TY - JOUR
T1 - “God’s Operating Manual”
T2 - Marriage Theologies in Ultra-Orthodox and Evangelical Marital Guidebooks
AU - Novis-Deutsch, Nurit
N1 - Funding Information: The author wishes to thank Dr. Joselyn Segal, Bethany Pedigo, and Rev. Phyllis Hankers for their advice on evangelical marriage guidebooks, as well as Sifrei Kodesh, Hevruta, Zol-Sefer, and Virtual Geulah bookstores for kindly sharing their sales data of ultra-Orthodox marriage guidebooks. The author sincerely thanks the members of the research group at Van Leer institute in Jerusalem and of the research group at the Israeli Institute for Democracy for commenting on this research. Dr. Ari Engelberg shared in the analysis of the ultra-Orthodox half of the data, and I thank him for generously permitting me to use some of our joint findings in this study. The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Publisher Copyright: © 2019 The Author(s).
PY - 2020/4/1
Y1 - 2020/4/1
N2 - Evangelical Protestant and Jewish ultra-Orthodox communities are two high-tension religious groups that share an emphasis on traditional family values. Their leaders must communicate the virtues of religious marriage to “curious outsiders” while supporting “distressed insiders” whose marriages have become unstable. This article analyzes thirty marital guidebooks, fifteen ultra-Orthodox, and fifteen evangelical Protestant to probe their strategies. A key finding is the abundance of marriage theologies in the guidebooks, that is, schemas that endeavor to make sense of marriage and its vicissitudes by explicating God’s role and expectations for the couple. Five shared and four denomination-specific marriage theologies are identified and discussed.
AB - Evangelical Protestant and Jewish ultra-Orthodox communities are two high-tension religious groups that share an emphasis on traditional family values. Their leaders must communicate the virtues of religious marriage to “curious outsiders” while supporting “distressed insiders” whose marriages have become unstable. This article analyzes thirty marital guidebooks, fifteen ultra-Orthodox, and fifteen evangelical Protestant to probe their strategies. A key finding is the abundance of marriage theologies in the guidebooks, that is, schemas that endeavor to make sense of marriage and its vicissitudes by explicating God’s role and expectations for the couple. Five shared and four denomination-specific marriage theologies are identified and discussed.
KW - cross-cultural
KW - evangelical Protestant
KW - gender and marriage
KW - marital guidebooks
KW - meaning making
KW - religion
KW - self-help literature
KW - ultra-Orthodox
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85070721761
U2 - 10.1177/0363199019859912
DO - 10.1177/0363199019859912
M3 - Article
SN - 0363-1990
VL - 45
SP - 191
EP - 206
JO - Journal of Family History
JF - Journal of Family History
IS - 2
ER -