Submission

Adventures in Recovery: You Gotta Serve Somebody

August 1, 2011
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On Schisms and Authority

by Calulu

I was working recently on a large graphic design job when it struck me about the differences in the way authority looks inside of the Fundamentalist Patriarchal culture and from the outside.

It was one of those design projects for a larger firm and I was working as an independent contractor. A design project where I was given the basic elements the client wanted in the design but not much else. Punt, pass or run with the ball, it was my call. My idea for the project really jelled quickly as I was working with those basic elements, I had a very good idea going in a totally different direction than was suggested at the meeting. I quickly worked up two or three variations of my ideas and presented them to my agency contact, very excited by my new ideas.

Even as I was working as a contractor independently without a boss breathing down my neck and as a side job completely removed from my day job at the art studio I wasn’t entirely on my own. Final approval was through my agency contact, my authority on that job.

We’re all under some sort of authority, be it family obligations, jobs, bosses, governments, or from inside ourselves. Most of us know in ourselves that there are definitely authorities that you must obey regardless of how we feel about it. Don’t believe me, try running a red light about a hundred miles an hour and rejecting the authority of the cop that tries to ticket you. There’s three hots and a cot waiting down at your local pokey with your name on it if you resist. I should know, I have a stairway to heaven high pile of parking tickets in my name. My rebellion is tame but it’s there.

All this led me to thinking about authority and how many people in the more rigid portions of fundamentalist Quiverful land chafe about any authority that they don’t consider coming right from the hand of God.

We pay a great deal of lip service to the idea of authorities when we’re under conviction of that particular type of religion with its own controls. But we don’t respect it. We look for ways around it when it runs counter to some small petty detail.

I’m not talking about those of us that tried mightily to appease the demands of an angry tin-plated demigog that female submission seems to spawn in weak men. Those fundamentalist Frankensteins most of us did profess to obey. I’m talking about the spiritual authority of others and the reasons behind it.

They talk a good authority game, these self-righteous ones, making ever more complex rules about things as silly as covering ones head or not making move one without consulting the pastor. Usually just for control or to make themselves feel better than others or more righteous. But heaven forfend someone in our church decides that the only true way to heaven is head coverings in blue only while you believe that red is the only true color. You can’t agree, you consult this or that religious authority without taking in any advice that runs counter to your belief in the righteousness of red. Instead of looking for solutions or trying to understand the other side and compromise or even agree to allow each to do what they feel is right this usually explodes into open warfare. Splits occur between the two and they rope in people to each side, squaring off like the fate of the world depends on it. Lies are told, stories exaggerated to the point where the people on the other side of the issue are demonized and painted as the devil’s capering minions.

A Wise Woman

July 6, 2011
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by Kari

Because I must be some kind of masochist, I was browsing over at the No Greater Joy site today. I came across Debi Pearl’s article “A Wise Woman Builds Her House,” dated May 5, 2001. After rolling my eyes repeatedly, I decided to write my own version. Mrs. Pearl’s words are in black, mine are in red.

A wise woman doesn’t take anything for granted. She is thankful to be loved and seeks to make herself more lovely.
A wise woman doesn’t take anything for granted. She knows she is worthy of love and seeks to remember her true worth.

A wise woman doesn’t allow herself to be a liability but strives to be an asset to the marriage bond. She looks for ways to make, save, and use money wisely. Her husband knows he is a richer man because she is his wife.
A wise woman is not ignorant of the family’s finances and is involved in decisions that affect her well-being. She looks for ways to help balance the family budget by looking for ways to make more and spend less. Her partner knows they can depend on each other.

A wise woman seeks to be a part of her husband’s life. His interest becomes her interest. She looks for ways to help him in every endeavor in which he is involved. When he needs a helping hand, it is her hand that is there first.
A wise woman seeks to be a part of her partner’s life while maintaining her own identity. She develops her own interests to pursue when she does not share her partner’s interest. She looks for ways to support her partner without sacrificing her own life.

A wise woman knows that his peace of mind (and sometimes, wise understanding) is something she can give or take away by her observations and conversation concerning circumstances or people. She limits her conversation to the positive.
A wise woman knows that she must be honest with her partner and herself to achieve true peace in the home.

A wise woman sets a joyful mood in the household. She uses laughter, music and happy times to stir the children to a positive, joyful frame of mind. She knows this light-heartedness helps take stress off her husband.
A wise woman knows she cannot control anyone’s mood or temper besides her own. She does not attempt to force her children to pretend happiness and joy where none exists. She knows this will cause them unendurable pain, and ultimately create more stress in her home.

