citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, morality, Spiritual Warfare, Substantive Due Process

Sorry, But 50/50 Shared Parenting Won’t Solve the Constitutional Problem Or Help Raise Better Kids

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Then two women who were harlots came to the king and stood before him.   The one woman said, “Oh, my lord,  this woman and I live in the same house; and I gave birth to a child while she was in the house. 18 It happened on the third day after I gave birth, that this woman also gave birth to a child, and we were together. There was no stranger with us in the house, only the two of us in the house.  This woman’s son died in the night, because she lay on it.   So she arose in the middle of the night and took my son from beside me while your maidservant slept, and laid him in her bosom, and laid her dead son in my bosom.  When I rose in the morning to nurse my son, behold, he was dead; but when I looked at him carefully in the morning, behold, he was not my son, whom I had borne.”   Then the other woman said, “No! For the living one is my son, and the dead one is your son.” But the first woman said, “No! For the dead one is your son, and the living one is my son.” Thus they spoke before the king.

Then the king said, “ The one says, ‘This is my son who is living, and your son is the dead one’; and the other says, ‘No! For your son is the dead one, and my son is the living one.’”   The king said, “Get me a sword.” So they brought a sword before the king.    The king said, “Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.”   Then the woman whose child was the living one spoke to the king, for she was deeply stirred over her son and said, “Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and by no means kill him.” But the other said, “He shall be neither mine nor yours; divide him!”    Then the king said, “Give the first woman the living child, and by no means kill him. She is his mother.”   When all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had [o]handed down, they feared the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to [p]administer justice.  
–  1 Kings 3:16-27

Back in biblical times, sons were a big deal, even to “ladies of the night”, because sons were a means of longterm survival if there was no husband in the picture.    It was on this basis that Judah’s widowed daughter-in-law repaid his treachery toward her by masquerading as a prostitute to get him to impregnate her, and when it was all said and done, he remarked that she was more righteous than he (duh!)    Anyone who has been to “family court” knows that not much has changed:  sons and daughters often translate into cash flow of varying reliability, courtesy of the court, for some women, and a few men as well, not to even mention some abusive state entities.    It’s understandable, then, that the parent who’s ordered to provide the cash flow would so much rather have parenting time instead.   Who can blame them?     Given that the states also get Federal payola in the form of Title IV-D payments for collecting those child support payments, we now have those babies being divided three ways in “family court”, instead of in half as proposed in Solomon’s court.

There are lots of videos out there describing this ugly underbelly of Big Divorce, a $100 billion per year industry, that additionally costs state and Federal taxpayers another $100+ billion each year in transferred social costs from unilateral “no-fault” forced divorce laws.   While we pointedly disagree with some of the spelling, and the conclusion, the facts and statistics are well-presented in this expose‘.  

Trust us when we say that our empathies are always with the innocent Respondent who was forced into “family court” against their will and conscience, when they never did anything to harm their children or family.    The typical situation:

Connie Covetous marries Billy Beergut, both previously single, but perhaps they were involved premaritally or cohabited first.    Connie finishes school, has a couple of kids, and goes to work in a job making around what Billy makes.   It’s still not enough to keep up with HGTV and the Travel Channel, and Billy doesn’t feel compelled to climb the economic ladder to make enough for upward mobility.   She’s exhausted.  He’s enjoying their kids and his hobbies.    Connie starts complaining about Billy to a male coworker she admires, who is climbing the ladder and doing all the things to improve himself that she wishes Billy were doing.    The male colleague complains back about his wife who “is taking him for granted”.    The two become involved and promise each other to divorce their respective spouses.   Under our legal system, it doesn’t matter whether or not those now-surplus spouses consent from the curb.   The unilateral petitions will be granted 100% of the time, and a reason doesn’t have to be given.     Neither discarded spouse does consent,  so Billy is dragged into court, and he’s ordered to pay child support and become a part-time father, by an imperious “black-robe” perched above him.    Now Connie’s household income is four times his, and he’s evicted from the family home to boot.   Close to 70% of unilateral divorce petitions are filed by women in the United States, as even the divorce attorneys tell us.  Only two states require mutual consent for “no-fault” divorce grounds, and technically only one state, Mississippi, has laws that don’t eventually enable a forced divorce against the consent of an innocent partner.    

Is mandated 50-50 shared parenting really in the best interest of the child?    That depends.   Is it right for even 1% of the children’s time to be spent under Connie’s adulterous roof?    Arguably, not!    The trauma of remarriage has been shown in studies to be even worse for child outcomes than just the divorce, if the children are exposed to the legalized adultery partner.    If Billy B. becomes a “stander”,  and does not remarry or take on a girlfriend, the childrens’ outcomes will be better than if both parents remarry and are materially well off, no matter how little he’s allowed to see the kids.    The kids will see the day-in, day-out moral example their father sets in honoring his marriage vows in the most difficult of circumstances, i.e., immoral civil paper ordering him not to honor those vows to protect and cherish.  If, on the other hand, both parents are living in some form of state-licensed or unlicensed adultery, and that’s the forward plan, neither home is any better than the other for the kids, and they will be raised to believe adultery is an unavoidable cultural norm, that nothing in life is that reliable, and they will probably even avoid marriage as adults, having the next generation of kids out of wedlock.

If  we go back to 1968 and earlier, we didn’t have these societal issues to any meaningful degree because we had fault-based custody decisions.    That system worked well, and the reason it did has already been explained.    That system was also much cheaper for the taxpayers of the day (some grandparents will actually remember when we used to balance our state and Federal budgets), and it helped our constitutional republic to thrive because we always raised a majority of solid, moral citizens in sufficient numbers to sustain it.    Today that’s rapidly breaking down into cries for socialism among the children of this regime – as if unilateral, forced divorce isn’t already socialism, but clearly, blanket 50/50 shared parenting isn’t the answer from the sociological perspective.  It’s only one more layer of socialism, transferring resources from the virtuous to the less virtuous on both a micro and macro level.   (“standerinfamilycourt” is only coincidentally in agreement with the legal vultures of the “family court” regime on this one issue.   Hopefully that won’t happen again.)

Let’s now look at it from the fundamental rights perspective, and the longstanding legal precedents that have come down under the  Bill of Rights.    The growing number of shared parenting activists out there are correct that there are due process and equal protection issues involved here, under the 14th amendment.    But it’s not necessarily because they aren’t given the same amount of parenting time as the custodial parent, unless both parents are guilty of some equally grievous infraction against the marriage, the safety of the home, or the moral development of the children.     In fact, the guy in the video is technically arguing against his own core argument, in a sort of laughable double-speak.   For example, at ~5:30 minutes he says,

“creation of the ‘best interest of the children’ state statutes was unconstitutional!  And a lie.  They are vague value judgements (sic) and cannot be used until after harm to a child has been proven.”   

On the contrary, SIFC would humbly propose that the mere filing of a unilateral divorce petition on “no-fault” grounds is prima facie evidence of harm to the child, as well as to grandchildren, both born and unborn.   Under those circumstances, it should be a rebuttable presumption that the Petitioner(s) should not get more than supervised visitation, and no overnights, or whatever differing arrangement they mutually agree with the other spouse.    That’s equal protection under the law, and the “best interest of the child”, friends.   (Sword held at a respectful and safe distance from the baby.)    SIFC does agree that the principle of Parens Patriae ~7:10  is definitionally incompatible with “no-fault” because an asserted fault must be established for this power of the state to apply, and that it has been rampantly abused by state courts,  which are acting ministerially for legislatures who enacted the entire gamut of “no-fault” laws (not just grounds statutes) unconstitutionally.

The looting of the system evolved over time, escalating dramatically in the 1980’s.    The violation of civil rights and constitutional precedent occurring at the first hearing, which this gentleman refers to ~8:10  actually consists of reducing the parental authority of the non-filing spouse below 100% unless there’s some fault basis!   And the burden should be on the Petitioning side to prove this under the normal standards of evidence.   On the other hand, even if it’s 50/50, the innocent spouse’s civil rights are already being violated by 50% – half the maimed, spiritually dead baby, so to speak.   The constitutional issue this gentleman speaks of still remains under his split-the-baby approach, whether he’s being deprived of 50% of this parental sovereignty or 90% of it.    Admittedly, 50% is financially less burdensome than 90% in terms of child support, but that’s really a separate property-taking issue, which is also better-adjudicated under a fault-basis.    Under a proper repeal of non-consensual divorce on “no-fault” grounds, the divorce simply would not be granted unless the parents came to binding terms on all such matters so that nobody is forfeiting, nor being deprived of, their fundamental 14th amendment protections.

To be sure, most of the proposed legislation before legislatures in many states call for a “rebuttable presumption” that this is in the child’s best interest,  something that is likely to prove to be utterly meaningless “window dressing” in practice, given the rampant judicial corruption throughout the family court system, and the high hurdles to court access that most of us experience, should the need arise to rebut the presumption.   This will be a mere band-aid on a pustulent boil that needs full lancing and draining.    It appears that the industrial family law machine and its lobbyists are somewhat split on the issue, looking as they always do through their primary lens:  impact on longterm fee revenue.    A few firms embrace it, realizing that nothing is ever really final.    Most stand vehemently opposed, proving that pushing through forced divorces quickly, then litigating over children and support collections for years thereafter is the optimal business model.    We should keep an eye on the trend in state enactment threat, those of us who hope to abolish non-consensual “no-fault” decrees altogether.    Strategically, in the face of enactment of a law that has pretty strong public sympathy,  as 50/50 shared parenting has, and seems inevitable — as a matter not of if but when, might there come a day when under those changed circumstances, we could start to persuade the “family law” lobby that forced faultless divorces are no longer in their business interest?   Are they aware from their own market research that 80% of unilateral “no-fault” divorces in the U.S. aren’t really mutual, nor over “irreconcilable differences” other than adultery or the desire to pursue adultery legally?

“standerinfamilycourt” is aware that this post is not going to sit well with those who are already-divorced and not looking back, possibly “remarried”, strapped with child support payments and either alienated from their children, or allowed too little time with them.   That sucks.   Unfortunately, it boils down to the same choice you would have made for their sake if you were civilly still in that marriage.  There would be no one on the side, for their sake, with or without the subsequent civil paper condoning it.    You’d be on your knees taking your complaint to the Lord about any and all barriers to your being the parent He appointed you to be.     You’d be sacrificing and laying down your life in order to raise them right, since you only get one shot at it.   The Lord would see this and, in His time, move mountains in your behalf.

Here’s what the Righteous Judge says about the best interest of the child:

And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me;  but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.  Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!

“If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be cast into the eternal fire.    If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than to have two eyes and be cast into the   fiery hell.

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven continually see the face of My Father who is in heaven. For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost.”

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!

Discipleship, Lost culture, morality, Spiritual Warfare

Open Letter to All Self-Appointed Marriage Theologians

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Response by Standerinfamilycourt

Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment.    –  James 3:1

A covenant marriage stander recently posted an urgent request to a marriage permanence Facebook group to “set her straight”, referring to a young lady with close to 2,000 followers who posted a “Note” entitled as above.      Most of us know that no other topic on the face of the planet today generates more instant theologians.    The transformative power of this topic on just about anybody and everybody is legendary, to say the very least.

It’s not that “standerinfamilycourt” believes someone must attend or graduate from bible school or seminary to write authoritatively on the indissolubility of holy matrimony.    On the contrary, the more typical experience, over the past 150 years or so, is that such an educational component actually ruins its graduates and steers them far away from the Spirit-driven biblical truth, unless the Holy Spirit is very persistent in pursuing them and changing their heart.    However, it seems reasonable that a person needs to either come from an exceptionally excellent discipling home in their youth, or they need to have lived long enough in adult life to have taken on some significant discipleship challenges before they are very likely to know whereof they speak.    A fair impression concerning a young person, therefore, who has 2,000 followers and no other disclosed connection to ministry or background is, more likely than not, she’s doing a whole bunch of ear-tickling.    The last thing we need in Christendom is an Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez personality creating a fifth gospel, lecturing and labeling as “legalist” anyone who declines to adopt it!

SIFC told this complaining stander that, after having read the Note, it is indeed erroneous on most of its points, but with no prior connection with this young lady, and no indication (since she lists herself as “single”) that her soul is in imminent peril from being herself in an adulterous legalized union, it does not seem appropriate to invade her wall for the purpose of spanking her in front of her followers.   Now, somebody with a very public ministry and half a million followers, which merchandizes heresy and pockets the proceeds, is definitely a different kind of case.    In this complained-of case, this open letter will need to suffice.

Dear Amateur Theologian:
Social media is a wonderful thing, affording opportunities that many of us would never have, otherwise, to make our voice heard to the masses.    “Standerinfamilycourt” is not going to say that’s a bad thing, necessarily, but rather, that when it comes to our parallel life in the kingdom of God, it is a fearsomely responsible thing.
Our response to your Note of January 1, 2019 will linger in Luke, chapter 12 where Jesus says this:

“The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

One advantage of youth and lack of experience is that more often than not, youthful exegetes will fit into the second grace category, but not indefinitely.     That you can persuade close to 2,000 people to read your personal Note on your Facebook wall is very impressive, indeed.   It would be even more impressive if that influence could be harnessed for the kingdom of God to pull people from the broad path that everyone wants to be on, but whose destination (Christ tells us) is destruction, over to the narrow path which requires us to lay our own lives down in this life, so consequently few want to be on that path but nevertheless its destination is eternal life.   Even so, you clearly have a bright future as (perhaps) a writer for a “Christian” publication like Crosstalk where you can secure an even larger audience, as you hone your excellent writing skills and increase their commercial circulation.   Indeed, most of us would say that you have been given much.
“I’m not writing this note to espouse an opinion.   My heart is simply to bring some clarity to what the Scripture actually says, means, and requires of us”,   you say. 
You’re way ahead, my dear, perceiving already that popular Christian writers aren’t so presumptuous as to share truths or, even worse, moral absolutes.   No, they’re endlessly humble and so they share “hearts”.    That alone, will take you much further than someone who says, “thus saith the Lord.”   However, we’d respectfully challenge that anything that doesn’t actually line up with “thus saith the Lord” is by definition…an opinion.   Clarity is as clarity does, after all.
In addition to your very correct observation that … “It is too important a matter to leave to some surface, passive reading of scripture and neglect the diligent study required to come to an accurate understanding of God’s original intent”, you deserve additional kudos for recognizing the continuum between antinomianism and legalism (“So, it was no surprise to see both legalism and antinomianism manifested in many views concerning marriage. “)   This (accused) “legalist’s” main contribution to this conversation will be to hopefully bring your understanding of legalism more into alignment with what Christ told us the spirit of Phariseeism is.    We’re quite sure that you wouldn’t want to fall into antinomianism unintentionally, by misunderstanding what actually constitutes “legalism” in the kingdom of God!   
If it won’t overly offend you, we won’t directly link to that Note of yours, since attempting to refute hermeneutical errors point-by-point would make this post very long and boring , but we would like to give our readers a rough overall outline of its contents and, speaking as an unabashed “legalist” by your measuring stick,  answer a few of your main points.  Fair enough?
“Note” High-Level Outline:
(1) SAMT’s notion of covenant, and assertion that the marriage covenant is conditional and can be “broken”
(2) SAMT’s notion of marriage rights & duties / Failure to fulfill these
(3) SAMT’s notion of “biblical grounds for divorce”
(4) SAMT’s application of Deuteronomy and other Mosaic laws to marriage and divorce today
(5) SAMT’s assertion that there’s a difference between biblical references to divorces and “sending away”
(6) SAMT’s inferences from Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well
CONCERNING BIBLICAL COVENANT (Point 1):
Our young Note-writer (hereafter, let’s call you “SAMT” : self-appointed marriage theologian) spends considerable time in the Garden of Eden recounting the creation basis of the first wedding, and asserts that the essential element of covenant is, therefore “do not be unequally yoked”, citing  2 Corinthians 6:14-18.    You show in your version of this, “SAMT” that you profoundly misunderstand who the respective parties to the biblical marriage covenant actually are.  “SAMT”, you imagine that the parties are simply the husband and the wife, which is the humanist view and is natural enough if you weren’t paying any attention to what Jesus, and the prophet Malachi said about that.
Jesus told us that entrance by consent into a holy matrimony union by witnessed vows results in God’s hand creating a new entity, declaring they are never again two but one-flesh, and closing off any human’s ability to dissolve or sever that entity other than by physical death.    This new entity is the inferior party to the holy matrimony covenant.   So then, who exactly is the superior party?   Malachi informs us that the superior party is God Himself.
So where, then, does the notion come from that there’s a superior and an inferior party to every biblical covenant?    It actually comes from ancient near-eastern culture, where covenants were absolutely binding on the more powerful of the two parties, even if the less powerful party had difficulty honoring their end.    In fact, that was the whole point in making a covenant in the first place, there was a weaker party who might not keep up his or her end.     In Genesis 15, Moses gives the account of how God illustrated this to Abram, just before he got his new name, Abraham:

And He said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it.”  He said, “O Lord God, how may I know that I will possess it?” So He said to him, “Bring Me a three year old heifer, and a three year old female goat, and a three year old ram, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”  Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, and laid each half opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds.   The birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abram drove them away. Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him.    God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years.  But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age….It came about when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces.   On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying,
“To your descendants I have given this land,
From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates…”

Obviously, God deliberately yoked Himself with an unequal covenant mate here.   He did not require terrified Abram to walk between the split carcasses – He had to do so Himself!  Later, He commanded Hosea to be unequally yoked to a prostitute in holy matrimony, although the walked-out marriage was anything but holy until Hosea redeemed Gomer, his God-joined one-flesh off the slave block.   Hosea serves as a type, a foreshadowing of Jesus’ role.    “SAMT”, if you’d like to learn more in-depth about biblical covenant,  and about the nature of the God-joined one-flesh entity, please click here, and here.    Your version is taken out of context, “SAMT” and in fact is a subtle mix of Christo-feminism, and long-winded excuses not to obey Christ’s most basic commandments, which do not actually exempt our one-flesh spouse and which include:
– do not take your own revenge
– do not demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth
– if you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven
– do not live for self
–  do not drag a fellow believer before a pagan court
The upshot of all of this, “SAMT”:  since God is one of the parties to the marriage covenant of our youth, and He has never once, in all of biblical history, ever failed to uphold His end of an unconditional covenant He was a party to, the marriage covenant can certainly be violated by the inferior party (and perhaps even by both husband and wife), but it is absolutely not possible for the marriage covenant to be broken, contrary to your humanistic assertion.    You say you are “single”,  and do you plan to exchange conditional wedding vows someday?   “I might”, rather than “I do”?  If that’s your plan, you are not actually consenting to holy matrimony, and as a consequence, God who knows your heart, will not create sarx mia , the supernatural one-flesh entity of holy matrimony.   That might sound good to you, since you’d apparently rather shuck an unsatisfactory spouse in the name of Jesus, but your union will be no better than married gays or than today’s abundance of remarriage adulterers.   If this is “harsh” and “judgmental” to you, then take it up with Him.    The people you disagree with didn’t write the bible!

Picture Credit:  Sharon Henry
MARRIAGE RIGHTS, DUTIES AND DEFAULTS (Point 2)
Says “SAMT” of this topic:
“God’s intent for marriage is that the two become one, and that they love and care for their spouse. Under the old covenant law, a husband had the responsibility to provide for the basic needs for his wife. If he did not do so, but he withheld any of these things from her she was free to go. She was released from the covenant because he did not keep it.” 
As if Jesus never bothered to deliver the sermon on the mount, “SAMT” you look to the Mosaic law to define the rights, duties and remedies for defaults in marriage, and you insist that this remains the standard for Christ-followers.   Your theory shows a considerable misunderstanding, even of Mosaic law.   The above quote, taking scripture seriously out context, does not refer at all to God-joined holy matrimony.   What you have latched onto refers to Moses’ attempt to regulate the practice of taking a concubine slave in addition to a God-joined covenant wife, in other words, the concurrent form of polygamy.   You quote Exodus 21:10-11 :
If he takes to himself another woman, he may not reduce her food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights.   If he will not do these three things for her, then she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.
What was the “money” involved?   Her usual slave price to go free was waived.   Our budding theologian somehow infers from this that a contemporary covenant wife may divorce her husband, despite everything both Christ and Paul clearly, specifically and repeatedly said to the contrary, after Jesus completely abrogated the Mosaic regulations for His higher law, and despite the fact that no woman under the Hebrew patriarchy ever had any right to divorce her husband for any reason.    In doing this, “SAMT”, you ignore the effects of testing your theory by applying the hermeneutical principles of Culture and Comparison, and you twist the Content to suit your desired outcome.   You did not Consult the writings of the early church fathers to see what they said to the contrary because they were echoing Christ and Paul.   “SAMT”, it can’t be said often enough, that anything at all written about MDR isn’t even worth reading unless it is written in such a way that it demonstrates that these principles have been faithfully applied.   Otherwise, the integrity of this topic soon gives way to feelings, emotions, lust and ideologies, typically humanism and feminism.
Do we have something that resembles the concubinage situation described in Exodus 21 today?   Yes, indeed we do!   It’s the consecutive polygamy of remarriage adultery, in fact.   Today’s  equivalent instruction for regulating this immorality, with the exception of “conjugal rights” (since Jesus made clear that such relations were continuously sinful):  voluntarily provide for this adultery partner and any non-covenant children when you must separate from him or her to end the ongoing sexual sin.
We have to agree with you, “SAMT” in what you say next.   Indeed, 1 Corinthians 7 is the “go-to” chapter in the New Testament for the rights and duties of marriage, with three important caveats, which we hope you didn’t miss:

(1) the rights and duties are strictly to one’s own spouse, the one God inseverably joined you to for life, not somebody else’s

