Mary Winkler and the COC

The Mary Winkler murder case is a textbook illustration of the problem of being a woman in the church of Christ--married too young, with too many kids and not enough education or financial resources. In watching the coverage of the case by the mainstream media, I've been frustrated by the fact that they gloss over the COC's hardline stance on divorce, because I think that's the ultimate reason why she killed him, in addition to the alleged abuse.

(I suppose this is where I should insert my disclaimer that I do NOT condone what she did by any means and I think she should have served a lot more time than she did. I wish she had found the courage to take the bolder step of divorcing her husband rather than committing a horrible crime and robbing her children of their father.)

Anyway, I've mentioned in previous posts that the COC teaches that women are completely subordinate to men. It is spoken from the pulpit over and over that the only completely acceptable role for a woman to play is that of submissive, obedient wife and loving mother. Anything else a woman does is highly suspect and will be punished, one way or another.

How does the COC enforce these rules? Well, I like to refer to the COC as the soft Taliban. No one will hurl a rock at a woman for failing to fulfill her assigned role in life, but her fellow churchgoers will use gossip and the threat of shunning to keep her in line. Do you have an education beyond an associates degree at a COC-approved Bible college? Everyone will tell you that men don't want to marry women who are better educated than themselves. Older than 25 and not married? People will whisper that maybe you're a lesbian and will not include you in their social activities. Married but don't have children? People will speculate that you're sterile and too poor to adopt a child. Find fulfillment in your career? People will grumble about how you should be at home taking care of your kids and husband (or, if you're single, how you should be focusing on finding a Christian man to marry, rather than climbing the corporate ladder).

Once a woman in the COC marries, she essentially cedes control of her life to her husband. I'm not talking about the compromises and adjustments that all couples need to make in order to get along. I mean that she no longer is supposed to have any agency whatsoever. The husband is the undisputed head of the household and she is not allowed to question his authority or to leave him.

Even if the husband is verbally or physically abusive, divorce is not allowed. A woman who divorces her husband for any reason except adultery (and she'd better have incontrovertible proof that he actually did the deed--photographs and videotape are preferable) will be kicked out of the church. And anyone who helps her, even her own family, will also come under scrutiny and will most likely be kicked out as well (some churches are a little more flexible than others on this second point).

In the view of the COC, divorce is the worst possible sin, even worse than murder. They'll forgive you for murder, but not for divorce. I think it's because murder involves just one man, but divorce upsets the entire social order. It's the ultimate rebellion on the part of a woman to refuse to submit to her husband by leaving him. If the husband is the one initiating the divorce, then he's abdicating his god-given role as the leader of the household by leaving the woman alone and in charge.

So this is the milieu in which Mary Winkler grew up. As someone who had been thoroughly indoctrinated in the COC from her birth, she knew that divorce was not an option for her. She would have lost her entire social network, including her extended family. I certainly could be wrong, but I believe that in her mind, the only way out of that marriage was to kill her husband or kill herself. Again, I wish she had found the courage to break out of that COC mindset and find another way, but what I wish even more is that the COC would admit its role in the tragedy--how it forces people to put up a front and be dishonest about their true feelings, desires, struggles, and problems and how it mistreats and grinds down women and, ultimately, breaks their spirits.