For Better, For Worse: The Ethics of Divorce after Marriage Equality [Hardcover]

For Better, For Worse discusses the shame narratives tied to divorce, rooted in Christian theologies of marriage and U.S. political landscapes of marriage rights and regulation. Using interdisciplinary methods, Natalie E. Williams investigates the current conflict between social practices that normalize divorce and religious and political rhetorical narratives that continue to shame those who divorce. Williams's work seeks to understand current attitudes and policies related to divorce and to shape Christian ethical responses that resist the use of shame, relying instead on commitments to truth-telling and a cultivation of shamelessness to support flourishing across a spectrum of family forms.Natalie E. Williams teaches religion at Saint Peters Preparatory School.

Natalie E. Williams provides an important missing piece in the dynamic, fraught theo-ethical conversation on marriage. Both Christianity and the state sell divorce as a shame-inducing decision that unleashes catastrophes rather than a multi-faceted, sometimes liberating relational choice. Divorces negative press reinforces the hetero status quo, while queering the data reveals many creative relational options. Study this lest the advent of marriage/divorce equality lead to more of the same. Mary E. Hunt, Co-director, Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER)

Why isn't there a Christian sacrament of divorce? Williams upturns debates over so-called traditional marriage by arguing that Christians should recognize and embrace divorce as a truth-telling practice that shatters Christians' idolatrous attachment to marriage. Indeed, Christians have a responsibility to transform the stigma of divorce and to support the families unjustly perceived as failures. This book shamelessly reimagines a Christian ethics of divorce. Heather White, visiting assistant professor, University of Puget Sound

This is a startlingly fresh take on divorce as a moral good. It introduces a broadlS'