“When I was your age, my parents wouldn’t send me to college,” my mother was telling me. “I had to work my way through on my own. I don’t want you to have to stop. I will do everything I can to help you keep going to school. Your education is the most important thing to me.”

We stood in the kitchen, a printed letter lying on the counter between us. It was not good news.

I glanced up at my mother with a strained smile. I knew that if wishes could be cashed at the bank, I’d be writing my admissions essay to an ivy-coated castle. Instead, I was trying to find a way to pay the bill from my last semester of community college in time to register for fall classes. It was already August.

My work at Wal-Mart paid eight-fifty an hour: better than all the other work options for teenagers in the area. My schedule was already as close to full-time as it could be without requiring the company to offer me benefits. My hands were tied: I could take another part-time job, but when would I go to school? It was all I could do to keep our car paid for and insured while my mother handled the rent and utilities. College tuition had slipped between more pressing matters like food and transportation, and dragging it back to current status again would not be easy.

Still, I was grateful to have a mother who dared to disagree with the life track laid out before me. A Catholic turned evangelical, my mother was a radical believer in forging new paths. She had, after all, followed her heart out of her family’s religion when I was still a toddler. Going to college was my chance to discover what God had in store for me as an individual, she thought. I knew already that beliefs like these made my mother an outsider, a liberal and a radical in my church of stay-at-home daughters and unremitting parental supervision. What I did not yet know was how short and how tight the bonds were that held my friends.

“Why don’t you fill out your FAFSA?” my mother suggested. “Maybe you can get grants or student loans. They might offer you more if you apply to a four-year school. Let’s drive around and look for a college where you can transfer your credits.

I loved Rowling College on sight. The sprawling green lawn, ancient shady oaks and dark grey stone of its oldest building washed over me in a wave of color and charm. “It looks like a little Harvard,” I told my mother breathlessly. A more culturally adept young woman might have said it looked like Hogwarts.

The admissions counselor radiated warmth and hope. She beamed at my community college transcripts. No, it didn’t matter that I didn’t have SATs, she said. My grades proved that I could handle introductory classes. I felt a bubble of excitement rising in my throat, and firmly swallowed it. I would assume that this all was beyond my grasp, I decided. If it proved true, I would be pleasantly surprised. If it didn’t, I would not allow myself to feel the disappointment. I can go back to college later, I reasoned. There is a manager position opening at my store.

I was only half fooling myself. As I sipped the coffee and marveled at the expensive upholstery in the admissions office, I imagined myself striding up the long path to the college’s double doors, each step declaring, “I belong here.”

“What are your career goals?” the admissions counselor asked me.

“I want to go to graduate school and become a writer,” I said. Then, daringly, “I want to go to Harvard.” Saying it aloud sounded absurd, but there it was. The story of the homeless girl who had walked through its gates gave me not only the dream, but the audacity to name it.

The counselor smiled. “We’ll get you to Harvard.” Rowling had sent students there before. Other students had sat in this chair and then gone on to great things. Why indeed couldn’t I?

The next two weeks were spent working and trying not to think about whether or not my application would be approved. My retired friend Jim, the store greeter, welcomed my news and bolstered my hopes. “That’s good,” he told me. “You should go to college. You’re smart. Get the hell out of here while you’re young.” I grinned, and told him I intended to do so. I could still hear my community college teacher’s words in the back of my mind. You could be a writer. You could go to grad school. Graduate school seemed like the most glamorous place in the world.

Meanwhile, my friends at a sister church were catching the education fever. I learned of their ambitions in a phone call with their ambassador: Jennifer. A tall, active, tomboyish young woman, Jennifer had gone out of her way to befriend me on the basis of our shared connection with my best friend Sven. Despite the fact that her church was in Connecticut and mine in Pennsylvania, she kept in touch via the internet and periodically came to visit. Demographically, our churches seemed destined to be a match: her youth group was comprised mainly of girls, whereas mine was overwhelmingly slanted toward the boys. That spring, I’d been invited to spend a week at Jennifer’s house, where I’d met her circle of friends and found myself in the strange position of what felt like the ambassador from Land of Raining Men. It appeared that my church had been sighted as a hunting ground for husbands. Knowing that we were expected not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers, I suppressed my disgust with the contrivance of it all and dutifully related the names and ages of the potential suitors that I knew, possessively avoiding Sven’s. A decade had taught me that he was safe: passive and uncontrolling. A girl who had no intentions of obedience had first to ensure that she’d never be ordered to do anything.

As I told Jennifer about my nascent college plans, she burst out in excitement: “We’re going too! A bunch of us are applying to Bob Jones University.”

Bob Jones? I’d heard that name before. Other homeschooling families in my church used Bob Jones textbooks. My mother had discarded them as dull and political, opting for the more flexible and artistic Sonlight curriculum instead. I had no idea that Bob Jones had founded a university, nor (as I was just realizing) did I have any idea who Bob Jones really was.

“I told my dad that it would be okay since we won’t be going alone,” Jennifer continued. “We’ll watch out for each other. It’s a Christian college. We won’t have to worry about drinking or partying or any of that. You should come with us!”

I froze. Rowling College’s wrought-iron lampposts and immaculate lawn flashed in front of my eyes. I want to go to a real school, came the unstoppable silent protest. I was immediately wracked with guilt. What do you have against Bob Jones? I asked myself furiously. How do you know it’s not a “real” school? But the steely voice in my head would not be silenced. I don’t care if this makes me a terrible, judgmental person. I want to go to a real school, and that does not include Bob Jones.

