Jamie Wight, Maranatha, & Sexual Predation Unrecognized

September 23, 2015 By Libby Anne

In recent weeks, I have been writing posts about evangelical theologian Doug Wilson’s troubling way of handling child molestors and abusers. And by “troubling way of handling,” I mean that Wilson has a habit of writing to judges requesting leniency for men on trial for sexually abusing children. Wilson remains an influential evangelical theologian who is supported by such prominent evangelical theologians and organizations as John Piper and The Gospel Coalition, yet what recent weeks have revealed about his handling of child sexual abuse suggest that he is utterly unfit for ministry.

In the comments on my recent post about Jamin Wight, who sexually molested a young girl from age 13 through age 16, several readers pointed to similarities between the story of his victim, Natalie Greenfield, and the story of Maranatha Chapman. And they were right—the similarities are almost uncanny. In this post I want to tease out both the similarities and the differences and hit on some themes and underlying problems.

First let’s look at the Maranatha story:

In early fall of 1986, [26-year-old] Matthew confessed to [his mentor] Stan that he was troubled by a strong attraction to Stan’s [13-year-old] daughter Maranatha, confessing that he found her “very attractive” and that she had become “a distraction.” “I don’t know what to do about it,” he said. According to Lindvall’s telling, “Matthew was certain this attraction could not be right since Maranatha was so much younger than he.” “Have you ever considered that this may be a good thing?” Stan asked him in response, “How do you know this isn’t from the Lord?” But Stan went on to tell Matthew that Maranatha wasn’t ready for marriage yet, and that he therefore needed to put a hold on his feelings for a while. Matthew continued to be a frequent guest in Stan’s home, constantly in contact with Maranatha and the rest of the family, but was forbidden to tell Maranatha about his feelings or have any physical contact with her.

Shortly after this Maranatha told her father that she had “an interest” in Matthew. As time went by Maranatha found her “attraction” to Matthew “increasingly distracting.” She told her father about her crush as she had been taught to do. Stan told Maranatha that she needed to “keep her heart pure and focused on the Lord” and to “wholly give herself to the Lord without any lingering desire for Matthew.” And Maranatha obediently sought to do just that.

As Natalie tells her story:

[24-year-old] Jamin expressed an interest in me to my parents when I was 14 years old, months after he’d begun grooming me and had already instigated a physical relationship with me. To say I had a crush on him would be an understatement – I was completely infatuated with him, as is common for abuse victims, and had been since shortly after I met him at a church event when I was 13 years old. (No one knew the depth of my affection for him, of course, I think told my parents I thought he was pretty cool.) My parents told Jamin he could wait for me if he wanted to and they’d reassess the situation when I was 18 years old. It was made exceedingly clear that in the meantime there was to be no ‘relationship’ whatsoever.

The similarities are striking. In both stories, a man in his mid-twenties expressed interest in a 13 or 14-year-old homeschooled girl, the girl had a crush on the young man, and the parents told the young man to wait, agreeing to address the question again when the girl was older but not discouraging the match altogether. I want to spend some time on these similarities first, before I move on to the differences in the two stories’ outcomes.

In our society today, it is not considered normal for fully grown men in their mid-twenties to express interest in a 13 or 14-year-old girl. Indeed, such a thing ought to mark a man as a potential predator. It is usual for men in their mid-twenties to be interested in dating and marrying women who are near their age, who have the same physical maturity and lived experience they do. Girls of 13 and 14 are in middle school. The incredibly huge difference in lived experience between a middle school student and a mid-twenties adult ought to forestall any thought of a relationship.

If a man in his mid-twenties were to come to me and express interest in my daughter Sally when she is 13 or 14, I would give him a stern lecture on the inappropriateness of even considering such a thing and then treat him as a someone who is likely a sexual predator and someone who poses a potential danger to my daughter. I might even report it to the police, just to make sure he was on their radar. I suspect most parents would react similarly.

Why didn’t Maranatha’s and Natalie’s parents react by booting the young man in question out of the house as a potential sexual predator? As I discussed in my earlier post, both Natalie and Maranatha grew up in a Christian homeschooling culture that glorifies early marriage and adheres to strong gender roles—men are to protect and support, women are to nurture and keep the home. I grew up in this culture myself, and was disappointed when I reach 18 without a marriage proposal. Katie Travis grew up in this situation and was so worried about being an old maid at 23 that she married a convicted child molester rather than stay on the marriage market.

Another key feature of this Christian homeschooling culture is the importance of a young man approaching a young woman’s father, and not that young woman herself, to express interest in her. Fathers are taught to expect to be approached by godly young men hoping to wed their daughters. In this context, Stan and the Greenfields likely saw Matthew and Jamin as earnest and well qualified young men who had simply jumped the gun by a few years. They may even have been flattered by this proof that they were successfully raising godly, becoming young women.

And now for the differences between the two stories.

While both sets of parents told the young men who approached them about their young daughters that they would have to wait, Stan actively encouraged Matthew to see his attraction to Maranatha as given to him by God. Then, when Maranatha was only 15, Stan gave her to Matthew in marriage. In contrast, the Greenfields told Jamin that he must wait until Natalie was 18 to revisit the question, and stuck to that. Unlike Stan, they were not willing to marry their daughter off at 15 to a mid-twenties man, instead insisting that any talk of marriage must wait until Natalie was 18.

According to Lindvall’s telling of the Maranatha story, Matthew did not have any sexual contact with Maranatha before Stan gave her to him in marriage when she was 15. As Natalie explains in writing of her own story, Jamin sexually abused her from age 13 to age 16. When Natalie was 17, a friend convinced her to go to her parents about the years-long sexual abuse she had suffered at Jamin’s hands. Natalie did, and her parents recognized it as the abuse it was and supported her in going to the police to report it and press charges.

