The Project

How do individuals experience divorce through religious practice and community? How are faith communities responding to divorce and uncoupling?

I have spent four years listening to stories of searching for spiritual healing and supportive congregational networks during separation and divorce. I have interviewed religious leaders and divorced individuals from Evangelical and Mainline Protestantism; Catholicism; Black Baptist congregations; Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist Judaism; and Unitarian Universalism. I have also attended support groups and special religious events for the divorced in many of these communities.

I want to introduce here some of the rituals and practices for divorced members that I have found beyond one-on-one ministerial counseling. I outline some of my research to date in each tradition, preliminary findings regarding major challenges and issues faced by religious communities as they attempt to provide formal practices for the divorced, and a list of selective resources that leaders and divorced individuals found useful in each tradition.

My research is clearly not representative of all religious experience, but my findings do provide a window into the number and kind of approaches at work in U.S. religious communities. Admittedly, I hope in this preliminary report to promote confidence that an attention to how individuals experience divorce within their religious communities has the potential to strengthen faith and families, as well as enhance religious membership, participation, and congregational life. I hope it will inspire the continuation, creation, and support for meaningful practice.

I have found many efforts in faith communities to transform what is often a devastating life event into an opportunity to grow stronger in faith and religious community. Yet, there is no question that the lingering shame and stigma surrounding divorce deeply influences a person's religious experience. In most cases, the rituals and practices I found were borne despite persistent cultural and congregational silence and stigma. In one memorable exchange with an elderly Conservative rabbi, as I questioned him about the construction of divorce ritual, he answered, "Why would we want a ritual for a plague?"

I sensed consistent concern on the part of some religious leaders that creating new rituals and practices for the divorced might somehow sanction and encourage relationship dissolution.

And yet, as they faced the end of what was supposed to be a sacred, life-long union, many members of these congregations worked to embrace practices that reinforced acceptance from and full participation in their faith. They embraced the idea, well put by Rabbi Perry Netter (2002: 112), author of Divorce is a Mitzvah, that "to make order out of chaos is a highly religious act." They took seriously the Evangelical Christian DivorceCare program suggestion that "the emotional support you need [in getting through divorce] comes from your spiritual life being stable first." And perhaps most significant to those who see the creation of divorce practices as a portent of marriage devaluation, the majority of these members and their religious leaders unquestionably reaffirmed marriage and sacred life partnerships as they worked to heal, forgive, and begin anew.