(2) there is a male and female in each status being addressed, with this symmetry continuing throughout the chapter and four or five different statuses.   We must not attempt to transfer the advice from one group to the other for our own convenience.  Not one of these statuses addressed, however is a “divorced” category, only “married but estranged”.    Paul believed Jesus that all divorce was man-made, and not only immoral, but impossible between a one-flesh covenant couple.
(3) any separation between God-joined spouses was to be aimed at reconciliation when possible, not permanent severance.
You dish out some pretty good marriage advice from this point in your Note, “SAMT” (for a single person, anyway).     But then you launch into a fiery manifesto on domestic abuse, with the peculiar bias that it’s always the man beating on the woman, and you declare:
“Many women who seek counsel from the church regarding their abusive situations at home are told that they still need to submit, or they are accused of being the cause of the abuse because they must have failed to be submissive enough. The stories of what women have been instructed to endure and sent back home to in the name of holiness is honestly disgusting.”
(Any chance that you go around beating up on pastors who don’t toe your ideological mark, “SAMT”?)
Instead of lingering on 1 Corinthians 7:11, where you just were, as the biblical remedy for an unsafe home,  you’re then diving back into Mosaic law faster than you can say “Zipporah”!   Your tone and ideology sound identical to the subject of an earlier blog of ours.   In case it isn’t clear from scripture, nowhere does Christ or any of the Apostles give any permission to divorce for abuse or adultery or abandonment, but more about that when we get to your theories about “biblical grounds”.
Says “SAMT”…
“God designed marriage to be a blessing to both the husband and wife. It is really sad that we have reduced it to some obligation to live under the same roof regardless of how the other party treats us.”
Says “SIFC”:
God designed His relationship with us to be a blessing to Him and to everyone around us.    It’s really sad that we have reduced it to some obligation for God to let us into heaven anyway regardless of how we treat Him.
And, oh “SAMT”, what have you done to the context and tone of Malachi 2, my dear?    You have stood this poor prophet on his head!     You drill right in on verse 16, “God hates divorce”,  but this context of this is impossible to get right without starting at verse 13 and understanding who exactly the prophet was addressing when he spoke for the Lord in declaring that fellowship was broken with the priest of God who had divorced his wife and married another.   You go into a litany of reasons why God hates divorce, but skip right over the one He forthrightly declares:  it corrupts our offspring and our generations.   You do this because you speak as more of a feminist than a disciple.   No form of humanism is ever compatible with discipleship.   They are polar opposites!   
Next you say:
“However, when one party has broken covenant, God does not hold the innocent party to a broken covenant, and God does not call them a sinner for issuing a bill of divorce to someone who has broken covenant with them.
We’ve already covered the biblical fact that the marriage covenant can be violated but never broken due to who the covenant parties to holy matrimony actually are.  So, let us ask you this, “SAMT”:  does God ever call someone a sinner for disobeying Him?
So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no [hu]man separate.
– Matt. 19:6
But to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband (but if she does leave, she must remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not divorce his wife.
– 1 Corinthians 7:10-11
No, He actually likens the rebellious to a witch or a sorcerer, my dear.
“So, we can’t accuse everyone who has been through a divorce of being a sinner for having gone through it!”   say you.
Very true, “SAMT”, but only if the person did not initiate the lawsuit before the pagan court,  and did not even consent to it.   If they did, they have practiced the sin of witchcraft and they need to repent.  Even then, unless the marriage was biblically invalid from the beginning because of the existence of a prior living estranged spouse, they are still married in God’s eyes. If that seems like an “accusation” to you, then there’s something very wrong with your heart toward God.
God hates divorce but He Himself had one! “
No, “SAMT”.   If you trouble to read just a bit further in Jeremiah 3, you soon find God saying, “return to Me, for I am married to you.”    For more about the rampant abuse and proper exegesis of that particular scripture, please click here.
PRESUMED “GROUNDS” FOR DIVORCE ,  ATTEMPTS TO APPLY MOSAIC LAW TO CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE,  WITH OR WITHOUT “PAPERWORK”
(Points 3 , 4, and 5)
From here, we’re about to dive into some heavy-duty scripture abuse debunking, “SAMT”.   Scripture abuse always results when anyone fails to apply all five principles of disciplined hermeneutics before they make personal decisions and, even worse, presume to teach others:  Content, Context, Culture, Comparison and Consultation.   There’s nothing worse than treating the word of God like a bag of trail mix, latching on to things out of context and discarding or ignoring the bits you don’t like.   Next you say….
“This verse [referring to Matthew 19:3-10] is often quoted to claim that divorce is only permitted in cases of adultery. Others claim it means divorce is only permitted in cases of fornication, meaning only when a man discovers his bride was not a virgin when they married. Some claim that even if divorce is permitted in the case of adultery or fornication, remarriage is never permitted. All of these opinions are wrong.”
Just as your own opinion is equally wrong, “SAMT”.  Unfortunately, all of the above is both unsupported and directly contradicted by scripture, and more specifically, by the very words of Christ which we’ve already cited above, in verse 6, which is the only verse that deserves any focus in this passage, until we get to verse 12, where Jesus speaks of living as a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of God, after forbidding anyone to marry a divorced person.  This, “SAMT”,  makes everything you go on to say about what question the Pharisees actually asked amount to a  total red herring.    It doesn’t matter what they asked, only what Jesus said in response.  Ditto for your leap back into Deuteronomy 24, since Jesus chose instead to quote Moses’ better word in Genesis 2:21-24, rather than Moses’ ill-fated attempt to regulate sin and hard-heartedness on the trail to the Promised Land.
Contrary to your assertion, adultery has never been biblical grounds for divorce from a God-joined union either in the New Testament, nor the Old Testament.   Under Mosaic law, sexual sins against betrothal and marriage were punishable by stoning, not divorce.  That’s because the one-flesh entity had to be severed somehow to allow for remarriage.   Nobody can say with certainty what Moses wrote Deuteronomy 24:1-4 concerning, but it’s far more likely that this regulation was covering one of the many non-capital reason why a betrothal contract could not be consummated under Jewish rules of ceremonial cleanness (“some indecency”)–and so, the reason for defilement of the land existed both before and after the severed union.   Whatever the reason for the Deuteronomy 24 passage, there is not a single Christian today to whom it applies, because Jesus abrogated all of the Mosaic regulations when He said of several things where the prior moral law was simply not worthy of the kingdom of God, “it is written, BUT I SAY UNTO YOU…”   He also clearly commanded us to live reconciled lives.
This really gets people’s knickers in a twist throughout Christendom, but no other context is possible after the sermon on the mount, except that Jesus was disagreeing with both Hillel and Shammai.    And it’s not a matter of “paperwork”, either!
“….MOSES allowed you to divorce your wives, BUT FROM THE BEGINNING, IT WAS NOT EVER SO!”–  Matthew 19:8
Which brings us to debunking the definition of “legalism”…. The first thing to understand, “SAMT”, is that this is not a biblical term any more than, say, “homophobia” is.   You will not find it in any translation, because it is the jargon of “Churchianity” .     When Christ and Paul rebuked the behavior of the Pharisees, there are four key points:
(1) they were the ones pushing man-legalized immoral abandonment of covenant
(2) they were the hangers-on to Mosaic regulation after Jesus abrogated all 613 of them in favor of a higher moral standard
(3) Per Jesus, the 10 Commandments remain in full effect
(4) If the word of God makes clear that dying in a certain state of sexual sin will cost us our inheritance in the kingdom of God, obeying is never “legalism”.
“Legalism” to Christ is applying any part of the Mosaic regulation that lies outside the 10 Commandments (you know, stuff like Deuteronomy 24:4).   “Legalism”, therefore, excludes urging obedience to the direct commandments from Christ’s ministry.   Around here, we call “legalism” Judaizing heresies, such as Paul spoke of to the Galatians.    So, the solution to antinomianism is obedience to Christ’s commandments, not accusing those who do obey and who urge others to obey, of somehow holding people to (inferior) Mosaic standards.    In fact, it’s usually the very same accusers like yourself who want to do that, in lieu of obeying Christ.   Moses after all, was considerably more lenient in matters of marriage than is Christ.   Almost everyone instinctively knows this, and that’s why they can’t seem to let go of Moses.
READING INTO JESUS’ CONVERSATION WITH THE SAMARITAN WOMAN AT THE WELL
“It is sad that so many so often misrepresent the heart of God. They read things in Scripture that are actually full of love and grace and the beauty of God’s heart towards the hurting with such jaded eyes. The story of the woman at the well is a prime example of this. “
What’s really sad is that some who would deign to teach others imagine that God’s “heart” is any different than what repeatedly came out of His Son’s mouth.    That’s either blaspheming the Father or it’s accusing  the Son.    Which brings us to another red flag “no-no” of unsound hermeneutics — the negative inference, or what Jesus “didn’t say”.   In this young lady’s defense, though, it’s quite common to see middle-aged seminarians do the same thing, though they should certainly know better.
In the case of the other scarlet lady with whom Jesus was merciful, the woman taken in adultery, here’s what Jesus didn’t say:  “neither do I condemn you because nobody is without sin, and it’s impossible to live a holy life which is why I’m about to die for you.   Stay away from those hypocritical Pharisees next time.”      No, Jesus gave her a commandment: “Go and sin no more.”
Why would we imagine, that just because we don’t see the words captured in John’s account of the exchange at the well,  Jesus did not tell this woman who was shacking up with a boyfriend the same thing He told the other adulteress?    What Jesus supposedly “didn’t say” is no proof of anything!     For a more in-depth discussion of what was actually going on at the well, click here.
“SAMT”, we’re just about done here.   You spend the rest of your Note in righteous indignation, accusing biblical truth-tellers of “picking up stones”  when they tell people what scripture says, while it’s clear that feminist  ideology has a stone or two in your own hands.    You make it sound pious by going on and on about God’s “heart” and your “heart” as if He’s schizophrenic and you’re not delusional.    We hope you learn one day that words like “grace” and “love” cannot be limited to temporal matters and people’s feelings – since that’s actually not very “loving”.    If your definition of “love”, “grace”, “mercy” doesn’t include an eternal dimension, you are at risk of “loving” people straight into hell.   If you don’t believe us, try substituting other sins, ones that make you recoil, and see if it’s “unloving” or lacking  “grace” to urge them to repent with their feet, at the risk of their feeling “shamed” and  “condemnation”.
Here’s another side of God’s “heart”,  SAMT… back to Luke 12:

I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do.But I willwarn you whom to fear: fear the One who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear Him!

Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division; for from now on five members in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

 
Church Discipline, Discipleship, Lost culture, marriage, Marriage Restoration, morality, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare

Of Antinomians and Panderers Thereto

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by Standerinfamilycourt

For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.   – Jude 4

Not for the first time have we blogged about this, but it seems so-called “blended families” are all the rage with anyone who wants to sell lots of “Christian” books these days.   We’re told that these “families” are “blessed” (and just for good measure, the author will “bless” them), which is a bit strange since they are snapping up all of these books as a growing demographic: “– and their numbers were added to daily by the “family courts” of the land.”
 It’s kind of predictable that the targeted market won’t learn much from these books, however, so they’ll buy more to see if the advice works out any better.   But what if….God doesn’t want these books to work any magic in these unbiblical living arrangements and immoral relationships?   What if…the cost of “blended families”, who come together for reasons other than widowhood, is too eternally high to bear?   What if… a truly loving God splits these “families” up out of eternal mercy for every member of that kind of household?

Very recently, both Ryan and Selena Frederick of Fierce Marriage.com and Kris Vallotton have posted blogs with sure-fire marriage advice for those who purportedly “didn’t plan” to wind up in an adulterous remarriage by Christ’s standards, but now need to find a way to “thrive” (rather than repent).    Ministry people who publicly spread soul-endangering heretical material to make a person feel better about remaining in their state of sin require somebody to make an attempt at an equally public, respectful response, supplying the biblical truth.   Both of these ministries produce especially effective memes that are highly encouraging to those standing celibate until the Lord restores their God-joined, covenant union and removes their prodigal spouse, in true grace and mercy, from the legalized adulterous relationship they’ve fallen into,  which they pray everyday their prodigal will live long enough to repent of — from the heart.    As with RepentanceCry.com, whose divorced pastor/founder is currently “betrothed” to a younger woman who will (unless God intervenes) sinfully supplant his true estranged wife who is still living, SIFC is left with a  dilemma over the rightness of continuing to use their materials on our pages.     Unlike the case with RepentenceCry,  neither of these other two ministries seem to be blocking dissenters at this point, so members of the marriage permanence movement are still able to exchange with them.

So….exchange several of us attempted to do!

The tennis involved with commenters, who can’t abide anyone so confronting the ministry owners who have tickled their ears and validated their sinful choices, typically goes like this for anyone determined enough to sustain the online engagement:

Lob 1 : (aimed at page / ministry owners) straightforward Matthew 19:6 / Luke 16:18 appeal that God-joined holy matrimony is not dissoluble by anything but death, and that all non-widowed remarriage was consistently called adultery by Jesus.

Return 1:  MIsuse of some combination of Matt.5:32, 1 Cor. 7:15 and Matthew 19:9 to “prove” otherwise, and point out the “error” of the lob.   (They don’t know what to do with the actual scriptures in Lob 1, but they’re certain that theirs must override.)

Lob 2:  Patient, hermeneutical explanation why the Returner’s interpretation of those scriptures to justify marrying again, while having an estranged spouse still living, is not hermeneutically correct, and suggesting that they study it further for a period of time.

Return 2:  Projectile vomiting of everything the discarded spouse did, and / or what the true-spouse-of-the-new-spouse did, that God would surely not expect anyone to stay in the marriage and tolerate… these outrages against their happiness.  (Optional insistence that Lob 2 is an untrustworthy  “private interpretation”  with denial that the Lob 1 scriptures say what they say and mean what they mean.)

Lob 3:  Reminder from Matthew 19:6, 8 that Christ didn’t leave us with a choice whether to “remain in” such a marriage, but that He said we simply are in such a marriage until one of the original partners physically dies.

Return 3:  Indignant playing of (you guessed it) – the Pharisee card, accompanied by various Pauline scriptures cited to purport that nobody is capable of living by the ten commandments, and any effort to do so is “salvation by works” and deceitful, self-righteous “boasting”.
The truncated form of Romans 8:1, quoted to omit “who walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh…” is especially popular at this juncture, accompanied with “by grace we are saved through faith, not of our own works lest any man should boast.”     This, of course, is presumed to override anything Jesus ever said directly to the contrary of their sexual ethics, and asserted only to apply to those who are not “saved” yet, because those people don’t have their ticket punched by belief that their ticket is punched.

Lob 4:   A friendly reminder about the sermon on the mount, concerning obedience to Christ out of a grateful heart, and that the 613 old rabbinic regulations to which Paul was actually referring as “the law” are only suspended upon our surrender to Christ’s lordship,  perhaps quoting Luke 14:26 or Hebrews 10:26-29 or Matthew 7:21-23.  (The 10 Commandments remain in full effect, notwithstanding Luther’s objections thereto.)

Return 4: (now growing demonstrably more heated, can go two different ways – path 1,  revert to Return 1 and mechanically parrot this point again and again for the rest of the conversation, alternating this with vicious ad hominem slurs….or… shift into sorrowful-pious-humility mode with an offer to “pray” that the lobber will “get saved for real some day” – path 2, depending on the personality of the remarriage adulterer on the other side of the net, and assuming Lob 4 didn’t horrifically draw one of each, in tandem!)   It tends to get really ugly from here, but four things are clear from both types of tennis partners:

(1) what they were once sold as the terms of salvation is not matching up with what’s now being presented…

(2) who they thought they were in Christ is now being shaken to the marrow of their bones (with which we should all achingly and deeply empathize)…

(3) if it means they can’t have their “salvation” on the terms they were sold, they’re not about to take our suggestion to study up to make sure they’re as “saved” as they think they are.

(4) they must have a full retraction and apology from you, and they will stalk you by tagging, with repetitive points and demands for “answers” to extraneous questions, day and night until they get it (or you decide life’s too short and block them), even if they happen to presently be separated from said legalized adultery partner.

By this point, there is zero question that we are dealing with one or more antinomians in the conversation.  Antinomianism (from the Greek: ἀντί, “against” + νόμος, “law”) is any view which rejects laws or legalism and is against moral, religious or social norms (Latin: mores), or is at least considered to do so.[1] The term has both religious and secular meanings.  In Christianity, an antinomian is one who takes the principle of salvation by faith and divine grace to the point of asserting that the saved are not bound to follow the moral law contained in the Ten Commandments.[2][3] The distinction between antinomian and other Christian views on moral law is that antinomians believe that obedience to the law is motivated by an internal principle flowing from belief rather than from any external compulsion.    What they don’t take into account is that if you don’t obey, you can’t really claim to believe.    The eighteen inches from head to heart has not been spanned.  They’re stuck on simple mental assent which fails to engage their feet, in the way that the tax collector Zachheus’ feet were engaged when he came to saving faith.    Following the ten commandments is an essential element of following Christ that precludes our own presumptions about what He “would want” for us which they were hoping might suspend one or more of those “impossible-to-follow” commandments.  Jesus died, they insist, for our past, present (unrepented) and future sins!

If the site owners are paying attention, and booksellers good enough to make a living at it always pay attention, we’re about to find out if they, too, are antinomians.   All too often, booksellers appealing enough to the masses to have half a million people following their facebook  page, are almost always antinomians, not just people who honestly don’t know any better.    The exchange with the Vallotton page has not been that contentious so far, and nobody was “unduly” triggered there by the truth-tellers.    Vallotton, who has slightly under 400,000 followers seems to have a loyal opposition consisting mainly of the LGBT community and their sympathizers who are among the most vocal on that page, and that’s where most of his attention seemed to be going.    Some marriage permanence disciples had already been there, challenging the premise that “blended families” are covenant families and are holy matrimony unions, before SIFC  arrived there to comment.    This was also true on the FierceMarriage page,  where the owner’s response to the weekend proceedings arrived around noon Monday, as follows…..

“Hi everyone,
Ok, this is a very nuanced topic, and perhaps we didn’t do the intro justice. I’ll modify the introduction of the blog post so it’s not misleading, but I do want to address some things here about assumptions we’ve made—we’ve (wrongly) assumed that you know where we’re coming from and the premises we had in mind when posting this content.

“For clarity:

1: Divorce is never God’s best for any marriage, Christian or non-Christian alike. In fact, the Bible says that “God hates divorce”. (Malachi 2) It’s never His best for any marriage.

2: As a last resort, and “because of hardness of hearts”, the Bible gives two clear grounds for divorce: (1) sexual immorality (Matthew 5:32; 19:9) and (2) abandonment by an unbeliever (1 Corinthians 7:15). There is nuance to what constitutes “abandonment by an unbeliever” that can only be discerned on a case by case basis, with pastoral care, prayer, and biblical counseling.

3: The two grounds above shouldn’t be construed as situations “requiring” divorce. Divorce is not required or even encouraged in the above cases. They’re exceptions made, not imposed requirements. Repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation are always the best possible ways forward.

4: If the divorce was for unbiblical reasons, there are no grounds for remarriage. If there are instances where divorce occurs and it’s biblically justified, remarriage is acceptable for the innocent party. (Matthew 19:9) But even then, we encourage couples to fight hard for their marriage (see #3 above) through prayer, counseling, and pursuit of each other.

5: This is a very sensitive and nuanced topic for many that requires speaking “truth in love” in a relational context. We must speak truth, yes, but we must do so in a way that encourages others in Christ, builds each other up in him, and lovingly urges holiness in light of God’s grace in Jesus. For this reason, we urge you to only post comments if you can be lovingly truthful without being brash or harsh.

6: There are other questions like, “can I remarry if I got divorced while I was an unbeliever”. This, and questions like it, are complex questions that are very hard to answer quickly. For that reason, we urge you to get biblical counsel from a pastor who knows you and can read God’s Word with you to find the answer.

7: Finally, a divorced and/or remarried believer should not feel any less loved by God. This is not to condone sin, but rather, to reiterate that our being loved by God is a GIFT (“so that none may boast” Eph 2:9) despite our sin, and is good for our salvation in eternity and our sanctification until we get there.

(Uh-oh!)

“standerinfamilycourt’s” response:

Ryan and Selena, a growing number of pastors and other serious disciples who are familiar with the history of bible versions and revisions over the last 150 years, who are familiar with church history for the first 400 years, and who faithfully apply sound principles of scriptural hermeneutics in studying this topic deeply, must respectfully disagree with several of your points.

Overall, a couple of great books by faithful men of God would be a good read for the two of you.

“One Flesh” by Joe Fogel
“Have You Not Read?” by Casey Whitaker
“Til Death Do Us Part?” by Dr. Joseph Webb

Briefly answering a few of your points:

1. God has *commandments*, not “bests”, “ideals”, “purposes”, “designs” or the like. When Jesus said, “what God has joined, let no human (anthropos) put distance between (choresthetai)”, this was in the imperative mood. This is a commandment with eternal consequences if it goes unrepented. Further, Malachi 2 is (in full context) a rebuke of his priests who divorce their God-joined wife and marry another. God makes clear this breaks all fellowship with Him until repented, because HIs covenant remains with the still-living spouse of his youth. God does not hate the divorce out of remarriage adultery with some other living person’s God-joined spouse.

2. Since when has “hardness of heart” been an acceptable attribute in a Christ-follower? This makes the very dangerous assertion that God is obligated to make allowances for our unholy attitudes. This is not scriptural in any sense. Most of us have bibles that read: if you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven (Matt. 18:23-35), do not demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (Matt.5:38), do not take your own revenge (Rom. 12:19), and unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter heaven (Matt. 5:20). On the contrary, Hebrews chapters 3 and 4 describe what happens to an indulged hard heart in a disciple.

3 and 4. Studied deeply and responsibly, we find that the so-called “biblical grounds” for divorce simply don’t exist once principled hermeneutics are applied to the scriptures relied upon. Historically, they are the invention of the homosexual humanist Catholic monk known as Erasmus Desiderius, who was unsavory company for the likes of Martin Luther and other Reformers. All of the above 3 books address this in detail, as does our blog, www.standerinfamilycourt.com. The only biblical ground for divorce is to get out of a biblically immoral relationship with somebody other than your God-joined one-flesh original mate. The only biblical ground for remarriage to somebody other than that person is widowhood (Rom. 7:2-3; 1 Cor. 7:11,39).

5. Since on three separate occasions Jesus stated, with no exceptions, “EVERYONE / whosoever / whoso marries a divorced [person] enters into an ongoing state of adultery”, and since at least twice Paul warned, “do not be deceived…adulterers have no inheritance in the kingdom of God” (speaking only of those who die in that state), “speaking the truth in love” requires speaking the truth in eternal terms that lead to actual repentance – the cessation of the sin in order to recover that inheritance.

6. This question melts away once the evangelical myths of 5 centuries are dispensed with. Getting saved does not sever the one-flesh entity created by God’s hand with one’s true spouse, nor does it dissolve the covenant between that entity and God. Matt. 19:5-6,8 The truly regenerated person, properly discipled, should long to reconcile with their true spouse and should get out of their legalized adultery. Many manage to do so despite being discipled by hirelings, because the Holy Spirit directs their path, as Jesus promised He would.

