NLQ Reviews

Me? Obey Him?

October 23, 2011
Print FriendlyPrint Friendly

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 …

A Love That Multiplies ~ The Duggar’s New Book

August 11, 2011
Print FriendlyPrint Friendly

by Hopewell

Regular readers of this blog know that I watch TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting–” a reality show featuring the family of Jim-B0b and Michelle Duggar. I make some people very happy with my blog posts on this family and get flames from others. Such is life!! So, when I spotted a used copy of their new book so I could “buy used and save the difference,” just like the Duggar’s recommend, I knew I’d have to review it here!

Like everything Duggar there is much to admire here: some good tips about listening to your children, listening to your spouse, spending time as a family, spending time in God’s word, gathering together with other believers, living debt free, controlling your anger, modeling good behavior, drawing close in times of crisis, and looking for learning opportunities all around you.

A Season of Re-Runs:

This book, however, does have a few flaws that need examining. First: repeat, repeat, repeat! Much of this book is a virtual transcript of several recent episodes of “19 Kids and Counting” (or it’s previous incarnations). If the reader has never seen an episode it might be new, but I doubt it. Like any politician, Jim-Bob “stays on message.” You can find nearly everything in this book in other radio or podcast interviews, newspaper or magazine stories or blog posts.

Another big problem is that this book, when not repeating everything said in the past, is a public relations exercise. Nearly everything the Duggars have ever been criticized for on message boards, blogs, in the press–it all gets “answered” here. Don’t expect any shocking answers! Jim-Bob stays on message.

NLQ Review: Sex, Mom and God by Frank Schaeffer

June 2, 2011
Print FriendlyPrint Friendly

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.

NLQ Review: The Authoritarians

May 24, 2011
Print FriendlyPrint Friendly

Book review by CF

The Authoritarians, a free book published on the internet and written by a sociologist named Dr. Bob Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba, is a fascinating review of his 40 years of research into the authoritarian personality in America and Canada. While the book does focus on the results of years of sociological experimentation, the statistics and number-crunching is mostly confined to the footnotes section so that the findings can be discussed in language that is easy to understand for the general audience. I personally recommend reading the footnotes, however – the additional discussion helps provide context for a lot of surprising and shocking conclusions that the experimental evidence has produced, which might be tossed out as baseless allegation and opinion otherwise.

Most people, when they hear the word ‘authoritarian,’ likely immediately associate the concept with people such as dictators. It might seem strange that such a topic should appear on a website for women seeking help regarding spiritual abuse, but the connection lies with the power of authority. The two largest sources of authority in our world today are governmental and religious, and authoritarian leaders and followers can be found involved with either one (and as the research bears out, can overlap between the two without much difficulty). Therefore, it may be of use to the readers here to see if their spiritual and earthly lives have been influenced or even controlled by a person or group of people exhibiting authoritarian characteristics. Based upon the stories I’ve read here, I’d say it’s quite likely. Perhaps understanding the motivations and thought processes of authoritarian followers and leaders could help with the healing process.

This book focuses on right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) which should not be confused with right-wing politics, though the evidence provided by this work shows some degree of correlation. RWA personalities have an unusually high respect and trust for established authority, either governmental or religious, while left-wing authoritarianism (LWA) does the same for leaders seeking to tear down the current order. Dr. Altemeyer’s work has found tiny scraps of LWA in North America but the great preponderance of authoritarian behavior observed has been of the RWA variety, hence his frequent use of the RWA term throughout the book.

It’s important to understand that the conclusions reached in this book are based on scientific experimental evidence, mainly through sociological surveys and personality tests. I think he explains this point very well in the book’s introduction, so I’d like to simply quote a portion of his Introduction chapter, page 4, (bolded emphasis mine):

“The second reason I can offer for reading what follows is that it is not chock full of opinions, but experimental evidence. Liberals have stereotypes about conservatives, and conservatives have stereotypes about liberals. Moderates have stereotypes about both. Anyone who has watched, or been a liberal arguing with a conservative (or vice versa) knows that personal opinion and rhetoric can be had a penny a pound. But arguing never seems to get anywhere. Whereas if you set up a fair and square experiment in which people can act nobly, fairly, and with integrity, and you find that most of one group does, and most of another group does not, that’s a fact, not an opinion. And if you keep finding the same thing experiment after experiment, and other people do too, then that’s a body of facts that demands attention. Some people, we have seen to our dismay, don’t care a hoot what scientific investigation reveals; but most people do. If the data were fairly gathered and we let them do the talking, we should be on a higher plane than the current, “Sez you!”