I have a great deal of respect for Natalie’s parents on this point. Their pastor, Doug Wilson, wrote to the judge in the case portraying Jamin’s abuse of Natalie as a consensual sexual relationship. In fact, the judge believed that version of events, equating it to a “homeschool teenage love affair.” But rather than castigating their daughter for having sex outside of marriage or forcing her to marry Jamin, Natalie’s parents recognize it as abuse and supported Natalie in pressing charges. Perhaps not surprisingly, they ended up leaving their church over this issue.

The irony, perhaps, is that these communities often teach that daughters remain under their fathers’ authority and protection even after they turn 18. My own father tried to “protect” me well into adulthood, and attempted to break off my relationship with my now-husband over doctrinal issues. And yet, this same community appears to have systemic problems when it comes to protecting its daughters from predation before they turn 18. This community badly needs awareness raising about how sexual predators operate and what sexual predation looks like.

Child Marriage and the Rest of the Maranatha Story

December 2, 2013 By Libby Anne

Maranatha’s daughter Lauren at her own wedding.

Maranatha’s courtship story has been told and retold in homeschooling circles at least since the 1990s, and is held up by many as an ideal. But there’s one thing that is routinely left out of the story. Just how old was Maranatha Owen when she married Matthew Chapman at the culmination of a parent-guided courtship/betrothal process?

We often think about child marriage as something that happens in other countries, but not here. I’ve generally thought of it that way too, even with my background. I grew up in a conservative evangelical/fundamentalist homeschool community where no one dated and everyone talked about and aspired to courtship. But in my community essentially no one started courting before attaining legal adulthood. Recently I’ve been hearing other stories, though, far different stories—and one of those stories is Maranatha’s, which I will tell in a moment.

There were a couple of relevant reasons those in my community put off courtship. First, courtship was scary, and the consequences were huge. If you courted and then broke it off that had the potential to look really really bad. After all, the whole reason for foregoing dating was the idea that for every romantic relationship you have, you give away a piece of your heart that you will never get back. Second, courtship was about finding a marriage partner, and long courtships or engagements were seen as causes for fleshly temptation. Therefore it made no sense to begin a courtship before you were actually ready for marriage. And thus we waited.

There are some Christian homeschooling leaders, Jonathan Lindvall primary among them, who brush these reasons aside and preach the godliness of youthful courtship. Lindvall argues for avoiding the heartache of broken courtship by means of heavy parental control and what he likes to term “betrothals.” If parents help their children find godly partners, love will follow eventually, or so his argument goes. Lindvall and others like him also argue that young people are ready for marriage far earlier than “the world” may recognize, and that waiting rather than marrying young only leads to temptation and the possibility of going astray.

And now we turn to the story of the 1988 betrothal and marriage of Matthew Chapmen and Maranatha Owen. I will begin by summarizing the story as told by Lindvall, and will then answer the question of the couple’s age.

Having began saved at age 19, Matthew Chapman felt led to the ministry. He attended Baylor University’s ministerial program and began serving as a ministerial intern at a large church in Waco, Texas. During this time he began to look for mentorship from an older man at the church, a homeschooling father named Stan Owen. Stan became Matthew’s spiritual father, and the two spent a great deal of time together. In the summer of 1986, Stan began to feel that God had destined Matthew to marry his daughter Maranatha. Without talking to either Matthew, his spiritual son, or Maranatha, his biological daughter, Stan dedicated the two together in marriage in prayer before God.

In early fall of 1986, Matthew confessed to Stan that he was troubled by a strong attraction to Stan’s daughter Maranatha, confessing that he found her “very attractive” and that she had become “a distraction.” “I don’t know what to do about it,” he said. According to Lindvall’s telling, “Matthew was certain this attraction could not be right since Maranatha was so much younger than he.” “Have you ever considered that this may be a good thing?” Stan asked him in response, “How do you know this isn’t from the Lord?” But Stan went on to tell Matthew that Maranatha wasn’t ready for marriage yet, and that he therefore needed to put a hold on his feelings for a while. Matthew continued to be a frequent guest in Stan’s home, constantly in contact with Maranatha and the rest of the family, but was forbidden to tell Maranatha about his feelings or have any physical contact with her.

Shortly after this Maranatha told her father that she had “an interest” in Matthew. As time went by Maranatha found her “attraction” to Matthew “increasingly distracting.” She told her father about her crush as she had been taught to do. Stan told Maranatha that she needed to “keep her heart pure and focused on the Lord” and to “wholly give herself to the Lord without any lingering desire for Matthew.” And Maranatha obediently sought to do just that. Of course, Stan had already decided to give Maranatha to Matthew, so this was simply a matter of biding his time until he decided Maranatha was ready.

A year later, in early fall of 1987, Matthew felt that God had told him by direct communication that he, Matthew, was to marry Maranatha. Matthew shared with his mentor what God had told him, and asked permission to propose to Maranatha. Stan confirmed that the thoughts may well have been from God, but asked Matthew to wait a little longer, promising to share when he had heard from God himself.

Several months went by and Christmas arrived. Stan’s Christmas present to Matthew was a Christmas card with the words “This year for Christmas, I am going to give you the greatest gift I could ever give you” on the front. Inside was a photograph of Maranatha. There were also instructions: “On January 1st, you may ask Maranatha to marry you.” The instructions stated, however, that while Matthew and Maranatha could become engaged Stan would not give Maranatha to Matthew until he determined she was ready, which might be months or years. Matthew proposed and Maranatha accepted.