7. It is definitely true that no sin, including even homosexuality, diminishes God’s love for us, but if we reject His commandments as regenerated people, the indwelling Holy Spirit (the main manifestation His enduring love) will drive us toward repentance. If we instead choose to grieve and quench the Holy Spirit instead of choosing to obey Him, we would be miserable in heaven for all eternity even if we arrived there, because we’d still resent moral absolutes just as we did on earth. He’s too loving to allow that. By contrast, there’s conclusive documentation from the minutes of annual conferences that many denominations in the 1970’s voted to officially change their marriage doctrine to accommodate the civil enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce in order not to lose finances and members, much like what is happening now with the homosexual community in the wake of legalized gay marriage. This is not soul-care in either case. Would you not make every effort to warn the homosexual that if they persist in their legalized sexual sin, they will not see heaven?

For about 4 years, your excellent memes have encouraged covenant marriage standers who follow our page, to obey Paul and remain chaste or be reconciled to the spouse of their youth. God has convicted many prodigals to exit their civil-only “marriage” and reconcile with their covenant spouse – to His great glory. If you persist in encouraging households that Jesus repeatedly called adulterous to remain in their sin, we will be compelled to blog an explanation as to why the fans of our page can no longer rely on your ministry. Precious souls are on the line here. You have used a public platform to advance a dangerous heresy (albeit you likely didn’t know any better). The godly response, therefore, needed to be equally public. Now you have ample basis for our suggestion that you study this a bit more purposefully, and we pray that you do.

We truly wish there was a “loving, nuanced” way to warn people that what they thought was holy matrimony, Jesus actually regards as ongoing adultery, and that it’s a heaven-or-hell matter. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; although the kisses of an enemy are profuse.” Prov. 27:6

“Let not many become teachers, for they will incur a harsher judgment.” James 3:1

 

Nobody relishes rebuking a ministry leader, or even an individual, in front of 500,000+ followers, and it should never be done lightly.   The starting presumption should always be that they didn’t know any better, and the rebuke should never be more public than their infraction was — but the people to whom false doctrine was disseminated need the faithful biblical truth, even if unpleasant exchanges with “triggered” people must be endured, and even if it means the page owner cuts us off as “divisive”.     There has been no further response all afternoon from the Fredericks, who seem to have become the infallible dispensers of marriage wisdom after less than 15 years’ experience.    By the grace of God, may they remain so, in a world where “gray divorce” is the only growing category, and the church is growing increasingly immoral in all things marriage. That they have not been so quick to respond the second time seems like a good sign of character.   Hopefully, they’re on Amazon right after dinner, looking for those three excellent books “standerinfamilycourt” recommended.   “Standerinfamilycourt” was once a notorious antinomian, too, mentally equating all sins great and small, until the great and eternally merciful shaking came!

More probably, something needs to be said privately to Kris Vallotton, in light of his restrained response to those correcting him, but whose closing words in his blog piece go so far as to formally “bless” households Jesus called adulterous, and to encourage the divorced that “they can love (somebody other than their estranged, true spouse) again”:

“If you have been through a divorce and remarried, I bless you today. I bless your family and your children— both your biological kids and your step-children! I encourage you to say out loud that you receive this blessing for yourself and for your family!

“If you’ve been through a divorce and are single, I want to tell you today that you will love again.

(   SIFC: People who have “been through a divorce” are NOT “single” unless their spouse is dead, or their spouse was already someone else’s spouse and not actually theirs in the first place.)

“Hear me: You WILL heal, and you WILL love again! God’s redemption is bigger than anything in your past and He can do miracles that we never even dreamed of before!”

“Standerinfamiycourt” would just love to be able to influence 400,000 or 500,000 souls all at once, given what we’re trying to accomplish in amassing enough support and influence to overthrow the unilateral “no-fault” divorce regime that brought us to where we are with the harlot church of today.    But this will likely never be, because the moral price of discouraging anyone living in this sinful state from full, physical repentance is just too high, and Jesus has already prophesied otherwise:

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.  For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!
www.standerinfamilycourt.com

Divorce, Equal Protection, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Religious freedom, Substantive Due Process

Does Any State Have a Materially-Constitutional “No-Fault” Law? Yes, Surprisingly!

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!    –  Isaiah 5:20

What does a materially-constitutional “no-fault” divorce law look like?     Above all, for a unilateral divorce law to be constitutional, there must be no front-door (nor back-door) means to force a divorce on any unwilling spouse who has done nothing to seriously harm the marriage or family members: to the full extent that such harm is not objectively provable with hard evidence.    Beyond that, no spouse should be deprived of property,  parental rights, free association, free exercise of religious conscience, nor be subjected to arbitrary, vague charges that cannot be understood in advance sufficiently to avoid running afoul of them.    In other words, any law that removes these explicit fundamental Bill of Rights protections without regard to proof of marital fault, over which the defendant has had reasonable self-control, should be deemed unconstitutional on its face.

Additionally, notwithstanding abusive past judicial precedents such as Maynard v. Hill,  if the state law retroactively renders a contract unenforceable, this is a violation of Article 1 Section 10.    After 50 years of divorce-on-demand laws which changed the marital contract from enforceable to unenforceable in most states, this primarily impacts a dwindling number of marriages that were contracted prior to the mid-1970’s, since in virtually all states, licensed civil marriages undertaken after enactment of a state’s unilateral “no-fault” law are merely registered cohabitations, voidable at-will after a defined waiting or living-apart period.

Finally, there should be no violation of the separation-of-powers between the branches of government, as laid out in Articles 1 and 3 of the Constitution.    Most liberal, socialist schemes do indeed involve violation of the separation-of-powers between the legislative and judicial branches of government, or between the legislative and executive branches.     For example, when a Federal Judge or Justice proclaims a new fundamental right, such as “privacy” without undergoing the rigorous Congress-based, state ratification-based process of amending the Constitution, there has been a violation of separation-of-powers.    Hence, judicial precedents and subsequent legislation which rely on an alleged right to  “privacy” to legalize or expand abortion, overrule sodomy or adultery prohibitions, require state-paid contraception (and the like), would have been seen as constitutionally invalid by our nation’s founders.

Under this same principle,  a legislature may not pass a law that strips the judicial branch of its assigned powers under Article 3 (and its state constitution counterparts), by channeling matters through a court only for appearance sake, while reducing the role of the judges from discretionary to purely administrative.    Similarly, legislatures may not delegate powers reserved to them to another branch.    There used to be individual legislative divorces enacted as special laws in the legislature which fell into disfavor in case law.   Yet “no-fault” unilateral divorce laws are essentially legislative divorces in blanket form, with the states’ family courts administering them in a way that generally does not require judicial discretion.

When any state’s divorce statute eliminates objective fault-based grounds for divorce and declares that the court “shall” * grant a contested divorce upon administratively-valid petition, with no discretionary consideration of the facts in the case as they relate to allegations about undefined terms such as “irreconcilable differences” or “the best interest of the child / children / family”,  a violation of Article 3 has resulted.     Under this exacting standard, it is reasonable to argue that even mutually-consenting “no-fault” divorce is unconstitutional on these same separation-of-powers grounds, even though fundamental rights of neither spouse would be violated under a strictly consensual divorce law, whereas the fundamental rights of the children of the marriage, and the objective state interest in limiting the cost of services to families, might still be compromised.        (Hence, in this blog, use of the term “materially-constitutional” will refer to a state statute where the fundamental 1st and 14th Amendment rights of neither spouse is violated, and both spouses receive equal protection under the law, taken as a whole.)

* Existing Texas statute uses the term “may” instead of “shall”, but under the heavy-handed influence of the Texas Bar Association, their “family courts” consistently administer the law as though the judges have no independent discretion to deny unilateral divorce petitions.   Texas is presently considering HB922 and HB926 (formerly HB93 and HB65, respectively), which will remove non-consenting no-fault grounds, but leave all other divorce provisions except the very brief 60-day waiting period unchanged.   

Because of the high cost of serving (or mitigating societal ills from) broken families, a few states have experimented with opt-in “covenant marriage” laws (Arkansas, Arizona, and Louisiana) while maintaining all their regular divorce-on-demand machinery for those who don’t opt-in.  Since there are no 1st nor 14th Amendment protections for those who don’t opt-in at the time of the marriage, these states don’t qualify as having constitutional divorce statutes.    These states have extremely low rates of voluntary participation in these measures, and Arkansas in particular remains among the states with the highest divorce rates.

“Standerinfamilycourt” cannot possibly be familiar with key provisions of all of the various state divorce laws, though the “model” UMDA (Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act) provides a general roadmap,  and various state-by-state tables are available which capture the variations in how the “no-fault” model was enacted and / or implemented in any given state.     Not too long ago, a comrade in the effort to repeal unilateral grounds for divorce pointed out that there are two states,  Mississippi and South Dakota, with consent-only  “no-fault” grounds.    Knowing how deceptively the historical practices around “no-fault” laws have developed in the various states (sometimes, even despite well-meaning original statutes), and seeing the relative divorce rates in those states compared with other states,  SIFC was skeptical, and so, purposed to analyze both of these state statutes in detail to see to what extent this was likely to be true, as the laws were applied to real families.     Texas, for example, will not have eliminated forced divorce on “no-fault” grounds simply by passing HB922, because existing law will be unchanged in a crucial provision that allows either spouse to file (purportedly) fault-based grounds based on living apart for 3 years, even if the filing spouse has refused to live with the non-filing spouse (who did not consent to the separation and therefore was not actually responsible for the alleged fault).    Could there be a similar situation going on in Mississippi or South Dakota?

With somewhere between 75% and 80% of divorces nationwide opposed by one of the spouses, typically, a state’s divorce rate correlates with barriers to finalizing a divorce, such as the length of any waiting period or statutory living apart period required.    Yet, neither Mississippi nor South Dakota figure in the states with the lowest divorce rate — both states are pretty much “middle of the pack” in their rates of marriage “dissolution”.     Both states appear to have had their consent-based “no-fault” laws in place for a considerable length of time, not as a result of the sort of repeal that is being sought in Texas.    According to 2017 statistics from the American Community Survey,  South Dakota ranks 9th highest with a divorce rate of 13.59 per 1000 married couples of all ages.     Mississippi’s rate is somewhat lower, at around 12 per 1000 married couples, as compared to states with the highest rates at 17-19 per 1000, and states with the lowest rates at 5-7 per 1000 married couples.   If unilateral divorce is indeed restricted to fault-based grounds in these two states, why isn’t either state’s divorce rate in the lower ranges?

Why would South Dakota, for example, still rank only 33rd out of 50 states in protecting families, if unilateral “no-fault” divorce is restricted by statute ?    We’re about to find out.    Before looking at the state specifics, we need to reflect for a moment on the coercive power of the state bar associations in shielding the lucrative divorce trade, also in controlling all three branches of state government, and the degree to which the state budget benefits from Federal Title IV-D funds from court operating rules and from legislation that confiscates children from the families those courts have shredded.     Then we need to look at whether other provisions in the divorce law which deprive law-abiding citizens who want to keep their families together of their due process and fundamental rights are counterbalancing the consent-only provision.    There is also the religion factor, which layers over all of the other factors in law.   States with the lowest divorce rates (sadly) tend to have the smallest “conservative” Protestant and Jewish populations, and a typically-higher Catholic population.    Lastly, there is the dwindling marriage rate among younger citizens due to a law-driven deliberate preference for cohabitation, and ultimately causing the “per 1000 married couples” measures to disproportionately consist of divorced and remarried older citizens, especially in states where non-consensual “no-fault” grounds are the only grounds available.    The map below shows data for those age 30 and under, where Mississippi likely has a higher young marriage rate than South Dakota, and a bit higher consensual divorce rate in that young age bracket.

 

In a picture where there are many “moving parts”,  restricting to consent-only “no-fault” grounds most likely offsets other factors in keeping that state’s divorce rate lower than it would otherwise be, and improvements on other battle fronts (notably, the behavior and doctrine of the church) would catalyze with adopting a materially constitutional statute in lowering that state’s divorce rate.

Here is a summary table of the specifics of each state’s consent-only “no-fault” grounds, and surrounding statutes influencing the net degree of family protection.    Mississippi appears to have enacted its “no-fault” law in 1972, while South Dakota’s base “no-fault” law was enacted in 1976, and modified in 1985, possibly to add back the mutual consent feature.

Deep Dive – No Fault by Consent Only (version 1).xlsb

In this table (click on document to expand), red shading indicates provisions in the law defective enough to override all or most benefits from requiring mutual consent for “no-fault” divorce grounds such as “irreconcilable differences”.     Yellow shading indicates cautionary areas (“it depends”), and green shading indicates provisions that are materially consistent with Bill of Rights fundamental protections for the non-offending spouse and innocent family members.    Demonstrably, most of the green and none of the red is associated with key provisions in the Mississippi statute, making it the most protective toward rightful families, of all the family codes in the nation, whereas South Dakota has left a few “back doors” open, whereby a unilateral divorce may ultimately be obtained without an innocent spouse’s consent, if traditional back-up allegations are pursued to exploit longstanding vagueness of definitions in the statute, such as “mental cruelty”.

“standerinfamilycourt’s” Conclusions:  
Obviously we see the old adage, “the devil is in the details” when we take a close look at the consent-only “no-fault” divorce laws, with a critical eye to whether they nevertheless still effectively function as unilateral laws with delayed timing–by which people can still be manipulated by determined “family law” practitioners who, in the larger picture, continue to have an enormous financial conflict of interest with the true best interests of the family and the objective best interests of even the state.

South Dakota’s divorce statute is obviously better than that of 48 other U.S. states, but it still contains perverse financial incentives that boost the divorce industry at everyone else’s expense, and that encourage divorce coercion, because marital fault is not considered in either child custody (hence, still subjecting the citizens of the state to Title IV-D abuses) or in property division.   Additionally,  definitions of “abuse” as an alternative ground for divorce in the statute remain more vague than in Mississippi’s statute, which is a problem because “mental cruelty” has long been the next reliable “go-to” when other unilateral grounds are not available.    Finally, the provision for defaulted, implied consent in South Dakota creates a weaker law than in Mississippi, and opens the door for process service abuses, which is also a potential issue with Texas’ HB922, as currently drafted.

All things considered, Mississippi comes the closest of all 50 U.S. states to having a substantially constitutional “no-fault” divorce law that is only unilateral when it comes to fault-based grounds.     Among the best features of Mississippi’s statute:

->  No potential for abuse of a non-consenting spouse via default judgment provisions (rather than explicit appearance via joint petition, or service of process compliance).

->  60 day waiting period, even with written mutual consent.

->  Some consideration of marital fault in property division, if the consenting parties cannot agree, and the offended spouse would be at a disadvantage.

->  Strong consideration of marital fault in child custody decisions

->  Fairly explicit and actionable definition of physical and mental abuse, in terms of defining severity, extent, duration and other terms that in most states are vaguely defined by intention.    Limited “back door” available by resorting to cruelty allegations if “no-fault” fails to secure a “dissolution” decree.

– >The abandoner cannot allege “abandonment” nor “living apart” as back-door unilateral grounds, if unable to gain the non-offending spouse’s consent to the dissolution.

(Had the case against “SIFC”  been brought in Mississippi, instead of Illinois, it is highly doubtful the petitioner would have prevailed on any grounds.  Had the case been brought in South Dakota, the petitioner would likely have had to resort to false charges of “mental cruelty” in order to prevail, or there would have had to be a risky strategy of process service fraud leading to a default in-absentia judgment that could likely have been successfully challenged upon discovery.)

Why should it matter to take a deep look at what’s working in states like Mississippi, as we seek to repeal unilateral “no fault” grounds in additional states, such as Texas?    One big reason is to be prepared for the likely charge from the powerful “family law” lobby that these laws have not significantly reduced the divorce rate enough that the “threats” to women, gays, and abused spouses from repealing unilateral grounds for divorce is justified.    Looking at the above map, this will surely become a more prominent challenge if and when the movement begins to pick up steam–and purely emotional arguments can no longer carry the day, as they do today.    We need to be armed with facts that demonstrate exactly why having a constitutionally-defensible statute may not have had the impact we would hope for, especially as it relates to those “back doors” left open in some states.  The second reason is to clearly recognize and target other barriers to family preservation that lie outside the law — for example, immoral church practices, which might become more susceptible to reform under a tighter law.    The third reason is to gain important comfort that the state of Mississippi has managed to survive for 43 years, over the entire divorce-on-demand era, as the only state with a materially constitutional consensual-only “no-fault” law which powerful special interests have never succeeded in overturning in court based on “privacy” challenges.

Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.   –  Philippians 2:3-4

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7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!

 

citizenship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, morality, Substantive Due Process

Was Maynard v Hill An Abusive SCOTUS Ruling? Is it Really Relevant Today?

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by Standerinfamilycourt

So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no [hu]man separate….Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.    –  Matthew 19:6,8

And He said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said to Him, “Caesar’s.”   Then He said to them, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s.”
– Matthew 22: 20-22

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
–  Declaration of Independence, 1776

This will be a long but important read.   Take it in manageable settings as necessary, but “standerinfamilycourt” worked hard to make the content very worthwhile to those who hope to see unilateral “no-fault” divorce abolished in our lifetime, and no longer a part of our grandchildren’s adult reality as citizens.    A special callout and thanks is in order to Matthew Johnston and Jeff Morgan for providing much of the expertise and content for this blog post.   My assessment, however, of these materials is independent, and these two gentlemen may not agree with “standerfamilycourt’s” take on every point discussed here.   I trust they will agree with much of it.

U.S. history is littered with ill-conceived and ideological Supreme Court decisions that have unjustly been applied for many decades afterward as controlling precedent, under the principle of stare decisis in a way that singles out entire groups of citizens for wholesale denial of their fundamental rights, often in defense of the Sexual Revolution.    Typically this happens because the original faulty decision itself denied due process to one of the parties.     The 1888 case, Maynard v. Hill, is in my view, one of those really bad decisions.   It  laid down two highly erroneous principles that eventually made the marriage contract unenforceable in the United States once the political climate ripened for toxic, Marxist legislation, in effect outlawing the permanent wedded union (as Jesus defined holy matrimony), almost a century before enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws in most U.S. states drove more nails into the marriage coffin.   Maynard v Hill is one of the key cases that has been relied upon by various state Supreme Courts to rebuff any and all 1st and 14th Amendment challenges to nonconsensual “no-fault” laws, as enacted since then.  This came despite the fact that many top constitutional attorneys today see these laws as unconstitutional in many different aspects.

First, this case unjustifiably removed the critical protection of Article 1 Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution from the marriage contract based on a very questionable rationale, to be discussed in depth below.

Next, this case asserted the superiority of the state’s claim of “publc policy” over the marriage relationship, above the private nature of the marriage contract between husband and wife, whereas any such claimed authority can only be traced back to a usurpation, from God’s perspective, by the 16th century Reformers who insisted that the state regulate holy matrimony.   This was authority that Christ told us God reserved to Himself, according to His law.   The state’s delegated role from the hand of God is to recognize and defend rightful marriages, not deign to create nor terminate them, according to Jesus’ pronouncement in Matthew 19:6 and 8.

Finally, the majority Justices upheld the actions of a territorial legislature (where there was not yet a state constitution), while operating under authority delegated to them by the U.S. Congress. This, while denying the accused, but possibly blameless, wife in another state her right to basic notice and procedural due process.   This legislature unilaterally divorced her from her husband in absentia, at his adulterous request which was not based on any legitimate grounds.   Indeed, at the time, there were no laws even defining grounds for divorce in the new territory.  This Supreme Court held valid a special law specifically passed to “dissolve” her marriage, despite the fact that in doing so, the territorial legislature deprived her of liberty and property without allowing her any opportunity for representation, or even serving her notice that they were taking this action.   She found out a few years later, according to the complaint in the case eventually brought by her heirs.

This case was brought by the Ohio covenant children of David and Lydia Maynard after both of their parents’ deaths, in an estate dispute over land that had been granted in Oregon territory (at the time of the ruling, the land had since become part of Washington state) to David after he abandoned Lydia under false pretenses in Ohio, and took up with another woman on his way out west.    The land grant apparently had strings attached, such that twice as much land was granted to a married couple, which then had to be cultivated for a period of time within a certain time window.    Shortly after securing both pieces of land based on his marriage to Lydia, he then requested his divorce be granted by the legislature.   David had grown extremely influential as a founder of Seattle, and had held considerable sway with the legislature by the time he made his request.   The divorce  was granted  upon his request, with documents external to the SCOTUS opinion showing that David accused his wife of adultery in his petition, and submitted hearsay letters from friends claiming to know individuals who had allegedly witnessed Mrs. Maynard in clandestine activities or compromising situations back in Ohio.    However, because he could not legalize his adulterous union with his mistress within the time window for perfecting the land claim, the Territory revoked the grant of the portion of the land that had been granted to David based on his marriage to Lydia.   In other words, Mr. Maynard’s attempted bait-and-switch scheme failed, and he suffered his just reward as a consequence.   It was the validity of the special legislative divorce, and of the land grant revocation, that the couple’s adult children were challenging, in part arguing that Article 1 Section 10 prevented the legislature of Oregon Territory from impairing the marital contract between David and Lydia by granting the divorce-in-absentia via special law aimed at that particular marriage, and without any notice to one of the parties being so assailed.

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
( – Article 1 Section 10,  U.S. Constitution)

Since the facts of the case state that the legislature of Oregon Territory was operating under the temporary authority delegation by an act of the U.S. Congress in the absence of a state constitution…

“The act of congress creating the territory of Oregon and establishing a government for it, passed on the 14th of August, 1848, vested the legislative power and authority of the territory in an assembly consisting of two boards, a council and a house of representatives. 9 St. c. 177, 4. It declared that the legislative power of the territory should ‘extend to all rightful subjects of legislation not inconsistent with the constitution and laws of the United States,’

…it seems reasonable that Congress should not have been deemed to be able to delegate authority to a territory that they did not at least possess themselves, either to pass special laws which defeated the separation-of-powers already integral to the U.S. Constitution (Article 3), or to carve out a relatively untested exception to the Contracts Clause.   Yet, the authority to pass a special law granting a legislative divorce was justified by the majority, by relying on the history of U.S. states and territories who did not yet have a constitution who were following the English tradition of Parliament granting legislative divorces, and also upon the fact that various states were slow to transition from legislative divorces via special laws to a judicial procedure, in some cases even after a state constitution establishing separation-of-powers was ratified.   It seems natural, given that divorces were so rare in the 18th and 19th centuries, that change in this area would not have been a burning priority.    Eventually, however, many states constructed or amended their constitutions to require that divorces only be granted by a judicial process, a fact which the opinion acknowledges but dismisses on a very weak rationale, claiming that the historical reliance on legislative divorces justified the practice where there was not yet a state constitution, while completely ignoring the due process concerns that likely led to those provisions being adopted in various state constitutions.