Chapter 1 discusses the three qualities exhibited by an authoritarian follower (a high degree of submission towards perceived authorities, a high degree of aggression in carrying out authorities’ wishes, and a high degree of conventionalism). I will post one more excerpt from the book (page 33) that discusses the conventionalism factor in a bit more detail, seeing as how it probably ought to sound familiar for the NLQ readers:

“By conventionalism, the third defining element of the rightwing authoritarian, I don’t just mean do you put your socks on before your shoes, and I don’t just mean following the norms and customs that you like. I mean believing that everybody should have to follow the norms and customs that your authorities have decreed. Authoritarians get a lot of their ideas about how people ought to act from their religion, and as we’ll see in chapter 4 they tend to belong to fundamentalist religions that make it crystal clear what they consider correct and what they consider wrong. For example these churches strongly advocate a traditional family structure of father-as-head, mother as subservient to her husband and caretaker of the husband’s begotten, and kids as subservient, period.”

As the excerpt mentioned, Chapter 4 discusses the link between fundamentalism and authoritarianism and will probably be of most use to the readers here. The preceding three chapters provide the context for Chapter 4, though, so I don’t suggest skipping directly to it. Chapter 5 is about authoritarian leaders, which includes religious leaders, so there is likely to be some value there as well. Chapters 6 and 7 focus more on politics, and so are probably more ancillary, though the link between politics and the Religious Right is quite strong so it could provide useful insight as well.

That Evil Feminist Movie, “Tangled”

April 21, 2011
Print FriendlyPrint Friendly

[Note: For NLQ readers wo have not yet joined the forum, here's a small taste of what you're missing ~ :) ]

by Tess Willoughby

I found this and just about died. As a woman who escaped from my own abuser and “tower” of extreme fundamentalism, I can’t get over this woman’s take on the Disney movie “Tangled”:

Ladies Against Feminism: Mangled Stay-at-Home-Daughters on the Silver Screen.

Rapunzel’s rebellion, anti-domesticity, and general unwillingness to stay put are decried at length. In the movie, Reims states, “we’re treated to an interesting commentary on homemakers and why these captives to domesticity are setting themselves up for eventual disenchantment.”

Say what?

Even though Rapunzel was deceived by her kidnapper, Reims writes, because Rapunzel thought Gothel was her mother, Rapunzel is a sinner for rebelling against TOTAL abuse, control, and slavery when Rapunzel becomes an ADULT! Rapunzel is put in the same camp as Mother Gothel (“If we’re prepared to say that Mother Gothel’s sins are inexcusable, we must be prepared to say the same of Rapunzel’s”), even though Gothel is a textbook abuser right down to the insults with “I’m just teasing” and the use of terrors to control Rapunzel that Gothel herself has manufactured.

I was amazed at the thorough depiction by Disney of every kind of mental and emotional abuse. Like many of the captors whom we in this forum escaped, Gothel only turns to physical abuse when all other forms of abuse fail. When Rapunzel tries to escape, obviously suffering from acute Stockholm Syndrome, Gothel stalks her and creates a crisis to force her back into bondage. The world is evil, keep your light in the tower, says Gothel. Mother knows best. You’re 18, 21, 25? So what.

From this writer’s viewpoint, if you’re in a home, being domestic, it doesn’t matter that home is a prison and you’re being abused. It doesn’t matter that your authority figure has no intention of ever letting you leave, and does not recognize that parental authority has an expiration date or that husbandly authority can be abused until it is invalid. If you leave, at all, for any reason, you’re being sinful and rebellious and anti-biblical.

Steadfast Daughters in a Quivering World ~ Part 6: Soul-Binding

December 17, 2010
Print FriendlyPrint Friendly

[Note: this series is dedicated to Quivering Daughtersby the former-Quiverfull moms at No Longer Quivering.]
by Daisy

My name is Daisy.

I am a good person…but I was a bad parent.

Tragically, by choosing QF/patriarchal fundamentalist methodology as the pattern for my home, believing that it would provide the very best insurance against messing up with parenthood, I messed up. I messed up badly. I hurt my kids and, worse, I silenced them when they tried to tell me about it. Criticizing your parents is, of course, disrespectful and therefore opening a dangerous door that may lead a child ultimately to rebelling against God – and as I believed that put my child in danger of hellfire, of course, I conscientiously nipped dissent in the bud at every opportunity.