“Maybe,” I answered finally, failing to muster any enthusiasm. I told my mother nothing, fearful that she would think it was a good idea and my Rowling plans would evaporate before my eyes.

I slept fitfully that night. I pictured myself bursting through the chains that had held me in one place for too long, only to find myself swept away into a dreary black-and-white encampment. I saw the dull stone halls filled with good Christian husbands, all grey and lifeless. I saw the parade of unthreatening ideas, the inevitable fight against the Trinity but the ultimate surety of everything else. A silent scream welled up inside me. Away in the distance there stood the gates of Rowling, vibrant with promise, a dark channel separating me from them. I wanted to jump, to take the greatest risk, to grapple with the edges of the chasm and yank myself up. I feared the abyss not because I would be striking something unknown, but because I was afraid that I’d never know anything else. Bob Jones University, that good Christian college, in its very safety and certainty struck me with terror. I could not go where Jennifer went, even if it meant giving up everything.

Later that week, as I finished a shift at Wal-Mart and returned my tray to the manager, I heard my mother call my name. I turned to see her striding rapidly toward me, waving an envelope.

She couldn’t hold it in. “You were accepted!” she cried.

I scrambled for the letter and held it up before my eyes in shock. My frantic eyes struggled to focus. Rowling had taken me in. I was in! I was a real college student. With scholarships. The store spun and danced around me. I was dimly aware of my Wal-Mart managers grinning and patting me on the back. All I could see was the small black print: “Congratulations!”

As I studied my admissions package that night, I learned that I would be starting classes in a week. My first semester was paid for. I would only have to cover my books. I would even be moving onto campus! Since my room and board were covered under my scholarship package, it would cost more to commute. Apprehensively, I filled out my roommate survey. “Likes to read,” I wrote. “Very quiet. Early riser.” The excitement outweighed my nervousness. I would get to live on campus! I would get to eat in the cafeteria and study in the library. It was all so overwhelmingly new.

I was giddy as I called Jennifer to tell her the good news. When she answered, however, I knew that mine was a solitary joy. The tide had shifted. The sisterhood of Bob Jones would never be.

“What happened?” I asked.

“The elders of my church had a special meeting,” she sighed. “They decided that it wasn’t right for young women to go away together and live on their own. They said we would be too far away from our fathers’ headship.”

I hung up the phone with tears of rage stinging my eyes. Just like that, my friends’ futures had been sealed, their hopes crushed, their homes transformed into prisons. The doors of opportunity had slammed shut, and I stood alone on the outside. A cold fear settled on my shoulders, Frantically, I began packing my belongings, looking ahead to my move-in date with trepidation. If I could just move onto campus, I would be safe then. I would never come back, never be caught, never be caged. I thanked God for my faithless father, knowing now that only the “headless” state of my family permitted my escape. As I stuffed t-shirt after modest t-shirt into my luggage, I wept for my friends. There was nothing godly about this, nothing loving, nothing just. The girls had done everything right, but it was not enough. No amount of prayer or planning would be enough to let mere women follow their dreams, unsupervised.

If I make it to college, I promised God, I will work with all my might. I will take every opportunity in sight. I will not squander this gift.

For the next six days, I waited for the hammer to fall.

Discuss this post on the NLQ forum.

Sierra is a PhD student living in the Midwest. She was raised in a “Message of the Hour” congregation that followed the ministry of William Branham. She left the Message in 2006 and is the author of the blog The Unspoken Words: A Non-Prophet Message.

Read all posts by Sierra!

NLQ Recommends ...

'Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment' by Janet Heimlich

‘Quivering Daughters‘ by Hillary McFarland

‘Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement‘ by Kathryn Joyce

by Tess Willoughby

September 11, 2001. This dark day united all Americans in horror, in terror, and in pain.

With at least one exception: Nate Willoughby.

I found out that our country had been attacked using our own commercial aircraft when my mother called me from town and said, “Turn on the news.” Her tone of voice suggested the worst of the worst of the worst: so awful that you didn’t ask “what channel?” because it didn’t matter what channel. The president had been assassinated. There was some horrific, unthinkable natural disaster, probably in Virginia. Something so bad she couldn’t say it.

I hung up, turned on the TV and watched the Twin Towers burn, holding the phone in my hand.

The phone rang. I hit the answer button. Nate lit into me about how I needed to come back to him and I was in rebellion against God and would probably go to hell.

I swallowed and sat on the floor and said, “Are you aware that terrorists have attacked New York City? The World Trade Center is burning!”

Nate said, “Who cares. We’re talking about my life.”

I hung up on him and sobbed and choked in front of the TV until I didn’t have any more strength to cry. How mean and insane was my husband? How would I ever get away from this vindictive bastard without being destroyed? Was Nate even human? Was my country’s government about to fall? How many more planes had been hijacked, and what would blow up next? It felt as though my own personal hell had unleashed national horrors and worldwide chaos. The lid had blown off life itself and nothing venerable, nothing precious, nothing good could stand. My own personal, religious zealot terrorist had gone global somehow and the world was burning and crumbling to the ground; nothing and nobody was safe from crazy men with extreme religious agendas.

Post-traumatic stress does funky things with your brain. That September, I believed that I had landed in a world without personal boundaries, without national security: a world of merciless anarchy where freedom was not only impossible but a joke and and an illusion. A world where terrorists could strike anywhere and nightmarish, ruinously expensive court hearings never ended, but God was silent. I believed that I could lose absolutely everything, even my nation. If not for my parents, I would have lost my sanity.

