Birth Control

Family Driven Faith ~ Part 1: God’s Highest Calling

June 28, 2011
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A Former Independent Fundamental Baptist Pastor’s Perspective on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood

by Bruce Gerencser

For seven months in 2004 our family attended a vibrant, growing church in Central Ohio. We thought we had finally found a church to call home. One Sunday, after the morning service, Polly (my wife) was talking with a group of women who were trying to get to know her a bit better. One of the women asked Polly what she did during the day and she, without a moment’s hesitation, said “I work.”

In a split second everything changed. You see, in this church, none of the women worked outside the home. The pastor taught that it was a violation of God’s divine order for women to work outside the home. They could have home-based money-making enterprises but they were not to work outside the home.

From that day forward the women of the church were stand-offish towards Polly. Never mind that Polly had to work due to her husband’s disability. Never mind her job was the only thing that stood between us and living on the street. All that mattered was that our family was not ordered according to God’s divine plan. We stopped attending this church a short while later.

In the 1990’s I pastored a growing Sovereign Grace Baptist church in Texas. A young woman in the church professed faith in Christ and desired to be baptized. Customarily candidates for baptism were asked to give a public testimony before being baptized. This posed a problem for this particular woman. Her husband not only believed that the Bible taught a divine order for the sexes and the home, he also believed women should be silent in church. (His wife also wore a head covering.)

The woman wanted to give a public testimony but she didn’t want to disobey her husband. The standoff went on for weeks until, one day, the woman came to my office in tears, lamenting that her husband was keeping her from following Christ. I agreed with her and told her that her husband was standing between her and Christ. I counseled her to disobey her husband. Needless to say my counsel to her set off a bomb in the church.

This church also believed that church business was the domain of men. When the church held business meetings women were not allowed to speak. If they had a question they had to whisper their question to a man and then the man could ask the question on their behalf. Women were allowed to verbally ask for prayer and sing but everything else was the domain of men. Very few of the women worked outside the home.

While I found both of these positions to be somewhat excessive and quite demeaning to women, I also believed that such positions could be proved from the Bible. While I didn’t take things as far as the above mentioned churches I certainly believed that God had a divine order for the family and the church. I believed that God had ordained men to rule and women were to submit to the male authorities in their lives. The highest calling for a woman was to marry, bear children, and be a keeper of the home. Children were to submit to authority and obey every command given to them.

I believed that the Bible taught a hierarchical system that must be kept in order to enjoy the favor and blessing of God. God, through his son Jesus, was the head over all things. Of course what this really meant was that the Bible was the head over all things. Christianity is, above all else, a text-based religion. Without the Bible there is no Christianity. (in any meaningful way) As an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) pastor I believed the Bible was the inspired, inerrant words of God. The Bible was the final rule for everything.

IFB pastors say that the Bible is the rule for everything but what they really mean is that their interpretation of the Bible is the rule for everything. I cannot emphasize this point enough. At the heart of the IFB church movement, the Patriarchal movement, and the Quiverfull movement is a literalist interpretation of the Bible by pastors. Pastors, the under shepherds of the church, under direct authority from God, have the singular responsibility of teaching the church what the Bible says. (or better put, what his interpretations are) The pastor, called by God, empowered by the Holy Spirit is the mouthpiece of God.

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 Review: Sex, Mom and God by Frank Schaeffer

June 2, 2011
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Midwife at the Birth of Quiverfull

A review by Hopewell

Frank Schaeffer, son of Fran and Edith Schaeffer of L’Abri fame, continues his personal memoirs in his new book Sex, Mom, and God: How the Bible’s Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics–and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway. Before I review the book I want to say that I was sent a copy to review by Frank Schaeffer, but was not paid for my review so the views expressed here are my own.


I have often cited Schaeffer’s “Calvin Becker Trilogy”
as some of the funniest books I’ve ever read. That said, I’ve found his non-fiction version of his life to be tougher reading. While his fiction is trim, funny and pulls the reader fully into the story, his non-fiction sort of rambles. And has a somewhat bitter edge to it. Considering his upbringing, these are not surprising and they do not come across as whining–more like talking in circles. That said, I learned a lot of new information in this volume, and did certainly get some good laughs.

