The 49 Character Qualities of Ruth #12
Hospitality vs. Loneliness – Cheerfully sharing food, shelter, and spiritual refreshment with those whom God brings into my life (Hebrews 13:2)-Bill Gothard
by RazingRuth
The older I got, the more responsibilities I was given. When I last left my mother’s list of progeny, she’d just had me (I think). In 1986, she had “Caleb”. In 1988, she had twin boys, “Matthew” and “Luke”. We called them the Dynamic Duo because they were never still and would go on to win the “most likely to end up in the emergency room” award. After the twins were born, my father started travelling alot and my mother had a miscarriage, so it was three years before “Becca” was born, in 1991. All of the children after me were “my charges”/buddies.
1993 was a monumental year for my family…and for me.
Very early on in the year, one of my maternal grandparent’s died. The other followed shortly after. We’d moved back to the South by that point and it fell to my mother to plan and host her parent’s funerals. She, as it happened, was pregnant with Rachel. By default, the hospitality planning fell to me. Until now, I never realized just how bizarre it was for grown people to pass off the responsibility for hosting a wake to a nine year old child. I’d like to say that my parents must have been doing something right, or that I was preternaturally mature, because I pulled it off.
March 19, 2010 No Comments
Preparing a Visionary Daughter to Do Hard Things ~ Part 2: Maintaining Appearances
by Kiery
In time, I would begin to envision myself as a fair rose hidden inside metal armor. Afraid to grow, afraid to feel, staying inside a metal cage meant to protect. As far as appearances went though, you’d never know I felt that way. I don’t think my own family knew how I felt, when it comes down to it. Appearances were very important – we always had to look perfect, the house had to be spotless, when we were moving we had to be all happy about it (even if we weren’t), that way people wouldn’t think there was something wrong. The worst thing that could happen would be for someone to wonder if there was something wrong/ someone wasn’t “happy”.
I joined a speech club when I was 13, and for the first time in years, I felt like I was going to make friends, my own friends that wouldn’t be impacted by my family (because, we were a debate club learning how to think for ourselves). Just as I felt like I was making some progress and was beginning to allow myself to know people, our situation changed and we prepared to move out of state – somewhere we’d never even been. It was a house my grandparents had bought and offered to let us stay in until they retired. I was not happy about the move. I was stressed, and I had no qualms about letting people know that I was less than thrilled. My mom took me aside one day and talked to me about my “bad attitude” basically explaining that I had to be happy (and I had better be!) because we don’t want anyone to think something was wrong – we should be excited instead.
March 19, 2010 No Comments
Michael Pearl to appear on The Early Show ~ March 19
Update: according to No Greater Joy’s Facebook page, Michael Pearl’s interview on The Early Show has been postponed until Friday morning.
by Vyckie
In a letter to No Greater Joy’s followers, Michael Pearl has requested prayer “that God will give him clarity of mind and spirit to answer wisely all the questions that are put to him” on tomorrow morning’s edition of The Early Show on CBS.
Pearl also asked supporters to pray “that the report and the interviewer will be honest and fair.”
I get the feeling that in requesting that the report be “fair,” Michael Pearl is not actually wanting the interviewer be honest. My hope is that the interview questions will be direct and pointed. Here is just one of several honest questions which I’d like to see put to Pearl during tomorrow morning’s interview:
Mr. Pearl, you teach that the consequences of all sins are equal in Eternity, before God. How does this teaching influence your followers’ willingness to punish their children severely for what typically would be considered ”minor infractions”?
March 17, 2010 3 Comments
NLQ FAQ: How did you get yourself into this mess?
Jonathan W. Rice (jwr)
In late 2009, I learned that a journalist had written a book about the Quiverfull movement.[1] I ordered the book and also discovered an online forum for survivors and refugees who’d fled from it (No Longer Quivering). As far back as 1989, I’d known several families who fit the description but could never really understand their rationale. I hoped the NLQ forum and the book might shed some light on their beliefs. I was not disappointed.
In mid-February 2010, a thread title on the forum caught my eye: How did you get yourself into this mess? The author, a female refugee from the movement, was wondering how she and so many others could have fallen for it in the first place. After reading it, I again realized how closely the QF/P movement intersects with mainstream evangelicalism and fundamentalism; and how easily I too could have been recruited, given the wrong circumstances.
How, one may ask, do people get into such a seemingly bizarre religious movement? And how had I (in the past) been in danger of being sucked in myself?
The answer boils down to one simple word: “gradually.”