With regard to the due process owed to Lydia Maynard, the 14th Amendment was not ratified until 1868, some 13 years after this legislative divorce was granted, but this was still 20 years prior to this landmark decision upholding the validity of the divorce-in-absentia for estate purposes.    The court completely failed to apply the provisions of the 5th Amendment, ratified along with the Bill of Rights in 1791, to secure Mrs. Maynard’s right to the most basic procedural due process,  including notice of the proceeding, which should have been more than justified by the fact that the territorial legislature was operating under delegated authority from the U.S. Congress.

“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
(- 5th Amendment, U.S. Constitution)

 

Quoting from the majority opinion:

“The facts alleged in the bill of complaint, that no cause existed for the divorce, and that it was obtained without the knowledge of the wife cannot affect the validity of the act.   Knowledge or ignorance of parties of intended legislation does not affect its validity if within the competency of the legislature.”

That unduly harsh statement may be true where public notice is posted for the intended enactment of general laws, but how could such a judicial statement have overridden anyone’s basic rights to due process with regard to notice and representation under the U.S.  Constitution?   They call these things fundamental rights for a reason!  It would have been enlightening to read the dissenting opinions of Stanley Matthews and Horace Gray, but unfortunately, this blogger was unable to locate the text for those dissents online without a subscription service.

With regard to barring the application of Article 1 Section 10 to the marriage contract, the majority opinion quotes this isolated statement  by Chief Justice John Marshall in Dartmouth College v Woodward (decided 1819), as follows:

“As was said by Chief Justice MARSHALL in the Dartmouth College Case, not by way of judgment, but in answer to objections urged to positions taken: ‘The provision of the constitution never has been understood to embrace other contracts than those which respect property or some object of value, and confer rights which may be asserted in a court of justice. It never has been understood to restrict the general right of the legislature to legislate on the subject of divorce.’ “

John Marshall, of course, was one of the nation’s founding statesmen who participated in the historic constitutional convention process,  himself becoming a delegate in 1788 to the state convention that had been formed to ratify it, so he should certainly have been an excellent authority on the original intent of Article 1, Section 10.    However, was the 1888 Supreme Court majority accurate in their presumption that Marshall was inclusively referring to unprovoked (unilateral) divorce, where the petitioner was actually creating the contractual breach he was seeking “relief” from, when the former Chief Justice made the statement upon which the 1888 court (very selectively) relied  to support their interpretation of the founders’ intent?   Or… was Marshall simply stating that Article 1 Section 10 was not intended to impair the authority of the legislature to regulate divorce on a fault-basis that is consistent with the innocent party’s fundamental rights, including property and causeless government non-interference with family sovereignty?

One historical source indicates that Article 1 Section 10 was actually added to the final draft after no discussion had taken place in the Constitutional Convention:

” [The post-Convention drafting committee] made at least one important change to what the Convention had agreed to;  {Rufus} King [of Massachusetts] wanted to prevent states from interfering in contracts.  Although the Convention never took up the matter, his language was now inserted, creating the contract clause.[24]:243

In light of this, it is at least possible that Marshall’s statement, delivered 30 years after ratification, was not coming from firsthand debate or interactions with the drafters or Rufus King, even though he had been a part of the larger ratification process.    There is at least some historical evidence that John Marshall did know King personally and continued to correspond with him in the years following ratification.

Chief Justice Marshall authored the majority opinion for Dartmouth College v Woodward, directly referring to the relevance to marriage contracts as follows:

“…it has been argued that the word “contract,” in its broadest sense, would comprehend the political relations between the government and its citizens, would extend to offices held within a State, for State purposes, and to many of those laws concerning civil institutions, which must change with circumstances and be modified by ordinary legislation, which deeply concern the public, and which, to preserve good government, the public judgment must control. That even marriage is a contract, and its obligations are affected by the laws respecting divorces. That the clause in the Constitution, if construed in its greatest latitude,would prohibit these laws. Taken in its broad, unlimited sense, the clause would be an unprofitable and vexatious interference with the internal concerns of a State, would unnecessarily and unwisely embarrass its legislation, and render immutable those civil institutions, which are established for purposes of internal government, and which, to subserve those purposes, ought to vary with varying circumstances.  That, as the framers of the Constitution could never have intended to insert in that instrument a provision so unnecessary, so mischievous, and so repugnant to its general spirit, the term “contract” must be understood in a more limited sense.  That it must be understood as intended to guard against a power of at least doubtful utility, the abuse of which had been extensively felt, and to restrain the legislature in future from violating the right to property. That, anterior to the formation of the Constitution, a course of legislation had prevailed in many, if not in all, of the States, which weakened the confidence of man in man, and embarrassed all transactions between individuals, by dispensing with a faithful performance of engagements….Those acts enable some tribunals not to impair a marriage contract, but to liberate one of the parties, because it has been broken by the other.When any State legislature shall pass an act annulling all marriage contracts, or allowing either party to annul it, without the consent of the other, it will be time enough to inquire, whether such an act be constitutional

It is important to note that neither the legislative act, nor the SCOTUS opinion refers to the charge of adultery that other sources indicate David Maynard tried to register with the legislature.  Marshall continues thusly at a later juncture in his opinion…

“Could a law, compelling a specific performance, by giving a new remedy, be justly deemed an excess of legislative power? Thus far the contract of marriage has been considered with reference to general laws regulating divorces upon breaches of that contract.  (Note: for the benefit of the innocent party is strongly implied here.)... But if the argument means to assert that the legislative power to dissolve such a contract, without any breach on either side, against the wishes of the parties, and without any judicial inquiry to ascertain a breach, I certainly am not prepared to admit such a power, or that its exercise would not entrench upon the prohibition of the Constitution. If, under the faith of existing laws, a contract of marriage be duly solemnized, or a marriage settlement be made (and marriage is always in law a valuable consideration for a contract), it is not easy to perceive why a dissolution of its obligations, without any default or assent of the parties, may not as well fall within the prohibition as any other contract for a valuable consideration.  A man has just as good a right to his wife as to the property acquired under a marriage contract. He has a legal right to her society and her fortune, and to divest such right, without his default and against his will, would be as flagrant a violation of the principles of justice as the confiscation of his own estate.”  
(Presumably, Marshall would have held the same true of David Maynard’s similarly-situated original wife.)

Marshall goes on in Dartmouth College v Woodward to confirm his personal uncertainty, even with his own superior and contemporary proximity to the founders, vis-à-vis the 1888 court, about the intent of Article 1 Section 10 to exclude or include the marriage contract:

“It is more than possible that the preservation of rights of this description was not particularly in the view of the framers of the Constitution when the clause under consideration was introduced into that instrument. It is probable that interferences of more frequent occurrence, to which the temptation was stronger, and of which the mischief was more extensive, constituted the great motive for imposing this restriction on the State legislatures. But although a particular and a rare case may not, in itself, be of sufficient magnitude to induce a rule, yet it must be governed by the rule, when established, unless some plain and strong reason for excluding it can be given. It is not enough to say that this particular case was not in the mind of the convention when the article was framed, nor of the American people when it was adopted. It is necessary to go further and to say that, had this particular case been suggested, the language would have been so varied as to exclude it, or it would have been made a special exception. The case, being within the words of the rule, must be within its operation likewise, unless there be something in the literal construction so obviously absurd or mischievous or repugnant to the general spirit of the instrument as to justify those who expound the Constitution in making it an exception.”

In light of the full context of what Chief Justice Marshall stated in that majority opinion, would it really be unreasonable to conclude that Justice Stephen Field was guilty of taking the portion of Marshall’s statement which he selectively quoted, materially out of context?     After all, for the Maynards, there was no general law in Oregon Territory regarding divorces, which is why a special law had to be custom-crafted under stealth, one that impaired the marriage contract which had been broken by the party requesting the divorce, not the “other” whom Marshall specifically pointed to the need to protect.     The Chief Justice indicated he was still fine with the parties themselves agreeing to annul their own contract by mutual consent (except that the matter was not yet legally “ripe” before his court), but in this 1853 Maynard instance, the party who was back home presumably honoring that marriage contract was deprived of notice of her husband’s hurried request to annul it legislatively.     Had Justice Field shown true deference to stare decisis, he would have addressed these highly relevant points raised by Marshall, some of which had now indeed become ripe for review with the case before the 1888 court.    Instead, it appears he stood Marshall’s very specific contrary guidance on its head by ignoring the portion that did not suit the court majority, for purely ideological reasons, under their conception of “public policy”.

The majority in Maynard went on to cite language in an earlier decision,  Butler v. Pennsylvania, 10 How. 402, where the question arose whether a reduction of the per diem compensation to certain canal commissioners below that originally provided when they took office, was an impairment of a contract with them within the constitutional prohibition; the court, holding that it was not such an impairment, said: ‘The contracts designed to be protected by the tenth section of the first article of that instrument are contracts by which perfect rights, certain, definite, fixed private rights of property, are vested. ‘It is also to be observed that, while marriage is often termed by text writers and in decisions of courts as a civil contract, generally to indicate that it must be founded upon the agreement of the parties, and does not require any religious ceremony for its solemnization, it is something more than a mere contract.”

Hold the phone!   Obviously, if it is a “given” that Object A is a recognized member of Group B, and a constitutional principle applies to all members of Group B, then it won’t do to claim that a particular constitutional principle naming Group B shouldn’t apply to Object A just because Object A has some additional qualities.   This is known as basic subset mathematics.

Further, the court used a circular argument which failed to take into account that the only element that would cause the marital estate vesting not to be “fixed” by the inherent indissolubility of the marriage bond is some sort of fault-basis, or barring that, their own failure to uphold the rule of law on behalf of the innocent spouse.    They were, in effect, arguing that the possibility that someone might unlawfully abandon their marriage (or, indeed, that a rogue territorial legislature might violate the Constitution by enacting a special law without legal notice against that innocent spouse)  “unvests” and “unperfects” the property rights that were conferred at the publicly-witnessed lawful wedding…(“I herewith plight thee my troth.”)

The majority in Maynard also had a considerable amount to say about “public policy”, most of it flawed and leaning too much toward social expediency, at the longterm expense of societal integrity.    This should sound very familiar to the readers of this blog, since it has been quoted ad nauseum by self-interested attorneys, jurists and legislators alike ever since–as if it came down from the mountain on stone tablets.    For example:

“…when the validity of acts dissolving the bonds of matrimony is assailed; the legitimacy of many children, the peace of many families, and the settlement of many estates depending upon its being sustained. ”

and…

“Many causes may arise, physical, moral, and intellectual, such as the contracting by one of the parties of an incurable disease like leprosy, or confirmed insanity, or hopeless idiocy, or a conviction of a felony, which would render the continuance of the marriage relation intolerable to the other party, and productive of no possible benefit to society.When the object of the relation has been thus defeated, and no jurisdiction is vested in the judicial tribunals to grant a divorce, it is not perceived that any principle should prevent the legislature itself from interfering, and putting an end to the relation in the interest of the parties as well as of society. If the act declaring the divorce should attempt to interfere with the rights of property vested in either party, a different question would be presented.”

Apparently, these Maynard Justices saw “public policy” as more of a concern as respects the fundamental rights of the subsequent family rather than of due process sustaining the fundamental rights of the original covenant family….“love the one you’re with”.    Evidently, the choice of an illicit relationship by the party seeking to morally and financially abandon their family joins all of these other selfish reasons why honoring marriage vows would be “productive of no possible benefit to society”, and “intolerable to the petitioning party.”    And in fact, the furtive act declaring the divorce did inevitably interfere with the rights of property vested in the innocent wife, if not in Oregon Territory, then back home in Ohio, whether that distant legislature intended this or not.

The intrusion on property rights from state interference without due cause upon the marriage contract is even more egregious in today’s society due to this malodorous precedent, with not only equity in homes and businesses at stake, but also employment-derived retirement assets as a “gray divorce” couple is at or near retirement age, or perhaps already retired.   Because of concealed dissipation to finance an extramarital affair in the period before the guilty party files for unilateral “no-fault” divorce, unequal IRA and 401K balances will be a growing problem that didn’t exist back when most states took marital fault into strong consideration in dividing assets.  In effect, many of today’s “family courts” are actually rewarding adulterous spouses for breaking up their own marriage, and transferring considerable wealth from earner to rival paramour, all while blaming the “Respondent” for choosing not to file their own petition – a clear religious freedom violation.    And wouldn’t you know it?  Quite ironically, there are divorce case precedents where solely for the purposes of dividing marital assets, the marriage contract is indeed deemed in a certain amount of doublespeak to be an “economic partnership”, by golly  –  MVR v TMR,  New York (1982) 115 Misc 2d 674

The last thing to re-examine in assessing this Maynard case for validity in the current marriage debate is whether, in light of ratification of the U.S. Constitution which was specifically drafted to address the many flaws in English Parliamentary law,  was the English parliamentary legal history–even continuing in the colonies as it did–still a reasonable basis upon which to hold the continued practice of legislative enactment of special laws constitutional?    After all, the Maynard majority acknowledged that several states had by that time incorporated specific prohibitions against special laws to grant divorces  into their constitutions and pointed those cases toward the judiciary for a reason: to assure constitutional separation of powers, protection of constitutional due process, and individual fundamental rights.   This trend therefore was far from something unknown to the majority, since they explicitly ceded this fact.   More likely, this constitutional advance in the various states was ideologically objectionable to them.   In the 1848 Ohio Supreme Court case, Bingham-v-Miller-1848 (1), we read concerning the general constitutionality of legislative divorces:

“The constitution confers no such power.  The legislature is not sovereign; nor are all of the departments of government combined.  The people, only, are sovereign.  Nor can the matter be helped by implication, for the [Ohio] constitution in express terms declares that ‘all powers not hereby delegated, remain with the people…The constitution confers no power to grant divorces; from whence then can the legislature derive it?   Not, like the British parliament, from sovereignty, because the legislature does not possess it; not from the constitution, because it does not confer it…

“The British Parliament is clothed, according to their notions, with sovereign power, and may do what they like;  many if not all the legislatures of the colonies, and the old states, possessed and exercised both legislative and judicial power… Our legislature is clothed with the simple power to enact laws, and do some other things expressly authorized by the constitution.  Beyond this, the legislature has no power at all.   To grant a divorce is not to enact a law at all;  an expression of the will of the lawmaking power that a marriage is dissolved is no law at all.   It is a decree, an order, a judgment but not a law …”

Surely, back in 1819, Justice Marshall would have been acutely aware of from whence our Declaration of Independence explicitly states that the people’s sovereignty over fundamental rights emanates, and this was clearly not the British Parliament (to mildly understate it).    On this basis alone, we can safely bet that legislative divorces and special laws would have been repugnant to Marshall’s  experience as a Constitutional founder, though he was reportedly a deist and didn’t have the strong Christian worldview of many of his peers.   And curiously, the majority opinion in Maynard cited several state-level cases in support of their conclusion from a variety of eastern and midwestern states including Pennsylvania, New York and Indiana but, very curiously, did not mention Bingham at all.   Perhaps the dissenting opinion did, given its very high relevance.

One thing we learn from this case is that denial of fundamental due process has always been an essential element of easy, sleazy divorce, even back in the late 19th century when Marxist elements were beginning to emerge and influence the policy-making elites.   Marshall’s voice, on the other hand, called back from the purer days in U.S. history before some of our intellectual elites began to succumb to Marxist ideologies – it would be interesting to note the extent the two dissenting Justices had vainly attempted to echo him.

All of this matters a great deal today, because anyone who looks at contemporary unilateral “no-fault” grounds for divorce, which prevail without mutual consent in 48 states as of this writing,  along with their their surrounding, implementing statutes, cannot help but notice that in reducing the judiciary function to an administrative, ministerial role, where there is to be no finding of marital fault in most states for any aspect of unravelling a family,  these laws amount to nothing more than the outlawed special laws of yesterday in blanket form,  implemented by running them through specialized courts for appearance sake, in order to masquerade as general laws that non-substantively purport to require a judicial function.    Yet, we all know that judges feel compelled by the law to accept the assertions in the petition and rule against the “Respondent” 100% of the time without regard to whether the allegation of “irreconcilable differences”, “irretrievable breakdown”, “insupportability”, etc. is factually true.   In an increasing number of these cases,  the pair has been successfully married for decades and suddenly became “irreconcilable” or “insupportable” according to the legal fiction.   In other cases, we have statistics that at least 5% of supposedly “irreconcilable” couples reconcile with each other, even after subsequent marriages to others.

One of the things the Bingham v Miller jurists did was try to manage the chaos resulting from overturning a law of this nature after decades of unlawful practice,  something the Maynard jurists openly declared that they lacked the fear of God and moral courage to do.

” To deny this long-exercised power, and declare all the consequences resulting from it void, is pregnant with fearful consequences. If it affected only the rights of property, we should not hesitate; but second marriages have been contracted, and children born, and it would bastardize all these, although born under the sanction of apparent wedlock, authorized by an act of the legislature before they were born, and in consequence of which the relation was formed which gave them birth. On account of these children, and for them only, we hesitate. “
– Justice Read, Ohio, 1848

We will be in substantially the same place with the rightful overturn or repeal of unilateral “no-fault” divorce and its effects, except that we will no longer have the legal label of “illegitimate” or “bastard” to contend with, since from about 1987,  U.S. law no longer makes much distinction in the rights of children born in wedlock or out– in a government that has quite clearly lost the moral ability to even define or implement “wedlock”.   Perversely, this will probably prove to be a silver lining for winding down today’s multiple remarriage mess.  The Ohio court stated it had no issue with the property effects reverting back to the status they were prior to imposition of each unlawful dissolution, but only had an issue with the legal and social status of the children of the subsequent union(s).    Although the case text doesn’t explicitly say this, the commentary on it states that the court held those subsequent unions to be  “valid” for the sake of the children.    Today we would ask, “which one(s)?”  However, by Bingham’s own legal theory, it is a serious question whether this Ohio court actually possessed the constitutional authority to do so en masse without actually rehearing any of the cases based on grounds, but it does not appear that this case was appealed any higher.    There was no way to declare all the marriages “valid” out of compassion without setting up a situation of concurrent, Muslim or Mormon style polygamy, in a moral space currently dominated by consecutive polygamy.   Something like this will be the aftermath of correcting the almost unspeakable separation-of-powers evil brought about by unilateral “no-fault” grounds statutes.  Theoretically, only the first marriage will be valid following such an event, but there are complexities even with that.

To conclude, we go back to the error of the Maynard court, and ask an interesting question:

Had the court made the right call on the issue of legislative divorces and special laws under the Article 10 theory that the Bingham court correctly laid out 40 years earlier,  would it have been strictly necessary to address the merits of the contract argument of Article 1 Section 10 applying to marriage, or would it have been wiser to declare that argument “moot” and thereby avoid setting a questionable legal precedent with regard to contracts, one that even John Marshall was uncertain of?   

Both questions had to be addressed once the wrong call was made concerning legislative divorces.   That fatal event turned into a blowtorch on the sustainability of “no-fault” flames, coming as it did at the SCOTUS level.  The Bingham court in Ohio importantly said this about the contract issue:

“Some eminent jurists have denied the power to the legislature, upon the ground that it is a law impairing the obligation of contracts, and therefore prohibited to the states by the constitution of the United States. We do not chose to place it upon this ground, because we believe that clause was inserted in the constitution for no such object, but as appliable to contracts of a wholly different nature.   And besides, I believe it not only consistent with the theory of our government, but that our happiness, interest, and safety require us to deny to the general government any possible power not expressly granted, or clearly conferred. It is to the state where we have the control, that we must look for the protection of our dearest rights; and I would be the last to surrender up any right to the general government, and especially so dear a one as that of our domestic relations. This is a matter of our own, and we will keep it so.”

It is clear that there was considerable difference of opinion on the applicability of Article 1 Section 10 to the marriage contract among “eminent jurists” long after Marshall.    Aside from the purism of the legal theory expressed in Bingham, this purism may actually become directly relevant to the constitutional wind-down of the blanket form of legislative divorces we are saddled with today.    For example, in the all-too-common case of someone thrice-“married”, but the law under which they or their civil spouse’s divorce (and therefore, their subsequent civil union) is suddenly declared void by SCOTUS, whose contractual rights prevail?   Aren’t the contract rights of the first spouse just as enforceable under Article 1 Section 10 as the third-and-current civil  spouse?    Perhaps not for marriages contracted after enactment of unilateral “no-fault” laws rendered the civil contract undertaken on the wedding day to be “at-will”, effectively mooting the contract argument that once existed for pretty much anyone under age 65 or so who didn’t first marry fairly young.

It’s fine to say that you can’t “unscramble eggs” or “you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube”,  as we frequently hear with regard to biblically-illicit subsequent marriages, but if unilateral “no-fault” divorce and its parental and property effects are ultimately overturned on an Article 10 / Article 3 argument and separation-of-powers, millions of “marriages”, and probably the bulk of all currently-legal U.S. marriages under prevailing trends, will be voided.    If SIFC were a betting individual, the money would be on the current Justices rejecting the contract argument, not only out of stare decisis, but out  of pure practicality and widespread mootness, to considerably cut down on the enormous and inevitable chaos of conflicting claims.   There are purists among us who say that legislative repeal of unilateral divorce laws needs to take us back to 1969 (1958 for Oklahoma) based on this separation-of-powers constitutional principle, and not allow for even mutual petition “no-fault” grounds.   While that may wind up being the reality in a court result, this will be very unpopular to get through any legislatures where repeal rather than voiding would allow for a more orderly wind-down of divorce-on-demand.