My divorce lawyer had been worn down by Nate’s bullying to the breaking point. She was pushing me to agree to a no-fault divorce with all legal issues reserved for later. She would do nothing to get me any permanent alimony, nothing to get me any property, nothing to get me permanent custody of my children, nothing to help me with the personal injury suit, nothing at all except to sign a no-fault divorce decree now that the year-long waiting period was over.  She made it clear that I had no choice in this—in order to continue to represent me, she would have to hire additional staff to keep up with Nate, who had her completely buried in paperwork.

My lawyer was quitting, and she hated to bring it up but. . .I owed her $30,000.00. When my dad and I couldn’t pay any more, she put me on a payment plan. When we couldn’t make the payments, she turned me over to a collection agency. That collection agency, Chase and Citibank (Nate had credit cards in my name, remember?) called me every day.

Nate paid no child support, of course. He had a child support matter filed in court (the first of six), and was appealing the alimony, so would not be sending a dime while a decision or appeal was pending. Because the children and I were on public assistance, I got Legal Aid in Virginia Beach, but they would only help with the equitable distribution matter because of limited resources. On the custody/alimony/ child support matter, and the personal injury matter, I was on my own; I would have to drive six hours and represent myself.  Another lawyer in Virginia Beach was unaffordable.

Why so many matters? Why so many cases? you may be wondering. The judges found it more economical for the court to farm out the matters to multiple judges rather than one judge hearing the whole mess, since Nate files multiple motions per hearing and rants and raves for hours. Every separate matter in turn quickly became a legal swamp with its own morass of motions to respond to, discovery to answer, and subpoenas to move to quash. Litigating with Nate has always been like fighting the Hydra. You lop off one hearing but that hearing spawns three more hearings; answer one motion and get three more in the mail; quash one subpoena and get notice of three more. In Virginia, a lawyer can file his own subpoenas without going through any court, so Nate subpoenaed everything and everybody he could think of for every hearing. He quickly overwhelmed the whole judicial population of the Virginia Beach Circuit Court. The first judge, who returned Moriah to me after her dad kidnapped her out of school, stepped down after Nate filed a writ of mandamus against her with the Virginia Supreme Court.

Legal Aid got me nothing in equitable distribution except the stuff I ran away with. The judge ruled that I kept what I had in my possession and Nate kept what he had in his possession. Nate had taken out a second mortgage on our house without my knowledge, plus run up the debut on the credit cards, and so Nate persuaded the judge that in order to split the property 50/50, it was only fair that the marital debt also be divided 50/50. The judge bought this argument, and I got nothing. Not even the children’s toys.

This is going to sound idiotic but I’m going to say it anyway: even though I’m moderate now and voted for Barack Obama and probably will vote for him again, I can’t hate George W. Bush like so many of my good friends do. I detest the Patriot Act and hate the war even more, but I was on welfare with six little kids when the terrorists attacked and about to lose everything I owned in the courts. After 9/11, it was the president who gave me the reassurance that I might lose everything else—all my belongings and even eventually my children—but I wouldn’t lose my country. I’d still be American, and Americans have always been bullheaded enough to hang onto the faith that they can get free. No matter who or what is standing in the way.

Discuss this post on the NLQ forum!

Read all posts by Tess Willoughby!

NLQ Recommends ...

'Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment' by Janet Heimlich

‘Quivering Daughters‘ by Hillary McFarland

‘Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement‘ by Kathryn Joyce

by Sierra

Growing up in fundamentalism was like living with a moral GPS navigator installed in my head. Every decision was mapped out already; all I needed to do was listen to the voice telling me where to go. Sometimes I could stop and look at the map. Most of the time I was looking ahead, trying to live, listening and following directions as best I could.

The GPS gave me directions for living: Read the Bible and pray every day. Obey your parents. Be respectful of elders.

Those directions made sense. They were there to help me get where I wanted to go: straight ahead. There were no twists and turns yet.

Then the directions got a little stranger: Listen to one of Branham’s sermons every day. Wear long skirts. Be modest. Grow out your hair. Throw away worldly music. Throw away makeup. Look down on public-schooled kids. Don’t watch TV.

The GPS gave me directions for my relationship with my parents: Ignore your father’s rage and violence. Win him to Christ by silence. Submit to him as your earthly head until you are married. Follow the chain of command.

It gave me directions for relationships with boys: Don’t touch. Don’t laugh too much. Don’t be alone with them. Don’t give away pieces of your heart. Wait for God to bring you your husband.

It gave me directions for lifetime ambition: Your greatest calling is to be a wife and mother. Choose a vocation you can pursue at home, while raising children. Learn to cook and sew. Don’t venture out into the world.

The cacophony of advice was deafening. More troubling still, I felt a tug, a conflict in my soul. There was something wrong with the directions.

“Turn right.” They said. “Turn right. Turn right. Turn right.”

I was going in circles. The roads looked too familiar. I was trapped here, spinning in the dark, following the dull illumination of my headlights, listening for the next command. Nervously, I watched out the window and flinched when I spotted pale pairs of green forest eyes reflected back at me. Anywhere, there might be roadblocks. There might be deer. Where was I going?

I stopped by the side of the road and locked my doors. I let my engine idle. I looked at the map displayed on the GPS screen.

“This is not where I want to go,” I said hesitantly.

“Turn right in five hundred feet,” replied the GPS.

“You don’t understand,” I argued, growing bolder. “I need to get somewhere. I don’t want to burn up all my gas going in circles.”