March 16, 2010 2 Comments
The 49 Character Qualities of Ruth #11
Self Control vs. Self-indulgence – Instant obedience to the initial promptings of God’s Spirit (Galatians 5:24–25) – Bill Gothard
by RazingRuth
The training started when I was just a toddler. I don’t remember who introduced it or how it was introduced. I just remember that, at certain points in the day, one of my parents would have us line up in the family room and begin barking commands. “Ruth, go to the table and sit in the chair. Stand up. Sit down. Sit on the floor. Move the chair. Come stand by me.”
It was common for one or two of the commands to not make sense. “Ruth, pick up that magazine and move it into the bathroom, but don’t put it on the counter. Put it in the shower.” The goal was to get us not to question the command or the logic of the instruction – the goal was immediate and unquestioned obedience.
My mother never asked us to do anything “wrong” but my father would introduce “challenges” (as he called them). “Ruth, hit your brother.” This contradicted our household rules. However, if I did not walk over and tap my brother on the arm, I would have to sit in time out. I can’t tell you how common this “game” is in QF/ATI families.
Another incident, that I’ve described before, happened when I was very small and was asked to take a diaper to the trash for my mother. I had a sensitive gag reflex as a kid. Smells or sights could make me vomit. My father saw this as a character flaw and lack of self-control, so he mandated that my mother find a way to break my sensitivity.
March 13, 2010 1 Comment
Preparing a Visionary Daughter to Do Hard Things ~ Part 1: Big Girls Don’t Feel
by Kiery
I’m no stranger to hard things. In ways my life was built around doing hard things and part of that has made me who I am today. I’m no stranger to sacrifice, conflict, or rejection. For a while, these things seemed to follow me and my family wherever we went.
In 19 years, my mom’s had 10 pregnancies and 8 children, most of them taking place over the last 11 years. At 8, my life would become a cycle of doing my own thing, and then that being put on hold to take care of everyone and keep the house running until the newest baby arrived. This wasn’t always the case…
We started homeschooling when I was in kindergarten, according to my parents, primarily because my private school wouldn’t let me jump grades (since I was at a 1st grade level). My brother’s best friend at the time was also homeschooled and their family had spent the last few years convincing my parents that my mom doesn’t belong in the work place and should be at home teaching us. Through Bible studies and home-churching, my parents began to learn that homeschooling was actually God’s will and most of what they believed was wrong.
March 11, 2010 No Comments
I Am So Much More Than a Maiden of Virtue! Part 1 ~ I learned to keep my fear of hell to myself
by WanderingOne
I grew up hearing about my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ deep faith. Religiosity was, for my family, an important family heritage that was carefully handed down to us children. Christianity was the most important thing my parents and grandparents thought that they could pass down to us. On my dad’s side, my great grandfather was a minister. On my mom’s side, my grandparents served on the mission field in Latin America for a few years after they got married. There was no escaping religion—it was instilled in us from before we could grasp it.
I can’t really say much about how things got to be as “bad” as they did. I know my family has always been conservative, Bible-Believing, Calvinist Christians. But my parents weren’t homeschooled. When my grandparents were raising them, Michael and Debi Pearl had yet to write any books. There were no Botkin sisters for my mother to read when she was growing up. My family was conservative, yes. Fundamentalist, definitely. But not quiverfull, not homeschooling, and not rigidly Patriarchal. I have seen photographs of my grandmothers wearing pants, after all. I don’t know when it all changed. I don’t know why it changed. But it did.
March 9, 2010 No Comments
NLQ FAQ: Are Jim Bob & Michelle Duggar “Quiverfull”?
by hopewell
Q: Are the Duggars Quiverfull?
By their own admission, Jim-Bob and Michelle were so “grieved” after reading the information pamphlet in a birth control pill package that they turned their fertility over to God. (“About Us” para.1 See also, Dallas News). That decision has been the reason for their incredible family size of 19 children.
Recently the media has offered several profiles of just who are “Quiverfull” families.
Increasingly, the presence of such large, ideologically driven families is being documented through the medium of the age: reality TV shows and lifestyle cable channel specials, all of which campily depict Quiverfull life as like regular motherhoood, but amplified – more kids, more laundry, more merriment.
The most famous of these families, Michelle Duggar and her husband, Jim Bob…. Their fame sprouts primarily from their novelty: in 2008 Michelle Duggar was pregnant with her eighteenth child so far. ”So far” is a ubiquitous phrase in the movement… that cutely restates a Quiverfull family’s continuing trust in God’s control of the womb. But such theological underpinnings are glossed over to make room for the novel details of large family life. (Joyce, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, pp 138-139).
