II.

Child brides exist in many fundamentalist sects and also in some Asian cultures and Mormon communities in the U.S. and Canada. The idea of child marriage has even cropped up in pop culture recently. In 2014, Louisianan Phil Robertson, star of the reality TV hit Duck Dynasty, advised men "to marry these girls when they're about 15 or 16" because by age 20, "the only picking that's gonna take place is your pocket.”

It’s unclear how widespread courtship is in the U.S. Syrett said he has never come across statistics, nor is he aware of any academics who have tried to quantify its prevalence in North America.

Sarah Morton recalled her own experience with courtship in her Mennonite Brethren household in New Hamburg, Ont., a rural township near Kitchener. When she was 12, Morton’s parents invited a 24-year-old man and his family over for Sunday dinner while she demonstrated her homemaking skills: baking a cake and washing dishes.

“I just remember being aggressively auctioned off,” she said.

According to people who saw it firsthand, the courtship phenomenon in fundamentalist communities appears to have gained wider prominence in the late 1990s after the publication of Joshua Harris's 1997 book I Kissed Dating Goodbye.

“God and his Word talks about ‘rejoice in the wife of your youth.’”

Often cited as a “wisdom manual,” this bestseller helped codify courtship practices and launched a movement beyond a few fringe pastors. Among other things, Harris’s book suggests casually dating a range of people is "a training ground for divorce" and akin to “giving away pieces of your heart.”

Morton remembers her friends poring over Harris’s book in the early 2000s.

“Everyone around me was reading it, all the kids got into it,” Morton said. “It got quite threaded into the fundamentalism that I saw.”

In most provinces in Canada, a person must be at least 16 to get married. A minor under 18 years old, in most places, requires the consent of both parents.

Marriage under 18 remains legal in all 50 U.S. states, through various loopholes. Some states have no age requirement if parental consent is given. For example, in 1971, Sherry Johnson, an 11-year-old girl in Tampa, Fl., was forced to wed the 20-year-old man who raped her, on the ruling of a judge and the consent of her parents.

Samantha Field said that Roy Moore was a 'big name' at an independent fundamental Baptist church that she attended in her teens. (Samantha Field) Samantha Field said that Roy Moore was a 'big name' at an independent fundamental Baptist church that she attended in her teens. (Samantha Field)

The Unchained At Last project, a nonprofit group dedicated to ending child marriages, estimates 248,000 children — some as young as 10 — were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2010.

Asked why an adult male would even consider pursuing underage girls, North Carolina Rev. Rusty Thomas, a friend of Moore’s and the national director of the anti-abortion movement Operation Save America, quoted scripture.

“God and his word talks about ‘rejoice in the wife of your youth,’” said Thomas. “And I will tell you, my wife, I’m 12 years older than she is, and she encourages my daughters to look more towards an older man — not ancient of days, but a man who has a record, a standing, who is able to take care of them.”

Thomas’s daughter Cassia began courtship in 2007 when she was 17, and her husband is about seven years her senior. They now have 10 children. Thomas and his wife are “training” their 15-year-old twin daughters “to be godly wives and mothers.”

Indeed, child marriage arranged through Christian courtship is idealized in some fundamentalist quarters of the U.S. South. In conservative homeschooled households, many children grew up reading a series of 19th-century novels by Martha Finley. The books follow the life of Elsie Dinsmore, a devout girl in a fundamentalist Southern Christian environment who ends up marrying her father’s best friend, Mr. Travilla, while she’s a teenager. He’s presumed to be at least 15 years older. (Once married, Elsie continues to address him as “Mr. Travilla.”)

The books have sold 1.2 million copies and have enjoyed a second wave of popularity after the Texas-based Vision Forum Ministries, a now-defunct fundamentalist Christian organization, republished the collection for a more modern readership.

Vision Forum, where Roy Moore once held a faculty seat teaching Bible-steeped legal principles, closed in 2013 after its founder, Doug Phillips, confessed to a “lengthy inappropriate relationship” with a woman.

Until its demise, Vision Forum held major sway in the so-called Christian patriarchy movement and widely promoted the courtship of Matthew and Maranatha Chapman. According to Texas marriage records, the Chapmans wed in 1988, when Matthew was 27 and Maranatha was 15, and their story was used to promote the sanctity of teen-adult courtship rites.

Samantha Field confirmed that in her church, the Chapman romance was held up “as a big to-do.”

Field on her 16th birthday. (Samantha Field) Field on her 16th birthday. (Samantha Field)

Lauren, one of the Chapmans’ daughters, married in 2008 when she was 16; her husband was 26 at the time. Lauren documented her experiences on her blog Wearing His Purity, which is no longer online.

The Chapmans have since distanced themselves from the movement. Reached by phone in Texas, Matthew Chapman denied endorsing courtship and declined to speak on the record.

* * *

As adults, some of the evangelicals who left fundamentalism have come to re-evaluate what they witnessed in their youth and thought was the norm.

Samantha Field said that in her congregation, teen girls swooned over "godly" adult men and were in some cases "groomed" to welcome the possibility of dating them.

"None of the girls were ever interested in the core teen boys around," Field said. “It was always, ‘Look at this man, he’s leading his soul-winning teams on Thursday nights, and he's preaching on Sunday nights.’”

At his fundamentalist church in South Carolina in the 1990s, Bill McClellan said he and other "pimple-faced" boys his age competed for dates with the teen girls in their congregation. While courtship wasn't routine in McLellan's church, "it was not uncommon, either."

He recalled parents inviting adult men interested in their daughters over for supper. Potential suitors submitted questionnaires about politics, values and religious worldviews.

"Fathers would almost interview guys in their late 20s or early 30s," McLellan said. "There were girls who, what they wanted most, was to find somebody great, somebody older. They’re not working at McDonald’s. They’ve got careers.”

Catherine Brown, who is now 38, grew up attending an ultra-conservative church that functioned as a social centre in South Carolina. She said that in the wake of the Moore allegations, she's seen an outpouring of stories from former members of her congregation who were reminded of their experiences of “early courtship.”

Catherine Brown at age 16. (Catherine Brown) Catherine Brown at age 16. (Catherine Brown)

Homeschooled on an island in Charleston and without friends, Brown said she herself fantasized about marriage by the age of 15 to escape her social isolation.

"In my 15-year-old mind,” she said, “it seemed this could solve a number of problems.”