A wise woman gauges her husband’s needs. She seeks to fulfill his desires before even he is aware of them. She never leaves him daydreaming outside the home. She supplies his every desire.
A wise woman knows she cannot be all-knowing and expects her partner to communicate desires with integrity. She does not pretend to know her partner’s daydreams and does not degrade herself by becoming a porn queen against her will.

The Beautiful Girlhood Doll ~ Part 10: I Am a Person, Not a Doll!

July 4, 2011
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by Libby Anne

It has now been some years since I left my parents’ house and shifted for myself. I think my parents were somewhat surprised that I was able to make it on my own and that I did not come home asking for help, or maybe it was just me who was surprised. I found inner sources of strength I had not known I had. At the same time, my college friends, both the original evangelical ones and new ones I had met, were a wonderful source of support, and always accepted me regardless of what I did or didn’t believe. I finished college on my own, and was extremely proud at graduation.

During this time I also found someone special, and I married him not long after finishing college. Because I was marrying someone who did not share their beliefs, my parents did not approve, but then I did not expect them to. My siblings were not allowed to be in my wedding, and I walked myself down the aisle with my head held high. My friends and in-laws made my wedding a time of great joy, but my heart still broke years later when one of my little brothers was exulting at being a ring bearer in one of my siblings’ weddings, and all I could think was, I did want you for my ring bearer, little brother, please don’t think I didn’t. But I couldn’t tell him that, I couldn’t explain what had happened. Remembering that moment still brings tears to my eyes, even now.

Early on, there was some question about whether my new husband and I would be allowed to visit my parents and siblings. After all, what kind of example were we setting? This question was resolved, though, when we chose to become pregnant and have a child. The presence of a grandchild has improved my relationship with my parents, though it has also created new problems as they do not always agree with the way I am raising my little one.

Another factor that has improved my relationship with my parents is their belief that my husband is my authority, and that they should therefore seek to change his views rather than mine. At the same time, though, my husband is a man and not their physical child, so there is a level of emotional distance and respect present that there is not with me. Thus my parents simultaneously leave my beliefs alone and at the same time work to respectfully persuade my husband that he should change his beliefs. Of course, this makes me want to laugh, because my husband and I have an egalitarian relationship, and we frequently disagree with each other without seeing it as a problem.

Regardless of the reasons for the softening of my relationship with my parents, I am grateful that I can still be a part of my siblings’ lives. However, my relationship with my parents will never be the same, and the pain of what happened will never go away.

My parents’ mistake, if that is how you want to see it, was teaching me how to think. The simple reality is that teaching women to think will be subversive in any system that demands male authority and female submission. My parents gave me the tools to form my own opinions and choose my own beliefs while at the same time demanding that I hold their opinions and beliefs, and once I left home and learned that the world was a much bigger place than I had been taught, I was crushed in the inconsistency of this.

There is a deeper problem as well. My parents saw me as an empty slate and believed that they could paint on it as they wished and choose what the outcome would be. They saw me as something to be shaped and moulded rather than as an individual with my own thoughts and feelings. For them, I was one more daughter to fit into the perfect mold. In some ways, it was like they were playing dollhouse with me, forming me just how they wanted and setting me up just how they liked – but I’m not a doll!

The Beautiful Girlhood Doll ~ Part 9: The Broken Doll

July 2, 2011
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by Libby Anne

Soon after this rethinking of my parents’ beliefs, I returned home from college for a semester break more worried than I have ever been in my life. What were my parents going to think about my new beliefs on evolution, the Bible, the pro-life movement, and female equality? For a few weeks I said nothing, afraid of what would happen when I did. But the longer I listened to my parents praising me for my steadfast beliefs and condemning evolution and liberal college professors the more I realized I couldn’t hide my changes in belief. And so I told them. I was used to being only praised and affirmed, so telling my parents about my changing beliefs was probably the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. And sure enough, it was like I had dropped a bomb.

I have never seen my parents as angry or disappointed as they were that day. I had gone from being their golden daughter to being broken, completely broken, in their eyes. With that one revelation, they learned that all of their work had been for nothing. Since their whole reason for raising me was to create a soldier for Christ, spreading their specific views around the world, my changes in belief meant that everything they had done to bring me up was wasted.

