“Sunday Night” ~ an Australian news program’s expose of Above Rubies and Quiverfull, features Colin & Nancy Campbell and includes an interview with Vyckie Garrison and her oldest daughter, Angel.
Shunning
Adventures in Recovery ~ Your Momma Can’t Dance & This Church Don’t Rock & Roll
by Calulu
Early this summer I decided that perhaps I needed to find another church. It wasn’t that I was unhappy with the big mainline denomination that my family had landed at post fundamentalism. I just felt that something essential was missing. Most people there were content to sit in the pews and play church. I was missing that passion I’d experienced in my old church and had seen in many other congregations. Passion and excitement for the things of God. Just not mixed with hateful theology of ‘Can’ts’ ‘Don’ts’ or ‘Submit’
Even during my years at Possum Creek Christian Fellowship* I’d loved worship with all my heart. I’d been part of worship team and I’d spearheaded creative worship there. As I’ve moved along from Quiverful to Main Street I still loved worship, still led worship from the new church. As I left our new church this summer to visit many of the churches in our community worship was one of the big things in my mind. I wanted to land somewhere with not just passion and excitement but also with alive worship that would be open to allowing me to join. Worshiping is like breathing to me.
Every place I went was welcoming, but I wasn’t really seeing what I was searching for. I visited old friends, made new friends and tested the waters. Heard interesting sermons but sensed none of these places was really right for me. Once Possum Creekers heard I was church-hopping one of them called me and begged me to return (and drink the Koolaid again) She also explained that they were believing it was Last Days and everyone had bought hand guns to practice killing off attacking heathen hordes. Seriously, now they are arming up for the end of the world. Which really made me think that the mainstream church wasn’t so bad after all.
Justice is No Lady: Chapter 3 ~ Company of the Faithful
Warning: This story series contains descriptions of physical abuse.
by Defendant Rising
At Regent University, I had lots of role models. Sweet-tempered women were submitting to their husbands, keeping their student apartments immaculate, and having babies right and left. I learned to buy wheat berries from the local co-op and grind them to bake bread. We were Stepford Wives, only hugely, proudly fertile. We grew herbs. We read books on natural childbirth. We prayed for God to make us more meek and submissive. And we prayed for our dear darling hubbies over at the Christian law school who were going to usher in a new American Revolution and turn this country around. “Shh! Quiet! Daddy’s studying!”
It was a total time warp. Everywhere you looked, it was Ward and June and Wally and the Beav and Wally and the Beav and Wally and the Beav and little Chastity Grace Mary Martha Hope Cleaver.
I got right into the spirit of the place by watching the “700 Club” and getting pregnant. I still didn’t have the right lingeré—speaking of which, for some odd reason, pornography was being mis-addressed to our mailbox with my husband’s name on it. This was a sure sign that we were under Satanic attack. “I swear, honey, Nate swore, aghast, “I don’t know how they got my name. “That needs to be destroyed. Give it to me.” And with eyes brimming with tears at the sorry sinful state of the world, Nate went off to destroy it. Oh, that devil was a wily one, but nothing could deter my husband from his calling in the Lord.
Time Heals All Wounds ~ Part 10: It’s in the Lord’s Hands
All beautiful the march of days, as seasons come and go; The Hand that shaped the rose hath wrought the crystal of the snow
by Shelly Cruz
I walked over to the phone, and dialed Cecilia’s number. My first thought was that it would possibly be disconnected, but who knows, maybe they finally moved. Cecilia always talked about how the time would come, and their house would be demolished, and then they would have to move. They were living rent-free in an old farmhouse. Someone had blessed them years ago with a property. They had to care for it, and in return they could live there for free, but once the owner passed away, they’d have to move.
They were even given a 15-passenger van as a blessing too! Regardless of their ways, the Lord always saw fit to bless them, in abundance, too. Oftentimes, I wonder why all the big families always get so many blessings? If being Quiverfull, is an Old Testament mandate, why does it seem like extra-large families always get extra-large blessings?
I have seen this in church many times, the family with the 8+ kids, receive box loads of children’s clothing for their children. They get free food dropped to their doorsteps, their mortgage paid for them, or they get a blessing of not having any mortgage at all. Do people feel sorry for them, or are they really the “chosen ones”? I know I should not be questioning these things, but sometimes I do. It seems, to me, like the most legalistic people I know are the ones who get enormous blessings.
Anyway, the phone rang three times, and then someone picked up, ”Hello, whom may you wish to correspond with please?”
Justice is No Lady: Chapter 2 ~ First Prison Break
Warning: This story series contains descriptions of physical abuse.
by Defendant Rising
1993 was a rough year. It was the year that Nate was fired from his engineering job in Tazewell, Virginia, and first started thinking about studying the law. It was the year when we went to a conference and met a pastor who advocated corporal punishment for wives, and Nate took to his teachings like a duck to water. It was the year I had Jack, who was conceived a few months after Daniel’s birth. Most notably, 1993 marked my first attempt at a separation from Nate.
Daniel had been born at home. Nate and I were part of the Christian separatist movement of the late ’80s and early ’90s, rooted in the belief that liberals and “secular humanists” would destroy the moral fiber of America. Christian separatists— right-wing religious splinter groups including white supremacists, Y2K survivalists, secessionists, reconstructionists, and so on—believed that the upstanding patriotic Christian Americans needed to separate themselves and create a fortress of Christian homes where the true leaders of tomorrow would be raised.
