown) Seelhoff, a very famous home-schooling mother who had a newsletter, but is now like Vyckie Garrison, has a blog like NLQ. I nearly forgot about her, much check her out to see what she's been up to!

[Sydney Fox]

Divorce is bad and should result in exile of the woman unless it happens to YOU. That's the impression I get from judgmental fundies. People such as the Maxwells are extremely judgmental and would probably think poorly of any women who is divorced. As far as these fundies are concerned, it's only an exception if they find their own loved ones in such a situation. The only walk a mile in others' shoes wasn't taught in their version of Christianity.....

So what do you think Steve Maxwell would do if (if he ever marries one of his daughters off) one of his girls gets abused by their husband? Would he go all Rambo on the SIL? Pray with him? Would he ever let his daughters divorce? It's all nice to say they don't believe in divorce if they have no experience with abusive husbands. Well, except for Steve of course. ;)

[bananacat]

So what do you think Steve Maxwell would do if (if he ever marries one of his daughters off) one of his girls gets abused by their husband? Would he go all Rambo on the SIL? Pray with him? Would he ever let his daughters divorce? It's all nice to say they don't believe in divorce if they have no experience with abusive husbands. Well, except for Steve of course. ;)

Steve is already abusive so he would probably give the SIL a pat on the back for being such a dominant and commanding manly man. If it was bad enough that even Steve couldn't deny it, he would "encourage" his daughter to be forgiving and more submissive, and to try to work things out no matter what. He would tell her to try to avoid triggers, and if it was physical abuse that she couldn't avoid, he would tell her that it's nothing compared to the pain Jesus went through on the cross, or compared to the eternal pain she'd have in Hell if she divorced.