My parents’ utter horror was soon replaced with attempts to retrain me and bring me back to the strait and narrow. My mother gave me a pile of Vision Forum materials on daughterly submission and fatherly authority and demanded that I read them. I think that backfired, actually, because having learned to think for myself and having seen a bit of the world, the books by the Botkins and others made no sense. The Botkins seem to think every college girl is a whore, and yet I had spent two years at college and knew this was not true. The Botkins also seem to worship their father in a way that I found extremely dangerous, for I had just realized that fathers are as fallible as anyone else. None of the literature made any sense to me any more.

Slightly more effective than the literature was the emotional pressure. My father, with whom I had been so close, ignored me. My mother told me over and over how much I had hurt my father, and that if I really wanted to follow God and know what was true I should just ask my dad my questions and believe whatever he told me. But this didn’t make sense to me because I had learned that my father could be, and was, wrong. My childhood friends’ admonitions that God spoke to me through my father and so I should listen to him fell on deaf ears, for they no longer made sense. After all, the Bible never said any such thing, and if God wanted to speak to me I felt sure he could speak directly to me.

The Beautiful Girlhood Doll ~ Part 7: Submission & Obedience

June 27, 2011
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by Libby Anne

The Godly Woman recognizes that “the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man…” She willingly and joyfully submits to him in everything as she would unto Christ. What other women view as a burden and degradation, she views as an honor and a blessing.

My parents believed in male headship and the umbrella of authority. They believed that the husband is the head of the wife and that the wife must submit to the husband even as the husband must love the wife. And submission meant obedience.

My mother was constantly reading books like Me? Obey Him? as she strove to be a better, more submissive wife. This was difficult for my mother, for she was a very strong woman. I watched her war with herself as she tried to reconcile her strong spirit with the submission she believed in so steadfastly. I watched her cry over it, watched it eat away at her. Occasionally, my father became upset with my mother, feeling that she was infringing on his authority. His most common response was to give her the silent treatment, and that was enough. In response, my mother generally first felt indignation and then blamed herself for not submitting enough and resolved again and again to do better. While my parents loved each other dearly, this tension added strain to their relationship, and I could see it.

Yet interestingly, even as I watched my mother struggle with female submission, I nevertheless believed in it strongly. At the same time, I usually inwardly sided with my mom in her disputes with my dad, largely because he could appear so unreasonable and become upset over seemingly small matters. I justified this contradiction between my beliefs and my feelings with regard to my parents’ quarrels by telling myself that I would have no trouble submitting to my future husband since I would marry a reasonable man who would not give me such trouble.

Of course, my parents believed in more than just a wife’s submission to her husband. They also believed that children are under their father’s authority and are to submit to him. For boys, this lasted until age eighteen, when they would leave the home and start a career; for girls, this lasted until marriage to a man approved by the father. This meant that while my brothers would be out from under my father’s authority when they turned eighteen, I would not. My parents also believed that if my father died, I would be under the authority of my nearest male relative, which in practice meant my oldest younger brother.

In retrospect, I am almost baffled that I believed this so wholeheartedly and sincerely, but I think I understand why. First, I was also able to endorse female submission because I myself had never been in a position where what I wanted contradicted what my male authority wanted, and second, when I endorsed female submission I found myself praised and affirmed.

I loved and respected my father, and we agreed on petty much everything (except, I suppose, his disagreements with my mother). I was my father’s golden girl, his pride and joy. It was like he had shaped me to be the perfect daughter, to be everything he had always wanted. I was smart, and my parents educated me well so that I could carry on intelligent conversations with him on a variety of issues. I felt his pride in me and I basked in it. I lived for my father’s approval, and this was a driving force behind my diligence in education and in homemaking. I strove to be everything my father wanted me to be, and received nothing but praise in return. I thus had never had any reason to resent the presence of male authority over me and every reason to endorse it and claim it.

It’s About the DAUGHTERS

June 17, 2011
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[Note: This piece is being crossposted at No Longer Quivering as a way to introduce NLQ readers to guest writer, Libby Anne's new blog: Love, Joy, Feminism. Read Libby Anne's "The Beautiful Girlhood Doll" series here.]

by Liberty

When it comes to the multitude of problems with Christian Patriarchy, it is the position of the daughters that I am most passionate about. The patriarch has it pretty good – he’s the one who gets to call the shots. The sons usually don’t have it so bad either – they’re patriarchs in training. The mothers may spend their lives having baby after baby and they may believe that they’re to submit to the patriarch in everything, but they generally chose this life at some point, and knew what life was like before on the outside. Then there is the daughter. Unlike her mother, the daughter of Patriarchy has no choice.

She is told that all she is ever to be is a wife and mother. She may someday run a home business, selling herbs or dresses she’s made, but she may never work outside the home or – god forbid! – have a career.