Is what SIFC has just described too remote a possibility for concern? Don’t bet on that!     Legal challenges to pending unilateral “no-fault” divorce petitions have to-date been brought before county circuit judges in several states requesting a summary dismissal of the “no-fault” petition on Article 10 / Article 3 grounds, alleging that the court does not have subject matter jurisdiction to rubber-stamp divorces based on blanket legislative mandates that neither require nor permit a genuine judicial discretion.    When that summary judgment is typically denied by the “family court” judge, this then opens up a legal route of Federal challenge outside the usual self-interested state appellate system, and cuts costs for a pro-se challenger down to manageable levels, at least until success is achieved at the first Federal level where the judge’s immunity is successfully challenged because of the lack of subject matter jurisdiction.   At this point, the state AG and organizations like the ACLU will fiercely seek to defend existing laws and entrenched financial interests, probably hoping to empty their opponent’s purse before they prevail up the legal chain to SCOTUS.     This sort of Federal appeal is also available to those whose wrongful divorce has already been finalized against their will,  and for a few years thereafter, even following an unsuccessful state constitutional challenge on 1st and 14th Amendment grounds.   These circumstances increase the possibility that constitutional challenges can be brought in numerous states (hence, Federal circuits) by people who might have deep enough pockets to sustain them, and thereby increase the likelihood that SCOTUS will see a “Federal question”,  and ultimately agree to hear a case all nine justices would probably much rather not hear.   It is also possible that as these cases gather traction in the lower Federal courts, there will be a huge push to amend state constitutions to remove the defect being challenged, by carving out a specific delegation which allows the “family courts” to carry on as usual, much easier to do (and much harder to organize effective opposition to),  on the individual state level –when the other side has control of the money, the media and the popular culture.

Clearly there needs to be a strategic and proactive discussion among the movers and shakers in the marriage permanence movement about how the aftermath of successful constitutional challenge on this basis might be optimally managed, and what sort of strategic alliances need to be cultivated ahead of such a successful development, to have a chance of preventing unilateral “no-fault” divorce from reinventing itself on state constitutions, if so overturned.

(    For comic relief, juicy details and more of the humanistic, anti-family academic mindset concerning this case, SIFC recommends Steven H. Hobbs’ “Love on the Oregon Trail:  What the Story of Maynard v Hill Teaches Us About Marriage and Democratic Self-Governance” – 2003).

“By Me kings reign, and princes decree righteousness…”
– Proverbs 8:15
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!
Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Divorce, Equal Protection, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Religious freedom, Substantive Due Process

Would a Ruling that Unilateral No-Fault Divorce is Unconstitutional REALLY Be “Legislating from the Bench” ?

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by Standerinfamilycourt

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;–to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;–to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;–to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;–to Controversies between two or more States;–between a State and Citizens of another State; –between Citizens of different States, –between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
United States Constitution, Article 3, Section 2, Clause 1

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.    United States Constitution, Article 10

Two landmark cases of the Sexual Revolution in the U.S., namely Roe v. Wade – 1973 (depriving pre-born children of their fundamental right to life), and Obergefell v. Hodges – 2015, legalizing sodomy as “marriage”, were seen by conservatives and original constructionists (with a fair amount of justification, we daresay) as “legislating from the bench”.    An extra-constitutional fundamental right (to “privacy”) was established without actually amending the Constitution via Congressional and state legislative action as called for in Article 5.    Leading up to those cases, several other cases also turned on a judicially-presumed “right of privacy”, including Eisenstadt v. Baird – 1972 (establishing the right of unmarried individuals to purchase contraceptives) and Lawrence v. Texas – 2003 (declaring state laws against sodomy “unconstitutional”).      It should be noted that the fundamental right that is explicit in the Bill of Rights is the right to freedom of association, which came to be closely associated with a presumed “privacy” right which, even worse, has come to override the priority of other conflicting fundamental rights of impacted parties, in order to arrive at some of these activist, individualist decisions that don’t comport with balancing fundamental rights in a way that is best for society as a whole.

As for prioritizing the protection of fundamental rights that inherently conflict with one another, most reasonable people would concur with the principle:  “My fundamental rights end where yours take up.”     For example, a baby’s right to life was ruled in Roe v. Wade to unduly infringe upon a woman’s right to “free association”, but is that reasonable?    A homosexual pair’s right to “free association”, protected by local SOGI laws (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) was ruled to have priority over a wedding professional’s free exercise of religion in a matter before the U.S. Supreme Court last year with a landmark ruling in his favor delivered in June.

SCOTUS did (effectively) rule in 2015 that homosexual couples have a fundamental right to remain married, but our unilateral divorce laws continue to deny that same fundamental right to innocent heterosexual spouses who oppose the purported “dissolution” of their marriage as profoundly harmful to their immediate and extended families’ true best interests, and significantly infringing on the family members’ rights to free association and free religious exercise.  In fact, the Petitioner’s presumed right to “free association” with an adulterous partner, and “privacy” are treated as trumping their innocent spouse’s right to free religious exercise and conscience, as well as their right to protection of property with due process of law, along with their right to protection of decades of extended family relationships.    My right to bear arms must necessarily yield to your right to life if I misuse my fundamental right in order to advance my individual selfish interest at your expense.    And so forth.

Most immoral laws and court rulings indeed result from immoral prioritization of conflicting fundamental rights – a balancing that always has been unavoidable when it comes to the Bill of Rights protections.    It is popular (and ridiculously false) to claim that “you can’t legislate morality”,  but is that not precisely what laws against murder, rape, battery, larceny and defamation actually do?   Don’t discrimination laws of all types “legislate morality” ?

C.S. Lewis famously said,

“There is no neutral ground in the universe.   Every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.”

Indeed, if someone isn’t legislating morality, it certainly doesn’t leave just a neutral vacuum.     The evidence is all around us that somebody else is surely going to be legislating immorality –and in constantly increasing amounts,  to the corrosive detriment of the whole of society.    As the morality and sense of the good of the whole thereby disintegrates, the whole nation can go down to historic ruin because immoral laws can be exceedingly difficult to reverse no matter how much vile impact they’ve produced.

This concludes the long introduction to the topic at-hand.
Our U.S. Constitution and state constitutions were designed with an intentional separation-of-powers so that the three branches,  legislative, executive and judicial, historically operated with prudent boundaries; checks-and-balances on each other.    It wasn’t perfect, but it continued to pervasively function well over a long period of time —  until the Sexual Revolution hit in full force in the 1970’s.   In addition, the concept of Federalism served to set boundaries of balance between states’ power and the power of national leaders.     Unfortunately, both of these mechanisms in recent decades have worked together to make the erosion of equal protection in marriage laws enacted with unconstitutional statutory provisions increasingly difficult to counter or overturn, at least with regard to the heterosexuals who (after all) produce the children who become the next generation of citizens.

As we’ve seen since former President Obama swept into office in 2008, it’s been a far different story with regard to homosexuals, who achieved superior protections to all other citizens, and relaxation of those legal boundaries, vis-à-vis heterosexuals .   Homosexuals have typically not been required to undertake the expensive burden of taking marriage cases through all levels of the state courts before a lower Federal court would hear and rule on the case.    Homosexuals have often been extended special privilege in overturning a state marriage law that state judiciary authorities declined to review.    By contrast, heterosexuals in modern times have been forced to bear the expensive burden of exhausting all state channels of review, with SCOTUS being the first allowed Federal  engagement point of review.   The odds of getting a constitutional challenge heard there are approximately 90 to 1 as recently reported.     Reportedly, less than 1% of the 9,000 some cases submitted for SCOTUS docketing ever make it oral arguments.    Unless at least four Justices agree to hear the case, it will never be heard, and no reason need be given.   To make matters worse, the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Court revealed that the Justices had been using a “vetting pool” of clerks, rather than having their own clerks read the cases, reducing the chances of a case which so fundamentally “takes on” the Sexual Revolution having its day in highest court in the land even more remote.    To his credit, Justice Gorsuch announced that he would be joining Justice Alito in breaking with that convenience.    Most recently, Justice Kavanaugh was mum on that issue, so presumably he’s using the “cert” pool, as the now-retired Justice Kennedy did.   That means liberal clerks still probably outnumber conservative clerks in that pool, but “standerinfamilycourt” digresses except to say that even the conservative clerks are going to have an ideological bias against the perception of “legislating from the bench”.

Unfortunately, the whole concept of “legislating from the bench”,  tends to be ideologically charged.   It refers to using courts to violate the constitutional separation of powers in Articles 1 and 3, also the interference with Federalism and states’ rights prohibited by Article 10.    Our constitutional republic is gravely harmed in the clear-cut cases of “legislating from the bench” where special rights have been created for a group of people in a case precedent that will in fact deny fundamental rights to everyone else in order to implement and enforce the same.    Our constitutional republic is equally harmed when an ideological majority uses the concept as an excuse to deny fundamental rights to a group of people whose state constitutions and the Bill of Rights is supposed to guarantee them.   The latter has historically been accomplished either through applying an inappropriate standard of judicial review, or wrongfully declining to hear such a case coming from a lower level.

For example, in 1986, Florida pro-se constitutional challenger Judith Brumbaugh related in her book, “Judge, Please Don’t Strike that Gavel on My Marriage”, that she managed to get her appeal of Florida’s unilateral “no-fault” divorce law docketed at the U.S. Supreme Court.    They ultimately declined to hear the case “for want of a Federal question”.    It was striking that Judith’s request for “cert” even got docketed.   This blog has documented many earlier challenges to unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws based on religious freedom and equal protection grounds, where the state appeals courts applied the rational basis standard of review, instead of the strict scrutiny basis that is constitutionally required when fundamental rights are being denied by a state statute.   The latter requires that the states prove a compelling interest in denying those fundamental rights, and that such laws be narrowly-tailored to meet that interest in the least intrusive way upon those rights.    What tends to happen is that SCOTUS will apply Article 10 first, and say there is no “Federal question” (unless conflicting results are found in lower courts in different circuits on the same issue) even when it is clear that not only is the Bill of Rights being violated, but the state courts are tolerating wholesale violations of Articles 1 and 3, and thereby compromising the separation-of-powers between the branches of government.    What’s really happening is the actual inverse of “legislating from the bench”,  that is, taking away true judicial discretion and validating a phony cause-of-action from the floors of the state legislative bodies, while being allowed to do it through what amounts to judicial collusion and self-dealing.

Although SCOTUS intervened twice in equal protection cases involving marriage or divorce between homosexuals between 2013 and 2015, the last heterosexual divorce case “standerinfamilycourt” could find that was heard appears to be in 1996 out of Mississippi, and it involved the termination of parental rights for a mother who had suffered a divorce to which she probably acquiesced.    (Mississippi’s “no-fault” law is the only one in the country that was comprehensively enacted in 1972 so as to not force divorce on a non-consenting spouse except on a fault basis.)   The matter at issue was not even the divorce itself, but her inability to pay the transcript costs that blocked her from fighting the termination of her parental rights at the request of her now-“remarried” husband.    There was already significant precedent for the costs of access to courts not to be permitted to deny access to her avenues of initial hearing or appeal.  That case was simply remanded back to the state on that very narrow basis.

In the landmark case, Loving v Virginia (1967) there were no such concerns with violating Article 10.    The Lovings had secured the help of the ACLU to fight the state’s anti-miscegenation laws all the way up through the state appellate system in a class action suit, until certiorari was requested and granted from SCOTUS.   However, neither was there any artificial requirement imposed by SCOTUS to wait for differing outcomes in other regions of the country, lest the spurious claim be made of “want of a Federal question”.    The Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2) ….

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

….makes such assertions highly questionable when Bill of Rights protections are being denied by state legislatures to its citizens.
The sequence of events in the Loving case, as laid out in the majority SCOTUS opinion:

“On November 6, 1963, they filed a motion in the state trial court to vacate the judgment and set aside the sentence on the ground that the statutes which they had violated were repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment. The motion not having been decided by October 28, 1964, the Lovings instituted a class action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia requesting that a three-judge court be convened to declare the Virginia anti-miscegenation statutes unconstitutional and to enjoin state officials from enforcing their convictions. On January 22, 1965, the state trial judge denied the motion to vacate the sentences, and the Lovings perfected an appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. On February 11, 1965, the three-judge District Court continued the case to allow the Lovings to present their constitutional claims to the highest state court. The Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of the anti-miscegenation statutes and, after modifying the sentence, affirmed the convictions. The Lovings appealed this decision, and we noted probable jurisdiction on December 12, 1966…”

Fundamental rights to stay married, and to live where they wished were on the line in this case that was decided unanimously by the Justices, two and a half years before unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws began to be enacted in the various states.   While it should never be the case, the ugly reality is that the changeable prevailing morality tends to drive landmark SCOTUS decisions and fundamental rights get some lip service, but tend to take a back seat.  For more on the constitutional challenges to unilateral “no-fault” divorce  that were decided at the state level under an erroneous standard of judicial review, but never heard by SCOTUS, please click here, and here.   Several of the gay marriage cases decided in 2014 cited the right to stay married.

If subsequent state legislation conflicts with a state constitution, there is no violation of Federalism for SCOTUS to enforce the state constitution where a state supreme court denied certiorari.

First-level state appeals are required to be heard, but are sometimes dismissed on technicalities, and hearings for state Supreme Court appeals can be declined without comment, simply based on the number of cases submitted, with “standerinfamilycourt’s” constitutional attorney advising that the state Supreme Court might hear perhaps 5% of the few thousand appeals submitted each session.   Given the influence-peddling on the state level for states that have an elected judiciary, which was ongoing both before and after the jaw-dropping Citizens United ruling by SCOTUS (money is “speech”), it is important, in theory at least, to have an unobstructed path to SCOTUS.    Appellate decisions at the state level, and demonstrably also by SCOTUS, are becoming almost uniformly ideological rather than independent, with the effect that constitutional checks-and-balances between the branches of government are becoming ever-weaker, and stare decisis (ruling by precedent) is pretty much a joke these days.   While in a rare instance there might be a favorable individual challenge where the ruling would be limited in its impact to the law as applied to just that case,  no state appellate court wants to invalidate 50 years worth of unconstitutional marriage dissolutions by admitting the laws are unconstitutional on their face, knowing the social chaos that would result, so these courts will be duplicitous in avoiding ever being put in a situation where they would have to so rule.    Some basis is going to have the be found for taking a constitutional challenge up through the Federal court system despite the long history of being barred from doing so by Article 10 arguments.

In one sense, given the long history of barriers and difficulty of getting any true appellate justice in 1st and 14th Amendment-based challenges to unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws, either on the state or Federal levels, the question of whether it would be “legislating from the bench” to declare them unconstitutional on this basis might seem like a moot or futile question.    However, if judges could be sued in Federal court because they ruled while having no true subject matter jurisdiction due to the Article 3 violations entailed in the statute, then this might suddenly become a very relevant question.    As this post is being written, the theory that state divorce statutes unconstitutionally strip judges of the discretion required by Article 3 is being tested in Federal court in several states.    As soon as some initial outcomes are available, the updates will be the subject of a future post.

Then I will draw near to you for judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against those who swear falsely, and against those who oppress the wage earner in his wages, the widow and the orphan, and those who turn aside the alien and do not fear Me,” says the Lord of hosts.   “For I, the Lord, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.
– Malachi 3: 5-6

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!

 

Church Discipline, citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Divorce, Lost culture, marriage, morality, Spiritual Warfare

“Standerinfamilycourt” Responds to Dr. Hilary Towers and Author Leila Miller

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Our response to this article,
Are the Church’s Teachings on Sexuality Still ‘Good News’ for the Divorced?
…which is (in part) about Protestant covenant marriage “standers” and their example to Roman Catholic divorcees.

There’s much to say here.  Bottom line: Jesus told us in Matt. 19:8 that all “divorce” is a man-made fabrication “from the beginning”,  a violation of the created order (Gen. 2:21-24; Matt. 19:4-6), and the only “marriage” God recognizes is both complementarian and life-long indissoluble by any acts or paper of men.   He and Paul both go on to say that dying in the ongoing state of adultery – that is, “remarriage” after man-legalized abandonment of a God-joined spouse, sends people to hell (Matt. 5:27-32; Luke 16:15-31; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; Gal. 5:19-21).
The only people, therefore, who are actually “divorced” are the subsequent spouses who were never married in God’s eyes to begin with. True God-joined spouses are only immorally abandoned, according to the word of God, because only D-E-A-T-H ever dissolves those marriages.   Jesus mentions NO religious test for this that is recorded within the four canonized gospels, nor do any of the Apostles reference such.    Bluntly, all Christ-followers should vehemently object to Roman Catholic doctrine that waters down this truth via the papal contrivance of “nullity”, which today amounts to little more than revival of the vile medieval practice of selling indulgences.   

By the “church” the obvious reference in this article is to the RCC, who since the 12th century has progressively watered down this hard truth with “annulment” (extra paper), a practice which is now almost universal in this country.  The Protestant church, on the other hand, watered it down by ignoring / reinterpreting / obfuscating the scriptures, fraudulently handing jurisdiction over to the civil state by the Reformers, and by casting inexcusable doubt on the Apostles and early church fathers who unanimously confirmed the hard truth for 400 years–until history’s last “Donald Trump” came along (namely, the Emperor Constantine).

Under the concurrent polygamist, Constantine, the church took its first Leftist turn, in gratitude for being delivered from Roman persecution.

We saw this wicked cycle being played out again at the Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas a couple of weeks ago, where in addition to the longstanding violation of Matt. 19:6, the largest evangelical denomination in the U.S. is now paving the way for sanctioned violation of Matt. 19:4, rather than repent of BOTH forms of marriage desecration, and rather than patiently endure the resulting persecution of staying true to biblical sexual ethics.    Possibly the recent spectacle of human street torches on the big screen in the movie “The Apostle Paul” didn’t bode well, but there also seems to be increasing evidence of dirty money making its way into both the RCC and the SBC. The objective of the outside financial largesse, of course, is to complete the decades-long orchestrated political extinction of the biblical family.

“Irregular circumstances” need to be repented of by severance.   This is a euphemistic canonical term for immoral life choices that Jesus and Paul both repeatedly tell us destroy the souls of those involved.   Jesus couldn’t have been more clear that this is ongoing adultery in every case where there is a living, estranged spouse on either side.    We can all empathize with the desire to lessen the stigma and trauma for the children of such illicit unions, but we must never lose sight of the betrayed children of covenant, and must never favor the illicit children over the covenant children (and covenant generations).    God never did this.   Jesus was graphically clear in Luke 16 when describing the eternal fate of such “married” people.     We presume that then, as now,  there were non-covenant children involved — just as there are children made in God’s image today being raised in sodomous unions.

In fact, while it’s great that this article highlights and praises the “standers” who endeavor to live chaste lives following man’s divorce, it’s also true that the only pure motivation for standing that goes the distance is the consuming and enduring desire to keep family members and our one-flesh mates (as well as their legalized adultery partners) out of hell by leaving the door wide open to their physical repentance.   Any church that recognizes “irregular circumstances” and gives that any other treatment than what was prescribed by Paul in 1 Cor. 5 is directly stoking the demand for the rising, overwhelming incidence of divorce.   We don’t need family flowcharts, we need on-our-face repentance in the holy fear of God!

The authors write:

“Protestants have a term for those spouses who remain true to a wayward spouse even in the wake of what may be a necessary separation and/or civil divorce: “standers.” Absent clear and enthusiastic support for this approach (both from within the Church and without), it simply does not occur to many faithful U.S. Catholics that ‘standing’ might be the most compassionate option for the abandoned spouse and his or her children.”       (We standers certainly believe that the Apostle Paul would agree.)

This is an excellent observation, with a couple of caveats.  First, most standers who are true Christ-followers do not consider civil divorce “necessary” under any circumstances, because they know it is of no effect in the kingdom of God.   The obvious exception is, of course, divorce out of a “marriage” that Jesus repeatedly called ongoing adulterous (non-widowed “remarriage”) — a union which God is always precluded from participating in at all.    This differs not one whit from a sodomous, legalized union for all the same reasons.   Disciples in covenant marriages should endeavor not to participate in the civil system, and should be willing to endure whatever hardships necessary, rather than disobey 1 Cor. 6:1-8.

If the authors are under the impression that standers are ever civil divorce initiators, they are only fractionally correct. There are a handful of these who went from prodigal to stander after learning the truth, and then repenting (by leaving adulterous subsequent relationships, legalized or not).  Separation without civil involvement may indeed be necessary for original marriages — and this is consistent with the instructions of the Apostle in 1 Cor. 7:10-11, not to divorce, and if divorced, to remain celibate until reconciled.

Secondly, local Protestant churches typically consider standers “pariahs” and a threat to the “unity” of the church.  Some false shepherds will even carry out “church discipline” on vocal standers (instead of on the legalized adulterers whose souls are actually on the line).    Of course, one does not necessarily need to have an estranged marriage to be a stander in the larger sense.  

Thankfully, God is raising up a growing handful of Protestant pastors, with and without congregations, in an encouraging variety of evangelical denominations, who are coming into the biblical truth in the last few years, Berean-style, through deep study of original language scripture manuscripts and the writings of the ante-Nicene “church fathers“ (whereas their faithless peers would prefer to discard this valuable historic evidence in order to please and appease the religious humanists filling their pews)–and these true shepherds are coming into the unpopular truth by the wooing of the Holy Spirit.    These men have determined to suffer the economic consequences and the censure entailed in refusing to do adulterous weddings, in attending marriage permanence retreats to encourage standers, in writing truthful books, and in preaching the truth without fear of the temporal consequences.   SIFC and the angels in heaven can’t sing their praises loudly enough!

SIFC believes it was Dr. Towers who recently suggested that the effects of the standers’ movement on their children should be studied when there is a large enough sample size.   Amen!  At present, SIFC blogs anecdotally on this topic quite frequently.   We would all hope that unilateral divorce will be abolished nationwide, well before sample size  “n” can occur and before longitudinal results would ever become available.   SIFC has historical doubts that the Lord will tarry that long in these Days of Noah, but absolutely applauds Dr. Towers’ desire to see this topic studied.   Let’s be thankful that the Lord has orchestrated that Catholics and Protestants work together to turn the moral tide in church culture before it’s apocalyptically too  late for our country.

All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,
But He does according to His will in the host of heaven
And among the inhabitants of earth;
And no one can ward off His hand
Or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’
– Daniel 4:35

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

citizenship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, morality, Substantive Due Process

Dear Texas Lawmakers: A Guest Blog

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– by Kristi  Davis

Dear Members of the Texas State Committee on Juvenile Justice and Family Issues:

I came before you in March of 2017 to testify for HB93 for the repeal of no-fault divorce laws in Texas. My testimony can be viewed online on your website.

Now I would like to present to you an analogy to help bring better understanding of what you are allowing when you have allowed no-fault divorce to continue in our state.

You received your privilege of representing people of our state when those people exercised their privilege to vote and voted for you. You chose to run; they chose to vote. The result is the seat you are now sitting in. All this took place because there are rules in place to create a healthy environment for us to “do government”.

