Legalism

Maternal Martyr, Michelle Duggar, Willing to Risk Life for Baby #20

November 8, 2011
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by Vyckie Garrison

Mega-family parents, Jim Bob & Michelle Duggar of TLC’s “19 & Counting” fame announced on TODAY they are expecting baby #20 – due in April 2012.

Despite a difficult pregnancy and premature delivery of now-23-month-old, Josie, Michelle told TLC viewers she is willing to “lay down her life” for another baby.

“We do not take for granted the wonderful blessings of life that God has bestowed upon us!” writes Michelle on The Duggar Family website. “Many years ago, Jim Bob & I gave this area of our lives to God, allowing Him to grant life as He saw fit.”

The flip side of the Quiverfull ideal of “trusting the Lord with our family planning” which Jim Bob & Michelle embrace and promote through their TV Reality show, website, and numerous books, is that Michelle also accepts the possibility of her own or her baby’s deaths, should such tragedy occur, as God’s will.

In her book, The Way Home, Beyond Feminism and Back To Reality, Quiverfull proponent, Mary Pride explains that mothers who risk their lives for the sake of building the Kingdom of God are to be honored the same as missionaries:

“Routinely we send missionaries off to work in unsavory climates, knowing full well that they will probably come down with amoebic dysentery, be overheated (or frozen), receive inadequate medical care in second-rate hospitals, and on the average live ten years less than other people. But we don’t tell people not to be missionaries. Instead, we commend missionaries for their courage. 

“Missionaries go to foreign countries to beget new Christians; mothers get pregnant to be beget new Christians. Even if maternal missionary work has some hazards (and what missionary work doesn’t?), the noble way is to face them with courage. Likewise, we really ought to honor women with medical problems … diabetes, asthma, quadriplegia, arthritis, heart problems … who are willing to serve God with their bodies as mothers.  These are the unsung heroines of the modern church.  (p. 57 emphasis in original)”

To further understand Michelle’s willingness to risk her life, consider that Quiverfull leaders routinely downplay the health risks when questioned regarding the prudence of prolific motherhood.  Again, Mary Pride, citing page after page of examples of supposedly bogus health risks and throwing in as an added bonus, the “medical dangers of not having children,” encourages women to trust the Lord in the face of suffering:

“Devotees of evil will sacrifice all they have — money, health, reputation — to maintain their lifestyle.  If the actual threat of venereal disease or AIDS does not deter the wicked from their pursuits, why should the mostly phantom threat of “medical problems” deter us from ours?  God will stand by His daughters who are willing to serve Him.”

I explain this idealism which led me to repeatedly endure high-risk pregnancies and life-threatening deliveries in greater detail at No Longer Quivering: here and here.

Quiverfull moms are nothing if not consistent in their submission to the will of God – for better or worse.

Full post …

The Destiny of a Virtuous Daughter ~ Part 4: Have Mercy on Me, a Sinner

November 8, 2011
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by Starfury

At 15, I was finally given the female role models I had longed for. My family converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, and I embraced it wholeheartedly. No longer did I have to pray only to God, but I had the Theotokos to turn to.. someone who could understand me as a girl. After our conversion, my prayer to God (whether the Father or the Son) diminished greatly, and I prayed often to both Mary and St. Katherine the Great-Martyr.

I was searching for unconditional love and acceptance, and it was hard to see it in the God who would stand judging you when you died. It was easier to find it in a woman who watched her son be crucified.

Regardless, I was determined to do things right. I still had to be the perfect daughter, only this time I had confession to help hold me accountable. I wasn’t content to just be Orthodox… I had to be the best I could. I made the effort to fast more… not just from meat, but from dairy as well, and during the Great Fasts, I abstained from fish on Wednesdays and Fridays.

I felt guilty going to confession, and I found myself spending more time alone in the woods in tears. I felt that I was doing the same things wrong, that I was struggling with the same sins over and over. I wondered if the priest kept count, if he thought I would never learn… I was trying to do my best, I really was. I followed daily prayer, I read my Bible, I said the Jesus prayer over and over on my prayer rope, I learned about the saints and their feast days, I attended every Liturgy and daily service I could.

