Peggy Wehmeyer is considering filing for divorce. Her grounds will be infidelity and betrayal. She is heartsick about it. She doesn’t have any issues with her husband, who is fine, but her intimate partner of more than 30 years, the evangelical church, is another matter.
They met at the University of Texas, whose tower is inscribed with the words, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free”. Peggy was looking for truth, for a philosophy that would make sense of a messed-up world. She found it in the teachings of Jesus. And even though her relationship with evangelicals would be rocky at times, she stayed faithful.
If you find your partner is unfaithful, you face the reality of packing your bags and leaving. But how do you leave a church whose members brought you meals for five months when you were bedridden with a difficult pregnancy? How do you separate from a partner whose encouragement and spiritual wisdom helped you raise your children? And why would you reject a lover who reminds you that your value is measured by the quality of the love you give and not by your popularity or prestige? You don’t. You hang on through the heartbreak, until you can’t hang on anymore.
The first crack in Peggy Wehmeyer’s relationship with the evangelical church came when her children drifted to more socially conscious churches.
One daughter became a public defender lawyer and sometimes fights for guilty criminals to get fair sentences. Peggy asked her how she could defend bad guys, and wouldn’t Jesus want her to be a prosecutor instead? Her daughter responded, “Are you kidding, Mom? He hung out with prostitutes and sinners. He’s for the disenfranchised and powerless. If I’m going to follow Jesus, I follow him into the prisons.”
Her other daughter teaches Special Ed in the inner city. Peggy begged her to teach in a safer neighborhood.
She responded, “If we’re the hands and feet of Jesus – like you taught us – this is where I need to be.” It struck Peggy that all those Bible stories her husband and her had read to them at the dinner table each night had stuck, just in ways she was unprepared for.
Peggy is not a typical evangelical – she was the religious reporter for ABC News, the only one on a national network. She did reports on Promise Keepers and the True Love Waits chastity program and defended them to her liberal co-workers. The liberals liked to call us evangelicals “swamp people.”
Peggy knew that evangelicals valued personal morality and serving the wider good. Now she is not so sure. Evangelicals on the national stage seem to be more interested in power and influence and winning by any means. Instead of making it our mission to serve and protect the most vulnerable, the church now seems desperate to BE served and protected. Peggy Wehmeyer is not sure how much longer she can belong.
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