So please imagine this chaotic scenario:

What would you think if one of your constituents walked into the Capitol Building one day and declared that you were no longer their choice for office and must be removed?  This person is not just any constituent; this person voted for you.

And what would you think if they had the erroneous right and ability to remove you simply by making a subjective statement on how they no longer like this relationship you are now in, as voter and representative?

Imagine they could simply file a complaint at the information desk which would guarantee the issue be brought up on the House floor in front of everyone. There really is no need to discuss the issue on the floor, after all, because they need no reason for your removal.  And you will have no opportunity to object to their statement because your side of the story need not be heard. How can you defend yourself, really, when you have not been accused of doing any wrong? The situation has nothing to do with your work performance, anyway. It all comes down to their whims and singular feelings about your relationship. They no longer want you in your seat. That is all that is needed.

What if you wanted to keep your seat? After all, this one voter does not represent your whole constituency; others are involved!
I regret to tell you, the rules were changed years ago that allow one voter, any one voter, to remove you at any time for no reason other than their feelings, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Once the voter objects, your job is gone and your career is over. The entire process can be completed in as little as two months’ time, because we wouldn’t want to inconvenience the public with the legal bill to defend your job.

Please remember: this voter also has access to everything you own and all your private information. They can walk into your office at any time and take your computer, read your emails, force your aides to speak against you, even take over your office and lock your door! They can force your aides to become their aides and work for their campaign to elect someone else in your place. You cannot stop it. But then again, why would you? Even though they voluntarily entered this relationship and chose to vote, you wouldn’t want to force someone to stay enslaved in this voter/representative relationship, would you?

This process could take place at any time, with any representative, as many times as a person would choose, ad nauseum.

Representatives could be shuffled in and out of office the whole session long. I know that making laws is why you are in office, that’s your job, but it’s ok if your job never gets done due to these personal whims of one person. Sure, the whole of the public would pay the price, but aren’t this individual’s desires more important? The courts say this is in the best interest of all your constituents, though years of research would say they are exactly wrong.

Would you think this public policy is not such a great one and needs to be amended or removed?

What would you do if the media folks showed up and opposed your efforts to change these policies? They would make a handsome living off broadcasting these voter objections at the Capitol, after all. But they would not say that out loud; instead, they will tell you that you are being selfish and old-fashioned. They would say that the law is now in the eye of the beholder, subject to redefinition by anyone living under it. Would you be “ok” with that?

Chaos.

Can you imagine this sort of logic applied to every area of law? If it can happen to the most fundamental and important of relationships- family ties, human beings- why not apply to it to everything else, because everything else is less important?
This matter could not be more serious.

Where do we draw the line? Where do you draw the line?
You may think my analogy sounds impossible, but that is what people of 50 years ago thought of the idea of a society where people dissolve marriage and family with the click of a button, literally.
If you do not stop this nonsense here, this analogy that sounds impossible today could be the way of life tomorrow. You are in the position to draw the line.

Let’s reestablish a healthy environment to “do family”; support healthy family relationships by requiring contested divorce cases to be brought for real reasons and every case to be heard thoroughly by a judge. If doing what is in the best interest of the children is really valued at all in this legislature, I implore you to leave hypocrisy behind and protect family by repealing unilateral divorce.

Most sincerely,
Kristi Davis
Texas Citizen
3-Time (Generational) Divorce  Sufferer under No-Fault Divorce in Texas

(    SIFC:   Kristi Davis testified on March 8, 2017 before this Texas Legislative Committee where at least three committee members actually derive income, either directly or indirectly, from unilateral divorce laws.   She has recently launched a blog page called  Healing and Repealing for Strong Family Trees – www.healingandrepealing.com  )

 

 

Discipleship, Lost culture, morality, Spiritual Warfare

Who’s That Back-Door Funding the Southern Baptists These Days…(And WHY)?

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Give us that Marxist social gospel
Give us that Marxist social gospel
Give us that Marxist social gospel
It’s good enough for most

It was good enough for the mainstream Methodists
Good enough for the Episcopalians
Good enough for the leftist Lutherans
It’s even good enough for this Pope   

Yeah!….( okay, “SIFC” will behave now.)

In the not-so-humble opinion of “standerinfamilycourt”, it’s way past time to recognize that the bride of Jesus Christ is not some sort of demographic-sensitive, finger-to-the-wind organizational hawker.   Her Husband never did allow one single soul to come to Him on his or her own terms while He walked the earth, not even the man who wanted to go home first and bury his ailing father.

It has been hard to miss the leftward drift over the past 3 or so years of The Gospel Coalition publication (TGC) and the related Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), both of which are Southern Baptist-affiliated organizations.    What do we mean by “leftward drift” ?    It’s easily recognizable to some of us with adult children whom we raised in conservative evangelical homes, or in traditional Catholic homes, but those big kids are now thinking Jesus died for “social justice” –  and they choose their current church accordingly, leaving some of us grateful that our grandchildren are in church at all, but….

Did Jesus die for “social justice” ?

Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.
Therefore Pilate said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth.
– John 18:36-37

Jesus laid down His life to bring the poor and lost into a future kingdom.    Yes, He taught us to do unto others as we would have done for us,  but the temporal (as He demonstrates Himself) is only PART of the equation, and it is, in fact, by far the lesser part.

While it might seem comforting to reason that the SBC is doing what all major organizations do in the 21st  century,  especially after losing a million members over the last decade, and they are appealing to what they perceive as their future demographic to try and recover the loss, yet there may possibly be a little more that’s afoot along with the demographic appeal, and it just might be a bit sinister.    This may seem a crass suggestion, but once the choice has been made to shift (or drift) mission from the eternal to the temporal, is not such discernment fair game?

In the fall of 2015, TGC contributor Joe Carter did an excellent three-part series of articles on the Communist roots of the U.S.
50-state unilateral divorce laws, and the deleterious impact they have had on the civility and stability of our society.    He promised a fourth installment which the marriage permanence community eagerly awaited, but for some reason, he has not delivered it –almost three years later.    Why?   Some have sought to find out, but Joe’s not saying.   (More about the reinvented Joe Carter below.)

As the Southern Baptist Convention gears up for its annual convention June 10-13 in Dallas, shortly after the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., it appears the agenda will be heavy with more of the same.   The media has managed to keep the national attention riveted on “racism”, despite a rash of multi-racial school shootings, carried out by fatherless young men.    Denominational leaders are tripping all over themselves to “apologize” for our “segregated” churches, despite the fact that people quite freely make their own choice where they feel most comfortable attending, and you never see a “blacks only” or “whites only” sign in front of any church in this country.    Likely to be ignored (again) in the agenda is the fact that the 2018 host state and the neighboring state both have unilateral divorce repeal bills pending on the floors of their legislatures, and it’s a prime opportunity for the SBC to act on its year 2000 resolution — that is, presuming the denomination ever meant a single word of it.

The PMS Pasting of Paige Patterson

The family-friendly year 2000 SBC resolution entitled, “The Baptist Faith and Message” was presided over by the man who this week lost his job as head of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary over allegations that he is a “misogynist” and “patriarchal”, guilty in the first-degree of the unspeakable crime of counseling a physically and emotionally battered woman, some years earlier, in the identical fashion the Apostles Paul and Peter would have.   As described in the preceding blog post,  homosexual journalist Jonathan Merritt brought a Y2K radio interview audio of Dr. Paige Patterson to Spiritual Sounding Board, a blog site that “exposes” traditional biblical church conduct and morals (and especially, church leadership that cultivates this) as “abusive” and “controlling”.  SSB then proceeded obligingly to second-guess Dr. Patterson’s pastoral ministry of 20 years ago as “misogynistic”, “paternalistic”, and insufficiently protective of battered women.    This inflamed the likes of leftist-leaning Liberty University professor and ERLC (Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission) research fellow Karen Swallow-Prior, also media evangelist Beth Moore to raise a petition garnering over 3,000 signatures demanding Dr. Patterson’s removal from his post.   The undersigned claimed to “affirm”  The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 principles (we’d beg to differ), which reads, in part:

“…All Christians are under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in our own lives and in human society….In order to promote these ends Christians should be ready to work with all men of good will in any good cause, always being careful to act in the spirit of love without compromising their loyalty to Christ and His truth…

“Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God’s unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church and to provide for the man and the woman in marriage the framework for intimate companionship, the channel of sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the means for procreation of the human race….The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God’s image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation…..Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord. Parents are to demonstrate to their children God’s pattern for marriage. Parents are to teach their children spiritual and moral values and to lead them, through consistent lifestyle example and loving discipline, to make choices based on biblical truth. Children are to honor and obey their parents.”

Given that Jesus was abundantly and repeatedly clear that all “divorce” is man-made rebellion against the created order (Matt. 19:6,8), representing an un-Christlike and deliberate decision to take one’s own revenge, to never forgive, and to covet a different spouse, is it not at least possible that what really offended these women on Patterson’s part, is that many of them actually are adulterously-“remarried”, and therefore, Paul’s instruction for abuse found in 1 Cor. 7:11 casts an implicit moral judgment on their own unbiblical life choices, when counseled and publicly endorsed by a seminary head?    Around this blog, we call that the “shoe fits-syndrome”; nobody likes to be exposed, by the double-edged sword of God’s word, as a hypocrite – even indirectly.    This tragically-successful petition treats the socially conservative SBC year 2000 Resolution as though it were a bag of trail mix, because these same women (and possibly their pastors as well) have grown accustomed to treating God’s word the same way.   Don’t think for a moment that the well-financed globalist players pushing the Marxist breakdown of the family aren’t intimately familiar with the utter hypocrisy of the contemporary adulterated church (as well as the 50-year advanced pastor-intimidation-factor which unrepentant congregation members routinely wield), or that these globalist malefactors would even hesitate to “play” these gullible women, along with their horde of well-meaning sympathizers!

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.   For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.   – 2 Timothy 3:1-7

Swallow-Prior has also been openly critical of Dr. Patterson’s leadership to exclude women from theology professorships at the seminary, a feminist issue that can reasonably be associated with biblical instruction for a woman not to teach or exercise authority over men.    Swallow-Prior’s actions indicate that she is an LGBT sympathizer and is in alignment with a faction that wants to push the SBC in the direction of a leftist social-justice gospel.

(     SIFC:  Regrettably, Karen Swallow Prior was reported to have been hit by a bus on Wednesday in Nashville, one day after Patterson’s removal, and suffered serious injuries requiring emergency surgery.    Please be upholding this confused lady in prayer – Matthew 5:43-48 – for a healing from head to heart to toe, as God is gracious to deliver and instruct.   She reportedly is recovering well, according to an update from the same source.)

In the four-minute “smoking gun” audio, Dr. Patterson is asked by the interviewer about a wife’s submission to her husband, asking him what he says to a woman he knows is being physically abused.   Dr. Patterson tells the interviewer (approximately 52 seconds in) that it “depends on the level of abuse to a certain degree”,  and that he’s never in his pastoral ministry ever counseled a woman to seek a divorce.    Both are biblically-valid statements, but there is nothing Dr. Patterson could possibly have said that could be more inflammatory to the ideology that (in fairness to Dr. Patterson) was yet to emerge in these “abuse ministries” — already violating two of their core tenets within just 53 seconds of opening his mouth.    From there, Patterson continued in the interview to make clear that where there was actual endangerment, he counseled chaste separation with the seeking of professional help, and said he had even assisted in bringing it about on occasion.   (This is the correct scriptural approach, in fact).  He then transitioned to the more typical case (approximately 1:50) where perhaps the abuse is not physical yet, and while stating unequivocally that he considered all abuse to be serious, Dr. Patterson related a specific story that should have been credited for its redemptive nature, sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit, and the effective instruction in spiritual weaponry he imparted to this lady–rather than the “reckless endangerment” the cast of feminazi’s have vocally characterized it as.    One has to seriously question the born-again experience of histrionical critics whose words and conduct show they do not trust the ability of God to supernaturally protect those who obey Him, and even worse, who cast aside as inconsequential the kingdom fruit of a former abuser being transformed, regenerated and born into the kingdom of God.

He counseled this lady, “you must not forget the power of prayer….I want you to every evening get down by your bed, just as he goes to sleep…when he’s just about asleep, you just pray for him, out loud, quietly…but I said, ‘get ready because he just might get a little more violent’….   Here, Patterson might have explained it a little better so as not to be misconstrued, but  SIFC knows from firsthand experience that he was talking about violence due to the nature of spiritual warfare, not because she was necessarily overheard.   He failed to be more specific about the days that most likely elapsed before what happened next occurred….
“…sure enough, she came to church one morning with both eyes black, and she was angry with me and with God and the world….and she said, ‘I hope you’re happy’, and I said ‘yes, ma’am I am, I’m sorry about that, but I’m very happy’, but what she didn’t know when she sat down in church that morning was that her husband had come in and sat at the back, the first time he ever came, and when I gave the invitation that morning, he was the first one down to the front. And his heart was broken.  He said ‘my wife’s been praying for me, and I can’t believe what I did to her.  Do you think God could forgive someone like me?’  Patterson went on to make clear that the regenerated man was transformed into a great husband after that, and there was no further violence.

Additional audio “skeletons”  came out of the closet where Patterson either showed some bad judgment in sheltering sexual offenders, or related some anecdote in a way sure to inflame the “feminists-for-Christ”, who insisted he was “objectifying” women and girls, including this audio from 2014.  Lastly,  a late-breaking claim from a former seminary student who reportedly told blogging Enid, OK pastor Wade Burleson just this week that she had been raped on the campus of another Baptist seminary in 2003, and she alleged that Patterson had counseled her not to report it to the police.    This last story literally broke via the Washington Post (given by Burleson to young religion writer Sarah Pulliam Bailey) just as the deliberations for Patterson’s job were getting underway on Tuesday this past week, and this 11th hour story pretty much sealed his fate.   Since Patterson had earlier removed Burleson from a job on a missionary board, the latter was hardly a “disinterested party” when he took the tasty morsel to WaPo.   Snarks the previously-vanquished former underling of Patterson’s:  “A woman divorcing a man is far worse than a woman enduring physical abuse.  A single woman inviting a man into her apartment is a far worse sin than a single woman being raped by the man she invited over.”     Tell me this false shepherd Burleson isn’t  a cultural Marxist–and one with a festering personal vendetta, at that!

( SIFC:While any failure to timely report a felony crime to law enforcement officials is seriously unacceptable on the part of any school official — or any Samaritan with firsthand knowledge, for that matter, what was conveniently left to the side by Burleson, Dreher, et. al. in their screeds was any mention whether this perpetrator (another student) forced his way into the victim’s [apparently] on-campus living accommodation or was invited there, in violation of campus rules.   These schools typically require all students to sign their pre-consent to strong morals agreements as a condition of remaining a student in good standing.   Critics like journalist Rod Dreher, a former evangelical converted to Roman Catholicism, are decrying that the female victim was put on probation… while the male student was expelled and permanently barred from attending another SBC seminary.   While not completely conclusive, this strongly indicates that the victim violated the campus moral policies by inviting him in, and she received a proportionally lesser penalty that at least allowed her the opportunity to complete her studies if she was so-inclined.   The real question is whether the disciplinary actions were appropriately documented by school officials and whether those files still exist 15 years later.   Apparently, normal seminary disciplinary policies, formally pre-agreed by the students, aren’t supposed to be enforced, under #churchtoo ideology, against victims who suffer crime as a direct result of themselves violating school morals policies, because “it adds to their trauma”.   This, as concerns a seminary student, is supposed to be the moral equivalent of blaming a rape victim who–proverbially–had dressed like a streetwalker, according to the social justice ideology.)      

Ironically, the only story we’re aware of about Patterson’s leadership malfeasance that doesn’t seem at least questionable by objective biblical standards never even surfaced during this food fight in Fort Worth, but was well-known to SBC leadership for years.   We come by it due to a brief mention by relatively sympathetic Pulpit & Pen, who thinks disciplinary action against Patterson should have occurred ten years ago, and that he was politically singled out while other known bad and worse actors have come away unscathed so far.  The others, apparently, are lesser-known to the noisy outside social justice warriors–and they don’t run the institutions that influence church doctrine and shape future pastors.

We’re Being “Played” : Abuse As a “Silver Bullet”
Many believe the bottom line was that unless a way was found ahead of the conference to shove Patterson to the side, there was a reduced chance of carrying off a social justice theme at the June conference.   “Abuse” is one (but not the only one) of those potent, emotional core themes of the Left, right along with “bullying” — one that even the most ardent social conservatives will cast aside years of professional expertise in evidence and due process to treat an allegation emotionally if a painful personal experience stirs up those emotions.   As we saw with the successful last minute smear of former Chief Justice Roy Moore (who was for years an active advocate for intact, biblical families in carrying out his duties on the bench–in addition to his powerful opposition to the LGBT political agenda) prior to the December, 2017 special election in Alabama.     It is a signature trait of Soros interference with democratic processes that unproven (or unprovable) allegations will indeed carry the day if  visceral human emotions are skillfully played ,with inadequate time  or means to investigate allegations.   It has become an article of Leftist faith that to call man’s divorce immoral, and to require a man or woman to remain in a marriage they no longer want to be in is “social injustice”.

The Gilyard debacle could have been spun as precisely what it looks like: insensitive and negligent failure to protect female members of the congregations and staffs of a succession of churches from an obvious sexual predator.    One who was convicted, went to jail, and was installed in yet another pulpit as soon was he was released, as a matter of fact.   Why wasn’t it spun this time?  Perhaps the issue is that this sexual predator, apparently sheltered by Dr. Patterson for a couple of decades, is black.    Not good for the narrative.  The operatives knew that predominantly-female emotions were high enough  over uninvestigated and questionable charges, that it was unnecessary to hang the man over a real crime which didn’t fit the narrative.   And who was sheltering Dr. Patterson in the nine years since Gilyard went to prison –  any of the board members who voted this week to depose him, perchance?

(  SIFC:  Update,  June 1 ,2018 –  documentary evidence has now been made public by the wife of Dr. Patterson’s chief of staff, showing that it is likely that the 2003 “rape victim” at Southeastern Baptist Seminary was actually caught in consensual fornication, and more recently lied to the media about it.    This includes correspondence the “rape victim” sent to Dr. Patterson in 2003.

This should not be at all surprising, given the highly political rush to judgment, the revenge factor of some of the players, and likely outside meddling.    As the actual facts come to light, the Patterson proceedings bear even more resemblance to the politically-pivotal Roy Moore incident in December, 2017, where unsubstantiated allegations cost a Senate election.   Regrettably, on May 30 a faction of the Board of Trustees voted to reverse their May 23 decision based on continued feminist pressure, and vindictively stripped Dr. Patterson, age 75, of his retirement benefits, while he was out of the country, claiming, there was “new” – but undisclosed – “urgent” evidence.)

Another pastor from Oklahoma, Grady Arnold, was interviewed this week on the Janet Mefferd podcast show.    Pastor Arnold has written a resolution, discussed at the 20 minute mark, which he will be presenting at the conference to try to turn the SBC back from formally or informally embracing  cultural Marxism.    May the Lord put the wind at his back, but the resolution’s prospects don’t look very good at this point.

Rent-An-Evangelical
Mentioned earlier was the connection between removal petition instigator, Karen Swallow-Prior and the ERLC, between Jonathan Merritt and the George Soros-controlled secular publications that frequently carry his work.    Independent journalists such as Pulpit & Pen have been alleging for the past three years that one or more of the complex funding networks of Mr. Soros has been donating to both the ERLC and to The Gospel Coalition, which has manifested in the leftist undertones both have been steadily taking on.    In fact, Pulpit & Pen asserted on an April 10 facebook post that Soros / Riady-placed board members run the ERLC, but did not name any names.   The ministry website names only a massively large “Leadership Council” but does not disclose the names of ERLC board members.    This information is also unavailable on either Charity Navigator or Guidestar.     Presumably,  this board would include the likes of Tim Keller, and others involved with the Acton Institute.


Source:  Full length video, American Association of Evangelicals, 2016

Another Janet Mefferd podcast on May 18 featured an interview with Tom Littleton, another Southern Baptist pastor and writer, where Soros funding of SBC entities was discussed at the 20:30 mark. where Littleton says, “at some point I think that’s [the dirty money] going to surface….and it’s going to be a really damaging thing for some of these leaders when we see where some of this money is coming from.”

Unfortunately, conclusively proving the money trail is not so straightforward, because both of these SBC “suspect” organizations are able to classify themselves as disclosure-exempt religious organizations according to IRS rules for nonprofits.  That means the IRS Form 990 information returns that disclose financials and major donors which we might otherwise be able to look up on sites like Guidestar and Charity Navigator are not available to the public.    That said, the serendipity of a 2016 hacking and leaking incident resulted in access to strategy documents of the (Soros)  Open Society  Foundation that at least provide some pretty good circumstantial evidence.    The first “rented” evangelicals were already liberals, such as journalist Jim Wallis of Sojouners, who was forced to admit in 2011 to taking Soros money after originally denying it.

This is a map of the various locations for Soros funding organizations in the U.S.  — showing plenty of them in and around the SBC’s operating hubs.  Most deal with open borders immigration initiatives (which is how the first financial involvement with the ERLC was orchestrated), but not all do.

Source:  Soros FY2015 Reception and Placement Program Affiliate Sites

(    SIFC:   Here’s a quick guide to those Soros-funded organization acronymns on the above map illustration:

CWS*~^  –  Church World Service (open borders)
EMM*~ – Episcopal Migration Ministries (refugees)
ECDC* –  Ethiopian Community Development Council (refugees)
HIAS*  –   (refugees)
IRC^ –  International Rescue Campaign (refugees)
LIRS^ – Lutheran Immigration and Rescue Service (refugees)**
USCCB*~^ – United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (ecumenism)
USCRI* – U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (open borders)
WR*^ –  World Relief (“human flourishing” – a.k.a. humanist responses to human suffering)

* Eight of these “social justice” organizations have a presence in the Chicagoland area, home to The Gospel Coalition.
~ Three of these have a presence in the Louisville, KY vicinity of the SBC /  ERLC national headquarters
^  Five of these have a presence in the Dallas / Fort Worth area where important SBC seminaries, including the one Dr. Patterson was just deposed from, are located.

** One of SIFC’s adult children is presently part of a liberal Lutheran church located in a university town in a Deep South state–which is also gay-affirming, divorce-and-remarriage-affirming, and deeply involved with this Soros-funded organization.    The church’s local leadership consists largely of liberal professors from the nearby secular university.   SIFC has attended services there numerous times and is quite familiar with the liberal culture of that church, where gay literature is displayed on the reception tables in the church lobby.)

