Category — 6 ~ Hot Topics
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
No Laughing Matter: Michael Pearl & His Chicken Mock Critics
Michael Pearl has issued a scornful brush-off of critic’s charge that No Greater Joy Ministry’s “child-training” advice incited Kevin and Elizabeth Statz to beat their 9-year-old daughter, Lydia to death using quarter-inch plumbing supply line.
by Vyckie
I am nearly speechless with anger after reading a link postedby NLQ forum member, Asteli which highlights Michael Pearl’s “Laughing” Facebook note response to his critics.
“It has come to my attention that a vocal few are decrying our sensible application of the Biblical rod in training up our children. I laugh at my caustic critics, for our properly spanked and trained children grow to maturity in great peace and love.”
A vocal few? Who Is Speaking Out Against Abuse? ~ I’d say there are more than a few “caustic critics” who are outraged over the “application of the Biblical rod” which lead to the death of Lydia Shatz.
“Numbered in the millions, these kids become the models of self-control and discipline, highly educated and creative-entrepreneurs that pay the taxes your children will receive in entitlements. When your children finally find an honest mechanic or a trustworthy homebuilder, it will be one of ours. When your children apply for a job it will be at a company our children founded. When they go to a doctor, it will be one of our Christian children that heals them with cutting edge innovation. When your adult kids go for therapy it will be one of our kids-become-psychologist that directs them to the couch and challenges them to release their self-loathing and embrace hope for a better tomorrow.”
Numbered in the millions ~ that’s a terrifying thought ~ but it is true that No Greater Joy Ministries is a 1.5 million dollar a year business. If no one was buying, reading, and implementing the Pearl’s potentially-deadly child training advice, we could laugh right back at him ~ but as it stands, this is no laughing matter.
March 3, 2010 7 Comments
Lydia’s smile could have lit a room
This post first appeared at Beauty For Ashes
Paul and I have just returned home from the funeral of a most precious little girl. Lydia’s smile could have lit a room. Now it reflects the glory of God the Savior for all eternity.
. . .
It is now exactly two weeks since we got a phone call….well, let me back up. Over a year ago a new family began attending our tiny church. A husband and wife with nine kids – six biological, three adopted from Liberia. They were a lovely family, the children polite and well behaved. They home-schooled. That’s how they found our church actually. They belonged to the same home-school organization as our pastor. Anyway, the wife was one of the, kindest women I’ve ever known. Anytime there was a gathering of the church she and I would often find ourselves off somewhere together, talking quietly until it was time to leave. Her warmth was a soothing thing. No two people could be more different than she and I, and yet there was a sweet comfort in our times together. We’d been to their house a few times for church related functions, and once just Paul and I were there, for dinner. We ate shepherd’s pie, and the children were a delight. They showed us how to milk their goats. The husband also had always taken time to reach out to Paul, who in person is extremely reserved and tends to be overlooked, and so Paul was fond of him as well.
After about nine months they decided to leave our church. They had just completed our series of membership classes, so their change of heart came as a bit of a shock, and a disappointment. As I understood it, one of the reasons for their leaving was that the husband had a strong disagreement with a doctrinal stance of our church. He insisted that Christians could achieve total sanctification (a state of sinless living) in this lifetime. We heartily disagree. We actually believe that is an un-Biblical and unhealthy teaching which can lead to any number of problems – in particular legalism and perfectionism. When no agreement could be reached, he determined to find a church more in keeping with his position. I was so sad, because I’d grown so fond of my friend, and also her little adopted girls, especially little Lydia, who always looked at me like I was some kind of miracle.
It has been maybe six months since they left, maybe a bit more. I saw them once after that, when we went to their house to pick up a bookshelf they gifted to us, twice if you count the time we chatted with the father and a few of the kids in the parking lot at Costco. Then Saturday night, two weeks ago, we got a phone call. Little Lydia was dead. Her older sister, Zariah, was in the hospital in critical condition. The other seven children had been placed in foster care and both parents were in jail – accused of murder, and child abuse.
February 22, 2010 1 Comment
Disciplining to Death ~ No Greater Joy Ministries and Child Abuse
Friday, February 5, Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz, were charged with beating their 7 year old daughter to death for mispronouncing a word, and torturing her 11 year old sister, who was brought to Sacramento Children’s Hospital in critical condition from kidney failure and other injuries.[1]
In addition to the two girls, who were adopted, the Schatz’s have 6 biological children and another adopted child—all of whom were rarely seen out of doors or playing with other children, report neighbors[2]. Recently, the Butte county DA has reported that the Schatz’s followed the teachings of Michael Pearl, founder of No Greater Joy Ministries.[3]
Pearl advocates what he refers to as “Biblical Chastisement,” that is punishing children through the use of a rod, quoting Proverbs 13: 24 as a prooftext:
“He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.” (KJV)[4]
Pearl encourages parents to “chastise” (not punish—as if there is some enormous difference!) using a “rod.” He suggests using 1/4 inch plumber’s supply line, to administer the chastisement—which, Pearl maintains, is not a beating. This is exactly what the Schatz’s are being accused of using in beating and torturing their children.
February 19, 2010 5 Comments
Are Scott and Andrea Bass a Quiverfull couple?
