When I was navigating my divorce, I was terrified that in losing my marriage I would lose my faith. So, I searched high and low for stories of other people in the church who had navigated a divorce and kept their faith. I remember finding one book where a progressive Christian author briefly touched on her divorce, and I just wept. Her few sentences on the topic finally made me realize I was not alone and helped me cobble together a way to hold both my faith and this new aspect of my identity. This project aspires to provide more than just a few sentences of support. My hope with this project is to offer a framework of faith formation for those who have been touched by divorce—and one that takes seriously how it helps us understand sin and salvation, rupture and repair and one that can help us not treat those who have experienced divorce as a dirty secret but allow their experiences to be a part of what it means to be a part of Jesus’ vision for creating the kingdom of God.

For the purposes of this grant, my hope is that this project will take the form of a book and a study guide that investigates a constructive theology of divorce. I want to explore what divorce teaches us about God, ourselves (humanity), sin, salvation, and the future. To do this, I will draw on scripture, history, theology, and experience—both my experience and the experiences of others. In particular, this grant will help me collect the stories of other people to weave into this work. I look forward to gathering these stories through surveys, interviews, and a gathering of folks from a variety of backgrounds and experiences.