Readers of this blog who read and critique my Duggar-family posts, will be especially interested in Frank’s role in birthing the Quiverfull movement. Way back in the Day, when he was still styled “Franky Schaeffer” (to distinguish him from from his same-named father), Frank was literary agent to a new Christian author named Mary Pride. With the Schaeffer name attached, Pride’s book was a shoe-in. Today we know her, and her (in)famous book, The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality as the Spiritual Mother of the Quiverfull Movement. Frank(y) then, was her midwife.


What makes Frank(y)’s role so intriguing, is the fact that his parents were very much pro-birth control. His mother, who in fact and fiction, loved nothing (except maybe the Lord) more than discussing sex, revealed to her very young son that not only was his father a “passionate” lover, but his needs were such that they had marital relations every day–even when Mom was “off the roof” and Biblically unclean due to menstruation. She also showed him her diaphram and explained its purpose fully to her surprised son.


Known as well for her talks on the importance of keeping a man’s needs fulfilled as she was for her Hidden Art of Homemaking
[life style and book of same name--which predate Martha Stewart and still have a cult-like following today], Edith famously said that even on the Mission Field a wife needs a see-thru black nightie to entertain her husband. After “The Way Home,” Edith questioned her son with “Where did you find this unfortunate woman?” Like much of Edith’s prose, rhetoric and general life questions, this is a question still relevant today.

The Destiny of a Virtuous Daughter ~ Part 2: My New Love

May 29, 2011
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by Starfury

For as much as my parents objected to many worldly things, they gave in on a surprising number of equally worldly things. Most notably, in my case, was the subject of ballet. I had always wanted to dance from a young age, and when I was 8, my parents finally agreed to let me begin to take classes. This was often something I was reminded to be grateful for–they weren’t as conservative as other families, after all.

In truth, I was grateful for it. I loved it with all my heart, and had great dreams of practicing hard and winding up as a prima ballerina for some famous worldwide touring company and performing all the famous ballets. There was only one problem with this idea… I wasn’t sure how I could maintain the necessary strenuous schedule kept by company dancers (classes and rehearsals all day, every day), and still be a loving wife and mother who homeschooled her kids. As the years went on, I slowly began to decide that as much as I loved dance, I probably wasn’t going to end up doing it professionally. After all, I’d wanted to be many other things growing up, including an astronaut and a dolphin trainer, but neither was really compatible with homeschooling 6+ kids (and I didn’t like swimming under water).

Fortunately for my overactive imagination and tendency to jump wholeheartedly into things, ever embracing some new idea for my life that would somehow either be forced to fit the wife and mother mold, or be tossed out the window, my parents decided it was time that my political apathy came to an end. I was summarily informed that I would be participating in a program called TeenPact, which involved me being shipped off to the capital for four days to learn how the government worked. I had always hated politics, but it did offer high school credit, and my parents wanted me to expand my horizons–within the scope they had predetermined, of course.

My first day at the capital had my introversion hitting me full force. I was wearing an ankle-length skirt and my hair was bound up in a snood so I could wear a headcovering, but still seem somewhat “modern.” That was the first time I had ever touched a boy, when one of the boys there came over and shook my hand. There was a brief moment of horror, and wondering if I had just committed a terrible sin, but I decided that it couldn’t have been that bad. Lightning hadn’t struck me, and this was a Christian group, after all.

At the end of the four-day program, I was utterly changed. Politics was my new love, and I wanted nothing more than to go into it myself so I could help make a difference, turn people back toward Christ, and somehow set myself up as an example for how godly women can affect politics. My intentions were never purposefully arrogant–I merely thought that if I want someone to look up to, but the person I wanted didn’t exist, then I should pioneer the way myself. Though my aspirations were gradually turning independent, I realized that I had to keep them quiet… I should be more concerned about how to be a proper senator’s wife, than a proper senator.

