“Sunday Night” ~ an Australian news program’s expose of Above Rubies and Quiverfull, features Colin & Nancy Campbell and includes an interview with Vyckie Garrison and her oldest daughter, Angel.
Archive for October, 2010
Justice is No Lady: Chapter 4 ~ Second Prison Break and the Norfolk Years
Warning: This story series contains descriptions of physical abuse.
by Defendant Rising
It was 1995. Nate’s grandmother’s basement was orange. It was wallpapered in a fifties motif with little vinyl record albums. My husband, the newly minted Christian attorney, had been in this basement on his laptop computer, hooked up to the internet, for six months.
I sat and looked out the basement window, the bottom of which was level with the dirt, and begged Nate for the thousandth time to disconnect and spend some time with his wife and three babies. Nate would come out of the basement only for food, sex (I had the wrong lingeré still), evening TV, and excursions to the grocery store. And to sleep.
Nate’s grandmother seemed perfectly content to have her beloved grandson remain in her house, eating and procreating and tying up the phone line, for the remainder of her natural life.
Nate would not get off the computer. He would not get a job. We lived in his grandmother’s house, sponging off his grandmother, for most of Moriah’s infancy. I nearly went mad with boredom and loneliness. Even my usual job of waiting on Nate hand and foot had been usurped by Grandma. Nate left his dirty dishes by the computer and television and Grandma cleared them away.
Nate was depressed for weeks at a time. Then, it was as if aliens had kidnapped him and injected him with super-caffeine. He would talk me to death long into the night, night after night. He had a brilliant idea that would make him millions of dollars—“wait until you hear this, baby”—building cool cars! No, he would write a book about true Christian faith, setting down once and for all proper biblical doctrine, the book of theology to end them all, and it would be called. . .”
Adventures in Recovery ~ Your Momma Can’t Dance & This Church Don’t Rock & Roll
by Calulu
Early this summer I decided that perhaps I needed to find another church. It wasn’t that I was unhappy with the big mainline denomination that my family had landed at post fundamentalism. I just felt that something essential was missing. Most people there were content to sit in the pews and play church. I was missing that passion I’d experienced in my old church and had seen in many other congregations. Passion and excitement for the things of God. Just not mixed with hateful theology of ‘Can’ts’ ‘Don’ts’ or ‘Submit’
Even during my years at Possum Creek Christian Fellowship* I’d loved worship with all my heart. I’d been part of worship team and I’d spearheaded creative worship there. As I’ve moved along from Quiverful to Main Street I still loved worship, still led worship from the new church. As I left our new church this summer to visit many of the churches in our community worship was one of the big things in my mind. I wanted to land somewhere with not just passion and excitement but also with alive worship that would be open to allowing me to join. Worshiping is like breathing to me.
Every place I went was welcoming, but I wasn’t really seeing what I was searching for. I visited old friends, made new friends and tested the waters. Heard interesting sermons but sensed none of these places was really right for me. Once Possum Creekers heard I was church-hopping one of them called me and begged me to return (and drink the Koolaid again) She also explained that they were believing it was Last Days and everyone had bought hand guns to practice killing off attacking heathen hordes. Seriously, now they are arming up for the end of the world. Which really made me think that the mainstream church wasn’t so bad after all.
The Formula Ruled Above All
by Erika
If you remember from one of my earlier installments, right before we started our first year of homeschooling, I had spent the summer in Uganda on a missions trip with Teen Missions International. It was an amazing summer and everything had seemed normal in my family before I left. I was promised that things wouldn’t change much even though we’d be homeschooling. Of course, reading back through my story, you know that things DID change. I enjoyed that summer away so much. I had amazing experiences and the travel bug had officially hit. More than the travel bug, though, I enjoyed the satisfaction of helping others and telling people about my relationship with God. Hearing the stories of missionaries that went through the churches of my childhood came alive when I was finally able to have stories of my own to tell from the mission field. As soon as I got home from that trip with TMI, I was ready to sign up for another one. I truly had the heart of missions within me. I was excited to go to another country and help more people the next summer.
When the summer trip catalog arrived in the mail, I poured over it and marked off the different teams that I was interested in until I narrowed it down to the one I really wanted to go on. Nicaragua. It was a new team for TMI. They had never been there with a team before and one of the girls that was on the Uganda team with me was planning to go there. We got along really well while on our trip together and I thought it would be fun that we could be on the same team.
Created To Be His Help Meet ~ An Open Letter to Debi Pearl
by Africaturtle
Dear Debi,
It’s been a few years now since I read your book Created to be His Help Meet for the first time.
I am married to a Mr. Command Man, as per your book’s description. My mom gave me your book for Christmas the first year I was married (six years ago now). She told me it was the best book she had read on the subject, and after reading it I was convinced it was too. (I had already read many other Christian books and periodicals on godly womanhood, including those of Mary Pride, Nancy Campbell, and a few from Vision Forum.) As a new wife and soon-to-be mother (I was pregnant within the first month after our wedding) I soaked up all of your stories and advice, expecting wholeheartedly to put these lessons into action and experience the heavenly marriage I was destined for!