We were associated with the Quiverfull movement too, which meant that we rejected birth control so that we could physically produce a lot of the leaders of tomorrow: God’s Army. Home birth, home schooling, even home church were big trends. Anything that kept the faithful tucked away in their righteous enclaves and away from the godless masses. Whole communities sprang up where Christian right-wingers could turn on (Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy), tune out (the liberal media establishment—many of us even tossed out our television sets), and drop out of mainstream American life.
We were the counter-counterculture. We were fanatics. We were darned proud of it. Quiverfull, in particular, was a philosophy that any married couple in the Christian Right could buy right into. It was so easy: Exercise Dominion! Please Jesus! Take over America! Using Tools You Probably Have Around the House!
The 49 Character Qualities of Ruth #22: Gathering Evidence
by RazingRuth
I was taken back to the station. Officer Barney* and Officer Crouch* (*obviously pseudonyms) spoke to me very little on the way to the station, but the questions they did ask were sympathetic. They wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing – as a minor (technically), I was a runaway. It didn’t matter that I was several weeks shy of 18, I was a minor. They made sure I understood that there was a very good chance I would be sent home with my parents anyway. I understood. I had just come too far to turn back now.
We got to the station and they led me into a room. I’d only been in there a few minutes when Officer Barney came in with the attorney the Kline’s had found for me. Attorney Dana* said she’d called protective services and pulled some strings but that, unless I could prove the engagement and that it was against my will, I would likely have to go home to my parents. I’d have to emancipate myself if I couldn’t prove their was abuse and that process was likely to take longer than my turning 18. Proving the engagement was pretty easy. I had a ring. When I got to the Kline’s, I’d taken it off my finger and tossed it into my bag. Since my possessions were taken from me when we entered the station, the ring was retrieved and catalogued as “evidence”. Then there was my journal. The journal I kept could be used as evidence. The problem was that I had left it behind. The only way to get it would be through my parents and you can imagine how asking for it might not work out. We decided to call my brother and see if he could get to our house and get it under the auspices of getting me some “modest clothing”. It worked. We got my journal.
Daughter of the Patriarchy: “Why do you look that cow in the face?”
By Sierra
Courtship took my church by storm in the 1990s. While I never read I Kissed Dating Goodbye, I was given a number of books about marriage and intimacy and taught explicitly that dating was preparation for divorce. Having never dated, I was not in a position to protest. I listened patiently to the story of the couple in my church who had married without so much as holding hands. They were the happiest couple after Eamon and Pearl, so clearly they’d done something right. I learned that smitten young Message couples would walk around holding each end of a shared stick, in order to express their affection without risking finger-to-finger contact. I thought to myself that it sounded a bit contrived.
I was sure, however, that the first man to touch me would take away something of my purity: a commodity I was given at birth and must guard throughout my life. I was spiritually dressed in a sparkling white wedding gown, which I must constantly defend against the oil of someone else’s hands. Kissing was out of the question. Branham taught that there were “sex glands” in the lips of men and women, and that the two sets should never meet except for marital procreation. But it wasn’t just physical contact to be avoided: broken hearts came, too, from loosely guarded emotions. I must never say the words, “I love you,” to anyone until I was engaged. True love could only happen to the pure.
And so it was with dread that I, at age 15, received and read an email from my friend Karl. I’d known him online for a couple of years – we had joined a message board and discussed our shared love of Japanese anime there. He had been left hanging when I purged my life of secular influences – indeed, I had also purged my life of him, along with the anime and my other very close friends. But on a whim I had logged into AIM, we’d talked, and he’d got my email address. He wrote to me about a dream he’d had where everything was right and beautiful, where I’d come back from my strange and sudden disappearance and told him that it was all okay, now I could finally be with him. He said he loved me. I stared at the email in helpless frustration. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t date! Especially not an unbeliever. With my cheeks burning in the shame of hypocrisy, I clattered out a terrified reply. “It’s not me you need,” I wrote through gritted teeth and tears. “It’s Jesus.” I never felt like such a liar.
Feeling sure that God would bless my efforts to fully commit myself to Him, I deliberately cast Karl out of my mind and immersed myself in a mythology of my own making: a story running from the time I entered the Message to the present. I rejected the name I’d used online, telling myself all that was “Sierra” was sinful and rebellious. “I will not be Sierra again,” I wrote in my journal furiously. I would rededicate my life to Christ, and revert to my childhood nickname, Tara. And onto the set of my little drama waltzed Sven.
The 49 Character Qualities of Ruth #21: The First Night
by RazingRuth
It’s hard to explain what those first few minutes were like, as I made my way across the field to the neighbors’. I had a million emotions – fear, anger, sadness, grief, excitement, and uncertainty, just to name a few. At any moment, I expected the sliding door to open and the back yard lights to go on. I expected one of the boys, or – worse- my father, to hop on the ATV we kept in the yard.
Looking back every step, though – all I saw was a quiet house. No one had noticed my leaving, even though I was sharing a room at this point. In hindsight, I’ve always wondered if my sisters had slept through my feverish gathering (maybe they thought I was gathering clothes for a late night load of laundry?) or if they knew I was leaving and knew I was unhappy? Either way, they didn’t stop me or raise any alarm.
My neighbors were shocked to see me standing on their porch. Mr. and Mrs. Kline* (pseudonym) had had their doubts about my family for years. They’d called protective services one day after watching my dad dole out a punishment to my brother. Protective services did nothing – deeming the incident to be within the scope of parental discipline, but the Kline’s intervention made a deep impression on me. I knew someone was watching our family.
Michelle says, Never enough babies!
