Evangelical angst over Jon and Kate

I updated my Facebook status last night to say that I “can’t watch Jon & Kate’s marriage fall apart any longer. It’s too depressing.” I had actually stopped watching TLC’s “Jon & Kate Plus 8” several months ago because of all the sickening giveaways that the family was getting — it wasn’t enough for them […]

I updated my Facebook status last night to say that I “can’t watch Jon & Kate’s marriage fall apart any longer. It’s too depressing.”

I had actually stopped watching TLC’s “Jon & Kate Plus 8” several months ago because of all the sickening giveaways that the family was getting — it wasn’t enough for them to go to a Phillies’ game; they had to get invited to the owner’s box. They couldn’t just renew their wedding vows; they had to get a free trip to Hawaii and all sorts of freebies. But I digress.

So I tuned in to see Sunday’s premier of the new season, which was built around the fractured state of the Gosselin marriage. Tabloids have been foaming at the mouth with rumors of infidelity from both Jon and Kate. The hour-long show was incredibly depressing as Jon and Kate are clearly going their separate ways while the eight little kids — still addictively adorable — are caught in the middle. This is the kind of uncomfortable reality TV that’s all too real.


Part of the trouble seems to be Kate’s increasing time on the road to promote her line of evangelical parenting books. Diana Butler Bass dissects the Gosslin’s marriage over at Beliefnet, and lays the blame (in part) on evangelicals:

How dreary it is to watch a relationship implode on national television. In some measure, the failure is theirs. But the conservative evangelical community shares some of that failure, too. The religious world to which Jon and Kate belong never successfully navigated the gender changes of the last three decades, insisting that happiness can still be found in hierarchical roles of male superiority and female submission. Having rejected feminist theology, evangelicals can’t really navigate contemporary marriage issues like those facing Jon and Kate. They made celebrities of the Gosselins for being traditionalists, yet that success eroded the very basis of the traditionalism on which their family was based. Now, the woman is criticized for that same success by an increasingly cruel media and tabloid press. I just wonder if all those church people will turn on you next.

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