As it happens, my eyes were just opening to the dreadful truth that QF had sold me a bill of goods when my oldest child found her voice. I was on the way out of QF teaching, patriarchal Christianity and my marriage when that beautiful daughter tried to describe her pain to me by starving herself almost to death. Shortly after she began her lengthy treatment for anorexia, another of my children found a way to tell me that her soul was in agony. A razor blade and a veritable hill of pills were her loud-hailer.

If you, like me, raised your children in QF until at least their early teens, you may have already had to endure the sorrow of watching your children rise up and call you Monster, or at least, Failure. If you haven’t yet, it is my opinion that, you probably will. And, believe it or not, this is a good, good thing. I do hope your child does not need to resort to the dramatic acts my oldest two did in order to gain your attention, in fact, I would plead with you to listen to them well before that becomes necessary. But I want to encourage you with this:

As parents we should not be afraid of the volume or power or ugliness of the moment – or indeed the many moments – when our child finds her young adult voice. What we really should be afraid of is her silence. That compliant 25-year-old looks and sounds like an adult, but she has a 12-year-old soul. Like the tiny feet of Chinese girls crushed and tightly bound in rags by well-intentioned parents to prevent their healthy growth, that child may be the victim of a sort of a ‘soul-binding’. This disastrous mistake may have doomed her to endure both a crippling emotional agony and an ongoing rage that her mother could dare to insist that such a violent and abusive act was perpetrated because of love.

Steadfast Daughters in a Quivering World ~ Part 5: Confessions of a Quiverfull Hero

December 14, 2010
Print FriendlyPrint Friendly

[Note: this series is dedicated to Quivering Daughters by the former-Quiverfull moms at No Longer Quivering.]
by Daisy

I was only 19 when I arrived at Christianity’s door, bruised and highly impressionable and, because of my family situation, determined to do a better job of sorting out my life than my parents had done. Victims of abuse in their own homes, my parents had learned very early to dissociate from their emotions. Our home was an emotionally sterile one and, although I know now that this is not true, as as child I believed my parents did not love me. I decided that when *I* had kids, if they grew up knowing nothing else, they would know for sure that I loved them more than breathing.

I became the kind of Christian mother other Christian mothers looked up to in awe. My numerous children were admired wherever they went: smart, lively, godly and absolutely obedient. Women used to call on me and ask advice, yearning to be able to produce the kind of wonderful ‘fruit’ I was enjoying in abundance in my children. I would explain the difference between violent abuse and the loving application of ‘the rod’ which turned children’s little hearts away from sin and toward God. I would explain that I spanked sparingly and always in the context of a warm, loving expansive relationship, as part of a ritual that included healthy confession, repentance, and loving forgiveness. Anyone who knew my kids could see that following these biblical parenting principles was paying off big time.

As committed as I was to following the principles I’d come to believe would help me to raise wonderful and godly children, and as invested as I was in the outcome, I was blind to the true state of my children’s hearts. Forbidding certain, and indeed numerous, beliefs and practices which I now see were absolutely benign didn’t make my children lose their taste for them as I thought it would – it just drove them underground. In order to indulge perfectly normal, harmless preferences and cling to some semblance of separate identity, my children were forced to construct a secret inner life to which I had no access and which, of course, added considerably to their guilt burden.

Despite many, many lessons about the love and forgiveness of a generous heavenly Father, I realize now that my children were not able to reconcile the horrors of personal guilt and the fear of punishment against abstract concepts such as Christian integrity and the grace of God. In an effort to explain the kindness and extent of a grace so great it could save even sinners like us, I inadvertently buried my older children in the shallow grave of shame, self-loathing, and later, deep, deep rage. They came to be appalled at the lurking sin monster that evidently resided in their hearts, and endured an abiding self-disgust that their natural bents seemed often to be precisely what God deemed evil.

My older girls were damaged in particularly sad ways. QF standards of modesty caused them to wonder just what was so disgusting or dangerous about their bodies that they needed to keep them so carefully under wraps. Witnessing my unreasonably energetic efforts to submit to their father, my girls learned that even when a man is stupid, petty and a bully, God wants Christian women and their children to bear it with a smile and a prayer. I taught them that heroic hypocrisy was more important than honest misery. Their determination not to repeat my marital nightmare ultimately caused them to question their sexual orientation. Frustrated in the belief that the whole world was conspiring to strip them of their sense of self and squeeze them into a mold for which they were not fitted, my daughters generated lakefuls of underground anger which eventually exploded into terrifying geysers of self-destructive energy.

