• Conservative Christian Preacher Stephen Allwine Thinks Murdering His Wife Better Than Divorcing Her

Conservative Christian Preacher Stephen Allwine Thinks Murdering His Wife Better Than Divorcing Her

I watched a true-crime program about a guy named Stephen Allwine.

Stephen Allwine, and his wife, Amy, belonged to a conservative Christian church. I believe the show said they attended the Church of God.

The narrator doing the voice over on this show explained that the Allwine’s denomination strongly disapproved of divorce, so rather than divorce his wife, Stephen murdered her.

You know we have one messed up interpretation of the Bible, and some very messed up theology, when churches and some Christians make divorce out to be so bad that it looks worse than murder.

Murder becomes preferable to divorce to some. That is where some Christian attitudes and legalism leads.

This is my second post like this on this blog – I did another one just like it awhile ago about another married Christian couple, where the husband hired men to kill his wife, because he belonged to a church that felt that divorce was almost an unforgivable sin.

This Allwine guy also had affairs on his wife. Prior to killing his wife, he was on the website for married cheaters: “Ashley Madison.”

Here are some links to news reports about Allwine’s murder of his wife:

Police: Man who cheated using Ashley Madison, tried hiring hit man on dark web in bid to murder wife

January 2018

A Minnesota preacher in a failing marriage, who failed in his attempt to hire a hitman using bitcoin on the dark web, also failed to convincingly stage his wife’s murder as a suicide — a final misstep that ultimately led to his arrest, officials said.

…The couple, who met at a Christian college and were active members of their church together also adopted a son.

Stephen Allwine, a religious man who served as a church elder and deacon at a United Church of God congregation also offered marriage counseling to couples having trouble.

• Christianity Did Not Help Me, It Did Not Work For Me

I was a very devout Christian from childhood up to my early, maybe mid, forties.

These days, I don’t know what I am (religiously speaking).

As I look back over my life, I can see that not only did the Christian faith not help me much, but as some of its teachings were taught to me, it created obstacles in my life, and kept me stuck in harmful patterns or ways of thinking.

Supposing there is an afterlife with a Heaven and a Hell, and acceptance of Christ means a ticket into Heaven upon death, that works out just fine. I can sure see how that is beneficial later on.

Christianity, though, did not really help me with very much in the present life.

Any pain, problems, or stress I’ve had so far were not relieved by the Christian faith.

Prayer, Bible reading, believing in Jesus, volunteering at charities, attending church – none of that alleviated my problems.

• Godly Men, Be Quiet By S. Krehbiel

Godly Men, Be Quiet By S. Krehbiel

Godly Men, Be Quiet By S. Krehbiel

Snippets:

….Patriarchal Christian masculinity is a powerful drug. It makes many church men believe that the world desperately needs their perspective on everything.

It makes their followers believe that asking such men to step aside from leadership is somehow tantamount to cruelty. 

God is always calling these men to lead someone or something, even when what they know about that thing may be approximately two cents less than nothing. 

Particularly in the evangelical world, the spiritual quality that seems to most define men like this is their ability to imagine that they hear God in the voice of their own ambition.

And then, inevitably, they start talking about healing, and positioning themselves as experts on how survivors should heal and need to heal. They cultivate suspiciously in-house quasi-professionals. They host high-profile healing services.

• Complementarians Show Us Your Truth – Complementarianism And Domestic Abuse by Kat Armstrong

I skimmed this page over a couple of days ago. From what I remember, I think the author may be complementarian, or doesn’t take issue with it.

If you want to really cut down on sexism and domestic violence among complementarian professing congregations, you will have to toss out complementarianism. Trying to keep complementarianism around and ask complementarian men just to behave more nice is like putting lipstick on a pig, or a band-aid on a bullet wound.

Complementarians Show Us Your Truth – Complementarianism And Domestic Abuse by Kat Armstrong

As I toured a local domestic violence shelter I asked if they find the women and children escaping danger have faith in God or come from certain religious backgrounds.

