{"id":22659,"date":"2018-10-23T21:46:46","date_gmt":"2018-10-24T03:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rolltodisbelieve\/?p=22659"},"modified":"2018-11-02T15:08:29","modified_gmt":"2018-11-02T21:08:29","slug":"the-husband-hunt-an-evangelical-horror-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rolltodisbelieve\/2018\/10\/23\/the-husband-hunt-an-evangelical-horror-story\/","title":{"rendered":"The Husband Hunt: An Evangelical Horror Story"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Conservative Christian leaders have sold their female followers a bill of goods about marriage. Today, I\u2019ll show you what that bill of goods contains, and how it\u2019s hurt the women who believe it. It\u2019s a horror story that beats werewolves, vampires, ghosts, and goblins\u2013because it\u2019s real, and it\u2019s happening right now to millions of women<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Mawwiage is what bwings us togevvah today. (www.NandoFoto.com<\/a>, CC<\/a>.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nOur Heroines.<\/h2>\n***
** ***A while ago, I found myself reading a bunch of Christian women\u2019s blogs. And they all dealt with the same problems, and their authors all fit into the same general mold.<\/p>\n

These women were all in their mid-30s, sometimes even in their late 30s. They were smart-alecks, or they were passionate, or they were perceptive. They seemed quirky and off-beat and full of laughter. Of course, they all expressed deep devotion to Christianity and firm belief in the religion\u2019s many claims. These were the type of Christian women who use phrases like\u00a0a beautiful mess<\/em><\/a> without a hint of dark humor. Overall, they fell well outside of what they viewed with disdain as\u00a0worldly<\/em> standards of beauty.<\/p>\n

Now, these women weren\u2019t courtship-type Christians<\/a>. They rejected those awful Patriarchy and Quiverfull Christian-cult<\/a> nutjob ideas. We\u2019re talking about more like the kind of Christian women who go to conventions and \u201cdo life<\/a>\u201d and adore authors like Jen Hatmaker<\/a> and Rachel Held Evans<\/a>.\u00a0They wear big hats<\/a> and funky jewelry<\/a> and take selfies with duckface<\/a> to highlight how\u00a0wacky<\/em>\u00a0they are.<\/p>\n

Maybe they even accept marriage equality.<\/p>\n

Yes, almost certainly they do<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Most of all, they inhabit an environment that fully endorses the idea of dating and marrying for love, just saddled with a number of weird ideas about supernatural agents behind the scenes.<\/p>\n

What I describe here represents the lead-in to the horror story:<\/strong> the flawed and cracked beginning, the small misunderstanding that becomes earth-shattering in the last act, the tiny detail that reveals itself at the end as the linchpin of the Rube Goldberg-style<\/a> trap that destroys the heroine just as she thinks she\u2019s escaped her doom.<\/p>\n

The Grand Similarity.<\/h2>\n*****
** At the time, I didn\u2019t quite connect that I was seeing the lead-in to a horror story, though. Their similarities simply startled me. And out of all their similarities, the most common trait they shared was what they wanted most in their lives<\/em>.<\/p>\n
** They all ached to have that vision of the Happy Christian Family. <\/strong><\/p>\n
** *****They wanted the whole enchilada: mom, dad, a pack of noisy and curious kids, and oh, yes, generational links forged and passed down and perpetuated. Ultimately, they wanted a close-knit family life, one they all built together and shared in joy, one that could endure sorrows without number.<\/p>\n

Their leaders have pushed this vision for\u00a0generations<\/em>. Their media praises it. Everything in their culture teaches exactly the same thing: woman<\/em>, therefore craves this ideal<\/em>. A woman who\u00a0doesn\u2019t<\/em> want that vision soon finds herself regarded with suspicion if not outright condemnation. I know. I\u2019ve lived through the retaliation they inflict<\/a> when they even suspect that a woman doesn\u2019t<\/em> want that life.<\/p>\n

These<\/em> women stood in no danger of facing any of that \u201cChristian love,\u201d however.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Ticking Clock.<\/h2>\n*******
** *******Of course, our heroines knew that their fantasies came with a time limit.\u00a0But the situation was far more dire than they\u2019d imagined. The curtain had begun to drape down across their window of opportunity.<\/p>\n

And yet they had no street-legal way to conceive children without a husband. That\u2019s really where the bottleneck was, for them. Most of them had never even had a serious boyfriend. And they\u2019d either gone through a string of men who hadn\u2019t turned into boyfriends or husbands, or had\u00a0tried<\/em> to acquire a life partner<\/a> but gotten a well-rehearsed deflection speech instead. It ran a bit like this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

You\u2019re a great woman and one day I know the Lord will make some man blissfully happy to have you as a wife. But I\u2019ve prayed about this, and unfortunately I\u2019m just not the one the Lord intends for you.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

And it kept happening.<\/p>\n

Over their lifetimes, these women had forged what felt like to them was a terrific, affirming form of Christianity.<\/p>\n

They just hadn\u2019t made any romantic connections<\/a> with the men who interested them, that\u2019s all.<\/p>\n

As I read their blogs, I heard a faint thrumming noise in my mind that I couldn\u2019t identify\u2013at first. Softly it thudded just beyond the limits of my hearing. Shadowing every word I read were the sweeping and unstoppable hands of a clock whose ticking counted down moments as they passed.<\/p>\n

The Slow Realization.<\/h2>\n*********
** At first, these Christian women bloggers hadn\u2019t been too worried by what was happening.<\/p>\n
** After all, they all<\/em> believed\u2013full stop and without any reservations\u2013that Jesus Christ himself would find them husbands. Oh yes! He would drop those astonished men into the waiting laps of their future wives\u2013at the right time.<\/p>\n
** *********But something was wrong.<\/p>\n

Their friends who\u2019d won the brass ring and golden ticket uniformly acted like that\u2019s how everything had gone down<\/a>. They insisted that it was just pure luck\u2013divine intervention\u2013the will of their god<\/a>. Worst of all, they reinforced the failed teachings of the tribe, promising women that if they would only rededicate themselves to following the rules, they\u2019d find what they sought. At least, they might. If nothing else, they\u2019d at least escape harm at the hands of\u00a0worldly<\/em> men.<\/p>\n

It must be galling to be a single Christian woman and encounter so many married women<\/a> daring to lecture them about how to\u00a0totally<\/em> find TRUE CHRISTIAN\u2122 husbands.<\/p>\n

The only thing worse might be seeing married Christian men<\/em> going that route.\u00a0Behold a case in point:<\/p>\n