There was still something that I was doing wrong, there had to be. I still struggled with my temper, I still wanted things that didn’t quite line up with wife and mother, and my mother and I still had a rocky relationship.

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Corpses Don’t Rebel: A former follower of Michael Pearl’s “To Train Up A Child” reacts to the death of Hana Williams

November 2, 2011
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Trigger Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of infant and child abuse.

httpv://youtu.be/BP3gvhaA4uo

This piece was submitted by No Longer Quivering member, “ExPearlSwine” – who understandably wishes to share her story anonymously.

The death toll from parents following Michael and Debi Pearl’s teachings continues to mount. Another child is has been “biblically chastened” to death via corporal punishment, and Michael Pearl is defending his teachings in the mainstream media while promoting his new book. Gary Tuchman and Anderson Cooper both reported on the death of 13-year-old Hana Williams, whose adoptive parents Larry and Carri Williams subjected her to beatings and neglect while following the teachings of the Pearls.

Michael Pearl defends himself and his teachings during his CNN interviews using two arguments:

First, the presence of his book, To Train Up a Child, and the presence of his other teaching materials on “biblical chastisement,” in the homes of homicidal parents, is purely circumstantial. It makes no more sense, Pearl argues, to blame To Train Up a Child for discipline-turned-abusive-turned-murderous than to blame Alcoholics Anonymous brochures in the home for deaths due to drunk driving, or weight-loss materials in the home for obesity. As Anderson Cooper pointed out, this defense is illogical. AA literature says not to drink, especially while driving. Pearl literature emphasizes inflicting physical pain on children in order to break their wills and achieve total obedience to parents. In the Cooper interview, Pearl talks about physically chastising to “get the child’s attention.” What if your child still isn’t paying attention?

Pearl’s second argument comes up every time his teachings are linked to children beaten to death: kids end up abused and killed because parents, despite owning copies of his teachings and trying to follow them, aren’t really following his teachings. They are missing the joy part, the reconciliation part, the praying part, the loving part, or whatever. They discipline in anger instead of in love.

Or—and I suspect this is what Pearl really thinks but can’t say without contradicting his own child-training directions—they should have known when to stop, when they were being cruel and abusive instead of loving, even if the child was still in rebellion and hadn’t budged an inch. At some point, a loving parent with some sense and a conscience will stop inflicting more pain. This is what Pearl believes, or at least one would hope this is what he believes. This isn’t what he teaches.

I followed the Pearls’ teachings for years, and the children I subjected to “biblical chastisement” are very much the worse off for it. I’m wondering which part of Michael Pearl’s teachings he’d say I was missing:

  1. Get Pearl’s teachings and read every single word and pray. Check.
  2. Start striking infants with objects on the hand or in the buttocks area as soon as they are able to reach for something you don’t want them to touch and ignore your “No.” Check.
  3. Hit them harder if they continue. Check.
  4. When they cry, lovingly console them and “reconcile” them to yourself and God. Check.
  5. Always use physical chastisement on them when they don’t respond to spoken correction. Check. If I didn’t strike them, my husband did.
  6. Believe that they will end up juvenile delinquents and go to hell if you slack off. Check.
  7. Pray and study the Bible some more. Check.
  8. Be joyful about chastising your baby all day. Praise God while you slap a three-month-old’s hand with a ruler and think about how godly he’ll turn out. Half a check. It was hard.
  9. The children will quit rebelling and be wonderful children who sweetly, quietly obey and love you to pieces. . . No check.

This is what I was missing: the part where the Pearls’ teaching worked. Only one child out of the oldest four quietly obeyed in response to chastisement, but she also had signs of severe emotional disturbance. She withdrew into herself and didn’t speak until she was two. The other three oldest children out of my Quiver Full of kids would rebel. And rebel. They would go to the wall rebelling. They would rebel until the cows came home and the bulls came home and calves were born. The more you hurt them, the more they rebelled.

