Divorce in the Black Church: Why Women Often Bear the Blame

For nearly a decade, Kimmoly LaBoo says she poured herself into her Baltimore-area church. An author, publisher and speaker, she completed leadership training, mentored others and became a trusted servant without ever seeking a former title.

When her marriage began falling apart, she expected the same church that had nurtured her faith to help her navigate one of life’s darkest seasons. Instead, she said, she encountered misunderstanding and blame-shifting — starting with church leadership.

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In church counseling sessions, LaBoo and her then-husband met with the senior pastor and the pastor’s husband; to protect her husband’s dignity, LaBoo says she initially withheld details of her husband’s years-long emotional abuse, only to have the pastor privately blame LaBoo for the faltering marriage.

Troubling Pattern

Only after LaBoo described years of her husband’s misconduct — explosive, angry tirades and property destruction that sometimes required police intervention and caused her to live in fear — did the pastor acknowledge that conventional mentoring would not solve the problem.

LaBoo recalled the pastor’s conclusion: “‘None of what I was going to suggest is going to work in your situation.’” Yet LaBoo says the church never adjusted its response to her.

The Black church has long upheld marriage as a sacred covenant, even as many congregations minister to communities where divorce is an everyday reality. For many Christians involved in their churches, divorce marks not only the end of a marriage but also the beginning of another painful separation—from the faith community they expected would carry them through the valley.

Interviews with several divorced church members, therapists and ministry leaders reveal a troubling pattern. The same congregations that excel at weddings, marriage conferences and preaching the covenant, struggle to respond when marriages collapse.

Patriarchal Tradition

Like the experience LaBoo described, some church leaders and congregants unintentionally shame the divorced. Sometimes, they side with one of the exes; given the patriarchal nature of the church, it’s usually the husband. Still other churches do nothing as one former spouse — often the ex-wife — disappears from the pews while the other remains. 

That dynamic has prompted a growing body of research asking whether churches have devoted as much attention to helping members heal after divorce as they have to preparing couples for marriage. 

While studies have found that Black Christian couples often rely on shared faith and prayer to sustain their marriages, pastoral scholars say divorced women frequently describe feeling isolated, overlooked or quietly stigmatized in congregations where marriage remains the spiritual ideal. Researchers have argued that separated and divorced church members can be subtly devalued in religious settings, discouraging them from fully participating in congregational life and prompting calls for ministries that offer the same grace after divorce that churches extend before the wedding.

Whether divorced members experience compassion or condemnation often depends less on theology than on local church culture, leadership maturity and whose story gets believed first. What often results is a faith crisis that worsens the emotional pain that accompanies divorce. 

Unfit to Lead?

In LaBoo’s case, after her marriage fell apart, a writing ministry she had developed by request  was indefinitely postponed; church leadership questioned whether her troubled marriage made her unfit to lead. Meanwhile, LaBoo says, her husband continued to lead lay worship and direct the senior choir.

“How could I be removed from teaching a writing class while the person creating the chaos at home remained in front of the congregation every week?” she says. 

The church has to know when a situation is beyond Bible study. If leaders aren’t equipped to help, they have a responsibility to refer people to someone who is.

Kimmoly LaBoo, author, publisher and speaker

Looking back, LaBoo believes many churches aren’t prepared for the modern, emotionally challenging, complex issues when a marriage hits serious turbulence. Some answers, she says, can’t easily be found in scripture alone. 

“The church has to know when a situation is beyond Bible study,” LaBoo says. “If leaders aren’t equipped to help, they have a responsibility to refer people to someone who is.”

Then there’s the patriarchy that’s often embedded in church culture. LaBoo believes too many divorced women quietly disappear while the systems that failed them, and turn a blind eye to men’s abuses, remain unchanged.

‘How is Your Husband?’

For T’Jae Gibson Ellis, the pain came less from criticism than invisibility.

As a young wife, Ellis attended church alone, usually because her husband, who served in the military, worked unpredictable schedules—or sometimes simply chose not to attend. Yet church leaders routinely kept him in mind, not her.

“‘How is your husband?'” she recalls them asking her. “Tell him we asked about him,’”

Few asked about her, Ellis says.

“I found ‘the church’ more interested in where my then-husband was instead of ministering to my needs as a very present member,” Ellis said.

Marva Jones, a veteran couples counselor and family therapist, believes many of the painful endings between couples and their church begin long before the pair reach the altar.

“I think the initial change we need to make is what we do before people get married,” said Jones, founder and president of Tree of Life Counseling and Training Center in Ohio. She worries some churches unintentionally nudge  dating couples toward the altar before an honest exploration of challenges that stress a marriage: finances, trauma histories, parenting philosophies, conflict resolution and family dynamics.

“I think there needs to be more work up front,” she said.

Death of a Relationship

Jones, author of The Dance (The Power of the Father, Parenting Through Divorce and Separation, Don’t Let Your Children Become Collateral Damage), rejects the rigid six- or eight-week premarital counseling sessions churches frequently mandate. She argues that every couple has unique histories that require individualized preparation.

Jones also believes churches must create ministries specifically for divorced members rather than folding them into general singles ministries.

“People divorced with children is a different group than people who are divorced without children,” she says. “They’re trying to heal…but they’re seeing their children every day and they still have to interact with this person.”

Equally important, Jones says, churches should recognize divorce as the death of a once-promising relationship, triggering emotions similar to bereavement.

Both exes “need that grief group to be able to process” the hurt, anger, and sadness, she said. “They were planning their hopes and dreams together. Something happened that shattered the dream.”

Too often, Jones says, churches emphasize that God hates divorce, but they don’t adequately confront the abuse, violence, infidelity or coercive control that may have triggered it

Church leaders “don’t want to hear about [a husband or wife] being violent at home” because it’s hard to reconcile abuse with a member who’s active, involved and faithful, Jones says. “People can be whatever they want to be in the church and something completely different at home.”

Rendering Judgment

Not every story ends in rejection.

She also believes women frequently bear a disproportionate share of judgment in a divorce: “You will see that being implemented more with women in ministry than men,” Jones says.

When her marriage to a pastor ended, Roxanne Freeman said members of her denomination rallied around her after they gradually recognized what had happened behind closed doors.

“They always supported me,” Freeman says. “But I don’t think after a while they supported him.”

Still, she acknowledged that her experience was unusual.

“I have seen other people…leave the church,” she says. “They embrace the people who they like…and the other one kind of flees because we don’t want to deal with these people anymore.”

She also described a congregation in which a cheating husband remained in the church — until the congregation held him accountable. Once that happened, his former wife eventually flourished in ministry.

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Along with managing marital expectations up front, Jones believes churches can do a better job changing church norms around divorced couples. Her recommendations range from individualized premarital counseling and referral partnerships with licensed therapists to grief support groups and ministries tailored to divorced parents. 

Ultimately, though, she believes congregations must be willing to love divorced people through brokenness instead of treating the end of their marriage as a permanent spiritual scar.

“That’s our responsibility,” she says. “To love.”

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