Says Pulpit & Pen,  December, 2017:
“THINKING THIS THROUGH together for a moment… Joe Carter came to the ERLC soon after Russell Moore’s ascent and radical altering of the standard conservative Southern Baptist messaging on key topics, especially LGBTQ issues.  Carter serves as ERLC “Communications Specialist” while he still holds his Senior Editor job with Rev. Robert Sirico – the once radical left wing, Marxist gay activist Pentecostal (later) gay church pastor and founder of Metropolitan Community Churches (the world’s first gay denomination), who conducted some of the nations first gay marriages and boasted he would perform exorcisms to rebuke the heterosexual spirits from his opposition – who is now a Catholic Libertarian priest.  If that is not disturbing we are simply NOT paying attention!  Carter has also worked in high level editing positions with at least two other Catholic publications according to his biography….

(  SIFC:  This blogger personally became aware of a sodomy-affirming MCC evangelical “church” during the 1980’s while residing in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the “buckle of the Bible Belt” and sequential polygamy capital of the nation–and considered both very disturbing!)

This December, 2017 article continues….
“Civil City Utopian Prophets and The Funding Machine
The following collaborations outlined as bullet points show the depths of Faith-Based involvement of Tim Keller and other evangelicals and institutions.  Several have been mentioned in previous articles without mention of the role Acton played in them.

  • Leading up to the 2009 infusion of untold billions of tax dollars by the Obama administration into the Faith Based Partnership overhaul – Tim Keller (page 80) and Friends, including the Acton Institute, worked with a Faith Based Partnership model in Orlando called “Seeking the Welfare of the City” (STWOTC) which resulted in the Polis Institute.  Richard Florida’s pro homosexual ideology was promoted by the Human Rights Campaign and Albert Mohler played a key role (page 76) as has the Acton Institute.  Acton still heavily promotes the “Welfare of the City” concept which centers around Faith Based Partnerships.  If participants like churches and ministries want to find funding to “save their cities” through Community Development grants, they must be inclusive and welcoming of one of the more destructive influences within the communities they are asserting they wish to help.  The erosion of the family and sexual liberation are two of the most compelling issues urban centers face.
    ……….
    “Are Money Changers Funding Acton and an Evangelical Deep State?

    • Another major player in what appears as an Evangelical Deep State is the National Christian Foundation of Alpharetta GA.  According to its history with Conservative Transparency and a 2016 990 forms /report, the NCF has brought about $6 Billion into its Christian philanthropy circles since 2011 (page 15 of the 990 shows $1,396,381,203 in 2016 alone.)  On requesting NCF to provide its donor and recipient list and history, the organization refused to supply any information whatsoever.  Various philanthropic sites do track some of the money and its sources, but given that NCF is a “Donor ADVISED fund,” the agreement upon giving is the intention of the donor is to be recognized but not required in the distribution.  What the Conservative Transparency tracking shows is that NCF giving in large part goes to political organizations like Acton Institute, Heritage Foundation, and a variety of organizations, many being Libertarian like Acton instead of conservative Christian organizations or ministries.  NCF helps coordinate giving for the Frankfurt School / Marxist-inspired Civilitas Group in which Tim Keller and Rick Warren serve as Board Members…..Since 2012 a marked departure from classic Evangelical conservative stance has taken place and Russell Moore, Tim Keller and others have been peddling the new, more civil, culturally relevant tone on social issues.  Given that their partners, like Acton and Sirico, all share the goals of harnessing Christian giving while  promoting a  Social Gospel and Faith Based Partnerships (FBP) it is fair to ask, “WHY?”Marvin Olasky, crowned the father of the Bush FBP agenda, later heavily funded and loaded with LGBTQ activism in the Obama years, provides conservative Christians with unquestioned news “from a Christian world view” in World Magazine.  Perhaps he should answer for his Fellowship with Acton Institute and Father Sirico knowing the LGBTQ infiltration of these circles and the programs he (Olasky) promotes.  Would Albert Mohler, the highly regarded head of Southern Seminary and SBC/ TGC/ evangelical leader clarify exactly what part of Richard Florida and HRC’s pro gay urban planning he believes is so vital for the church that he endorses it along with other strategies of the homosexual agenda.  There is little else in the Florida rhetoric except a heavy dose of Cultural Marxism. So what is the Appeal and what part of the ideology are we as the church to follow if NOT its push for LGBTQ “inclusion”?”

Another Christian journalist, Brannon Howse (World View Weekend), echoes this history and web of sinister connections between TGC and ERLC principals in his two-part series, “Exposing the Religious Trojan Horse of the Globalist Deep State” (March 28, 2018).    Presumably, these leaked documents enabled the reporting that was coming to light in 2017 and 2018 by these sources.

(  SIFC:  While Howse’s documented fact-gathering is indeed very useful, we put a heavy “disclaimer” on the toxic Calvinism that intrudes at the halfway-point of the Part 1 video.    Obedience to the commandments of Christ is not “salvation by works”, as Howse wrongly contends while critiquing Dr. John Piper as a “neo-Calvinist”.)

There are documents dating from at least 2008 to 2016. In June, 2016 the Open Society Foundations also had several documents leaked by DCLeaks. Bloomberg reported that the foundation notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the hacking.   DCLeaks.com link was provided in a PJ Media article, but no longer works.  One leaked memo posted by DCLeaks.com from Soros’ “Open Society” Foundations, for example, outlines a plot to co-opt Catholic officials and push Soros’ views within the Catholic Church and within the Christian world more broadly. To do that, Soros provided funding to two so-called faith-based organizations, PICO (People Improving Communities through Organizing), and Faith in Public Life (FPL) that would advance his extremism against a “faction of the church” that does not support it.

Among other schemes, Soros provided “essential resources” to secure the “buy-in of individual Catholic bishops to more publicly voice support of economic and racial justice messages.” The agenda was to create a “critical mass of bishops” to promote Soros’ interpretation of Pope Francis’ perceived anti-free-market activism and “racial justice agenda.” Numerous prominent Catholics have said Soros is radically distorting the pope’s message to further his own fundamentally anti-Catholic agenda.  Debatable, since the pontiff and the financier actually appear to be significantly aligned on matters of relativistic morality and “social justice”.

Soros money was used to help create an advanced propaganda campaign to promote one of Soros’ “Christian” puppets as a “leading commentator in high-profile outlets, such as USA Today, Newsweek, CNN, NBC, NPR, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and the Guardian.” Of course, if a “commentator” agrees with Soros, by definition he or she disagrees with the bible   Possibly five of these bad actors, who were key in the removal of Dr. Patterson last week, seem to fit this pattern very well:   Jonathan Merritt, Ed Stetzer, Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Karen Swallow-Prior, and Beth Moore.   This 2014 Gospel Coalition video involves three of these individuals, and it accurately foreshadows (at about the 38 minute mark) what unfolded in 2018:  learning how to “play church nicely”, removing any obstacles to doing so, so that we can grow at the expense of souls and, if necessary, while setting aside the word of God for “pragmatism”.

The Hard Facts about Declining Baptist Church Membership
This whole conversation has been far more about heat, rather than light.   What gives any group of people the right to demand that church leadership move away from biblical practice and principles?  Or the right to murmur about everything else, short of whether Dr. P’s wife uses bagged salad greens in her submission to the “troglodyte” she married?   One of these days, either SIFC or somebody else is finally going to prove the unsavory, undisclosed financial connection between this whole initiative and the demonic pocketbook that has successfully “rented” evangelicals over the past few years in the SBC, RCC, and even in other countries, for immoral political ends that go well beyond the church.  Such would never be enabled if individuals claiming to be Christ-followers possessed the personal integrity to match their level of popular cultural influence.  Identity politics and victimhood doesn’t look any better on well-published  “Christians” than it does on anyone else.  
 
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.
 

To be fair to the Southern Baptists, there needs to be some acknowledgments:  the Assemblies of God reportedly picked up 1 million members after they liberalized doctrine and practice in the area of marriage permanence.   The Roman Catholic Church also appears to be gaining members after a long drought which let up after the death of conservative John Paul II, and liberalization of sexual morality commenced in earnest under the last two popes.   The “social justice” gospel is attracting millennials and their young families back to mainline churches some four decades after their conservative evangelical parents once derided them as “dead churches” whose remaining members were primarily the elderly.  Even so, God does not care at all to have pews packed full of spiritually dead and morally lost people who are “compassionate” in the temporal sense only.    The Baptists and Catholics are about to find out what’s already evident in the resurgence of the mainline churches:  the “social justice” pact-with-the-devil contains a price tag out of which the homosexual agenda cannot be “line-item vetoed”.     That makes ERLC head, Dr. Russell Moore’s famous last words in 2015, “Evangelicals Won’t Cave”, (likely written while that SBC pact was being made with OSF) laughable only three years later, as we predicted at the time in our rebuttal.

While it’s strategically tempting to hope to fill empty pews by opening the U.S. borders and becoming gay-friendly, if the SBC doesn’t get back to true biblical bearings, and tell all opposed critics to take a hike, what we’re going to have is a strengthening in an already-strong, growing movement inside and outside the churches, to dump the corrupted denominations and opt for small house churches / lay pastors, which nobody can argue isn’t a 1st century biblical model.   In other words, a continued loss of membership despite “inclusion” (heretical liberalization) efforts.   I’d personally hate to see that transpire at this nasty and pivotal point in our national history, because we really need the GODLY political power of the collective church to restore a little of the kingdom of God in our nation for everyone else suffering from 50 years of Leftist misery, most especially the poor, during which the salt lost its savor.  Instead, we’re squabbling about whether the Apostles and church fathers were “misogynists” in the clear instructions, presumably God-breathed, they left today’s leadership to follow.   SIFC’s current young pastors would call this contemporary vexation a “first world problem”.

 

Yes, the SBC has lost a million members over the past decade, while the liberalizing RCC seems (temptingly) to be picking up members the past few of years, with their Leftist, gay-affirming, “annulment”-expediting, communion-adulterating Pope.  AOG likewise picked up members like nobody’s business from 1971 to 1984, adding 1 million members (far fewer souls, I daresay) as a direct result of voting to desecrate heterosexual marriage in the wake of unilateral divorce enactment in the early 1970’s.  The price they paid was the swift exit of the power of the Holy Spirit, as numbers grew by yet another million to-date, and it gradually became acceptable to haul exposed cleavage, drooping pants and the “spouse”-du-jour into church.  I know because I was there for most of it.  “Come as you are, stay as you are” does indeed work wonders for membership — until it doesn’t.   In this case,  the Southern Baptists can be presumed to be on the same side of “until it doesn’t” as the Pentecostals.   Tulsa didn’t get to be the divorce capital of the United States due to Catholic dominance.    It’s small wonder some SBC leaders are so keen to import potential new members through open or porous borders, rather than set a godly example that gains power over the “nones” as our godly forebears did.   

Teaching unbiblical, culturally-popular pseudo-values (including, never piss off the women) to future pastors also works – until it doesn’t.  The fixed moral wall that has been hit a couple of times previously in church history is Islamism (and its ancient predecessor, Nebuchadnezzar), a reprise of which would be perfectly fine with Mr. Soros.

Many of the lost members from these denominations and from the RCC are legally-discarded spouses (and their children) whose pastors failed in very significant ways to honor and uphold the lifelong sanctity of their biblical, God-joined covenant marriage, their numbers being added to by perhaps 400,000 to 500,000 a year in the U.S., based on current unilateral divorce rates.  Nobody at a major evangelical publication ever writes a single word about these disciples (except to insinuate that there’s something “wrong” with them), though the conservative Catholic publications increasingly connect with “standers’ ” obedience to biblical instruction.  Perhaps 25% of the disaffected women find their way into Anabaptist-heritage churches, or a few of the dwindling number of virtuous Catholic parishes.   The rest, including most of the men, join the virtual church, house churches or settle for spiritual isolation, if they want to obey the Lord and not take a replacement “spouse” adulterously. 
 

Women like Beth Moore and like Karen Swallow-Prior, who claim that Jesus prescribed marriage dissolution for all manner of perceived and actual abuse, as opposed to chaste separation with rehabilitation in mind and appropriate reliance on the criminal justice system (where warranted)–are hussies and Jezebels, no matter how many books they sell.  They will be found “correct” the day that Jesus accepts hard-heartedness, unforgiveness and self-promotion as acceptable attributes in His disciples.  And those who become so presumptuous as to build “abuse ministries” around the same ideology,  are apostates misleading others toward moral destruction.   Quite amusingly, the hard-Left feminists have recently expressed their extreme displeasure with the nouveaux “conservative” feminists who promote the judicial murder of God-joined covenant marriages; who promote sequential polyandry in the name of domestic “justice” — but still won’t give their unqualified endorsement to abortion on demand for all.    

Dr. Stephen Baskerville (May 3, 2017 – How the Church Must Confront the Sexual Revolution, Crisis Magazine) :  “The church must take a firm and decisive stand on other aggressive and destructive legal abuses of the Sexual Revolution, principally fabricated accusations of new gender crimes like “rape” and “domestic violence,” and “child abuse.” The feminists claim that these are epidemic. Either they are right, in which case the church is silent in face of a great evil. Or they are false and the feminists are using them for political purposes, in which case the church is likewise silent in the face of a systemic injustice. “

But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent.Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.   – Revelation 2:4-6

Will the Southern Baptist Convention not even measure up to the Christ-rebuked Ephesian church, by the time this story of shameless social pandering and denominational prostitution ends?   Will there be anyone left in power to “hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans”  by the time of the 2019 annual conference ?

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!

 

Church Discipline, Discipleship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Lost culture, Spiritual Warfare

“Abuse” Lies Under Every Rock: Exposing An Abusive Abuse Ministry

11 Comments

by Standerinfamilycourt

There are six things which the Lord hates,
Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him:
Haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
And hands that shed innocent blood,
A heart that devises wicked plans,
Feet that run rapidly to evil,
A false witness who utters lies,
And one who spreads strife among brothers.
Proverbs 6:16-19

Can a ministry that seeks to speak out on behalf of physically or emotionally-battered spouses be abusive in their own practices?Due to the extreme political sensitivity of this topic, and out of a sincere desire to do no further harm to a priceless, real covenant family, this blog has been over two years in the writing.   Current events, however, are causing this unresolved, mishandled, and highly-politicized abuse issue to fester in a way that is about to be very bad for a couple of states that are in an earnest-but-neglected battle to repeal their unilateral divorce laws. “Standerinfamilycourt” will explain a bit more about that later in this post, and in depth in another post which is in the works, scheduled for release in about another week.

We all rejoiced when the good news came a little over two years ago that Pastor Saeed Abedini had at long last been released from the Iranian prison that had held him for nearly four years.     His wife, Naghmeh, put up a tireless effort to enlist those who could campaign for his release.   Shortly before the harvest of her efforts, she took to her Facebook page to disclose to her more than 85,000 followers that Saeed had developed a pornography addiction prior to being detained in Iran, and that he had physically and verbally abused her since early in their marriage.   She implied that her husband had been abusive and controlling in his most recent communications with her just prior to his release.    Upon his release, the Abedinis and Franklin Graham announced that they would be spending a few days with the Grahams in North Carolina to try and reconcile the issues in their marriage.   Yet, barely within two days of Saeed’s landing on U.S. soil, Naghmeh filed a petition in an Idaho court for a legal separation, explaining that the action was necessary to protect her children.    Since it’s hard to imagine that she could have made these arrangements while across the country in North Carolina, it seems apparent that she had pre-arranged this filing some time well-prior to Saeed’s release.    What was going on here? 

On January 24,  about a week after Saeed’s January 16 release,  a couple of months after she had publicly disclosed Saeed’s alleged abuse, this pseudo-ministry made contact with Naghmeh on her Facebook page.   She indicates that she had been reading their blogs.

Naghmeh_ACFJ

Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good morals.”
1 Corinthians 15:33

FB profile 7xtjw SIFC Note:   It is obvious that if physical abuse endangers a spouse or children in the home, separation for a season is absolutely necessary, and reporting it to the criminal justice authorities is equally imperative.    The latter seldom happens, however, since it’s cheaper and more private to run to the so-called “family court” system, and since almost nobody in our culture today buys into the unchangeable biblical truth that “remarriage” constitutes soul-destroying adultery in God’s eyes, with no excuses and no exceptions.  Emotional abuse, however, can be “in the eye of the beholder”,  and is difficult to objectively assess, measure or prove.     This is all the more reason why Paul’s inspired instructions to the church in
1 Corinthians 7:10-11 and in 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 is timeless in its remedy for domestic violence cases (which didn’t suddenly arise in the 21st century, most likely), especially against the backdrop of biblical truth– that man’s civil paper does not unjoin what only God can unjoin, and does not dissolve the unconditional covenant with God, in the case of the original marriage of our youth.   Nor has a piece of civil paper ever “protected” anyone from any form of abuse.

The unilateral divorce laws were driven by a desire not to have to prove marital fault for this very reason, i.e. that there’s an expense to do so along with ugly public airing of personal misconduct, and attempting to do so might still fail for lack admissible evidence, etc.    The mantra about “forcing women to stay in an abusive marriage” (even if it’s for only a slightly longer period) is an overblown, emotionally-driven exaggeration, but it becomes irresistible to the economically-hurting, and to the emotionally-wounded.

This reckless “no-fault” ideology, however, ignores the equal protection and due process obligations that the civil authorities also owe the accused under our Constitution, including all state constitutions.   Current law, as well as these “ministries”,  presume the accused to be guilty based solely on the allegation, and in effect, deny the accused  even a trial, before parental and property rights are cut off.     They are hugely responsible for toxic impacts on the very children they claim to protect, by using the state as a vehicle to allow the petitioning party to alienate the accused party from their God-given parental rights.   All too often, the “abuse” that is alleged is never objectively examined, and on this slippery slope it sometimes amounts to little more than individual perception, out of a self-focused spirit and with the egging-on of financially interested “professionals”.

We’ll spend a little time extracting from the web page of this “ministry”,  and a similar one,  Spiritual Sounding Board, which is currently at the center of a Leftist move to remove a conservative Southern Baptist seminary president who related in an interview that he had refused to counsel divorce in a mild (and quite brief) domestic abuse case that occurred when that pastor-molder served decades ago as a pastor himself.    We will come back to that particular incident, which is being developed more fully in a blog post, to follow.

From one of the “abuse ministry” websites, referring to a post on the other website (click through to SSB’s link):

Abusive abuse “ministries” trade on emotions and biblically-false doctrine, hoping that anyone who calls out their wicked aims and antichrist direction will be censured for “adding to the suffering of the abused”.     Their ideology castigates churches who are faithful to the word of God, accusing them of “devaluing”  and “objectifying” women.   They “cry wolf” at all churches who follow the precepts of Jesus and Paul, with the effect that where there truly is a questionable church, such as the one that unsuccessfully sued Spritual Sounding Board’s Julie Anne Smith for defamation in 2012,  or Greg Locke’s Tennessee church,  the broad paintbrush stroke they employ intimidates many other pastors into appeasing this Jezebel spirit instead of following the way of Christ.    Worst of all, they add to the spiritual delusion of the abuse victims, steering them away from the biblical instruction that is truly available for them, and which truly works, both in the temporal life and with souls in eternity.     When God delivers supernatural protection and miraculous transformation of the abuser, birthing him or her into the kingdom of God, they discredit even that, because it conflicts with their pro-divorce, feminist narrative.    These “ministries” would have considered the Apostle Paul a “misogynist” (to the full extent they couldn’t get away with misquoting him, and with “sanitizing” his instructions to wives).

But to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband  (but if she does leave, she must remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not divorce his wife.

For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy.

The Apostle Peter,  similarly “misogynistic”….

In the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, 2 as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior. ….

You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.

To sum up, all of you be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted, and humble in spirit;  not returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead; for you were called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing.  For,

“The one who desires life, to love and see good days,
Must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.
“He must turn away from evil and do good;
He must seek peace and pursue it.
“For the eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous,
And His ears attend to their prayer,
But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good?  But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed.


The above-posted  February, 2016 article by Spiritual Sounding Board,

Saeed Abedini and Franklin Graham Promote “Couples Counseling” to Reconcile the Abedinis. Because of Saeed’s Abuse, is This Counterproductive?

raises a few valid points:

– the offender (if he / she is actually such) must want to change before change is possible

– the victim(s) and offender do need physical separation for the necessary season

– individual counseling is typically necessary before couples-counseling is likely to succeed

…but the article reaches a destructive and unbiblical conclusion that jeopardizes the souls of everyone involved: husband, wife and children.    It also adds to the lethal effects on society as a whole, because it rushes the parties into the immoral, permanent abandonment of their marriage (unless the Lord intervenes some years later) under man’s false paper.    In some cases,  namely, the great many cases where the “marriage” was biblically unlawful at inception, this is an eternal mercy.    But in every case where God-joined holy matrimony was involved between some combination of a widowed or never-married man and woman,  this wicked, murmurring spirit is an abomination for which God will hold these practitioners responsible.

On the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ,

So they are no longer [never again] two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no [hu]man separate…Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.

The Greek word for the Hebrew or Aramaic word Jesus used in Matt.   19:6  is “choresthetai”  which referred to the furrows between rows in a plowed field.   An effective translation of this word is, “to put distance between.”   That is a very apt description of how these groups operate.   In Proverbs 6, God calls that an abomination.

These “ministries” actively foment and promote biblically-forbidden hard-heartedness, using clever labels, slanderous emotions and caustic publicity.   Here, they arrogantly presumed that Franklin Graham would not have steered the Abedinis to the appropriate resources, had he been free of their own salacious publicity and interference.   Spiritual Sounding Board (incredibly) asks why Franklin Graham didn’t defer to the Abedinis’ home pastor in Idaho for the counseling, but a look at the facebook traffic and the writings of these groups just prior to this 2016 post makes that a hypocritical charge.  The ugly reality is that the avenue of working with the home church was effectively foreclosed because, long before Saeed’s plane from Iran had even landed, they had already demonized that Utah home church as “hiding” and “enabling” the abuser, until Naghmeh was rendered unwilling to submit to that pastor’s legitimate spiritual authority.

An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, But she who shames him is like rottenness in his bones     Proverbs 12:4

 

WHAT DOES A GODLY, SCRIPTURAL ABUSE INTERVENTION EFFORT LOOK LIKE?

