Ex-Church of Christ Support Board

Please forgive the incomplete previous post. How were you treated when you married a non-member of the church? Were you pressured to convert your spouse, or did church members shame them into being baptized? If so, did the baptism "take" and did the spouse remain In church or did he/she uLtimately leave? In my own case, friends of my parents worked on me. One said I would not be happy unless I had JOY (Jesus, others, and you--in that order), and that would only be possible if I converted my fiance. My mother was horrified when I begged to differ. Another family friend was just incredulous that I wasn't actively trying to convert my fiancé. I ignored it all and have been happily married to my pagan/Druid/agnostic and possibly atheist husband for over 30 years. At the time I left the church, he was actually attending with me. I would love to hear your horror and/or success stories, as well as how you were treated if you attended services alone.

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I didn't. I was a good boy. I successfully converted a catholic girl when we were dating. However, she grew up super conservative catholic so the leap to the coc was not really that huge. The first thing she said when she attended her first coc 'worship' service was why do they need to know where everyone is at (as they read the announcements; who's on vacation, sick etc). She thought that was super nosey. The horror came when we both agreed to leave the coc to attend a non-coc church. They were in shock after all those years.

I had already moved well away before I got married. My parents came but my brother and sister didn't.

'At least they came' is my usual answer to questions about what my parents thought.

My father liked my husband (better than he liked my sister's husband, although my sister's husband was the son of a preacher man and a good solid Lipscomb boy - he was also kind of an ass). My father told me : you usually make good decisions.
At the time, I thought he meant this was a good decision also. In retrospect, I wonder sometimes if he meant 'you usually make good decisions, BUT'. I don't know.

My mother told me I might have a good life but I would burn in hell forever. That was the day before the ceremony and the one time I seriously considered my husband's suggestion that we drive to Reno and elope.

We saw them again a couple of days after the ceremony. Mother's first (FIRST!!) words to me then were orders to carry her bags out to the car. Not one single word of 'how are you' or 'did you have a good time' or anything of that sort at all. Ever.

So they left, and shortly afterwards the magazines started arriving - mother had subscribed to Power for Today and that other magazine - can't remember the name - FOR me, for something like two years.

Otherwise - my brother just laughed when he heard, and my sister told me she thought I was crazy. Why my sister didn't come, I'm not certain. She was already married at that point (he's now an elder). My brother just couldn't afford the trip on his own dime.

My best friend from the coc (and still my very good friend) came to the wedding with her mom and sister (drove two thousand miles!) and was a bridesmaid in the wedding. The preacher's son sent a gift: Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. My preacher uncle (not coc, but DoC/CC) sent a lovely card and a handcrafted gift, very nice.

I guess the reaction was - mixed.

I wasn't chastised because my hubby was dunked before we got married. Fortunately, he never drank the cofc kool-aid, so he was a great
support to me during the long, drawn out process of leaving. He still attends a church on most Sundays.......just not a cofc.

I was chastised for marrying a man who had been divorced. My mother threatened to not attend our wedding, I believe this was the real reason.

I also had a young c of c relative at the time, around 8 or 9 years old, wanted to know why my husband did not attend church.

zeek wrote:I will shamefully admit that, when I was fully intoxicated with the koolaid, I did club people over the head with Paul's "be not unequally yoked with nonbelievers" verse. Looking back now I wonder why I did that and how I could have been such an ass.

A lot of the "unequally yoked" are living happy ever after.

Ivy wrote:I wasn't chastised because my hubby was dunked before we got married. Fortunately, he never drank the cofc kool-aid, so he was a great
support to me during the long, drawn out process of leaving. He still attends a church on most Sundays.......just not a cofc.

Is he a member of the Church of God in Jesus, Holy Hepzibah?

Actually the term "church" refers to the people, not the building. So no one can get married inside another person. So this must be about the building. But since there is no authority for such social activities in the church building, technically no one should be getting married in a church building either. Everyone should be marrying outside the "church" no matter how the term is used. Ya know, since they are such sticklers for how things are phrased, the phrase "marrying outside the church" should never have been a phrase that was used.

I had already broken away from the CoC a few years before I married, and my wife grew up in a family split between Nazarene and Baptist affilitations. We're both active members of a non-denominational church now, and my family has been supportive after some initial reluctance before they got to know her. They still try to pressure her to visit their CoC congregation sometimes when I'm not around, which is obviously an attempt to use her to reach me (and a very dishonest and cowardly one at that), but she's familiar enough with CoC culture and doctrine that she wants nothing whatsoever to do with it.