MARRIAGE AFTER DIVORCE MAY NOT BE ADULTERY

A writer offers a paradigm-challenging Christian look at divorce—and what comes after.

The vexed subjects of divorce and remarriage are the focus of William’s nonfiction book. The work unfolds in the sharp awareness of how many Christian denominations not only frown on divorce, but also scorn the very idea of remarriage, citing scriptural injunctions that essentially equate these unions with adultery. The author views this a bit sardonically, since, as he puts it, churches every Sunday are “filled to the rafters with divorced people.” In his book, he seeks not to distort Christian law but to find nuances and readings that shed new and more forgiving light on divorce and remarriage in the religion’s tradition. He takes his readers on an exhaustively detailed tour through the whole of the Judeo-Christian scriptural canon, including apocryphal works like the book of Jasher. He examines a wide array of sexual issues in light of Scripture: biblical bigamy, unfaithfulness, and uncleanliness. He discusses with frank explicitness what the church typically views as sexual transgressions. Several of these discussions will strike some of William’s readers—Christian and non-Christian alike—as wincingly impolitic in the 21st century (“One of the primary reasons a man gets married is to have sex available 24/7”). And many readers may become impatient with the leisurely, highly allusive road the author takes to get to the point of his topic. But his generous approach —every chapter is buttressed by copious quotations from Scripture—charts an intriguing path through the thickets of what church dogma has generally considered unclean fornication. He deftly attempts to justify remarriage after divorce in a way that makes life livable for the many divorced Christians in the church today. “Nowhere does the Messiah instruct His followers to isolate themselves from sinners,” William points out, and this kind of stern insight fills his book.

A vigorously thought-provoking, if slow-moving, reexamination of Christian divorce.