“In five hundred feet, turn right.”

“You want me to get stuck here, don’t you?”

“Turn right.”

“But I’m not going anywhere!” I yelled. Fingers shaking, I turned off the GPS. I stashed it in the back seat under a pillow. I took out the batteries and flung them into the woods.

The silence was overwhelming.

Then I noticed a tiny bobbing compass stuck to my dashboard, a vestige of an earlier time when I was free to find my own roads. The compass pointed north.

I eased the car back onto the road. The compass dipped and bobbed, but held true. I watched the fluid inside form tiny bubbles around the arrow.

I came to a fork in the road.

“TURN RIGHT!” screamed a ghostly voice from the back of my head.

I turned left.

Anxiously, I glanced right and left on this unfamiliar road. I had no idea what animals might jump out at me, what pitfalls or construction might lie ahead. How could I find my way out of here on my own?

Then, as I drove, I grew more confident. Morning broke. As the trees melted away, I saw the forest in my rearview mirror. I glanced at the compass. It held steady.

For the first time in my life, I turned on the radio and floored it.

…

The moral of the story here is obvious. GPS navigators are great conveniences. They can get you almost anywhere you want to go. But if you use them all the time, you start to forget. Reading a map and finding your way feels difficult, unfamiliar. Risky.

Human beings weren’t made to follow moral GPS directions. We were made to find our way, minute by minute, adapting and readjusting our route along the way. We were meant to notice the scenery and remember it, to accept each turn as a choice, to own it and live it consciously.

We weren’t meant to follow ready-made routes. No such routes exist in the landscape; they’re imposed on it by the almighty powers of Google and men like William Branham, Bill Gothard and Doug Phillips.

Why do we rely on moral GPS navigators with their pre-recorded voices? (I’m looking at you, Voice of God Recordings!) Why are we so afraid to find our own way? Because we might trip up? Because we might find ourselves in a ditch needing forgiveness? If we’re never so vulnerable, how are we supposed to know who might stop and give us a helping hand?

Note that this doesn’t mean driving off wildly, without direction. I traded a moral GPS for a moral compass: something I can use to keep my destination always in sight. Something I can use to find my way out of any wrong turns I might make, even if it means hitting a dead end and retracing my steps. Even if it means taking a little longer to get where I’m going.

I don’t know the names of the roads I may take. I didn’t know them, either, when I was listening to Branham’s voice telling me where I had to go. I trusted him, and found myself spinning. Now I trust the destination.

Some call this following the Holy Spirit. Some call it keeping our eyes on Jesus. I call it trust. Maybe even faith.

And the music is way better.

Discuss this post on the NLQ forum. Comments are also open below.

Sierra is a PhD student living in the Midwest. She was raised in a “Message of the Hour” congregation that followed the ministry of William Branham. She left the Message in 2006 and is the author of the blog The Unspoken Words: A Non-Prophet Message.

Read all posts by Sierra!

NLQ Recommends ...

'Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment' by Janet Heimlich

‘Quivering Daughters‘ by Hillary McFarland

‘Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement‘ by Kathryn Joyce

by Sierra

Turning eighteen was magical. Suddenly, all the job applications I seemed to be throwing down an empty chute were bounced back with interest. Sven had already landed a job at Wal-Mart in his town. Now it was my turn. I nervously sat through my job interview, not daring to hope that I might actually be on my way to earning money. When they called back with an offer, I could hardly contain my excitement.

Not only did I have a job, I had a real driver’s license. No longer did I need the supervision of an adult driver. I could take myself anywhere I wanted, whenever I wanted. The freedom was intoxicating, and I found myself driving everywhere at the slightest excuse.

Now that I was mobile, my mother decided it was time to do something about the sorry state of my academic life. Homeschooling had ceased somewhere around age 15. I had been completely off the record in New Jersey, where strict homeschooling regulations would have required testing and proof of progress. Now, we were ready to move back to Pennsylvania, where the lax state laws meant I technically only needed one more year of credits. My mother decided that the best way to accomplish this would be to enroll me in community college classes, a strategy pursued by some of the boys in my church. They had used it to get a jump-start on college; at the very least, I could get a diploma out of it.

My first classroom experience since kindergarten was a twice-weekly evening class in one of the trailers behind the community college. It was a remedial math course, intended to catch me up on the untouched two-thirds of my Algebra II book, which had been only a guilt-emitting paperweight in my bedroom for the past year. I was nervous, but I also felt a sudden rush of power as I studied that remedial algebra. Although I was at a severe disadvantage, I knew that, with enough work, I could probably pass this class. I would never be like our church’s star students, both male, one working on his MBA at the esteemed Delaware Valley College. The latter’s mother lost no opportunity to remind me of that fact. And yet, the math was comfortingly rational. If I practiced enough, it came out right.

To my amazement, my tests began to come back with positive results. Not just positive results, in fact, but straight As! What is this? My mind reeled. I quickly rationalized it. This must be easy math. Anyone can do this. My whole class must be doing this well. I still might not make it in real college courses. Then I learned that the class average was something resembling a B-. I hid my starred exams under my notebooks, afraid that the other students would hate me as I quietly pondered what this meant.

Until that moment, I’d never had an opportunity to measure my own intelligence. I was terrified to learn: where were the limits of my powers? Could I make it in community college? In four-year school? In the workplace? After a lifetime of hearing that I was smart only from my parents, of getting meaningless As in a classroom of one, I threw myself into community college work with the fear ever lurking in the back of my mind, “What if I work as hard as I can and find out I’m not that smart? What then?” I resolved to work so hard that I didn’t have to find out just yet. I would tackle the challenge of this class, but not look beyond. One thing at a time.

