Evangelical churches strongly encourage dating/marriage "within the church community" so literally that building or the churches nearby.
They also strongly encourage young women to seek men who are "strong in god" and have good leadership and all the other fanfic-quality descriptions that evangelical pastors write about themselves.
And the evangelical churches tend to push people away from divorce, which means covering up abuse and gaslighting young women about how much their relationship sucks.
Add on top the insistence that church forms the core of your community, so if you're in a marriage you don't like, you're not just considering divorcing your spouse, but also the entire church.
Finally they marry young, or young-old like my borderline 30yo exfriend marrying a fresh 18 year old blonde chick.
That is what it looks like when the church leadership is brainwashing young women to get involved with church leadership.
It sucks them in before they're too young to know any better and fights against anything which might let them leave.
The women they want literally don't exist naturally, so they manufacture them.
How many times have we heard the story from the fundie wives cosplaying like it's the 50s that they used to be perfectly normal until their "eyes were opened" by their husbands?
My dad is one of those church leadership assholes and he went to great lengths to brainwash my sister into the same bullshit. She made it out fortunately, though not without trauma.
And you know what my godly christian conservative leadership dad did when I was in my first semester of college?
He dumped my godly christian conservative stay-at-home-mom who had spent the last 17 years homeschooling his kids.
It turned out mr godly do-gooder had hated his wife for the prior 15 years so he just played the role because "he didn't want another man raising his kids". (direct quote)
My mom was a deeply unpleasant abusive person, but he was just as bad. They really deserved each other and should have stayed married.
Now my dad dates women 25 years younger than him because he just lies about being rich.
Those young women today might end up in happy stable relationships within their church enclave, but they are super duper fucked if things go sour.
There's so much deep-seated toxicity in organized religion. It's almost as if we never learned the lesson that absolute power corrupts absolutely and letting a handful of people take charge of a large group isn't going to invite abuse and gaslighting.
we never learned the lesson that absolute power corrupts absolutely
My idiot dad looooooooves to say that line right before he says that's why the government should be dismantled and put into the hands of small community leaders with no oversight other than jesus... aka people like my dad.
There's another lesson. Always be suspicious of anyone who actively wants to be a leader. The people who do are usually the last person you want in charge of anything.
Except when it applies to him, the ex-cop who failed out of pastor-school and obsessively controlled the lives of his entire family. Plus he always tries running his own business because he can't stand having a boss.
The only way he could be more of a caricature is if he sexually abused my sister, and I honestly wouldn't be surprised if he did, because there was a ton of emotional incest going on with him obsessing over her vagina and what she did with it.
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u/Ms_Emilys_Picture 13d ago
I wouldn't say it's common, but I've read way too many articles about youth pastors marrying teenagers from their congregation.