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These Protestants “once spoke with horror and judgment against divorce and the divorced,” but are now “blithely settling for possible presidential candidates who have divorced repeatedly.” Of course, they also used to speak strongly in favor of Sunday closing laws and Prohibition. On much thinner scriptural warrant, many of them now speak strongly against gay sex.
I haven’t read any of these scholars, life being short, but I’d be happy to hear from those who have. From outside, it seems like a remarkable coincidence that the scholarship comes along just as we learn that evangelicals and fundamentalists divorce at the same rate as the general population. Isn’t their scholarship the tail being wagged by the dog? Hasn’t Christian morality been made more just and humane by continued exposure to a secular culture that respects freedom and women more than anyone could 2000+ years ago? (If you want to turn these rhetorical questions into real ones, i.e. blow my argument to bits, find an evangelical/fundamentalist Christian proposing this lenient interpretation prior to, say, 1907.)
