You’re raising a very important issue, forest. The UBF system is built upon several dogmas, particularly that it is mandatory that 1) you submit under a human shepherd and 2) you do not date anybody on your own, but marry by arrangement. Obviously, Lee himself did not follow these dogmas. In one newsletter he wrote that since he “had no human shepherd”, he “took Apostle Paul” as his shepherd (interestingly, he chose not Jesus, but Apostle Paul). He also bragged how he vowed to himself to make Miss Barry, who was originally the leader of the UBF movement, “his secretary” instead of submitting under her, and how he achieved this after a few years.

The self-contradiction in the UBF system is that the man who did not follow the rules he imposed onto all others grew so dramatically that he is praised and remembered every year in a special ceremony, while no one else in UBF receives this honor.

How can anyone (not to mention a Christian leader) with any sense of love, decency and respect toward others ever say such a thing!

Would any loving father or mother ever say such a thing to their own son or daughter? Or is it just OK to say it to your Bible student??

Would no other Christian leader comment on such a reprehensible statement? Or are we already numb and indifferent and close hearted to such things just because it happened some years ago, or because we still insist that our church is mostly in the right?

Is there even a silver lining or positive intention in such a statement? That the leader really meant well by this statement? I ask this because sometimes it is just so easy to preach “the gospel of good intentions” as an excuse for saying and doing things that are just unbecoming, if not downright unChristian.

Right. But I would go one step further and also argue against the idea that divorce in UBF is rare in the first place. On the old forum we counted over 2 dozen divorces in Chicago, often when one spouse wanted to leave UBF. Even in my small German chapter, there were 2 divorces during my time. One was even ordered by UBF, because one partner wanted to leave UBF. And note that the hardcore UBF partner was the one who filed for divorce, not the one who wanted to leave UBF. Because UBF totally covers up any sins and failures in the past, i.e. does not speak about all those who have left, divorced, committed suicide, leaders committing adultery, pressuring women to have abortions etc. and because people in UBF never talk about their real problems, including problems with their marriage, you get a distorted image. I bet current members in my former UBF chapter don’t even know that the “Abraham of Faith” of that chapter was divorced and re-married in UBF, because it happened 20 years ago. Instead he is probably seen and praised as a prime example of a Biblical and faithful husband.

Against the background that UBF is a group where people believe the Bible, which forbids divorce and re-marriage, is the literal word of God, the percentage of divorce and re-marriage in UBF is in fact unusually high.

This is an uncomfortable subject to discuss, because a greater portion of UBF missionaries (at least here in America) are pursuing lives that look, very often, more like upper middle class immigrants than missionaries.

Socio economic status plays a large part in more than just the low (be careful, you don’t hear about most divorces in UBF) rate of divorce.