She is told that an education is a dangerous thing. Education in the Bible and in homemaking skills are a good thing, but worldly knowledge is dangerous. The daughter of patriarchy learns early that she must guard her mind from evil thoughts and any question or doubt.

She learns early the importance of submission. She must submit to her parents, and, even when she is grown, to her father. She is taught that women must always be under male authority, and that an independent woman is a dangerous thing.

She spends her days helping her mother, cooking and cleaning and changing diapers. This is her destiny, and it is what she is put on earth for. She has little time with friends, as her mother is busy with baby after baby and she must be counted on to keep the house running.

She learns that the world outside of her patriarchal bubble is an evil and dangerous place. Feminists are selfish and ungodly, girls who wear tank tops and short skirts are sluts and whores, and the world is descending into chaos and damnation.

In sum, she is taught to believe what her father does, do as her father says, and stay in line. Any sign of independent thought is immediately squelched. She is taught a skewed view of the world, brainwashed into believing that those who might be her greatest allies are her enemies, and that to be different is to be evil. She knows nothing of the outside world save fear. Her education is often deficient, and even if she is educated well, she is taught to shoot low and her potential to dream big dreams is stifled, thus sabotaging her potential to even consider a worthwhile or fulfilling career. Thoughts normal girls have never enter her mind.

Magic Menstrual Mummies

June 7, 2011
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A boy discovers that there are right and wrong kinds of blood.

by Frank Schaeffer

I’d never heard of pheromones when I was ten. All I knew was that each month the large wicker basket in the bathroom on the middle floor of our chalet filled with softball sized, tightly-wound wads of toilet paper. These tissue bundles were evidence that—in biblical terms—the time of Our Girls’ Monthly Uncleanness was once again upon them.

Let me explain why I’ve capitalized those words. My late father, Francis Schaeffer, was a key founder of the Religious Right. My mother, Edith, was herself a spiritual leader—not merely the power behind her man, though she was also that. My parents raised me in L’Abri Fellowship, a sort of fundamentalist hippie commune before there were hippies, really not much more than a big old Swiss chalet where we lived, along with everyone who visited for “spiritual help” and/or to “find Jesus.” Mom divided everything into Very Important Things—say, Jesus, Virginity, Japanese Flower Arrangements, Lust, See-through Black Lingerie (to be enjoyed only after marriage), Our Girls’ Monthly Uncleanness—and everything else—those things that barely registered on my mother’s to-do list, like home-schooling me. So I’ll be capitalizing some words oddly in here. I’m not doing this as a theological statement so much as as a nervous tic, a leftover from my Edith Schaeffer-shaped childhood and also to signal what Loomed Large to my mother and what still Looms Large to me.

This was back in the days when a sanitary napkin was a fluffy and formidable thing, about the size and shape of a canoe. I knew God didn’t like the Menstrual Mummies because I’d heard Mom read from Leviticus 15 in a Bible study:

When a woman has a discharge, and the discharge in her body is blood, she shall be in her menstrual impurity for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until the evening. And everything on which she lies during her menstrual impurity shall be unclean. Everything also on which she sits shall be unclean. And whoever touches her bed shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water and be unclean until the evening. And whoever touches anything on which she sits shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water and be unclean until the evening. Whether it is the bed or anything on which she sits, when he touches it he shall be unclean until the evening.

So I never touched the Menstrual Mummies—except once. I unwrapped the tissue-tethered Unclean Thing and took a smear of blood from it to study with a small microscope that a kindly L’Abri student had given me. I wanted to see the egg that Mom said was “washed out each month unless it gets fertilized by the marvelous seed.” I didn’t see an egg, but I did observe several doughnut-shaped red blood cells after I dabbed a little blood on a glass slide and stained it, as per the student’s instructions.

About forty years after investigating the Menstrual Mummies in the wastepaper basket, I read an article in the New York Times science section about how humans’ sense of smell triggers physical responses. The article cited as an example the fact that women who live together—for instance, in college dorms, convents, and girls’ boarding schools—tend to menstruate at the same time. I don’t know if this theory of menstrual synchrony will stand up to the rigors of scientific inquiry, but I do know that our middle-floor chalet bathroom wastepaper basket seemed to fill and empty like some sort of metronome, keeping time with a cosmic rhythm as sure as the tides. Maybe Mom and my sisters reset the hormone “clock” of the women who stayed with us, from the helpers—cheerful, though virtual slave laborers working in return for room, board, and spiritual help for years at a time—to the students—who might stay for six to ten months or so.