I knew my future hinged on this. If I could make it in school, if I could make it in work, I wouldn’t be trapped in the Message of the Hour, doomed to a lifetime of incessant childbearing and submission. As I pulled into the parking lot of my community college for the last time, I noticed a promotional billboard hanging above the trailer where my class was held. Its message stunned me. I stopped the car and stared up through the windshield.

“From Homeless to Harvard,” the sign read, with a picture of a well-dressed woman beaming beside the bright red letters. It was a graduation photo. It was a picture of success, of triumph. As I got out of my mother’s car and stood gaping at the sign, an unfamiliar hope lodged in my throat like a piece of grit, nearly choking me. I, too, had lost my home – lodging, unwanted, in my grandparents’ cellar. I, too, was not expected to amount to anything – indeed, I was forbidden. William Branham saw working women as a threat to God’s order for the world. And yet, that smiling girl… she had gone to Harvard! Could I not, then, go somewhere? Could I not be something, too?

I turned in my final math exam with the lightest heart I’d felt since I was a little child, since before I’d ever heard of the Message or William Branham. I felt like a little girl again, with a whole future spread out before me for the taking. “I want to be an astronaut and an archaeologist,” the small child in my head whispered. “I want to write a book, travel the world and swim with dolphins. I want to do everything when I grow up.”

Weeks later, the final grade came in. I’d passed the math course with an A.

Discuss this post on the NLQ forum.

Sierra is a PhD student living in the Midwest. She was raised in a “Message of the Hour” congregation that followed the ministry of William Branham. She left the Message in 2006 and is the author of the blog The Unspoken Words: A Non-Prophet Message.

Read all posts by Sierra!

NLQ Recommends ...

'Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment' by Janet Heimlich

‘Quivering Daughters‘ by Hillary McFarland

‘Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement‘ by Kathryn Joyce

by 

The other day my husband came to me and confessed that sharing our story was just very painful for him to the point of tears. Out of love and respect for him I am submitting by not continuing to tell what we have been through. He did not ask me not to, but the last thing I want to do is hurt someone that I love so much. However, I would like to share where we are now, as how we got here really doesn’t matter. We choose to live from today and not let our past dictate who we are.

We no longer have an identity created by our marriage or our children. His identity is not bound to whether or not he is a perfect “leader” of his home. Mine is not tied to being the “perfect” wife and mother. We can never be those things. We could never achieve the perfection put forth by the Pearls, Doug Phillips, or any other mortal man. We were like beautiful tombs, but were dead inside. Our identity comes from trusting in the sacrifice of our Lord. The life I live is in faith, not faith in men, but faith in God. If my husband leaves I stand, if he stays I stand. We are who we are because It is finished, the work is done on our behalf.

This had given us freedom that we never knew. Before, we thought we had to be something or do something before our lives would be perfect. We had all these ideas from men, but when these ideas did not work out the way they promised we had to turn somewhere else. This compelled us to our answer, which was our faith. Is it perfect? No. We still stumble and misunderstand, but we have a peace now that was missing. We discovered through much study and prayer how we were supposed to treat each other. Not how some man said we should treat each other. We were in roles that were not intended for us to be in.

One thing we discovered is that we desire to be praised and worshiped. For me it was praise and honor that my marriage was intact and my kids well-behaved. Serving my family was not an act of love, but one of gaining praise for myself. A patriarchal dad is the center of his home or “kingdom”. He is worshiped by absolute obedience and getting his every desire. When our son began to rebel, and I was so unhappy in my marriage I was shattered. Everything I had worked for was not turning out the way I wanted. My husband was really unhappy trying to strive for this worship, because he was not created to be worshiped. He was created to worship.

We both felt condemned, because our life was not the perfect rosy picture of happiness religious men had told us it should be. We were condemned because our older children weren’t the picture of obedience, condemned because I worked out of the home, condemned for the music we listened to, and on and on. This unhappiness led us to the discovery of Romans 8:1-2. We had read it many times before but it never spoke to us. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit has set me free from the law of sin and death. We had bound ourselves to the laws of men’s interpretation. So now we will stand in the knowledge that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. We will stand firm, then, and not let ourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery.

We realized that Phillips and the Pearls really have a narrow vision that can’t be applicable universally. We believe God is universal and cross-cultural. We had separated ourselves from the “bad” influences of the world. We wanted to keep our family “protected”. We lived in fear, which was wrong, because perfect love casts away fear. When Jesus walked the earth many of his friends were whores and thieves. He loved these people. The “religious” people on the other hand were constantly subject to His wrath. We were the “religious.”  This was hard for us to accept about ourselves. We had scorned the very people that Jesus loved. Since then we have opened our lives to many more people, and have been greatly blessed. We are confident that He who began a good work will complete it no matter who is in our lives.

One of the most important things we have learned is not to take ourselves too seriously. This can lead to hurt feelings, resentment, and bitterness. So we consider each other and look not only to our own interest, but to the interest of each other. Bitterness can destroy a person, so we have been gifted with the ability to let things go that have happened to us or things that we really can’t control. We bear with each other and forgive because we have been forgiven.