Stan wanted to do things as they were done in the Bible, when betrothal was legally binding. Therefore, on February 22, 1988, just over a month after Matthew’s proposal and Maranatha’s acceptance, the two were legally married at the courthouse. Maranatha continued to live in her father’s home until her official “wedding” day, which, although she was already legally married, would be when she would begin her married life.

The summer of 1988, Stan decided that Maranatha was ready. In the six or so months since Matthew’s proposal and Maranatha’s acceptance, Matthew had prepared a home for them to live in and Maranatha had sewed a wedding dress. After dinner one day, Stan unexpectedly and without prior warning informed Matthew and Maranatha that the time was fast approaching. But Stan wanted to reenact the Biblical story of Jesus as bridegroom and the Church as his bride, so he did not give either Matthew or Maranatha a date.

Immediately after Stan’s surprise announcement, Maranatha was taken by her family members to the home of another Christian family. There Maranatha waited for Matthew to come and claim her. Every day between 3 pm and midnight she dressed in her wedding dress and sat with her suitcase, waiting. Finally, at long last, Stan told Matthew that the day had arrived, and Matthew came to the house where Maranatha was staying, claimed her, and took her to a surprise wedding feast Stan had prepared, complete with guests, singing, and dancing. The couple then left on their honeymoon and began their married life.

So now let’s talk ages. When Matthew first expressed his interest in Maranatha—interest Stan affirmed as from God but asked Matthew to put on hold—Maranatha was 13 and Matthew was 26. When Matthew heard from God that he was to marry Maranatha, and begged Stan to let him propose marriage to her, Maranatha was 14 and Matthew was 27. When Stan gave Matthew the go ahead to propose to his daughter, Maranatha was 15 and Matthew was 27. They were the same ages when they married just over a month later, and when Maranatha left her father’s home and the couple began their married life together Maranatha was 15 and Matthew was 28.

The original story doesn’t include any ages at all. I suspect that Lindvall and others felt these ages were appropriate, but were concerned that some might be put off by the idea of a 15-year-old girl marrying a 27-year-old man. I found the ages by looking them up on public record. They’re not available on the internet or in print otherwise.

Marrying girls off so early does several things. For one thing, it precludes them having other options. They have not finished their academic education and are not qualified for anything besides homemaking. And even then, what fifteen-year-old is truly ready to run a home in today’s world? For another thing, such early marriage means a girl marries before she has time to completely mature and form her own outlook on life. But then, sadly, that’s rather part of the point. This sort of arrangement, after all, functions not as an independent adult making her own decisions but rather as a property transfer—and it is explicitly stated as such.

Matthew wrote this in an article titled Thoughts on Betrothal (15 Years Later):

I know that in my case, I cannot even begin to fully communicate the wonderful gift Maranatha’s father gave to me in his daughter on the day we married. All her life, he had called her to trust him and follow him, even when she didn’t understand or, perhaps, even agree with how he was leading her, and she did. A few nights before our wedding feast, when Maranatha was dressed and ready and waiting for me to come, the doorbell rang and it was her dad who showed up instead. He assured her the wedding feast was not that particular night, and asked her to change her clothes and join him for a special dinner. He took her to a nice restaurant where they had a wonderful evening talking and sharing and laughing and crying together. Then, at one point, he told her, “Sweetheart, all your life you have submitted to me, trusted me, and followed me, and you have done this well. But, when Matthew comes and takes you, all of that transfers over to him, even if that means he leads you in ways that vary from how I would do things.” And when I went to get her, she followed her dad’s final lead right into my headship of her. Wow! Did I walk into a good deal or what?! I’ll tell you what though, having a wife with a heart like that makes you all the more want to seek the Lord and lead her faithfully.

Parents, I would also charge you to consider this. The way many Christian homeschooling parents raise their daughters, they mature rather quickly and develop significant capacities by a relatively young age. By their middle-teens, many daughters (but by no means all) possess the maturity and skills to run their own home. My point is to encourage you to be open to the Lord and take to heart that some of your daughters may be ready to marry sooner than your preconceived ideas have allowed for. And why not, if they are truly ready? What is the purpose of holding out for a predetermined numeric age if they are legitimately prepared and the Lord has brought His choice of a young man along for her? Don’t be surprised if this is some of the fruit of your good parenting in bringing forth mature, well-equipped, Godly young daughters. However, I seldom think this will be the case for most young men—it takes them (us) a lot longer to get to where they need to be. I have also seen that, oftentimes, a difference in age—even a significant one—with the man being older, helps make for a better fit.

Matthew says that homeschooled girls mature quickly. While I’m sure there are some homeschooled girls for whom this is true, I know the sort of homeschooled girls he’s talking about—they’re the ones raised to care for big families, cook, clean, and take care of babies, wear long dresses, practice submission, and learn a modest temperament. Maturity isn’t the ability to make a pie or change a diaper. Maturity isn’t the ability to quote a Bible verse or stay silent rather than gushing over the latest fad. And while we’re at it, running a home in today’s world takes more than knowledge of cooking, cleaning, and childcare.

Let me take a moment to address two objections I’ve seen raised. First, it is true that many girls in mainstream society date as early as 14. However, the courtship or betrothal process is closer to actual literal wedding planning than it is to dating. Courtship and betrothal are quite literally about getting married, and not at some nebulous time in the future but now. Second, it is true that it used to be more common for women to marry younger, even as young as 15. However, it was never as common to marry so young as we tend to think it was looking back (in fact, there are entire historical periods where people married just as late as we do today), and besides, the world today is not the same as the world of the past. Average age of marriage is generally a result of societal and economic factors that actually, like, matter.