Without batting an eye she commented that one of the largest megachurches in the Dallas area, that happens to be complementarian, had the highest number of women and children coming to their shelter. She casually mentioned it was because of their view on protecting the institution of marriage.

• Conservatives Still Misunderstanding and Misrepresenting the Concepts / Terms Toxic Masculinity and Traditional Masculinity – The Christian Post Editorial by M. Brown

 Conservatives Still Misunderstanding and Misrepresenting the Concepts / Terms Toxic Masculinity and Traditional Masculinity – The Christian Post Editorial by M. Brown

A very brief reminder of who I am or what I believe:
I used to be a Christian gender complementarian, but I left complementarianism years ago, and I now question (but did not reject altogether) the Christian faith.
I do not identify as a feminist for reasons I explain here.
I remain a conservative but left the Republican Party approximately three years ago.
(In other words, I am not a liberal, I not a feminist, and I am not an atheist.)

In the past few weeks, debates and conversations about the concepts and phrases of “Traditional Masculinity” and “Toxic Masculinity” broke out once again thanks to the APA and a television commercial by razor company Gillette.

A few days ago, I was skimming the headlines at The Christian Post site and stopped to read this, by a Michael Brown:

Is it harder to be a man or woman in America today?

In that editorial, the author, Brown, discusses Traditional Masculinity and Toxic Masculinity (in this post of mine, I will pretty much use both phrases interchangeably).

In that editorial, Brown linked to a Tweet he made, in which he inserted a Twitter poll, asking ‘who has things worse, men or women.’

After I finished reading Brown’s editorial on The Christian Post site, it was evident to me he has a flawed understanding of what the term “Toxic Masculinity” means, so I tweeted at him to say as much, and I was very polite through the entire exchange.

I did not use profanity, lose my temper, engage in name-calling or personal attack (ad hominem) when tweeting to Brown.

• Preacher Murdered His Wife Because Divorce Was Considered Unacceptable In His Denomination – What Does This Say About Legalistic Christian Teachings On Divorce?

 Preacher Murdered His Wife Because Divorce Was Considered Unacceptable In His Denomination – What Does This Say About Legalistic Christian Teachings On Divorce?

I watched a televised program about a preacher who hired two hit men to kill his wife of 20+ years, and one comment on this program that stood out to me was one that went something like this:
“He had his wife murdered because divorce was not acceptable in his denomination.”

This murder happened in the late 1980s.

The police detectives started suspecting the Church of Christ pastor, Charles Sennett (Senior), was behind the murder, one reason being, they discovered he was having an affair – and I believe he was having an affair with one of the women in his congregation (how much of this was 100% affair vs. a case of Clergy Sex Abuse I do not know, because the show did not go into great detail about this relationship).

As it turns out, the preacher lied to his mistress, Doris Tidwell.

Sennett lied and told Tidwell that he needed her to give him $3,000 for a legitimate reason (I think he may have told her he wanted to repay a loan) – but in reality, the preacher had to pay two hit men a few thousand to have them bump off his wife, who was about 45 years old at the time.

The mistress gave him the money – which he used to pay for the murder.

• Calvinists More Likely To Believe Domestic Violence Myths and Oppose Social Justice, Study Finds (2018)

Calvinists More Likely To Believe Domestic Violence Myths and Oppose Social Justice, Study Finds (2018)

Calvinists More Likely To Believe Domestic Violence Myths and Oppose Social Justice, Study Finds (2018)

Snippets:

By Napp Nazworth, Christian Post Reporter

Christians who hold Calvinist beliefs are more likely to believe certain myths about domestic violence against women and oppose social justice advocacy, a new study has found.

The study surveyed 238 seminary students and found that those who agreed with Calvinist beliefs were also more likely to agree with certain statements like, “A lot of domestic violence occurs because women keep on arguing about things with their partners,” and “Many women have an unconscious wish to be dominated by their partners,” according to a Dec. 20 article at PsyPost.org.