Michael Pearl has only three methods to deal with continued rebellion in children, since his teachings are straight from the Bible, and therefore infallible:

  1. Blame yourself. You must not be getting my teaching right.
  2. Hit harder. Pain is of the essence.
  3. Blame the kid. What else is left? Other people’s kids give in and act godly.

Oh, and don’t forget to be loving and joyful and kind and patient just like Jesus (only I can’t see Jesus removing the diaper of a baby to inflict any degree of pain on her whatsoever using any object or even his hand, by any stretch of my imagination). But don’t give in. Don’t stop chastising, and make sure it hurts. Don’t let the kid (and the devil in the kid) win.

Full post …

No Greater Joy Ministries Capitalizes on Tragedy with the Release of Michael Pearl’s New Book: “Training Children to Be Strong in Spirit”

November 1, 2011
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by Vyckie Garrison

Michael Pearl is getting a lot of media attention lately in the wake of the controversy fueled by the discovery of his child training book, “To Train Up a Child” in the home of yet another couple accused of killing their daughter by the excessive use of punitive discipline.

Pearl defended TTUAC to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, and he was also interviewed on HLN last week.

Writing an official statement for No Greater Joy Ministries Facebook page, Michael Pearl vowed to redouble NGJs efforts in light of the Hana Williams tragedy.

In a calculated and appallingly callous move, greedy Michael Pearl is taking “pre-orders” for his newest book, “Training Your Children To Be Strong in Spirit.”  The timing of NGJ’s release of Strong in Spirit capitalizes on the increased web traffic garnered from the media storm surrounding Pearl’s unabashed advocacy of dangerous child-rearing practices such as utilizing a piece of ¼-inch plumbing supply line to hit children as young as six-months old as a form of “biblical chastisement.”

From the NGJ product description:

This is not a time for weak spirits. Some call it intestinal fortitude. I call it guts — spiritual guts. The timid and afraid will fall victim to their appetites and not have the moral earnestness to be men and women of character. The greatest gift you can give your children is to train them to be strong in spirit, courageous, unbending in the face of adversity and temptation.

Yes – Michael Pearl knows something about “guts” – though I would call it “All The Gall.”

I’ve said before, It’s About MONEY – NGJ Ministries is no exception …

“Buy 12 or more and save 40%! We are currently offering this book at a 25% Pre-Order discount.”

Full post …

Me? Obey Him?

October 23, 2011
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A review of “Me? Obey Him?” by Elizabeth Rice Handford. Trigger warning for former Quiverfull believers who actually read this book and tried to live according to the principles … this post is a disturbing trip down memory lane.

by Vyckie Garrison

Those fortunate enough to have never actually read “Me? Obey Him?” may be shocked and appalled by the teachings in support of “biblical patriarchy.”  This review is simply quotations of Handford’s own words (in italics), followed by comments from my personal experience as a former Quiverfull Believer.

God’s Perfect Creation Required Order

Jesus, the Creator of Heaven and earth, submitted Himself to God the Father.  He took His place in the chain of command. … It is no shame, no dishonor,  for a woman to be under authority, if the Lord Jesus — very God Himself — submitted to the authority of the Father. (p. 14)

The submission of the Lord Jesus is our example.  He submitted not just to the tender ministrations of the Father.  He submitted to revilings and curses, persecution and suffering.  He was our example, not just to obey a gentle and kind husband but a harsh and mean husband as well.

You may find that your obedience to your husband and your obedience to God are all tied together.  You may not want to obey your husband because you are in rebellion against God. (p. 51)

By intimately linking Christ’s willing subjection to God the Father with a woman’s submission to her husband in “the chain of command,” the teachings of patriarchy create such an intricate tangle of enmeshment that it’s nearly impossible for an abused woman to extricate herself from the bondage of her husband’s tyranny without also throwing off her spiritual bond with Christ.

