Excommunication Series: Valerie's Story [266]
Flying Free
Natalie Hoffman
5.0 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 March 2024
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In part two of our excommunication series, I interview Valerie, a former member of a Reformed Baptist church that excommunicated her for divorcing her unfaithful and emotionally abusive husband.
After years of receiving “help” from her church as she endured betrayal after betrayal from her husband, she said enough was enough. But even as she divorced her husband and then tried to leave the church peacefully, they wouldn’t allow it. They had to have the last word. Listen to Valerie’s story today.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Natalie Hoffman of Flying Free Now.com and you're listening to the |
| 0:09.3 | Flying Free Podcast, a support resource for women of faith, looking for hope and healing from hidden |
| 0:16.4 | emotional and spiritual abuse. |
| 0:18.9 | Welcome to episode 266 of the Flying Free Podcast. |
| 0:27.0 | Today we are doing our second interview in a series of episodes in which you will hear or are hearing from three Christian abuse survivors who were excommunicated from their churches for divorcing their abuser. |
| 0:40.4 | Thousands of women all over the world who have dared to escape abusive relationships by obtaining legal protection through divorce have been subsequently excommunicated by churches who claim to be representatives of our shepherd, Jesus Christ. |
| 0:57.0 | Can you imagine the shepherd kicking a lamb out of his presence for escaping a wolf, it's unthinkable. |
| 1:06.3 | So let's meet our second guest in our ex-communication series. |
| 1:09.4 | Her name is Valerie. |
| 1:10.8 | Welcome. |
| 1:11.8 | Thank you, Natalie, for having me. |
| 1:14.0 | Yeah. |
| 1:15.0 | Okay, tell us what denomination were you excommunicated from and how many years were you a member? |
| 1:21.0 | The denomination is called Reform Baptist and I attended the church my entire life. |
| 1:26.7 | I'm a little over 50 and joined the church when I was 19. |
| 1:31.1 | I only attended two different locations, New Jersey and Michigan of that church, one for 30 years and one for about 23. |
| 1:42.0 | Okay, tell us what your church meant to you and what your involvement was. |
| 1:47.0 | If you grew up there, your family probably all went there and friends. |
| 1:51.0 | So tell us a little bit about that. Family of origin. I |
| 1:55.3 | have one sister and yes my parents were charter members in that |
| 1:59.4 | denomination, late 60s, and grew up there and it was pretty much everything church was |
| 2:07.7 | considered family which is not always bad they are God's family, but it was, especially when I got married and moved to Michigan, that was when it took on even a stronger sort of entrapping role in my life. |
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