When banks train their staff how to recognize counterfeit bills, they are said to have them spend some time closely studying the real thing.    We can profitably do the same here.    These are the traits of a biblically-faithful and effective abuse and endangered-marriage ministry:

(1) It prays that the justification and sanctification experience will be genuine and renewed in both marriage partners (Luke 13:3; Matthew 7:21-23)

(2) It counsels a sole regenerated partner in servant-leadership and seeing their offending spouse the way Jesus sees them (1 Peter 3:1-7; 1 Corinthians 7:12-13, 16)

(3) It refrains from suppressing the uncomfortable truth about the eternal and societal consequences of our individual choice to obey or disobey God’s commandments (1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Galatians 5:19-21; Galatians 6:7-8; Hebrews 13:4)

(4) It banishes the evangelical weasel-words:  “ideal”, “design”, “purpose”, “intention”, “best” (etc.) from reference to marriage indissolubility, and replaces those words with REALITY, and COMMANDMENT.  (Matthew 19:6; Malachi 2:13-15)

(5) It draws a scripture-based distinction between lawful and unlawful marriages, and counsels accordingly, with souls and generations in mind (Matthew 5:27-32; Luke 16:18-31; Matthew 19:9b-KJV; Mark 10:11-12; Malachi 2:14-15)

(6) It recognizes the spiritual warfare, demonic nature of holy matrimony destruction, and trains the believing spouse(s) in the spiritual weapons (in a separate session with the believing spouse, if necessary) –  Ephesians 6:10-18; 2 Corinthians 10:4-6

(7) Where criminal behavior is evident and provable, it counsels toward criminal court, not “family court”  (Romans 13:1-4; Matthew 22:20-21; 1 Corinthians 6:1-8)

(8) It frankly warns that a holy God recognizes neither man’s “divorce” nor attempts to “remarry”, despite the widespread iniquity they observe in the church  (Matthew 19:8; Matthew 5:32b; 19:9b; Luke 16:18b; Romans 7:2-3; 1 Corinthians 7:39)

(9) It builds a deliberate knowledge base about the biblical validity, theology, practice methods, track record and faith of other marital therapists, and makes that available

(10) It attempts to advise against and mediate with authorities to eliminate relationship-hindering elements such as objectively-unnecessary no-contact and restraining orders

(11) It attempts to mediate with the pastor if there is an unbiblical element of the home church’s doctrine on marriage, divorce or remarriage, and it encourages submission to the leadership of the home church unless there is a biblically-solid reason not to (for example, unqualified pastor who is divorced and remarried)
– 2 Timothy 2:15; 1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:6

(12) It teaches the biblical authority / responsibility structure of the home  (1 Corinthians 11:3)

(13) It cooperates with biblically-administered church discipline, and it helps to bring either or both spouses back into soft-hearted submission to valid church authority (Matthew 18:15-17; 1 Corinthians 5; James 5:19-20)

(14) It organizes essential material resources that enable the spouses to follow God’s instructions to separate chastely, and remain married (James 1:27; 1 Timothy 5:3-8; 1 Corinthians 7:11)

(15) It hones a skill set in defusing unhelpful, divisive emotions on both sides, and models longsuffering (Jeremiah 17:9; Galatians 5:22; Matthew 16:24)

(16) It leaves the control of the timeline in God’s hands, honoring Christ’s commandments not to take our own revenge and not to resort to pagan courtrooms (2 Peter 3:8-9; Romans 12:19;
1 Corinthians 6:1-8)

(17) It operates under the fruit of the Spirit, and educates everyone involved about the works of the flesh, including the fact that all forms of humanistic thought directly conflict with following Christ, and examines common wrong assumptions and motives for humanistic thought.  (Galatians 5:22-23;  Matthew 16:24-25)

Of course, these steps are the very antidote to secular humanism and temporal values that today masquerade as “discipleship”.    Several of these elements expressly conflict with the feminist ideology of these groups.   “Standerinfamilycourt” makes no apologies for any of them, however “enabling” and “misogynistic” they may be deemed to be.    Most importantly, several of these ministering essentials cannot be accomplished in the virtual world, nor by buying the hawked publications on offer.   Hence, these “ministries” have virtually no biblically-valid role in the kingdom of God.

Now that we have a picture of what a biblically-valid ministry to physically and emotionally-battered spouses looks like,  we’re ready to meet the people and examine the philosophies behind Spiritual Sounding Board, and A Cry for Justice, while holding their characteristic dogmas and practices up to the light of scripture.

Julie Anne Smith, owner of Spiritual Sounding Board is a Washington resident who began blogging a few years ago on what she views as “abusive churches”, following an incident in 2010 or 2011 that affected her and other friends and family members at Beaverton Grace Bible Church, where the pastor at the time was Charles O’Neal, who remains the current head pastor.    Unlike her former pastor, Julie Anne doesn’t really tell us too much more about her own background, except that she was a home-schooling parent for 23-1/2 years.   Presumably, she’s been a homemaker for the bulk of her pre-blogging career.    She does not disclose on her site her education, professional experience, or even her account of coming to faith.    The summons of the dismissed suit quotes several online statements by her and various co-defendants, but none of the allegations are specific enough to cite any biblical authority to substantiate those opinions.     She apparently gets extensively interviewed around the Pacific Northwest area as a result of the dismissed lawsuit, but to her credit, she is apparently not hawking books.   A defining quote from her “About” page gives an idea of what she defines as church-orchestrated abuse:

“Another part of my story is connected with the Homeschool Movement – the subculture within the fundamental Christian homeschool group which includes practices such as: full-quiver, courtship, Patriarchy, stay-at-home daughters, modesty/purity teachings (the church/pastor who sued me also was connected with the Homeschool Movement).

“As a long-time homeschooling mother (23+ yrs), I have seen how some of these practices, especially the ones that devalue/depersonalize women and girls, have caused great harm, physically, emotionally, financially, and spiritually. We have a big problem with abuse in our Christian groups!”

While the primary purpose of this blog post is not to critique churches, we must start by saying that just because disaffected congregation members may personally disagree with biblical concepts such as encouraging large families, modest dress, chastity, honoring homemaking as a career choice, submission to the biblical family-structure, discouraging contemporary dating practices, none of this automatically renders a church “abusive”, unless members are chained there and not permitted by some strong mechanism to “vote with their feet”–or there is substantive evidence of financial abuse of church resources, or perhaps sexual immorality in the leadership.
The church’s website does not make any disclosure of a church board or plural leadership, which discerning folk should probably take as a potential “red flag”,  especially where there is more than one campus–which appears to be the case here, but this is the typical operating model for that denomination.     There seems to be pretty good disclosure of these facts on BGBC’s web page, which should best be left to the judgment of the public, in the absence of non-public malfeasance that could not be resolved according to biblical principles with Pastor O’Neal.    If there is any scriptural authority for any of Mrs. Smith’s opinions, she does not seem to cite them in her blog posts (even though she does appear to provide an extensive list of links to the work of others on a separate Resources tab).   Indeed, even when she is citing “experts” in her own writings on handling marital abusers, the typical link is not to a social science publication, but to a newspaper summary of an emotion-gripping incident, itself having no links to social science support.

The best that can be said of the 2012 lawsuit incident is that both sides seem to have behaved unbiblically.    The fact that the suit was dismissed, while the outcome seems correct and just, does not exonerate the public slander, reviling and lack of submission on Mrs. Smith (and company’s) part to biblical authority while voluntarily a part of the church.

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality,  idolatry, sorcery, ENMITIES, STRIFE, jealousy, outbursts of anger, DISPUTES, DISSENTIONS, FACTIONS, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

The fact that Pastor O’Neal felt compelled to bring the matter before pagan judges to protect perceived financial interests does not speak very well of him, either, by biblical standards.   Neither party seemed to have acted in a way that was a good witness to the community.    Smith does not give a “what we believe” section, and  tells us nothing further that creditably justifies her site, but she does provide what looks like a good resource list to help individuals decide for themselves whether they are involved with an abusive or controlling church, and ought to simply move on quietly.    Smith’s motives, however, seem vengeful and controlling (at least, intimidating) in their own right.   It should go without saying that church discipline and biblical admonition are valid and scriptural in the absence of any factors indicating mistreatment of those elements, and are not, in and of themselves, “controlling” behavior, as Spiritual Sounding Board frequently alleges.

Mrs. Smith goes on to tell us about her association with another blogger on the topic of church abuse, by the name of Brad Sargent, who goes by the moniker, “futuristguy” .     His role in this site does not seem extensive, but he’s described as having compiled the library of links to the lawsuit documents, and as a “survivor of church abuse”.   Evaluation of his materials will be outside the scope of this blog, while noting that he did write a blog on the Mars Hill Church controversy that led to the litigious 2014 removal of founding pastor, Mark Driscoll for pastoral misconduct.    Sargent’s own blogsite does not seem to be fixated on interference with families, but he did also weigh in separately on the recent Paige Patterson controversy.

It was to Spiritual Sounding Board that Christian homosexual journalist Jonathan Merritt reportedly brought the year 2000 radio interview audio of Dr. Paige Patterson, President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and scheduled speaker for the mid-June annual conference in Dallas of the Southern Baptist Convention.   In magpie fashion, Mrs. Smith proceeded obligingly to second-guess Dr. Patterson’s pastoral ministry of 20 years ago as “misogynistic”, “paternalistic”, and insufficiently protective of battered women.    This inflamed the likes of Liberty University professor and ERLC (Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission) research fellow Karen Swallow-Prior, also media evangelist Beth Moore to raise a petition with over 3,000 signatures for Dr. Patterson’s removal from his post, which is scheduled to be discussed tomorrow, May 22.    Swallow-Prior has been openly critical of Dr. Patterson’s leadership to exclude women from theology professorships at the seminary, a feminist issue that can reasonably be associated with biblical instruction for a woman not to teach or exercise authority over men.    Swallow-Prior’s actions indicate that she is an LGBT sympathizer and is in alignment with a faction that wants to push the SBC in the direction of a leftist social-justice gospel.   There are suggestions that various Southern Baptist arms, including the ERLC, have benefitted from the largesse of George Soros’  Open Society Foundation,  and this Dallas seminary coup, if successful, has strong implications for the unilateral divorce repeal debate in Austin that resumes with the 2019 legislative session.

In the four-minute audio, Dr. Patterson is asked by the interviewer about a wife’s submission to her husband, asking him what he says to a woman he knows is being physically abused.   Dr. Patterson tells the interviewer (approximately 52 seconds in) that it “depends on the level of abuse to a certain degree”,  and that he’s never in his pastoral ministry ever counseled a woman to seek a divorce.    Both are biblically-valid statements, but there is nothing he could possibly have said that could be more inflammatory to the ideology that (in fairness to Dr. Patterson) was yet to emerge in these “abuse ministries”, already violating two of their core tenets within just 53 seconds of opening his mouth.    Not that Dr. Patterson should be required to bow and scrape before these militant hussies, it is an important point of chronology that this interview pre-dated the inception of these groups by several years, so it is a bit unreasonable to even accuse him of “insensitivity”.   From there, Patterson continued in the interview to make clear that where there was actual endangerment, he counseled chaste separation with the seeking of professional help, and said he had even assisted in bringing it about.   (This is the correct scriptural approach, in fact).    He then transitioned to the more typical case (approximately 1:50) where perhaps the abuse is not physical yet, and while stating unequivocally that he considered all abuse to be serious, Dr. Patterson related a specific story that should have been credited for its redemptive nature, sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit, and the effective instruction in spiritual weaponry he imparted to this lady, rather than the “reckless endangerment” the cast of feminazi’s have vocally characterized it as in their smear campaign.

He told this lady, “you must not forget the power of prayer….I want you to every evening get down by your bed, just as he goes to sleep…when he’s just about asleep, you just pray for him, out loud, quietly…but I said, ‘get ready because he just might get a little more violent’….   Here, Patterson might have explained it a little better so as not to be misconstrued, but  SIFC knows from firsthand experience that he was talking about violence due to the nature of spiritual warfare, not because she was necessarily overheard.   He failed to be more specific about the days that most likely elapsed before what happened next occurred….
“…sure enough, she came to church one morning with both eyes black, and she was angry with me and with God and the world….and she said, ‘I hope you’re happy’, and I said ‘yes, ma’am I am, I’m sorry about that, but I’m very happy’, but what she didn’t know when she sat down in church that morning was that her husband had come in and sat at the back, the first time he ever came, and when I gave the invitation that morning, he was the first one down to the front. And his heart was broken.  He said ‘my wife’s been praying for me, and I can’t believe what I did to her.  Do you think God could forgive someone like me?’  Patterson went on to make clear that the regenerated man was transformed into a great husband after that, and there was no further violence.

Folks, that’s how it’s supposed to work in the kingdom of God!
In fact, something similar happened nearly 40 years ago in SIFC’s home.

...Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you.
– Matthew 21:31

That formerly abusive man will get into heaven before any of these harpies trying to remove Dr. Patterson will, trust me.   No civil paperwork needed.    In fact, the rebellious filing of a divorce petition, in direct violation of 1 Cor. 6:1-8, is the trigger that tends to create much of the violence, along with the illicit presence of an immoral relationship which an insecure woman who is not submitted to Christ will often herself introduce, in her own abusiveness toward the marriage.   On the other hand, a biblical, chaste separation, where the abuser knows and trusts that their spouse remains committed to the home and to reconciliation, will often lead to genuine repentance.
I find a little bit of flaw with Dr. Patterson’s articulation, but no fault whatsoever with his conduct.   The fact that these condemning women have so much open disdain for God’s word and for His ways tells me all I really need to know about their characters, and about their qualification for the “ministry” they claim.

In contrast to Spiritual Sounding Board,  the “ministry”  A Cry for Justice is a bit older and more established.
(Note: we have removed the earlier reference to tax-exempt nonprofit status  which was in error, after ACFJ advised this was not correct.)

When founded in 2012, it was run by Pastor Jeff Crippen, of Christ Reformation Church in Tillamook, Oregon, and by Barbara Roberts of Australia, who claims to have come out of an abusive marriage, and is presently in a biblically-adulterous remarriage with a man she also says has come out of an abusive marriage.    Both have written various books on the topic of domestic abuse / violence and the “acceptability” of divorce, since 2008-9.    Crippen is a former law enforcement professional, and bolsters the “authority” of his books with that background.   He appears to be in a 40-year covenant marriage.   Crippen makes various charges in this 2012 post against conservative Christian denominations and fellowships, some biblical, and some not-so-much, for example:

“Taking Stock

Therefore, if your church:

  1. embraces a theology  that presumes a church member/professing Christian really is a Christian, regardless of how they are living,
  2. emphasizes the headship of the husband and father and the submission of the wife and mother without getting right down to the “nitty-gritty” of what abuse of headship actually looks like, so that the men in the church even “squirm” in the pew if they are guilty,
  3. does not, like we used to, permit women to vote or to pray aloud,
  4. teaches that the marriage covenant is not to be broken, that divorce is wrong (that sounds biblical, but what it usually translates into is the clear implication that abuse is not grounds for divorce)
  5. teaches that abuse victims, normally women, are pleasing God and suffering for Christ by remaining in a marriage to an abuser,
  6. discourages (in some cases forbids) a wife from saying anything negative about her husband (this is often expressed as a discouraging ‘gossip’)

…then I suggest to you that it is not fundamentally the troubled marriage that is threatening the health of your church, but it is the climate that has been created which inevitably deals injustice to victims.”

“Injustice Destroys Unity

“As more and more people in the congregation begin to realize this injustice, unity is destroyed.  As we, pastors and leaders, dig our heels in further, all the while telling ourselves that we are standing faithful for Christ in this, we only add fuel to the fire.

“There was still another hard thing that I had to face:  just what do we think of women?  The fact is that most conservative, Bible-believing pastors like ourselves actually look down upon women.  We see them as inferior beings.  We object to this charge, but our actions betray our real attitudes.

“I had to ask myself, “Jeff, just exactly what is it that is going on in your head when a woman walks into your office and asks for help?”  The answer I ultimately saw was “I see her as an inferior being and I talk down to her.”  Really, and with ruthless honesty – “What does Pastor _________ think about a woman who walks into his office?”  “What does he think about his wife?”  Don’t rush to answers.  The first responses we give are usually wrong.”

(Extracted from “An Open Letter from a A Pastor to Pastors”,  September 6, 2012)

Crippen reportedly stepped away from the  ACFJ “ministry” in 2017, leaving it in the hands of Barbara Roberts and her assistants.   Roberts was the author of the decidedly unbiblical book, “Not Under Bondage: Biblical Divorce for Abuse, Adultery and Desertion”.

Of course, the very title of this tome suggests a reliance on the too-common eisegesis of 1 Corinthians 7:15, which itself relies on an abusive translation of the Greek term “douloo” to include the marriage bond, and in so doing, fabricates an out-of-context “exception” for both divorce and remarriage based on a spouse’s desertion.    No one-flesh supernatural, inseverable joining for this bunch — that “demeans” women and “enables” abuse!    This book was written in 2008, and Ms. Roberts entered her adulterous union in 2011.     While our Lord says all divorce is man-fabricated, Roberts claims there is a “distinction” between a “treacherous divorce” and “disciplinary divorce”…

“Disciplinary divorce is permitted by the Bible. It applies in cases of abuse, adultery and desertion, where a seriously mistreated spouse divorces a seriously offending spouse.

“Treacherous divorce is condemned by the Bible. It occurs when a spouse obtains divorce for reasons other than abuse, adultery or desertion. I did not invent those terms by the way, I got them from another author. To explain the scriptural basis for the distinction between disciplinary and treacherous divorce took a whole book, so I’d best not try to go into it here!

“Understanding the biblical principle of disciplinary divorce is liberating, especially for the victims of domestic abuse, who have been the Cinderellas in the divorce controversy for centuries. God doesn’t say that abused spouses have to stay, put up and suffer. They are free to separate, divorce and, if they choose, remarry. They don’t have to be sacrificed on the altar of the institution of marriage, at the hands of a cruel spouse and a judgemental [sic] church. They can seek freedom from bondage and rebuild their lives, without guilt or condemnation.” 

(We would add…without much of a healthy fear of God!)    So, this brings us to the nitty-gritty of the issue to remove a seminary head who is committed to biblical marriage permanence and whose actions reject the falsehoods of the “social justice gospel”.    The full (and grossly errant) ACFJ  “Position on Divorce” can be read here.

ACFJ defines “abuse” that justifies divorce as follows:  “A pattern of coercive control (ongoing actions or inactions) that proceeds from a mentality of entitlement to power, whereby, through intimidation, manipulation and isolation, the abuser keeps his* target subordinated and under his control. This pattern can be emotional, verbal, psychological, spiritual, sexual, financial, social and physical. Not all these elements need be present, e.g., physical abuse may not be part of it.”

ACFJ goes on to claim on their site (without biblical authority) that the marriage covenant is “broken” by this “abuse”.   On the contrary, our bible states that, although many things violate the marriage covenant, only physical death actually breaks it.     Somebody’s obviously lying here:  either it’s Barbara Roberts, the self-interested, legalized adulteress, hoping to sell her apostate book, or it’s Jesus and Paul.    What do you think?

There is some misapplied-but-interesting lore behind ACFJ’s iconic Facebook cover:   “Saint Lucy was a rich Christian woman of Sicily who refused marriage and gave her money to the poor. Her rejected suitor (a pagan fellow to whom her mother had betrothed her) denounced Lucy to the authorities during the Diocletian persecution. The Governor of Syracuse ordered Lucy to burn a sacrifice to the emperor’s image. When she refused the Governor sentenced her to be defiled in a brothel. Christian tradition states that when the guards came to take her away, they could not move her even when they hitched her to a team of oxen. Bundles of wood were then heaped about her and set on fire, but would not burn. Finally, she met her death by the sword in 304 AD.   A later legend says that Lucy’s eyes were gouged out as part of the persecution but were miraculously restored at her death.  In the painting Lucy is standing before the Governor who condemned her at the behest of the abuser who sought to marry her. She is pointing upward to Heaven, warning the judge of the wrath that will come upon him for siding with the ungodly. The Holy Spirit hovers over her.”

If the Holy Spirit is hovering over this (purportedly, persecuted) organization, it is a grieved and quenched one.   

“Standerinfamilycourt” would like to conclude this post with some balancing thoughts by Dr. Stephen Baskerville, Professor of Government at Patrick Henry College, and Research Fellow at the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, The Independent Institute, and the Inter-American Institute, from his 2017 article, “How the Church Must Confront the Sexual Revolution”:

“The church must take a firm and decisive stand on other aggressive and destructive legal abuses of the Sexual Revolution, principally, fabricated accusations of new gender crimes like “rape” and “domestic violence,” and “child abuse.” The feminists claim that these are epidemic. Either they are right, in which case the church is silent in face of a great evil. Or they are false and the feminists are using them for political purposes, in which case the church is likewise silent in the face of a systemic injustice.

“Even more serious are fabricated accusations of domestic violence, a well-known weapon in divorce courts and a tool of the feminist lobby for creating single-parent homes and depriving children of fathers. They constitute another clear and direct attack on justice. Some Christians have indeed weighed in—unhelpfully. 

“In ‘Freeing the Oppressed: A Call to Christians concerning Domestic Abuse‘, Ron Clark parrots standard, patently preposterous feminist claims (“every 15 seconds a spouse kills his wife”). His personalized definition of “domestic violence” bears no relation to plain English, with “manipulation,” “self-pity,” and even “apologies” classed as “violence.” His books are a litany of government falsehoods that are used to exacerbate the family crisis and augment government power. But even if Clark is right, then why are the other churches so silent? Here too, the church should have something to say, one way or the other.  But here too, as with divorce generally, as with rape accusations, they are silent.”

 We note that Dr. Baskerville is a tireless critic of our immoral and unconstitutional unilateral divorce laws, whose proponents are constantly seeking to justify with “straw-man” arguments, such as claims that stripping ALL (offending and non-offending) divorce defendants of their basic Bill of Rights protections is imperative to reducing spousal suicide from “feeling trapped in abusive marriages”.    While correlation studies have indeed been done that show a slight drop in spousal suicide rates with the rise in states that have passed unconstitutional “family laws”, those studies ignore important resulting factors like the hefty social costs, the suicide, homicide, physical and sexual abuse rates of children in the resulting broken homes, and the suicide rates among legally-abandoned spouses, especially those alienated from their children due to no fault of their own.

You shall not distort justice; you shall not be partial, and you shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous.   – Deuteronomy 16:19

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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