May I also note that I had been very careful in choosing a godly, Christian man. Someone who welcomed the idea of children as a “blessing”, that served God wholeheartedly (we were involved in campus ministry together) and who respected my ideas and encouraged me to be a “keeper at home”, as described in Titus 2. I was sure we were destined for something great and unique as a family, and that our lives would be a testimony of faith and God’s greatness in a place that was in dire need of the light of the Gospel (we were living in Europe, not the US).
Justice is No Lady: Chapter 3 ~ Company of the Faithful
Warning: This story series contains descriptions of physical abuse.
by Defendant Rising
At Regent University, I had lots of role models. Sweet-tempered women were submitting to their husbands, keeping their student apartments immaculate, and having babies right and left. I learned to buy wheat berries from the local co-op and grind them to bake bread. We were Stepford Wives, only hugely, proudly fertile. We grew herbs. We read books on natural childbirth. We prayed for God to make us more meek and submissive. And we prayed for our dear darling hubbies over at the Christian law school who were going to usher in a new American Revolution and turn this country around. “Shh! Quiet! Daddy’s studying!”
It was a total time warp. Everywhere you looked, it was Ward and June and Wally and the Beav and Wally and the Beav and Wally and the Beav and little Chastity Grace Mary Martha Hope Cleaver.
I got right into the spirit of the place by watching the “700 Club” and getting pregnant. I still didn’t have the right lingeré—speaking of which, for some odd reason, pornography was being mis-addressed to our mailbox with my husband’s name on it. This was a sure sign that we were under Satanic attack. “I swear, honey, Nate swore, aghast, “I don’t know how they got my name. “That needs to be destroyed. Give it to me.” And with eyes brimming with tears at the sorry sinful state of the world, Nate went off to destroy it. Oh, that devil was a wily one, but nothing could deter my husband from his calling in the Lord.
NLQ FAQ: The Bible and Male Headship – Part 3
by Kristen Rosser ~ aka: KR Wordgazer
The question we began with was:
Doesn’t the Bible say the man is the head of the woman and that the husband is the head of the house, the instrument of God for directing the family? Isn’t he God’s designated authority, the one God holds responsible for all decision-making on behalf of the couple and their children?
We have looked at the question of male “headship” in light of the Bible’s overarching “Great Story,” and we have examined Ephesians Chapter 5 in light of ancient cultural understandings and original word meanings. Now we turn to some of the other passages and the questions they raise.
But doesn’t 1 Peter 3 say Sarah obeyed Abraham and called him lord, and Christian women are to imitate her?
Let’s look more closely at this Scripture in light of its context in 1 Peter. The First Epistle of Peter was written to scattered believers living in pagan societies in northern Asia Minor. The main subject of the letter is how these Christians are to live in these societies, enduring persecution when necessary, but also doing their best to present themselves as good citizens in a surrounding culture which viewed them with suspicion. To this end, Peter tells them in Chapter 2, verse 12 to be “having your conversation [behavior] honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works which they shall behold, glorify God . . .” With this in mind, Peter goes on in verse 13 to tell them to “Submit yourselves to every ordinance [institution] of man for the Lord’s sake,: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors. . .” Immediately following this, Peter goes into his own household code.
NLQ FAQ: The Bible and Male Headship – Part 2
by Kristen Rosser ~ aka: KR Wordgazer
The question being asked in Part 1 was:
Doesn’t the Bible say the man is the head of the woman and that the husband is the head of the house, the instrument of God for directing the family? Isn’t he God’s designated authority, the one God holds responsible for all decision-making on behalf of the couple and their children?
With the understanding from Part 1, of how the covenant community of the church fits into the Bible’s Great Story as a redeemed spiritual family– a family in which all Christians are brothers and sisters and God is our Father– let’s begin now to examine some of the passages that refer to men as “head.” As discussed in “Quiverfull and the Bible,” we will look at the cultural assumptions that would have been shared between a writer of a New Testament Epistle and the original audience, in order to see how the message might have been heard differently by them than it sounds to us today.. Hand-in-hand with this, we must look carefully at what the original audience would have understood the Greek word translated as “head” to actually mean.
Beginning, then, with the most frequently cited “headship” passage, Ephesians 5:21-22:
“Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the savior of the body.”
In the Epistle to the Ephesians, Paul’s big theme is who the church is “in Christ.” The first three chapters are about the church’s salvation, adoption, spiritual position and unity. In the fourth and fifth chapters he goes on to speak of how unity is to be maintained in the way individual members relate to one another. It is into this context that he places the section on how members of individual households are to relate to one another. This type of teaching has come to be known as a “household code.” The passage on husbands and wives is part of this code. (See Michael Kruse, “Household of God” online series, “Household: The Household Code,” http://krusekronicle.typepad.com/kruse_kronicle/2007/07/household-the-h.html )
Michelle says, Never enough babies!
