Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Divorce and the Church

Steve Scott has written a very insightful piece on the sin of the church regarding divorce.

From that piece:

There's a line of thinking in some strains of fundamentalist Christianity, a foul smelling doctrine of marriage, divorce and remarriage that makes anybody who has ever been divorced - even if they were the unwilling innocent (and willing reconciling) party in a marriage that was broken by the other person - an equivalent of the disease leprosy. Toss every imaginable sock of sin into the washing machine with the bleach of Jesus' blood, and out come the socks of murder, lying, theft, abuse, drug addiction, harlotry, whoredom, profanity, all pure white. Yet the socks of divorce and being divorced remain soiled. For many in the church, divorce is treated quite literally as the unpardonable sin and a dead end roadblock to any advance whatsoever in the Christian life. Divorcees, no matter how innocent, have the scarlet letter "D" tattooed branded on them, and are banned from remarriage, fellowship, even simple conversation with members of the opposite gender.
God is judging churches that retain this sin when it should never have been retained.

Just thought you would want to know.

1 comment:

Antonio's Theatre Reviews said...

I'm so glad that you posted this. So many people struggle with this topic every day. And it only seems to be harder to deal with on Sundays.
On firstwivesworld.com some Christian women of divorce have started a support group. I thought you might be interested in seeing it. You need to be a member in order to view the content and membership is free. Here is the link:

http://community.firstwivesworld.com/?page=groups/view&GRID=23

Here is also a great article on spirituality and divorce:

http://www.firstwivesworld.com/resources/resource-articles/spiritual-perspective-divorce

All my best,
Antonio