I have a question...it is an honest question, not a slam.
Aren't most traditional Baptist the real tough fire and brimstone types? Doesn't really seem like a denomination that would readily accept Casey.
I don't know much about Baptists, I am Nazarene, so I really am curious.
Oh, how I can speak to this.
I divorced my husband not long after my son was born...I left Texas and moved back to Mississippi while pregnant, after being beaten by my husband...I left to save the baby inside me.
I was MARRIED when I moved home, but I was separated from my abusive husband (whose abuse had hospitalized me in the past and caused multiple miscarriages--some other time, we'll discuss the psyche of abused spouses that makes them tolerate abuse and stay with the abuser, but I don't want to go into it now--but I was one of those women who said, "I'll never let a man lay his hands on me." Let's just say that the woman who entered the marriage was not the same one who tolerated the abuse, and who finally left it.)
...I attempted to attend the church that I was raised in. A Southern Baptist church where my father was a deacon. While on the one hand I was invited to the church in a very welcoming way, on the other hand, every Sunday School lesson seemed to cast women like me (women who for good reasons had chosen to raise their children alone) as the scourge of society, single-handedly responsible for the downfall of Western Civilization. Sermons told me to "submit to the man." No exceptions were ever made for women who were married to men who are abusive to their spouses.
My father is still a deacon in this church. I love him with all my heart. But I no longer attend the church, and I am the better for it. I raise my son with good morals and generosity toward others...I do not teach him that anyone is unworthy of Christ-like love.
Funny thing--when I was in Texas, suffering abuse, I went to the local Southern Baptist church in the town where I was living, and talked to the minster there. He in no uncertain terms told me that God did not expect me to stay with a man who abused me. He advised me to leave my husband. But when I got home, the minister in the same denomination told me that it was a sin to leave. The church in Mississippi even circulated a document entitled "Those Lost." I was on the list. Why? Because I chose to raise my son alone.
Bottom line: Southern Baptist churches are independent, and each has its on guiding philosophy and bi-laws. Some churches would be accepting of Casey. Some would see her as worthy of redemption. Some wouldn't.
OK...forgive me for TMI...but that in a nutshell is my story, in regards to Baptist churches.