These nubile, yet torturously unavailable young women filled our chalet with their pheromone-perfumed presence. And, as I learned from Mom’s Bible study on Leviticus, they were monstrously defiled as they plunged into their monthly menstrual freshet. I imagined that God was right there with me, in our middle-floor bathroom, brooding over the evidence of His Big Mistake: women.

NLQ FAQ: Should There Be a “You” in Quivering?

June 5, 2011
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What “Deny Yourself” Means – and Doesn’t Mean

by Kristen Rosser ~ aka: KR Wordgazer

The founders of No Longer Qivering spelled “Quivering” without a “u“ because, as they say, “There is no ‘you’ in Quivering” – there’s no place for self – and they claim this is a bad thing. But Jesus said that a true believer must deny himself, take up his cross and follow after Him. Quiverfull women take the Bible’s admonition to die to self very seriously. We use the acronym J.O.Y., for true JOY comes from putting “Jesus first, Others second and Yourself last.” How can you encourage Christian wives and mothers to turn from Christ’s teachings by making “You” a priority?

The problem with the way Quiverfull followers use the J.O.Y. teaching is that while they claim the “Y” is for “Yourself last,“ what is often actually practiced is “Yourself not at all” – and this particularly applies to wives, mothers and daughters. Quiverfull women believe that in putting their husbands and children first, they are putting Christ first, and that they are not to consider their own needs in any other way than as a means to an end, giving themselves just enough minimal care that they can go on serving “Others.”

J.O.Y. for Quiverfull women, in practice, usually looks more like O.O. – “Others Only.” But is this what Jesus actually taught or practiced?

The story of Mary and Martha is the story of how two sisters understood Christian service. Luke 10:38-42 shows how Martha “received” Jesus into “her house” – which is interesting in and of itself, for Luke apparently didn’t think it necessary to identify Martha in relation to a male authority (such as her brother Lazarus, seen in John 11 and 12). No, it was “her house” that Jesus came to, and Martha did what any good Quiverfull woman would do. Forgetting about herself, she bustled around preparing a meal. But Mary went and “sat at Jesus’ feet and heard his word.” “Sat at his feet” had a particular meaning according to the understanding of that time, which was “to learn as a disciple.” In Acts 22:3, Paul identifies himself as a disciple of Rabbi Gamaliel by saying, “I [was] brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel.” (Emphasis added.) What Mary was doing in Luke 10:39 was making herself a disciple of Jesus, sitting at his feet to learn with the other disciples.

Martha was upset. Here was Mary neglecting her womanly duties, leaving Martha to do it all herself while Mary took her place among Jesus’ disciples! So Martha went and complained to Jesus, asking Him to make Mary do her womanly duty and help in the kitchen. What did Jesus say? “Martha, Martha, you shouldn’t be thinking about yourself or your needs. If you have to prepare the meal alone, God will bless you all the more for your godly selflessness. But Mary, what do you think you’re doing? How will you find a husband if you continue to rebel against your God-given role?”

If Quiverfull teachings are to be believed, this is what Jesus should have actually said. But what He did say was quite the opposite. “Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things. But one thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen that good, which shall not be taken away from her.”

Jesus was telling Martha that it wasn’t necessary for her to be working in the kitchen at all! Instead, what was “needful” was to sit at His feet as one of his disciples, and Mary was right in what she had done. Jesus neither rebuked Martha for thinking about herself, nor said a word to Mary about forsaking her proper gender role. He made no distinctions for the practice of discipleship according to gender at all.

All right, I can see making an exception to serving “Others” if it’s really about putting my relationship with Jesus first. But isn’t Christian life about denying ourselves? Aren’t we just being self-absorbed if we focus on our own needs or desire things for ourselves?

Jesus did say to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him. But does this mean it’s wrong to prioritize our own needs, to stand up for ourselves, or to ask others to do things for us?

Matthew 16:36-46 is the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. He is just about to give His life for the world. A greater example of self-sacrifice could not be shown. But listen to what He says to Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, His closest friends:

“My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.” Is that Jesus expressing a deep emotional need, and asking His friends to help meet it?

“And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and said unto Peter, “What, could ye not watch with me one hour?” Is that Jesus, expressing disappointment, telling His friends honestly that they have let Him down?

Yes, that’s Jesus, thinking about His own human needs and asking for something for Himself. That’s Jesus, honestly telling others how He feels about not getting His needs met. It could not have been wrong for Him to do this– so how could it be wrong for us?