Does the decision to trust God and not birth control in their family planning alone qualify them as Quiverfull? Yes. Here’s why:
The Duggars wrote:
As conservative Christians, we believe every life is sacred, even the life of the unborn. Due to our lack of knowledge, we destroyed the precious life of our unborn child. We prayed and studied the Bible and found a host of references that told us God considered children a gift, a blessing, and a reward. (FAQ #2 para. 3).
Among that “host of Bible references” is Pslam 127, verses 3—5, the verse on which the Quiverfull movement has been built:
Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD:
and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man;
so are children of the youth.
Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them:
they shall not be ashamed,
but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate. (Pslam 127:3-5 K.J.V.)
The website www.Quiverfull.com says “We exalt Jesus Christ as Lord, and acknowledge His headship in all areas of our lives, including fertility.”(para.1). Mary Pride, a founder of the Quiverfull school of thought has written: “Family planning is the mother of abortion,” (Mary Pride, The Way Home, quoted in Newsweek, para. 4).
The Duggars frequently speak out about “causing” Michelle’s miscarriage by the use of birth control pills. They also adhere to Biblically-based abstinence for a set number of days following the birth of a boy or girl. This also supposedly ties in to the teaching of the Institute for Basic Life Principles, the pseudo-Christian organization founded by Bill Gothard. Gothard teaches couples to only have intercourse when the woman is at her “fertile” time each month.
Even breast feeding, which can be a barrier to conception is not to be prolonged for this reason. Back when the couple had a mere 13 children, Jim-Bob was quoted in the New York Times as saying he had “14 [children], really, since my wife is pregnant and life begins at conception’.” (New York Times, para. 11). An admission of such beliefs by a politician in a paper with worldwide circulation can only mean one thing: He believes it.
The Quiverfull idea began in the backlash against feminism. Mary Pride’s book The Way Home and a book A Full Quiver by Rick and Jan Hess are most frequently cited as giving birth to the Quiverfull lifestyle. Both reject birth control. These books, with the Bible, and often the teachings of Bill Gothard’s Institute of Basic Life Principles and materials from the dominionist Patriarch group, Vision Forum, constitute the “How-To” manuals for prospective Quiverfull couples. (Joyce, Nation, p. 11).
The Duggars have been eager and thorough students.
March 8, 2010 No Comments
NLQ Anniversary Chat Party Tonight ~ Laura Is Guest of Honor!!♪♫•*¨*•.¸¸♥ ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪
Laura and her namesake, Laura Rosie ~ aren’t they lovely?!
Please join us this evening in the NLQ Chat Room for our one-year celebration party!♪♫•*¨*•.¸¸♥ ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪
Laura will be the Guest of Honor ~ she’ll be logging in around 6 p.m. pacific time. Be sure to stop by to chat with Laura and wish her well in her happy new life!!! See you there. 
March 7, 2010 No Comments
No Longer Quivering Celebrates 1st Year!♪♫•*¨*•.¸¸♥ ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪
Hooray ~ NLQ is a year old today!
What started out as a small blog with two Quiverfull refugees telling our stories has in just one year’s time become the foremost online resource of information regarding the deceptions and dangers of the Quiverfull philosophy and lifestyle as well as a thriving virtual community of a diverse group of women (and a few men) to support and encourage one another as we process our experiences and recover from spiritual abuse.
Highlights from NLQ’s first year:
In the initial days following the publication of Kathryn Joyce’s “All God’s Children” on Salon.com, No Longer Quivering received a tremendous response of supportive feedback and posts around the blogosphere heralding “two brave women” ~ within the first month NLQ was nominated for the Canadian “F-word” Blog Awards: Best Feminist Blog International. At the time of the nomination, our escape from QF was still so fresh and our comprehension of what we were doing so naïve, I asked Laura, “Are we feminists?” To which Laura hesitantly responded, “I guess so.” LOL
Enthusiasm for this project has not slowed ~ currently, the blog and forum are getting 80,000+ hits / “visitors” per month ~ “page views” is nearly 500,000 per month. The blog alone gets an average of 6,500 page views per day ~ the forum gets more than twice that amount. Average time on site per visit is 12 mins. and 5.8 page views per reader.
There have been a number of media opportunities ~ including my appearance on the Joy Behar Show to promote the “Born to Breed” episode of WEtv’s Secret Lives of Women. I got to go to New York City ~ and the highlight of that trip was meeting Kathryn Joyce in person ~ after all the hours she spent interviewing me on the phone, we’ve developed a friendship, so it was a real treat to visit with Kathryn in the lounge of the Millinium Broadway hotel near Times Square.
March 7, 2010 8 Comments
