So my S.O. just informed me she may be joining a fundy church

[intheflow]

11. Have you asked her why she wants to go?

Is it only because friends invited her? Or is she also having some kind of spiritual crisis? Why weren’t you invited to Bingo?

I am a former Unitarian Universalist minister, never much of a Believer, pretty much an atheist at this point. So this is my advice.

If it’s the first, let her go. I went to an apostolic church a few times in my early 20s because a work friend invited me. It was a primarily Black church and the music ROCKED! But I ended up only going twice because the theology was ridiculous! 90% “WE ALONE ARE SAVED and the rest will burn in a fiery hell!” for 10% music that would have put the Blues Brothers to shame, and each service was 6-8 hours long. They were nice people but they also preached you can’t be friends with people outside the faith. So when I stopped attending, my work friend basically unfriended me in real life (back before the internet). So if you trust your partner’s Spidey sense overall, you can probably trust her with this.

If her answer is, in part, because she’s in a place of spiritual search, let her go to her friend’s church and offer to bring her to “church shopping” for other enlightenment options. I understand fully that this will be excruciating for you, but hear me out. Find a local UU church, Buddhist temple, or liberal synagogue. If she’s hung up on JC, you could try liberal Christian denominations like the United Church of Christ (UCC), Episcopalian, Metropolitan Church (started by gay clergy), or American Baptist (Jimmy Carter’s flavor of Baptist). Even some Catholic Churches are pretty liberal. The reason you could try this is, as much as you don’t understand it, religion has been used for good in the world. I worked hurricane recovery after Katrina and without the financial and physical support of pretty much every Christian denomination we would never have been able to do the work. Think: Rev. MLK, Jr. fighting for civil rights, Carter’s Habitat for Humanity, Gandhi, or the liberal clergy filing law suits to protect women’s reproductive rights. What I’m trying to impress on you is religion isn’t necessarily bad, interpretations are. It’s given many people comfort and community, and been a voice for good as well as evil. (Though not as often. 🙁 ) And, yeah, the sermons will drive you NUTS, and you’ll spring an eye socket restraining your eye rolls, but you will also be showing your partner that you support her growth as a person, that YOU are her life partner, not the Bingo people. And if she sees you supporting her journey, she may be more amenable to choosing a much less toxic/healthier path to enlightenment (or whatever it is she’s looking for).

If the answer to the last question, why weren’t you invited, is because they felt ill at ease with a “stranger” coming, or some other reason (like maybe she once mentioned you are an athiest), then that is GROOMING behavior. If it was because she thought you might be uncomfortable and/or bored, that could be her being supportive of you.

TL;DR: Talk to your partner and encourage her to make healthy choices.