This article was originally posted at She Keeps Bees.
by KM
You have probably heard the story by now. Scott and Andrea Bass, the Arizona couple who locked a fourteen year old girl in a bathroom without running water for two months and tortured her to the point of starvation? I’m wondering if this is a homeschooling Quiverfull family–and, if so, why the media has not remarked on it yet?
Let me be very clear here: I am not making this leap based merely on reports that the family homeschools. I recognize that it is impossible to generalize that all homeschoolers are Quiverfull fundamentalists, and that there are many viable reasons for homeschooling that have nothing to do with extremist religious ideology. Even though it is well-established that a large percentage of homeschoolers are Christian conservatives (See, for instance, the US Census statistics here), broad strokes about homeschooling are beside the point.
Mostly, I’m wondering about this because the style of “punishment” seems so parallel to so many of the stories of abuse written by ex-Quiverfull women and children. We know from major media outlets that the Bass child was locked in a small bathroom without running water–a small bathroom roughly the shape of a closet. We also know that the Bill Gothard organization–best known for its homeschooling wing, the Advanced Training Institutes of America (ATIA)–routinely generates survivor stories about people who are locked in what followers call the prayer closet. Besides the prayer closet, it’s well-known that Bill Gothard actively promotes other forms of Bible-based child abuse.
February 13, 2010 1 Comment
People Magazine: Duggars “won’t rule out having baby #20″
Why Michelle Duggar can’t say, “We’re done!”
“We’ll just wait and see what God has in store.” ~ Michelle Duggar, People, Feb. 8, 2010
by Vyckie
As a former Quiverfull mom of seven, I’ve had such a variety of birth experiences ~ emergency c-sections, scheduled repeat c-sections, failed homebirth attempt, successful homebirth (after four cesareans!), hospital VBAC, and with my last birth ~ which I had planned to have unassisted at home, I ended up with a 5th c-section due to partial uterine rupture.
My complicated birthing history made living out the Quiverfull ideal of “leaving my fertility in the Lord’s hands” all the more challenging ~ and one of the toughest things for me to handle was all the well-meaning friends, family, and complete strangers who looked at what I’d already been through physically and asked the obvious question:
“Aren’t you done yet?!!!!”
This is the question everyone’s asking Mama Duggar of “19 Kids and Counting” – TLC fame. And Michelle’s response in the current issue of People Magazine ~ “We’ll just wait and see what God has in store” ~ is exactly how I used to answer the concerned questioners too.
At one point, my own mother stood at the foot of my hospital bed and, with tears rolling down her cheeks, begged me not to get pregnant again. “This is too hard on you, Vyckie. What about the children you already have? You need to be alive and healthy to take care of them!!”
Despite the pain and misery I suffered ~ not to mention the very real danger to myself and my children ~ I had three more babies.
January 29, 2010 2 Comments
God gave them brains too
Why Michelle Duggar might not be done yet
by Vyckie
The Internet is buzzing with news of the premature birth of Josie Brooklyn Duggar ~ Michelle’s 19th child, who was delivered via emergency c-section last Thursday at only 25 weeks gestation and weighing a mere 1 lb. 6 oz.
Kate Harding, at Salon.com pointedly asks the question of the hour: Baby No. 19 is born extremely premature; will Michelle’s god ever give the poor woman a break? Of interest to me, is a comment on Kate’s article: God gave them brains too ~ So why don’t they use them instead of their reproductive organs? Trust in God but use your head, otherwise you are insulting God by behaving as if you have no choice in the matter.
Yep ~ I heard a lot of those sort of comments too ~ especially after my youngest child was delivered via c-section due to partial uterine rupture. This past week, I did an interview with Mike Munro for the Australian news program “Sunday Night.” One of the questions Mike asked me was, Why did you keep having babies when it was so dangerous for you? Did the movement force you to keep having babies?
Well ~ no. Not exactly. I’m sure Mr. Munro would have liked a sound-bite response to his question, but I had to slow down and try to explain that it was actually kind of complicated. Yes, God gave me a brain ~ and I was using it the entire time that I was living the Quiverfull life. The thing is, I was so committed to the ideal of “trusting the Lord with our family planning” that I found ways to convince myself that pregnancy was not really so dangerous as the doctors were telling me.
December 12, 2009 No Comments
Watch “Born to Breed” on YouTube
The Secret Lives of Women “Born to Breed” episode can now be viewed on YouTube ~ it has been posted in 6 parts.
December 3, 2009 No Comments
“Born to Breed” to air Tuesday, November 10 on WETV
The Tuesday, Nov. 10th episode of “Secret Lives of Women” will feature the Quiverfull movement ~ including my “No Longer Quivering” story.
The program, which is titled, “Born to Breed,” will air at 9 pm central time on WETV.
November 8, 2009 No Comments
Rachel Scott ~ the two-headed lady …
Rachel Scott on WETV’s “Born to Breed”: Well, my husband is in charge … and I do believe in women submitting to men …
Rachel Scott on the Joy Behar Show: I believe that my husband and I have an equal partnership. But in matters of dispute, I would say that the two of us make decisions pretty much together as team. So I think submission is misunderstood.
BEHAR: So it’s not the total patriarchy that it’s painted – as in the film piece that I saw.
SCOTT: I don’t believe that is total accurate depiction of Quiverfull actually, so, no.
November 8, 2009 No Comments