Kristen Rosser, who writes the FAQs for No Longer Quivering, is currently working on an article which will address the popular Christian teachings on the absolute necessity of hierarchy – coming soon …

Woman’s Nature Requires Obedience

We’ve had the impression that women as a class are more spiritually minded than men, with sensibilities more refined, and purer thoughts. Scriptures say the opposite is true!  Women are more often led into spiritual error than men.  Perhaps it is caused by her intuitive, emotional thinking.  (Intuitive thinking is God’s gift, not to be despised, but it needs the balance of a man’s reason.)  I should add too, that a woman does not have to be led into error.  That is the reason God commanded her not to usurp authority over the man, so she can be protected from false doctrine. (p. 17)

Sexist generalizations are never useful in understanding human relationships.

In reality, I am no less rational than my (ex)husband.  He also is gifted with a strong intuition and emotional intelligence.  Convinced as we were that I was more susceptible to Satanic deception, our family was deprived of my reasonable input in decision making.  My intelligence was squelched, my intuition was distrusted and my feelings were denied.  My husband developed an artificially inflated sense of his own powers of logic.  I can’t count how many times he said to me, “What you are saying sounds reasonable, but how do I know that Satan is not using you to deceive me?”  I had no good defense.  According to the Scriptures, we had every reason to believe that I was indeed being used to lead my husband astray.

His authority and my obedience did not protect us from tragic deception which ripped apart our family.

What Do the Scriptures Say About a Wife’s Obedience?

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the Scriptures say a woman ought to obey her husband! …  [Note, these ellipses represent page after page of scriptural support given by Handford to bolster her argument that God commands wives to obey their husbands.] If you are intellectually honest, you will have to admit that it is impossible to find a single loophole, a single exception, an “if” or “unless.”  The Scriptures say, without qualification, to the openminded reader, that a woman ought to obey her husband. (pp. 24, 25)

1) She Is to Obey Regardless of His Spiritual Condition

The wife who obeys her husband may win him by her meek and quiet spirit, her loving behavior. (p. 25)

2) She Need Not Fear Conflicting Authority

There is no hint that a woman may have to choose between conflicting authority. …  If it is needed in order to fulfill both obligations, God will do a miracle to make it possible. … It is safe to conclude that when God told a woman to obey her husband, He intended for her to be able to do it without risk of offending other authorities. (pp. 25, 28)

3) She Obeys Without Reference to Her Feelings About the Will of God

The Scriptures say a woman must ignore her “feelings” about the will of God, and do what her husband says.  She is to obey her husband as if he were God Himself.  She can be as certain of God’s will, when her husband speaks, as if God had spoken audibly from Heaven! (p. 28 – emphasis added)

When a concerned friend reported our family to Child Protective Services, my ex-husband lost custody of the children due to his abuse.  The social worker told me that I was guilty of “failure to protect.”  The only thing that prevented me from having my parental rights terminated and my children placed in foster care was my willingness to submit to a full psychological evaluation, undergo individual and family counseling, and cooperate with random unannounced home visits by Social Services.

My older children rightfully blame me for not protecting them against their father’s abuse.  Even though they know that I was influenced by books such as “Me? Obey Him?” to believe that it was God’s will to submit to the abuse, my children cannot be fooled into thinking that I was not really responsible for their suffering.  I have apologized for my neglect.  Most of my children have forgiven me — still, the damage is done and some things can’t (and shouldn’t) be forgotten.

Full post …

Adventures in Recovery – The Help

September 29, 2011
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by Calulu

Last week Josie and I did something we would have never dared do back in our card-carrying super-fundie bread-making frumper-wearing days. We went into that darkened den of iniquity…*cue the music* dumm-dumm-dummmmm… The Movie Theater.

Back when we both were at PCCF, movies were frowned upon except things like “Ben Hur” or “Veggie Tales” or that Mel Gibson’s Jesus Chainsaw Massacre. Most were branded purposely anti-Christian. We still sometimes slunk off to see things like “March of the Penguins” or “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” hoping that no one in leadership from PCCF church was lurking about the town’s only movie theater in the downtown of our small city.