The Beautiful Girlhood Doll ~ Part 5: Home & Hospitality

May 18, 2011
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by Libby Anne

One of the defining qualities of beautiful girlhood is a love for home and hospitality. A young girl watches her mother and looks forward to the day when she, too, will have a family. While other girls are driven by wanderlust, the hospitable girl finds true contentment at home.

I loved being at home, and I never wanted to be anywhere else. My home was my father’s castle, and I loved it. While some of my siblings sometimes chaffed at not being allowed to go out and do things with their friends like other children, it never bothered me one bit. I would have rather stayed home anyway.

We children all had chores – with the amount of work needed to run a household of fourteen people, there was no other option. Besides, my parents believed work was good for children. I don’t mean that we had chores like essentially every other American child does, I mean we had CHORES. For a while, I did all the laundry for the family, and at another time I did all the cooking. Children were given chores starting when they could walk, and they were expected to do their chores each morning before breakfast, or they were not allowed to eat. I actually did not mind having chores one little bit. I had a lot of work to do, of course, but I loved the sense of accomplishment when I completed it.

Chores were segregated by gender. The girls cleaned bathrooms, did laundry, cooked, and cleaned around the house while the boys mowed, cleared brush, fed the animals, and saw to the upkeep of the outdoors. We all worked, but girls did girl chores and boys did boy chores. Within this schema, indoor chores and those involving the upkeep of the house were generally seen as the girls’ natural responsibility.

Caring for the younger children also fell to the girls, and this happened often. My mother had a lot on her plate, teaching high school, middle school, elementary school, and preschool while constantly nursing babies, and she needed my sisters and I to help out. And we did. I remember doing school in my bedroom with little sisters or brothers playing on the floor, or dropping everything to help make lunch or put a little one to bed.

In addition, while we never had a permanent buddy system, I have to admit that I did play favorites, and was especially close to one specific little sister. She was born at the moment I became a teenager, and it was almost like she was my own baby. When she was hurt or upset, she would come to me rather than to my mother. I saw this same pattern play out again several years later when one of my middle sisters, who was about six at the time, practically adopted the newest baby, getting her dressed in the morning, feeding her, carrying her around, and putting her down for naps. This sort of attachment was encouraged.

In addition to learning to care for children, I also learned how to run a house. When it came time for me to study economics in (homeschool) high school, my parents found a course that taught home economics, including things like balancing a checkbook and creating a budget. I learned from my mother how to shop for a large family, how to find clothes on a small budget, and how to make ends meet. As I watched my mother running the household, I was inwardly preparing myself to do the same. I am very much an organizer and a manager, and I could not wait to practice these talents in a home of my own.

Justice is No Lady: Chapter 7 ~ Spiritual Adultery

May 15, 2011
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Warning: This story series contains descriptions of physical abuse.

by Defendant Rising

Nate says what happened from Christmas of 1999 through summer of 2000 was this: I condoned his affair with Angel.

I guess Nate should know, because “condone” is a legal term and he’s a lawyer. That’s not the way I remember it. I remember two things: being very ill and being very angry. After the lingeré bonfire, Nate kept his sickly, irate wife very busy listening to his sermons on forgiveness, doing unpaid paralegal work (he set up his new firm at home with the clients stolen from his former boss), getting through Christmas on a shoestring, overhauling our finances, and going to marriage counseling with pastors Mike and Randy.

All this was going on in my last six weeks of pregnancy. The financial overhaul alone was tiring and overwhelming. Nate planned another home birth for me, increased my life insurance, and made me sign for credit cards in my name to reduce our interest rates. Then he rolled all our debt onto the cards, charged law office supplies to them, and locked the cards in the file cabinet. I wasn’t sure how increasing my life insurance saved us any money—after all, it cost more—but Nate insisted that I wouldn’t understand even if he explained it to me. I couldn’t even balance a checkbook, so if I would just trust him and sign here, here, and there already, he would take care of it all. It was futile to ask questions, I would just be even more worn out with Nate’s thousand-word answers, excuses, and insults.

Marriage counseling was also futile—it didn’t help matters at all. Nate was enraged for two reasons: I had great respect for Mike and Randy, and Mike and Randy were very hard on Nate. Randy made one remark during counseling that hit me like a stun gun.

