Sacred Divorce: Religion, Therapeutic Culture, and Ending Life Partnerships

While there are numerous rituals surrounding significant life transitions such as marriage, birth and death, few comparable resources exist for people undergoing divorce. Jenkins, a sociology professor at William and Mary College, illuminates the myriad ways religious practices and symbols enable divorced people of faith make sense of their loss, guilt, anger, and confusion. From interviews with divorced Pentecostals, Catholics, Baptists, Unitarians, Jewish, and mainline Protestants, she finds that therapeutic ideas about self-healing and religious belief are entwined. Clergy invoke old rituals and create unique ones to accommodate divorced members of their groups. For example, members of a Jewish group assemble at a pier where they toss a representative object from their marriage into the ocean as a release of unwanted emotion, and a Catholic priest compares divorced parishioners to biblical figures. Even though some people feel judged by their congregations, they also discover the solace of music and prayer in their faith homes. The communal nature of church or synagogue becomes a means for individuals to accomplish the private emotional work necessary to heal from divorce. (June)