But I was oblivious to this at the time. I adored my children, poured my life out for them, and simply could not imagine that my best and most sincere efforts at applying what was, after all, God’s methodology might be harming them in anyway.

But it was.

Steadfast Daughters in a Quivering World ~ Part 4: Acknowledgement & Apologies

December 12, 2010
Print FriendlyPrint Friendly

[Note: this series is dedicated to Quivering Daughters by the former-Quiverfull moms at No Longer Quivering.]
In this part of our series, the ex-QF moms of NLQ are speaking directly to our own Quivering Daughters ~ though we’ve already said our apologies in person, we want to acknowledge the abuse we inflicted on our children publicly for their sake, though we’re doing it anonymously out of respect for their privacy.

Trigger warning: As painful it has been for us to write these confessions down ~ it may be even tougher for the Quivering Daughters who were on the receiving end of our neglect and abuse to read.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

My children were everything to me. I remember the feelings I had when I gave birth to my first child, emotions that surprised me with their ferocity. I’d spent my entire life focusing on me, more than anyone else, and yet now, after a few hours of the most horrible pain I’d ever experienced in my entire life (so much for the pain-free birthing books I’d read and committed to memory), this bloody squalling thing suddenly became the Most Important Thing On Earth.

I looked in shock at my husband, holding that baby that, up until then, I’d never even seen with my physical eyes, and, my gaze wide with amazement at the power of the raw protective urge coursing through my body, said, “I’d do anything for her. I don’t care if it is a Mack Truck on the highway—I’d willingly let it run over me if it would save her life.”

I was absolutely, totally and emphatically in love.

So when a woman from church gave me an innocent looking white book with an Amish-style family on the front cover, telling me it was the best book on raising children she’d ever read, I was interested. Two pages into it, I was hooked. Here was a man telling me that there was a sure-fire way that I could raise my child and guarantee that she would grow up to love and serve the Lord. As a devout evangelical conservative Christian, there was nothing more important to me than that. As bad as a Mack Truck accident might be, there was no “accident” or situation worse than the thought of my child not growing up to follow Christ—because that would mean an entire eternity of Hell. A Mack Truck can’t begin to compare.

So with my mother-love highly aroused and my fears fully engaged, I read, page by page, all about the way to ensure that your children are properly trained so that they will grow up to love and serve God.

If I could sum up the message that this book spoke to a young mother who deeply loved her baby, it was this:

“Momma, your baby is a sinner. He/she will try to manipulate you. Things like a child not liking a diaper change and squirming to be free are an example of a sinful will attempting to dominate you. You may think this is a little thing, but it’s huge. Why? Because if you let the child dominate you, the child will win. If the child wins, the child will learn that rebellion pays. The child will then grow up to probably reject God and go to Hell, because a rebellious heart will not want to follow God. So, Momma, never ever let your child win. Your child’s exertion of will [which includes anything you deem unacceptable---grumpiness, for example] is an act of war, and parenting is about the parent winning any and all battles of wills.”

I loved my baby. How grateful, absolutely grateful I felt, that someone was there to show me the way. Now, at last, there was hope! My baby would get the joy of growing up in a home where things were done right. She wouldn’t have to go through the things I went through! No, she was going to have a godly home where she would be trained properly, and she would grow up happy and obedient and full of love towards God. It was so exciting.

So exciting that I bought ten of those books and passed them out to my friends so that they could all join in the delight of knowing we could raise our children in a way that would ensure both their happiness now and their eternal future in Heaven.

I didn’t know. If I could go back now and re-do the way I parented that little baby, I would. Out of all the things in my life that I deeply regret, that is the most painful, the most difficult, the most horrific set of memories to revisit. Because the thing is, I love my children no less now than I did then. It’s still a ferocious mother-bear kind of love. It’s still so powerful it is palpable.

But seeing your children as enemies in a war creates a fundamental crack in the parent-child relationship. Even if there is the most powerful love in the universe on the other side of the crack, the divide is still there…including the distortion of communication it causes. I entered into a performance-based parenting model out of love for my child. But that model does not feed love, or nurture love, or engage love.