Randy said, “Nate, in your heart you have rejected God.”

My brain began to blink to life. The broken mirror pieces in my mind fused into one big mirror, still picturing Nate, but he was ugly—uglier than the portrait of Dorian Gray. Ugly as sin.

Nate’s “theology,” no matter how complicated, was a substitute for faith, not evidence of faith. I knew it in that instant.

Nate’s retribution was swift, his diversion brilliant. He accused me of being in love with Randy and Randy of being in love with me. We could continue to go to the church and to marriage counseling, Nate decreed, but I was not allowed to speak to Randy unless Nate was present. Nate spread ugly innuendo about us throughout the congregation. In private, Nate assured me that the only thing I was guilty of was “spiritual adultery” so far—of putting another man in Nate’s place of spiritual head and God-mediator. I needed to watch myself, though, he argued, or I’d be in bed with Randy next.

I hated Nate with every ounce of my strength. Randy’s wife was very pregnant too, and it hurt to see the pain and doubt cross her face. Randy’s marriage held tight, though, and his wife was soon beaming again.

As the controversy blew over, I focused on the imminent birth of my sixth child. I had to lie down a lot. The cramps were breathtaking. I had legal research to conduct. I had my children to educate. Plus, Nate had one last theological curve ball to pitch. Nate had begged my forgiveness for Angel. He had repented in tears, and agreed to the marriage counseling. Now, in the wake of my alleged “spiritual adultery,” Nate was backtracking. Could a convinced polygamist, Nate asked me, ever commit adultery? Nate said, “Maybe only women can commit adultery.” As he explained to Mike and Randy, he was “looking at six months” of no sex while I carried Abi, and what better time to look for a second wife? (A little wrinkle: Though only 21, Angel was married. Her husband was in the Navy and deployed at sea.)

Suddenly I was the adulteress, and I wasn’t buying a ticket for this guilt trip. Nate and I had one heated argument after another, and, as long as we were arguing, I hotly denied that I needed God to speak to me through Nate or any man.

By the final two weeks of pregnancy, I was too uncomfortable to argue any more. The pressure on my pelvic floor was so intense that I wished I could simply hang from the ceiling via a system of big elastic belts between the legs and under the belly, attached to straps, affixed to wheels on tracks. Then, I fantasized, I could push off with my swollen feet and glide from room to room. Nate responded to my weakness and discomfort by threatening to exercise his “right” to polygamy on a permanent basis and move another woman into the house, if I couldn’t figure out a way to carry babies and have sex simultaneously. If I left him or reported him to the authorities for practicing polygamy, Nate said, he would use the courts to take the children and everything we owned. No other man would ever want me with six kids.

The Beautiful Girlhood Doll ~ Part 4: Enthusiasm & Industry

May 10, 2011
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by Liberty
Proverbs tells us that a virtuous woman “works with her hands with delight,” and “does not eat the bread of idleness.” The truly beautiful girl is one who sees her life as a mission of service. What others view as a burden, she views as a blessing and opportunity.

I was nothing if not hard working. In fact, I often got up early in order to complete all of my school work before lunch, so that I could then turn to reading, sewing, or any of a number of other hobbies. School was something I excelled at, and my parents were proud of me. I studied advanced science and math and loved learning languages. In fact, I wanted to be able to read the Bible in its original languages, so I studied Greek and Hebrew. And I loved it, and my parents couldn’t have approved more.

Of course, as much as my parents valued academics, I knew there were other areas a young woman must excel in if she wants to attract a proper husband. I therefore learned to cook, both from my mother or from simple experimentation. I prided myself on my pies, and even made noodles from scratch. Even though my mother did not can, she had the proper tools necessary, so I taught myself how to can vegetables. I knew that this skill was needed in a proper wife.