Notice that I say we. This has been a journey that we have taken mutually, and for that we are grateful. Neither of us could have done it without the other, nor would we be where we are today without the other being on this journey. Do we have the perfect, rosy marriage? No, but our vision is much clearer. This allows us to walk together in love and unity. If the unity is broken we have the tools to fix it. We had no one but each other on this journey, and that was good. We have been to many marriage seminars in the past, but they never helped like just being with each other through our trials. We are so very cautious now about the advice of men. It is always filtered through each other, prayer, and scripture.

The hardest thing we had to deal with was being totally open and honest with each other. That is naked and unashamed. I am not talking about being physically clothed or not, but about who we truly are and how we truly feel. We were guilty of putting conditions on our love, both with each other and our children.  In the past we were afraid to share our true selves, because of the possible condemnation. Finally being able to do this with each other has been the best part of this journey. The comfort we feel around each other has made a powerful difference in our lives. I am truly a better person, because of my husband and his unconditional love.

This is simply our story, and is not meant for advice to anyone. We have had enough advice to last us for eternity. It is our wish that it be an encouragement.

I would like to thank Vyckie for her courage in starting this website. Krwordgazer you have filled in so many gaps in my understanding. You have been blessed with a wonderful gift. Journey, Africaturtle, Dragonfly, Mamaloo, Calalu you have encouraged me with your courage and determination. Keep it up. Tess, I so want your story to have a happy ending. We are survivors.

Discuss this post on the NLQ forum. Comments are also open below ~ please feel free to add your well-wishes to LivingForEternity and her family.

Read all posts by LivingForEternity!

NLQ Recommends ...

'Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment' by Janet Heimlich

‘Quivering Daughters‘ by Hillary McFarland

‘Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement‘ by Kathryn Joyce

by Tess Willoughby

Part Two: The Legal Aftermath

I fled to the farm where I grew up and spent several weeks just trying to get the fuzz out of my head. I went to the doctor, who diagnosed Abi with failure to thrive. I supplemented her with formula but continued to breastfeed, because for once I had the luxury of breastfeeding by my own lights, and I intended to enjoy it. I moved six kids, 9 years old and under, in with my mom and dad, who were absolute angels about it.  I do not remember either of them complaining even once.

What were Tess’s long-term plans? Did I want separation? Divorce? Neither? Was God angry with me? Could I ever go back? I just stumbled through the days, utterly numb. I could not feel the presence of God, which struck terror into my heart. I could not pray, and opening a Bible freaked me out. Where had my faith gone? What did I believe? My thoughts were like muddy water that must be filtered through normality until the water runs clear. It took a long time to get clear, and in the meantime, I made a very costly mistake.

I filed for legal separation but then withdrew my action. Here is how this went down:

Nate called four or five times a day. He also sent multiple long emails every day. A few highlights:

• “I will counter-sue for divorce on fault-grounds of desertion.”
• “Venue (where the divorce will be held) is where the marital home is. You will have to travel back and forth repeatedly.”
• “I will avail myself in good faith of every legal procedure available. This means massive expense to your father. I will appeal any and all negative decisions.”
• “As I am living in the marital home, you will lose the [custody] fight. And of course, if I have the kids you will be paying me child support.”

In every email and phone call, Nate demanded that I come home immediately. In one email he made a condition: “Because of your hart [sic] heartedness and manifold sins against me, I will require that you sign an oath before God that you will submit to my authority completely, without question or dissention, and joyfully.”

Nate sent me the van in “good faith” to “work toward reconciliation,” but when reconciliation did not happen within his two-day deadline, he demanded the van back: his children’s sole transportation which was titled in his name. He threatened to prosecute me for possession of stolen property. He sued for divorce, alleging desertion and mental cruelty. He also sued as the children’s “next friend” against me for the “severe injuries” all six of them had suffered in the wreck (one child had a tiny cut above the eye). He sent my attorney dozens of faxes and called her office many times a day to run up my legal expenses. He mailed me the credit card bills which were in my name. He negotiated with my most prized possessions, using wedding gifts from my grandparents as bargaining chips. He demanded to talk to the children on the phone so that he could manipulate them into telling me to “come home.” They got off the phone and cried, saying, “Daddy is so lonely. Why did we leave him?”

Finally, Nate went bawling into the office of a pastor (not our pastor, of course) and got Rev. So-and-So to email me. Rev. So-and-So sent me the following proposition. We would declare a legal cease-fire and he would counsel with Nate. It was a terrible thing, Rev. So-and-So thought, to break up a family. He quoted the Bible on that score. He assured me that Nate was really repentant and seeking change. I did not want to even see Nate again, much less sleep with him, but I was still very deferential toward pastors and desperately wanted that legal cease-fire. I was not capable of traveling six hours to Virginia Beach for litigation. I was still very weak and confused and had six little kids to care for all summer. I felt guilty about the burden on my parents, which guilt Nate manipulated. My mother would have to take care of six kids so I could come to court and my father would have to pay the legal bills. I didn’t believe my lawyer when she said she could get a protective order that would keep Nate away from me and the kids, or that we would win the venue fight and I could go to court downtown, or that I would win the van in a lawsuit. Besides I had gotten a little foretaste of what even a winning legal battle with Nate would cost in time, money, and aggravation. Nate did nothing, it seemed, but sit at the computer churning out emails, letters, and legal papers around the clock. Some of the emails were composed at 2:00 a.m.

I dropped the legal separation and Nate dropped the divorce and the personal injury suit. The threatening emails became relentless, saccharine declarations of undying, “unconditional” love (Pastor So-and-So must have thought the submission oath was a bad idea).