Maranatha’s story is an extreme, yes, but it is not the only one of its kind. In 2008, only weeks after turning 16, Maranatha’s daughter Lauren married a man who was 26, a man who had already been interested in her for several years. And I’ve been hearing other stories too, stories of courtships begun at age 14 and marriages entered into at 16 or 17. Right now, my heart is sad for girls married off before they have the time to live, to learn who they are, to forge their own beliefs and outlook on life—girls married off so early other options are severely limited, and in such a patriarchal setting that even consent is curtailed.

In case you’re wondering, Matthew and Maranatha were married in Texas. The law in that state requires parental permission for marriages involving those who are 16 or 17, and a special court dispensation for marriages involving those under 16. I suspect that the law was different in 1988, and that this is the reason Maranatha’s daughter Lauren married immediately after turning 16 rather than before. Edit: It appears that Texas changed the marriage age with parental consent from 14 to 16 in 2005 in response to the activities of the FLDS sect moving into Texas and practicing both child marriage and polygamy, and that this explains why Maranatha was able to marry at age 15 while her daughter Lauren had to wait until she turned 16 to wed. Thanks to a reader for the info!

To Betroth or Not to Betroth: When Courtship Took the Homeschool World by Storm

July 30, 2018 By Libby Anne

In looking for a specific article on the No Greater Joy website, I stumbled upon an article from 2000 titled “To Betroth or Not to Betroth? That is the Question.” In it, Michael Pearl, a fundamentalist Christian homeschool speaker and guru, made a case against betrothal. Here is what I find fascinating: by 2000, betrothal had become a common enough idea in his circles that Pearl felt the need to write against it.

Several years ago I attended a lecture on betrothal. Since then I have heard quite a few testimonies from those involved in it. Many of you have sent me your favorite book or tape on “betrothal.” I have read or listened to all of them and studied the Scripture carefully. We asked for testimonies concerning betrothal, whether good or bad. We received quite a few letters from people that had sour experiences through betrothal, some of them now married. As of the writing of this article, two months after publishing the request, we have not received a single testimony from anyone that practiced it and would recommend it. The short answer is, “No, we do not practice betrothal.” Though I agree with all the assessments as to the problems, and though I agree with much of what is put forward as a solution, we do not practice betrothal as it is defined in the things I have read and heard.” We have not adopted a rigid system with superfluous rules, time-frames, pre-defined conditions, and protracted parental meddling. We want the will of God, and it doesn’t always come packaged the way we think it should.

It is with great caution and reluctance that I go on record as disagreeing with many of you on this issue. Your cures, in most cases, are far better than the disease, but I am convinced that there are too many side effects from the medicine that is being prescribed. Your cures are overkills.

That is how common betrothal–-actual betrothal-–had become in fundamentalist homeschool circles by 2000. It wasn’t an unknown quantity. Within the Pearls’ circles, it wasn’t even fringe. It was normative enough that even Michael Pearl himself was extremely cautious in how he came out against it.

Of course, Michael does not object to the entire package of betrothal—in fact, he agrees with most of it. He only objects just to certain pieces of it. For instance, take note of this statement:

There are variations in the views, but basically, betrothal is the idea of arranged marriages. The young people are prevented from having any kind of romantic or emotional relationship with each other until they enter a binding marriage agreement. With this part I fully agree.

Michael agrees with betrothal advocates that a couple should be “prevented from having any kind of romantic or emotional relationship with each other” before marriage. Where he disagrees appears to be in the heavy involvement of the father in the betrothal process. He writes that:

I am for anything that maintains the purity of the couple leading up to marriage, but a system that centers around the father of the bride is strange indeed. Real men are not interested in becoming intimate with a girl’s father. They are reserving their emotions for more judicious use—something a little closer to nature.

And if you’re picking up on some weird undertones, you’re not alone. Michael’s combination of “real men” with his reference to being “intimate” with a girl’s father seems grounded in concerns about masculinity, male friendship, and intimacy. Michael is not alone in this critique of betrothal, of course; every scheme I have ever heard of involves a young man spending great deal of time forging a relationship with a girl’s father, being mentored by him, and so forth, before ever approaching the girl.

Michael has this to say of that point in the process:

“She [the daughter] is allowed to say no, in which case the father tells the young man something to the effect that he just wasted one or more years courting a man twice his age.”

Michael is not off base here—in a betrothal framework, the father is expected to be so involved in the life of any potential husband that referring to the young man as “courting” the girl’s father is apt.

As Michael notes, some betrothal advocates took the father’s involvement even further, suggesting that the father should have the couple legally married and afterward have the young woman continue to live in her parents’ home, until such time as he (the father) might decided to tell the young man he could come and claim his bride. (I have written about this before; you can read about it here.)

Michael finds this horrifying.

“The creation of a system that seems more designed to indulge parents in a vicarious romance than it is to assure that their children are properly matched is embarrassing at the least.”

All of this does raise a question. Just what does Michael think the father’s role is? We’ve already established that he doesn’t think a couple should have a “romantic or emotional relationship” before they marry. How are they to meet? Does a father play a role in this process? As it happens, yes.

Michael spends a decent amount of time talking about his oldest daughter Rebekah’s marriage. For instance, he praises the fact that she married the first guy she was ever involved in, and didn’t have an “emotional” relationship with him before the wedding (I realize that praising all of this will sound very odd to a secular audience; it should, because it is).

Rebekah was twenty-six when she married, and she never had a “boy friend”—never shared any kind of emotional or physical relationship with anyone. Her husband need not be concerned that someday a man may walk up to him and say, “Your wife and I used to be very special to one another.” He is her first and only.

