Though it appears as a comment on a blog post about (at least nominally) an unrelated topic, Jeri Massi makes an observation about fundamentalist ‘family values’ that jibes nicely with something I’ve said repeatedly over the years:
For some odd reason, Fundamentalism considers itself family friendly, but it consistently pushes for families to break apart …
You need only to keep in mind that the 1st-century Christian church was a despised cult, and it required total, unmixed devotion in order to survive. With respect to family, fundamentalist Christianity teaches exactly what Scientology teaches: The group comes first, and your family can make-do with the leftovers.
Unfortunately, as the number of ‘nones’ increases and churches compete for an ever-diminishing pool of believers, that stringency is seeping into once-mainstream evangelical denominations such as the Southern Baptists. It is not merely an odd, unhappy coincidence that evangelicals have the highest divorce rate — and every other pathology — in society; it is a direct and predictable consequence of what is taught in their churches.