This lasted for about a week, until Nate stormed into Pastor So-and-So’s office in a rabid froth about his marital rights. Pastor So-and-So emailed me, bewildered at the dramatic change in his penitent, who not only refused to continue the counseling, but damned Pastor So-and-So to hell for refusing to help exercise spiritual discipline over his wayward wife. Pastor So-and-So warned me not to come home.

Does it sound as though I had been gone at least a year or more, given the sheer number of tactics, schemes, scams, and coercions I’d suffered through to this point?

Guess again. Nate had done all this in just shy of six weeks.

I emailed Nate and told him I wasn’t coming back. Then I braced myself. Turns out I didn’t brace myself quite hard enough for what was coming, or how quickly.

Nate showed up at 3:00 a.m. the next morning and demanded the keys to the van or he would have us all arrested. My father gave him the keys and told him to get off his property or he’d be arrested for trespassing. I was crying over the loss of the van the next day when I got word that Nate had been at the children’s school and demanded to see his children. The principal brought them to the gym for a meeting, and Nate picked up little Moriah and ran, with the principal chasing him. The principal called me and the police, and I followed my former family van out of town in my mom’s car while having a panic attack. The police pulled Nate over but then let him go, because I had no custody papers.

The police had to pick me up out of a muddy ditch where I had collapsed, weeping, as my little girl was legally abducted. In Virginia, even if you have custody (which I didn’t), any parent who has visitation rights can abduct a child from anywhere at any time, and they are guilty of, at the most, a second-degree misdemeanor. Parental kidnappers are never subject to arrest in Virginia unless they cross state lines. It is believed that most of our missing children are missing because they were abducted by non-custodial parents. When your child is abducted by a parent who has any parental rights at all, your only recourse is to file a show cause and go to court. I would have to regain custody in Virginia Beach.

I got a lawyer in Virginia Beach and filed for divorce and custody. My attorney bills went into the stratosphere within a month. As with my former lawyer, phone calls and faxes were unceasing. One Sunday afternoon my lawyer received a 52-page fax from Nate. The personal injury suit was scheduled for trial as well.

I would not see my little girl again for nine weeks.

I had landed in the hall of mirrors commonly known as the juvenile justice system, and its machinations were limited only by the time and energy of a man possessed, a man running on sheer rage. Only with me, it would never stop with juvenile court. In fact—and I’m thankful I did not know this in 2000—it would never stop at all. When Nate said he would avail himself of every legal procedure available, and appeal every negative decision all the way up, he was making the only promises to me that he’s ever kept.

Discuss this post on the NLQ forum!

Read all posts by Tess Willoughby!

NLQ Recommends ...

'Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment' by Janet Heimlich

‘Quivering Daughters‘ by Hillary McFarland

‘Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement‘ by Kathryn Joyce

by Sierra

I loved driving. I’d always known I would. As a child, I collected Hot Wheels cars until they numbered in the hundreds. When I was twelve, my mother decided to teach me to drive in case my father’s rage spilled over completely and I needed to escape. It was both terrifying and exhilarating. The car felt huge and seemed to move so much faster when my hands were on the wheel. I crowed with pride as I successfully navigated the winding roads of our rural neighborhood, passing a UPS truck with wide eyes and short breath.

As I grew older, I periodically stowed away money for a car. At my bakery job, I thought I might finally have a chance when I amassed $1,000 – a year’s savings. Anxious to get wheels, I researched motorcycles and mopeds, which were both cheaper and had a younger age restriction, but was repeatedly told that young ladies shouldn’t ride motorcycles – how could I, in a skirt? I was prepared to make it work until winter convinced me of the foolishness of that plan. I focused my energies again on hunting for cheap cars.

Time and again my savings evaporated: my father took the thousand; rent and food took the rest. I was a contributing member of the household; that meant petty savings for a teenager’s car was low on the priority list. Each time my mother’s outdated and under-maintained car ran itself into the ground and she was forced to buy or lease another, she promised that next time, I’d get to keep the old one. It never happened.

When I was sixteen, my mother and I moved to a farmhouse apartment in a rural area with only one general store within twenty miles. I applied for a summer job there, but was last in the queue of several farm kids and was never called back. My mother commuted to the bakery, an hour’s drive, and I was left to fend for myself in the house. My halfhearted attempts to master Algebra II soon dissolved, and I began to spend my days online, as I had done three years earlier. This time, I was playing a video game: Dark Age of Camelot, an online roleplaying game. All pretense of homeschooling was silently dropped. Our house was not in order; public school was not an option. And so I vanished into a game.

Sven and I played the game first together, igniting no small controversy in the church. The fantasy genre was already suspect: everyone knew that good Christian kids didn’t read Harry Potter, much less play any game resembling (God forbid) Dungeons and Dragons, where kids practiced actual incantations and learned to command the legions of the devil. (Oh, how many high schools would mysteriously burn to the ground if that were true!)

Sven and I defended our pastime vociferously: we knew no occult spells. Sure, there was “magic” in the game, but we were only pressing buttons to launch imaginary fireballs at opponents. There was no devil here. Our loudest opponent, a 26 year old, insisted that the only way to avoid witchcraft was to avoid the appearance of magic.

He was holier than we were; he only played Grand Theft Auto.

As my life dwindled to Sunday church services and fellowship, occasional trips to northern New Jersey to work at the bakery, and the closed Algebra book on my nightstand, I investigated more areas of Dark Age of Camelot, playing in zones where Sven didn’t play, and interacting with other people. Eventually, I made friends. I joined a group called “Lema en Estela,” where I found I could live in another world: one where I didn’t have to demonstrate my piety. I could be imaginative here. I could compete and win without being told that I was violating God’s order. I could make jokes without being told to be sober and serious, for the hour was late. More important, I could have long, friendly conversations with people who accepted me for who I was.