Here’s the funny thing—this is identical to the goal for betrothal. The goal here is to get a daughter to the altar without her having previously had a relationship—physical or emotional—with anyone—including the man she is marrying. That’s what “purity” means to individuals in these circles.

How did Michael obtain this ideal?

As Rebekah’s father, I turned away five or six men before they ever got close to her. She turned down at least a dozen others. In addition, there were three young men, that I would have been proud to have had as son-in-laws, that approached me, asking for Rebekah’s hand in marriage. I said to them, “Hey, it is fine with me, but it is her you must convince.” But Rebekah never gave any of them the time of day.

Like betrothal, the young men approached Michael before initiating anything—any relationship at all—with Rebekah. Note that Rebekah “never gave the time of day” to the three Michael says he let through. That means they definitely didn’t talk to her first, before approaching her father. Note, too, that Michael turned some men away without ever giving them access to Rebekah. He denied her those options entirely.

As Michael outlines it here, the only difference between his system and betrothal is that, first, Michael didn’t spend months courting each of these young men before approving them—except that, as we’ll see in a moment, this is not strictly true—and, second, he let the young men in question ask Rebekah if she was interested, rather than being the one to present them to her (this part does appear to be the case).

As Michael explains it:

I am sure that if I had been of the modern persuasion and had started proceedings with the young men, eventually presenting her with my choice, being a dutiful daughter, she would have worked hard to surrender to my choice. But I did not speak to her on behalf of these young men, for I would never disrespect my daughter by commencing an arrangement without her knowledge.

He then offers this:

If my kids come on hard times in their marriages, I want them to know that it is they who chose their life’s partner, not me.

I had something similar said to me as well, and it struck me as odd even then. The entire thought process is messed up, but I can’t quite put my finger on what’s wrong with it. Don’t get me wrong—I like the sentiment that people should be able to choose their own life partner! It’s just that they should be able to do so because they’re the one who will be living with them, and not as some sort of indemnity clause for the parent.

But despite all of Michael’s verbiage, he did start the proceedings with the young men. Not only that, but in some cases he spent months getting to know them, before Rebekah ever laid eyes on them.

The man Rebekah married, Gabriel Anast, came to me, wanting to get acquainted with Rebekah. She was overseas at the time, and, without making promises, I invited him to come and work for us in the office—which he did for several months. We got to know him and his family well. I told him that he passed muster as far as I was concerned, but that it was his job to win my daughter’s favor.

In order to get to know Gabriel, Michael had Gabriel work for him for several months. Michael may object to the terminology, but this is classic betrothal policy—it’s right out of the book. Having a young man work for you so that you can analyze his spiritual state, work ethic, and interactions with others, all before he ever is allowed access to your daughter, is every betrothal advocate’s dream.

After about six months he moved back to New Mexico without ever meeting Rebekah. Rebekah returned, then left again, and still they did not meet. I thought maybe he had lost interest. After being home for several months, she went to Israel for one year, and it was several months after she returned that they finally met. I had never spoken to Rebekah about his possible interest.

Can we be clear about the fact that as of when Gabriel came to Michael, and when Michael had Gabriel work in his office for months so that he could get to know him, Gabriel had not even met Rebekah?

After they met, he began to communicate with her regularly by email and telephone. After several weeks, one night he called to speak to me. By the way he was stuttering and “beating around the bush” I knew it was “another one of those” phone calls. After about two minutes of garbled, random irrelevancy, I was certain of his intentions and began to laugh at his stress. He had always been so intellectual and logical. During a break in my laughter, I was able to utter, “Just say it.” He said the stupidest thing, “I want to date your daughter.” He was 1300 miles away, so I said, “What do you mean?” He answered, “I want to consider her for marriage; Ugh…I mean…I…Ah…do consider her. I mean…Ah, if it is OK with you. What I mean is…Ugh…,” and from there it went downhill. I am thankful now that I didn’t subscribe to one of those complicated, multi-layered betrothal schemes. He would never have gotten past the first step. He had several friends who have been burnt by the betrothal systems, and he was not willing to go that route.

But he did get past the first step. Michael had Gabriel work in his office for several months so that he could get to know him! That is the first step.

I finally said, “Look, the two of you are old enough and mature enough to determine the will of God and make up your own minds. If you can get her to agree, you have my blessing.” They communicated on the telephone and by email, and warmed a plane seat a couple times between Nashville and Albuquerque. In a few weeks Rebekah approached me, seeking my permission for her to accept his proposal of marriage. Deb and I consented, and they announced their agreement to marry. They were married four months later, which I considered a rather long engagement.

They made an agreement between themselves to abstain from kissing until after they were married. It didn’t seem to have set them back any. As part of the wedding event, I told them that I expected to have a grandkid nine months and one week after the wedding. They didn’t disappoint me. They tell me it is due nine months and two or three days after she threw the bouquet. I always taught my children that if it needs doing, don’t fool around; get it done—pun intended.

Gabriel was, and remains, her first and only boy friend and lover. That is as it should be. They did all things in truth and honor to God, their families, and each other. We are proud of them and delighted in every way—looking forward to being grandparents.

The only difference between what Michael describes and courtship is that Michael let Gabriel approach Rebekah himself, rather than presenting Gabriel to Rebekah. This is not, of course, a distinction completely without a difference—if Michael had introduced Gabriel to Rebekah, she would have felt more pressure to accept him—and less room to turn him down—than she did having Gabriel approach her himself.

Still, this is where the fundamentalist Christian homeschool world was circa 2000—debating such minutia in a n increasingly detailed embrace of courtship and betrothal. It’s as though these individuals raised their children, homeschooled then, and then realized that if they were going to determine where their children turned out—on the straight and narrow, of course—they had to carefully and systematically control who they married, too, so they set about doing that as well.