I also enjoyed gardening. We always had large gardens, and we children did a great deal of the tending and weeding, sometimes waking at dawn in the summer months to weed before the summer heat. In addition to learning to garden, I found books at a homeschool convention about edible plants and medicinal herbs and set out to teach myself these important skills. I learned that dandelions could be eaten in salads, that plantain was good for mosquito bites, and that raspberry leaves made an excellent tea for pregnant women (such as my mother). I even tried to make flour out of clover. I loved walking through marshy areas or abandoned lots looking for plants that matched the pictures in my books, becoming excited at each new find. I knew that a proper wife should be able to forage for food and prepare herbal remedies, especially if the government collapsed and the country descended into anarchy as we always feared it would.

In addition to cooking and gardening, I knew a proper wife must know how to sew. This was no problem for me as I sewed clothing for myself and my younger siblings and crocheted sweaters for whichever child was the baby at the moment. At one point, the Lord of the Rings became a bit of a fad in our circle of friends, and I quickly outfitted everyone in homemade costumes. I also sewed a quilt, because I knew a proper wife must fill her hope chest with homemade quilts. I cross-stitched several samplers as well, ever proud of my growing accomplishments. I would be ready, I knew, for that moment when a godly man would seek my hand in marriage.

I also spent a good deal of time teaching my younger siblings and other homeschoolers we knew. I taught languages and math, eager to help my mom out by taking some of the load off her shoulders while at the same time practicing for when I would someday homeschool my own children.

Adventures in Recovery: They Will Know We Are Christians By The Fish On Our Car

May 3, 2011
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(Thanks Dwight Parker for the title, friendship and inspiration. You are a Rock Star!)

by Calulu

When is a t-shirt just a t-shirt and when is it a smug statement in the face of the world?

Recently I wore my cross to church. That’s something I almost never do and it’s not because it’s ugly. It’s not because I don’t respect what it stands for. If anything I have greater respect for it than I did during my years drinking the kool aid and toeing the proverbial line at my old patriarchal church. I do not want to dishonor what the cross represents.

My cross is beautiful, platinum set with blue sapphires and tanzanites. But I tremble over wearing such an ostentatious symbol of belief around my neck for a variety of reasons.

Back when I was a new Christian attending Possum Creek Christian Fellowship many of the people there wore emblems, t-shirts, jewelry that proudly proclaimed that they were Bible-believing Christians, as if the world couldn’t tell by the floral print cotton jumpers the ladies wore and the polyester pants and button-down shirts of the menfolk.

The t-shirts were imprinted with slogans like “The Devil Is Ugly As Sin” or “John 3:16” or various pious scripture. Bumper stickers abounded on fleets of 15 passenger rolling scrap iron vans in local church parking lots proclaiming that abortion was murder or that you need Jesus RIGHT NOW! Sometimes you’re instructed to “Honk If You Love Jesus”

I remember that my best friend, Josie, had two crosses I envied. One was gold with a stunning number of large diamonds mounted in it and the other was also gold, but a more rococo setting with garnets like drops of blood. I started to save for my tanzanite and sapphire one after wishing for a beautiful gem stone encrusted cross like Josie’s.

Now I look back and it all seems so silly, like status symbols one needs in middle school, like gang affiliations, like ridiculous couture clothing. Instead of doo-rags and those pants that sag to the ground you can hide beers in we ID ourselves with all sorts of things to provide a cultural identity in the Church. I realize now how smug, how proud, how elitist we were in our badges of self righteousness. How unapproachable we must have been in our upright Christian gear, like well-scrubbed indoctrinated cult members instead of average people who believe in God and love others. False pride and we were proud of that pride. Like lemmings lockstep marching along.

I am not even sure what it is that drives people to do things like that, label themselves or put on a public show. A couple of months ago I saw Pastor Hilltop and his non-dancing minions bedecked in t-shirts that had the church name on the back and said on the front “Random Acts Of Kindness” He and his flock were handing out hot cups of apple cider in front of Wal-Mart as their random act of kindness.

That really made me laugh, not only were they sporting matching Tees with their church name on it but they were deliberately giving people cider. Isn’t the whole point of random acts of kindness being that it’s random and you’re not shouting out to the world what you’re doing? I have to conclude this branding has more to do with “LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME I’M SOOOOOOO RIGHTEOUS!” more than any desire to ‘help’ others or show your faith.