We went to see “The Help”. We’d been talking about it for weeks. Josie spent a large dose of time as a military brat living in Georgia in the early sixties and the promos for the movie struck a sweet nostalgic chord in her. I wanted to see it because the way the lives of the white women lived in the book was my childhood. I grew up in a very well to do family in South Louisiana. We had a cook, a housekeeper, a nanny, gardener and my father had a driver. All were African Americans.

The first real unconditional love I experienced was from my nanny, just like most of the white characters in “The Help.” My mother was busy with her ladies that liquid lunch friends and when she was home she would spend literal days locked in her boudoir drinking whiskey, reading romance novels and eating bon bons. We had very little time together and almost no bond. The people that raised me, parented me and loved me until I was 13 were our servants and my father. So I really wanted to see this movie from the side of those that raised others children and did the real work of parenthood in those times and that strata of society.

Josie and I sat in the middle of the mostly deserted theater and giggled, whispered, cried and laughed over this film. Behind us we could hear our own age African American counterparts doing the same thing. After the movie Josie and I were standing in the parking lot as the other duo of ladies emerged from the building and walked up to us. We all started talking about those times, even if we were all small children back in the early sixties. We laughed, we cried, we shared our hopes for the future and for history to not be forgotten. An hour later we exchanged hugs and phone numbers after deciding we were going to start having lunch together a couple times a month.

That would have never happened if either Josie or I were still at PCCF because both of us would have been mentally spouting scriptures about being ‘unequally yoked’ knowing that spontaneous friendship with others not affiliated with PCCF would be out of the question.

Full post …

NLQ FAQ: The Bible & Accountability in Marriage – Part 2: The Marriage Covenant & Covenant Breaking

September 27, 2011
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by Kristen Rosser ~ aka:KR Wordgazer

Part 1 of this FAQ addressed ideas for helping your marriage when following the teachings of Quiverfull does not work as you had understood it was supposed to. But the Bible does not teach that being a Christian is a formula, or that your actions will guarantee the response of someone else. Each person has his or her own choices to make, and ultimately, they are that person’s choices alone. You cannot force your husband to do the right thing, and this brings us to the very difficult question asked at the end of Part 1:

But what if my husband is completely unrepentant and refuses to change behaviors that, if I am honest with myself, I must admit are harming my children, our marriage and myself? Is there anything I can do then?

The Bible regards marriage as a solemn contract, or covenant. A covenant is a kind of treaty between two parties, characterized by promises that need to be kept. When a covenant has been violated– when one of the parties breaks the covenant promises so frequently, callously or heinously that the wronged party must consider it irrevocably broken– there are ways for the one who has been wronged to end the covenant. Marriage is no different. In Jeremiah 3, Israel’s covenant with God is pictured as a marriage contract. God had kept His covenant promises, but Israel had continually broken them without repentance or any attempt to right the wrongs. In verse 8 God says, “And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce. . . .” God describes Himself here as the wronged party in a marriage covenant. The promises of the covenant had been broken beyond repair– not by God, but by Israel. God’s divorce of Israel did not break the covenant; it merely acknowledged that the covenant had been broken. But God nevertheless described Himself as getting a divorce. Since God would never sin, it could not have been wrong for Him to get a divorce– because He was not the one who broke the covenant. Covenant-breaking is a wrong that we must avoid; but when the other party has irretrievably broken the covenant, the wronged party is not obligated to pretend that the covenant is intact. It is up to the wronged party to decide when enough is enough. Forgiveness is important, but forgiveness alone will not restore a broken covenant. The party who broke the covenant must repent and bear the fruit of repentance, showing a real desire to change his ways and beginning to honor the covenant again. Israel refused to do so in Jeremiah 3, and the Bible gives us a picture of God finally deciding that enough was enough, and withdrawing from His covenant with Israel.