Perhaps the strangest part of all of this is that Michael thinks he isn’t controlling—unlike all those ridiculous betrothal advocates, of course. Michael spends months vetting young men who are interested in his twenty-something daughter—months before giving them permission to approach her.

That, apparently, is what “not controlling” looked like in this world.

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“Take the Bible. Zachariah and Elizabeth for instance. Zachariah was extremely old to marry Elizabeth and they became the parents of John the Baptist. Also take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus.”

Natalie Greenfield was 14 when Jamin White, 24, approached her parents and expressed interested interest in her. Natalie’s parents told Jamin to wait until she was 18, and that they would readdress the question then. The problem is that, because of the conservative culture they were surrounded by—this happened in controversial conservative Doug Wilson’s Moscow, Idaho—Natalie’s parents didn’t see Jamin’s request to court their 14-year-old daughter as a warning sign. Instead, it seemed to signal that Jamin was an upstanding, respectable, serious young man.

Jamin took advantage of this perception and spent the next several years sexually molesting and raping horrifically Natalie. When Natalie finally got up the courage to go to her parents—Jamin had used threats to keep her silent—they reported the crime and prosecuted Jamin. Her community, meanwhile, turned against her. There was no abuse, they said. The entire sordid affair was a consensual relationship that she had kept hidden from her parents. She, 14. Him, 24.

Natalie’s story is not as unusual as one might like. Blogger Kathryn Brightbill tweeted the following after the Roy Moore story broke yesterday:

Text: We should probably talk about how there is a segment of evangelicalism and homeschool culture where the only thing Roy Moore did wrong was initiating sexual contact outside of marriage. 14 year old girls courting adult men isn’t entirely uncommon.

Courting is a term specific to these communities. It does not imply agency. The agency, in courtship culture, belongs to the man. A man becomes interested in a girl. He approaches her father and asks for his permission to court her. At this point the father talks to the girl, to find out whether she is interested, but let’s be honest here—how much agency does a sheltered 14-year-old homeschool girl have, particularly when she has been taught that her role in life is that of wife and mother, and that she is to obey her father until he gives her away in marriage? And remember—she is still a child.

The father determines what the courtship will look like. In the most strict courtship, the couple is never allowed to be alone or to have any physical contact (including holding hands). When the man is ready, he approaches the girl’s father and asks his permission to marry her. The father may say he doesn’t think they’re ready, or may give the man tasks to complete. When the father approves the match, the man is free to ask the girl to marry him. And again, I ask you, what agency does the girl truly have? Her choices are bounded. What comes next? Well, let’s just say that long engagements are frowned upon.

Some years ago, someone I knew growing up was sent to prison for crossing state lines to have sex with a 14-year-old girl he’d met on the internet when he was 21. The conservative homeschool community we had both grown up in rose to his defense. They blamed the girl. They claimed she had initiated everything, they said she was sexually experienced, that she was a slut. She led him astray. That she was only 14 suddenly didn’t matter. That a 14-year-old girl is a child was irrelevant.

Is it any surprise that some conservatives have responded to the allegations surrounding Roy Moore by claiming that the young teens he preyed on were probably the ones pursuing him? Because we all know that 14-year-old girls are temptresses, after all. They know the hold they have over grown men, and they wield it as a weapon—or so the narrative goes.

There’s another aspect to this, too. In conservative evangelical culture, wives are expected to submit to and obey their husbands. When I left home for college, there were friends of my mom’s who begged her not to let me go. It would ruin me as wife material, they said. I would become to independent and would never be able to submit to a future husband. If a father marries his daughters off young, before they’re adults with independent life experience, so much the better.

Remember, Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson gave this advice several years ago:

At a Sportsmen’s Ministry talk in 2009, Robertson had some advice for a young man.

“Make sure that she can cook a meal, you need to eat some meals that she cooks, check that out,” he said. “Make sure she carries her Bible. That’ll save you a lot of trouble down the road. And if she picks your ducks, now, that’s a woman.”

“They got to where they’re getting hard to find,” Robertson remarked. “Mainly because these boys are waiting until they get to be about 20 years old before they marry ‘em. Look, you wait until they get to be 20 years old, the only picking that’s going to take place is your pocket.”

The Duck Commander company founder added: “You got to marry these girls when they are about 15 or 16, they’ll pick your ducks. You need to check with mom and dad about that of course.”

He went on to say that the Bible gave Americans the right to hunt.

And Robertson practices what he preaches. He began dating his wife, Kay, when she was only 14 and he was 18. They waited until Kay was 16 to get married.

As Kathryn Brightbill noted, for some conservatives Roy Moore’s mistake was not in pursuing young teenage girls but in engaging in sexual activity. And even here, there is a tendency among some conservatives to view teenage girls as temptresses out to get older men. Why did the woman who has come forward to accuse Moore of sexually molesting her when she was 14 get in his car and go to his house with him, after all? Moore’s mistake, then, was not having the moral fortitude to resist her womanly wiles.

Lest you think I am making this up, I’ll remind you of what I watched happen in the conservative community in which I grew up. “He was led astray by the wayward woman, just like in Proverbs,” they said. “That is the lesson he has learned.” What does Proverbs say, exactly? “With her many persuasions she entices him. With her flattering lips she seduces him. Suddenly he follows her, as an ox goes to the slaughter.” Teenage girls are not victims. They are vixens. Or so the logic goes.

I am not saying that every conservative, or every evangelical, views things this way. That is thankfully not the case. This view, however, is out there. It is not as fringe or isolated as it should be, and it is shaping some of the response to yesterday’s allegations against Roy Moore.

Virginia Reforms Troglodyte Marriage Law

July 5, 2016 By Libby Anne

According to the Washington Post, Virginia has amended its marriage law:

Only adults can get married in Virginia, according to a new law replacing policies that made it possible for a girl 13 or younger to marry if she had parental consent and was pregnant.

According to UNICEF, any marriage of an individual under age 18 is classified as a child marriage. That Virginia previously allowed girls as young as 13 to marry is shocking, but most U.S. states allow children of 16 or 17 to marry with parental consent, some earlier still. What prompted Virginia to change its law?

Vogel said she learned about the issue when constituents in an affluent part of her Northern Virginia district sought her help after a man in his 50s was suspected of having sex with a high school student.

As child-protective services began to close in, Vogel said the man wooed the parents and married the girl, eliminating the possibility of prosecution. It was the second time he followed this tactic; the earlier marriage ended in divorce, she said.

It may seem shocking that a man in his fifties could convince the parents of a high school student to let him marry her, but we live in a society where many parents are so conservative in their views on sex that forcing a child to marry the man they find she is having sex with may seem preferable to having her “ruined”—her virginity destroyed and no marriage prospects in sight. It is possible that reporting the man for statutory rape many not even have occurred to the parents, but it if did, a quick marriage may have seemed preferable to scandal.

Oh, but surely this didn’t happen all that often! Right?

Nearly 4,500 children under age 18 were married in Virginia from 2004 to 2013, according to data from the state’s Department of Health. That includes more than 200 children age 15 or younger.

About 90 percent of the underage spouses were girls; in many cases, the girls married men age 21 or older, and sometimes the men were decades older, data show.

From the linked source:

— 13: Number of children under age 15 married to spouses more than 20 years older

— 25: Number of 15-year-olds married to spouses more than 10 years older

— 47: Number of 16-year-olds married to spouses more than 14 years older

In other words, over the course of a decade, thirteen Virginia children aged 13 or 14, likely all girls, married me who were at least 33 or 34, if not older. During that same span, forty-seven 16-year-olds married men who were at least 30 and twenty-five 15-year-olds married men who were at least 25. (Granted, some small number of these marriages could have been between boys and women.)

It’s true that early marriages like these were once practiced more commonly in our historical past (though they were generally not as common as most people think). But we do not live in our historical past, and today there are severe social and economic consequences for children who enter into these marriages.

When children get married, Smoot said, they are 50 percent less likely to finish high school, four times less likely to go to college and more likely to have children sooner and more closely spaced than people who marry as adults.

Underage brides are also more likely to experience mental and physical problems, Smoot said, and have a divorce rate of as high as 80 percent.

Nevertheless, some lawmakers in Virginia opposed the reform, which “sets the minimum marriage age at 18, or 16 if a child is emancipated by court order” and “takes parents and pregnancy out of the equation.” One lawmaker voiced his opposition as follows:

“Neither a past or current pregnancy of either individual to be married . . . nor the wishes of the parents or legal guardians of the minor” are enough to prove emancipation is necessary, the law says.

That’s troubling to opponents such as Sen. J. Chapman “Chap” Petersen (D-Fairfax), who said it is not for lawmakers to judge the decisions of pregnant teens and their families.

“Maybe I’m old-fashioned,” he said, “but if someone gets pregnant and they want to be married when the child is born, not being able to do that of their own volition without going to court, I thought that was a little bit overly aggressive.”

I have to wonder if individuals like Petersen have any idea what it is like to be sixteen and pregnant in an evangelical or Catholic home in a conservative area. The idea that girls in circumstances like this are free to do anything “of their own volition” is boggling. Children do not have the same rights and freedoms adults have. A pregnant sixteen-year-old does not have the freedom to pick up and leave if her parents are pressuring her into something she does not want to do. A pregnant sixteen-year-old does not have the means or ability to support herself financially. Her ability to make her own choices, free from parental control, is severely limited, and sometimes nonexistent.

We’ve discussed child marriage in this space before, usually in the context of the Christian homeschooling movement. When looking at legislation like Virginia’s, it’s perhaps worth remembering that there are some religious leaders and groups explicitly promoting early marriage as a way to guard against sexual immorality. While most of these marriages likely involve children who are 16 or 17, and not 13, 14, or 15, any marriages that involve children younger than 18 curtail young people’s ability to make their own decisions separate from their parents. These marriages can lock young people in to a specific life trajectory before they are old enough to legally leave home without parental permission.

There are certainly adults who marry at 18 (or other ages) who later regret their decisions, but at least those adults make these decisions in a context where they are legally able to leave, make their own decisions, and start their own lives. Children do not. I am hopeful for a future in which more states reform their marriage laws and give children the support, resources, and education they need to reach adulthood capable of making informed and free decisions.

Is Child Marriage Wrong if the Parents Consent?

June 15, 2015 By Libby Anne

I was struck by a recent facebook post by Michael Farris, in which he discussed whether the government should be allowed to set a minimum age for marriage.

Text is as follows:

A recent discussion on a friend’s FB thread highlighted a very serious problem that I see surfacing in Christian and conservative circles.

The issue under discussion was setting the proper minimum age for marriage. The question quickly led to the recitation of the emerging mantra “it should be no business of the government.” So long as parents’ consent, marriage should be lawful at any age—many on this thread contended.

The way we test the propriety of a proposed legal rule is to take the rule to its extreme and see how we like the results. So I asked whether a parent should be permitted to give their permission to allow a 7 year old to be married to a 30 year old pedophile. The legal issue is the same whether or not there is a “dowry” (cash payment) offered by the “bridegroom.”