But doesn’t God say, “I hate divorce” in the Book of Malachi? And didn’t Jesus say, “what God has joined together, let not man separate’”?

We will examine more closely what Jesus said shortly, after examining the shared understandings He and His audience would have been working under, that we today may be missing (see the FAQ “Quiverfull and the Bible” for more about original intent and shared understandings between the author and audience of biblical texts). As for Malachi 3:11-16, here is what it says: “Judah hath dealt treacherously. . . and hath married the daughter of a strange god. . . Because the Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously; yet she is thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant. . . Therefore take heed your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth. For the Lord, the God of Israel saith that he hateth putting away, for one covereth violence with his garment. . .”

God was angry because in this case, the divorce itself was a breaking of the marriage covenant, for the women who were being divorced had done no wrong. Instead, it was the men divorcing their wives without cause who were doing wrong, committing treachery against the covenant by marrying other women. It was the breaking of the covenant that God hated, for He looked at it as tantamount to committing violence and then covering it over. When the marriage covenant has not been broken, then divorce itself breaks the covenant and is therefore wrong. But in the case where the covenant is already broken, divorce could not be wrong, or God would not have spoken of Himself as initiating a divorce.

Full post …

NLQ FAQ: The Bible & Accountability in Marriage – Part 1: Bringing Real Change to Your Relationship

September 26, 2011
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by Kristen Rosser ~ aka:KR Wordgazer

I have done my best to be a submissive and supportive ‘helpmeet’ to my husband in every way possible, but though I hardly want to admit it, it doesn’t seem to be working the way I thought it would. Sometimes I feel torn between being a good wife and protecting my children from potential damage from a lack of Christian character in their father. You are saying Quiverfull teachings could be making matters worse. How, and why? And what can I do to help make things better? 

If you have read the FAQ entitled “The Bible and the Nature of Woman,” you may remember that the words translated as “help meet” in the KJV are the two Hebrew words “ezer,” meaning “strong aid or rescuer” (which is most often used of God as the “help of Israel“); and “kenedgo,” which means “facing him” (or as we might put it today, “face to face”). God intended the woman to be her husband’s “face-to-face strong aid,” not his subordinate assistant. This is what a man needs. After the Fall, according to Genesis 3:16, the man began to rule over the woman; but in so doing, he was cutting himself off from what he needed most.

Christ came to bring a new kingdom, or a new Creation, spiritual rather than fleshly, in which the damaged relationships of the Fall are being healed. This is why 2 Corinthians 5:16 says, “Wherefore henceforth we know no man after the flesh,” and why Galatians 3:28 says, “there is neither. . . male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” What a husband needs is for his wife to become that face-to-face strong aid that God originally designed her to be. This means seeing yourself as his co-leader, stepping up to shoulder with him the responsibilities of leading the home and children, side by side.

This may surprise him at first, but many men, once they experience it, will gratefully welcome the co-leader relationship. Sometimes a man, feeling the burden of being the sole leader in the family, fears failure and feels alone, because as they say, “it’s lonely at the top.” He shrinks back or slacks off, coasting on his wife’s subordinate service and submission as she desperately tries to do all the work while still making him feel like “king of the home.“ The result can be a man who secretly despises himself and resents his wife. The combination of taking care of him and treating him like royalty (or a spoiled child) can be extremely unproductive– for both of you.

At other times a husband might become a micro-manager, feeling that the sole responsibility for everyone’s spiritual well-being is on his shoulders. Letting all the responsibility rest on him may seem right, but you’re not doing him any favors. He needs an “ezer kenedgo.” He needs the two of you to be adults together, facing the adult responsibilities together. And he needs to let the spiritual well-being of the family rest where it belongs– squarely on the shoulders of Christ Himself. A mere human man cannot be anyone’s savior or sanctifier. He must let God be God in the lives of his loved ones. Your husband needs to be allowed to be merely human, but also be held accountable to be a responsible adult.

Full post …