Though they are exceedingly rare, there are parents who would permit this kind of outrageous transaction. Such a plan is inherently evil and should be punished.

This FB discussion highlighted a growing tendency in the Christian and conservative movement to be seduced by a spirit of anarchy.

Government is instituted by God. We are wise to be very cautious toward government. And it is true that today’s government has far exceeded the bounds of its constitutional and moral authority. But we err if we think that government has no legitimate moral authority to punish parents who do evil.

Government is not the province of angels but anarchy is a tool of the devil.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see Farris state that the government has legitimate moral authority to punish parents who do evil. In my experience, the organizations he has founded (HSLDA and parentalrights.org) tend to work against the government’s ability to do just that (read more here), but perhaps his statement is something we can work with and build on. Or maybe that’s just me being overly optimistic. Perhaps his statement is more about PR than anything else.

More to the point, when I saw Farris’s post I was intrigued that he felt the need to take seriously the argument that parents and parents alone should be able to determine when a child is old enough to marry. That in and of itself is striking. That Farris, with his position as arguably the most visible spokesman for Christian homeschooling, felt the need to take this argument seriously suggests that this is considered a serious argument in his circles—and that is more than a little bit disturbing.

Take a look at this comment by Paul Calvert on Farris’s post:

Text is as follows:

Why didn’t God give a minimum age for marriage to His people in the Law of Moses? Many Bible teachers will say that Jewish boys became adults at age 13 (this is not in the Bible, I think it is maybe more like Jewish case-law).

Maybe God wants His people (us) to make some judgement calls. Is there a moral difference between getting married at 17 vs 16 vs 15 vs 14 . . .

Many suggest that puberty is the most reasonable minimum age. I can’t find any Biblical principle to argue for or against this.

If God (being fully righteous) chose not to give instructions about a minimum age for marriage, why would we want our government (that is often corrupt) to set a minimum age?

Currently, very young children are allowed to consent to fornication with other children who are close in age, but they are not allowed to get married. I think that sends a pretty bad message. We allow children to consent to fornication (without parental approval) which is inherently evil but we don’t allow them to consent to marriage (with parental approval) which is generally good.

When the government is this out of control, I can see how God fearing people (like Hannah on my post) might suggest that it would be better to simply revoke government jurisdiction in certain areas even though it would allow for some children to be abused.

I don’t have a great answer for this question. But I think it is valuable to consider it and discuss it.

Given Paul Calvert’s mention of his own post, I went to his facebook page to see if he had posed the original question Farris had been responding to. He had. Below are some of the comments left on his post, which was a question regarding the reasonable minimum legal age for marriage:

I am reminded of the Chapmans, whom I wrote about over a year ago now. Maranatha Chapman married a much-older man at age 15, and the story of her courtship and wedding was told and retold as a model and aspiration in Christian homeschooling circles in the 1990s. In 2008, Maranatha’s daughter, Lauren, also married a much-older man. She had just turned 16.

The Chapmans don’t just practice child marriage, they also preach it, encouraging other homeschooling parents to follow their lead, even arguing that “a difference in age—even a significant one—with the man being older, helps make for a better fit.” Indeed, we see this in one of the comments above—“a 40 year old man that is established and has run his course in sewing his wild oats is, in a lot of ways, a much better match for younger ladies than a youg [sic] man who has yet to move past being daring and impetuous.”

For individuals like Chapman and this commenter, it is important for a man to reach full maturity and gain experience before marriage, but not for a woman. This isn’t accidental, it’s purposeful. Debi Pearl has written that young women should work to keep themselves malleable so that they can become whatever helpmeet their future husband needs. They are to fit themselves to him, to change themselves as needed, to be what he needs them to be. A woman needs to be physically mature before marriage, but, well, that’s about it.

I grew up in a Christian homeschooling family, but I never saw anything like this in my community. I was surprised, then, when several other homeschool alumni commented on my posts about the Chapmans sharing stories of homeschool girls married of at 16 or 17, often to someone selected by their father, and generally without much life experience beyond their home, church, and Christian homeschooling group.

I’m still not sure how common it is for Christian homeschool girls to be married off at 16 or 17, or for homeschooling leaders to argue in favor of marrying young teenage girls off to much older men. Not very, I hope. However, it is perhaps because I am unsure that I find it so disconcerting that Farris felt the need to engage seriously with individuals arguing that parents should be able to marry their children off even younger. Just how widespread are these views? And even Farris only objected to marriages before age 16.

Early marriages are unwise for a number of reasons, but for individuals like Chapman or other commenters on these threads, early marriage solves a number of problems—it helps ensure that girls maintain their virginity before marriage, and that they do not have the time to become independent or get ideas. Instead, they are passed from father to husband, and expected to submit to male headship either way. This is a problem, especially in the Christian homeschooling world, where girls’ life experiences may be limited in the name of “sheltering” and “protecting” them, and it’s something that should be soundly condemned.

Of course, Farris would rather discuss the potential of libertarianism to veer into anarchy than address any of this. That, unlike the rest, doesn’t surprise me in the least.

Jamie Wight, Maranatha, & Sexual Predation Unrecognized

Child Marriage and the Rest of the Maranatha Story

To Betroth or Not to Betroth: When Courtship Took the Homeschool World by Storm

Top Posts of 2017 (and a few others)

Top Viewed Posts of the Past

Top Viewed Pages of All Time

Child Brides, Teenage Sluts, and Roy Moore

Virginia Reforms Troglodyte Marriage Law

Is Child Marriage Wrong if the Parents Consent?