Soon I’d abandoned Sven’s realm to spend all my time with Lema en Estela. I was hiding, but I was safe there. Safe from the impending failure that was my high school education. Safe from my father’s intrusions back into my life. Safe from the judgment of the adults at my church. Safe from the false girl friends who used me to get to Sven. Lema en Estela, as ephemeral as it was, was a beautiful refuge from what otherwise was an empty time.

In between escapes to what amounted to my own digital Narnia, I emerged to find a vale of sorrows: deaths in the church, then a death in my family. My father, who’d left us blissfully alone for three years, had lost his house and his girlfriend and dragged his own small business into the gutter with an exorbitant lifestyle. He crawled back to my mother, homeless and unemployed, and was met with open arms. God didn’t recognize their divorce, my mother said, and neither did she.

Within months, my father had taken up his post as “head of the household” again, even though he still wasn’t working. As the family patriarch, he spared no opportunity to let us know how we failed to live up to him: my mother still didn’t have a “real job,” and my “attitude” was bad. Though he had no interest in my mom’s religion, he was delighted by her submission: it provided him with a punching bag. Night after night, he told her how defective she was: mentally, physically, economically. His angry outbursts only grew worse when word arrived of his young brother’s suicide. I held my breath and disappeared into the digital world, as often as possible going unseen and unheard. I ate dinner in my room when I could and wolfed my food quickly to escape on other nights. I buried my nose in the Bible and the stack of sermons by William Branham on my mother’s nightstand. I cried out every night for the Holy Spirit to save me when thunderstorms sounded just like the first bombs of the Tribulation. The world outside was rending itself to pieces; I wondered if I might go unnoticed and survive.

I hid in my tiny digital world for a year. Sven and I occasionally met online to play strategy games or chat on AIM, but only rarely did we meet in the flesh. When we did, it was determined that I needed to be watched: we brought along his younger siblings, or one or two other friends, to ensure that no monkey business went on if we were ever allowed in the car together. Sometime during the year, I learned that Sven was encouraged to drive out on errands with his friend Jenny, alone. The injustice burned; I could understand Sven’s parents’ arguments about abstaining from the “appearance of evil” and not placing ourselves in temptation, but not why I was the only girl with whom the danger of evil and temptation lurked.

Then I turned seventeen, and a crack appeared in the ceiling of my world. I received my learner’s permit to drive. I slid behind the wheel eagerly, gripping the steering wheel like a life preserver. This would be my ticket out. I could feel a rush of independence surging from the engine, to the wheel, through my arms and up to my giddy brain. Once I was on the road, I could be my own person at last. Almost.

All I needed was that most distant of possessions for a girl growing up in fundamentalism: a job, and money of my own. That most coveted dream had dipped closer, and I reached with all my might.

Discuss this post on the NLQ forum.

Sierra is a PhD student living in the Midwest. She was raised in a “Message of the Hour” congregation that followed the ministry of William Branham. She left the Message in 2006 and is the author of the blog The Unspoken Words: A Non-Prophet Message.

Read all posts by Sierra!

NLQ Recommends ...

'Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment' by Janet Heimlich

‘Quivering Daughters‘ by Hillary McFarland

‘Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement‘ by Kathryn Joyce

by Bruce Gerencser

As an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) pastor I taught that the Bible clearly defined the roles of men (husbands), women (wives), and children. (a hierarchy) The Bible was clear; the husband is the head of the home and the wife is commanded to submit to the authority and rule of her husband. Like the pastor in the church, the husband is the final authority in the home. It matters not if he is worthy of such responsibility. A husband is disobedient to God if he refuses to be the head of the home. The wife, if she refuses to submit to her husband’s authority, is a Jezebel and risks the judgment of God.

I taught women that God’s highest calling for them was marriage, having children, and keeping the home. I discouraged women from going to college. After all why waste money going to college if you are going to be busy having children and keeping the home.

I taught men that God’s highest calling for them was to be leaders. Men were called to lead the church and the home. (and lead the government) The strength or weakness of any culture, church, or home depended on whether or not men were fulfilling their divine calling to lead.

Children were at the bottom of the hierarchical system. They were under the authority of God, the Bible, the pastor, their father, and their mother. (And according to my sons, the oldest brother) Children had one divine calling in life, obey!

This kind of hierarchical family structure has been a part of American society since the day the Pilgrims stepped ashore on the eastern coast of America. Over time, due to social, political, and economic pressures the hierarchical family structure was weakened. As women gained the right to vote, began working outside of the home, and began using birth control, they realized they could live without being under the control and the authority of a man. Modern American women are free to pursue their own life path, free to live lives independent of men. When women marry they are no longer considered the helpmeet. They are equal partners in the marriage. Their values, beliefs, and opinions matter.

However, in the IFB church movement women still live in the 18th century. Bound by commands and teachings from an antiquated book, they live lives strangely and sadly out of touch with the modern world. Every aspect of family life is controlled by what the Bible teaches. (or what an authoritarian Pastor and authoritarian husband/father say the Bible teaches)

I have no objections to a women willingly choosing to live and participate in a hierarchical family structure. If an Amish woman wants to live as the Amish do then I have no reason or right to object. (though it is difficult to determine if they willingly choose. Is it a free choice when there are no other options?)

For my family and I moving away from a hierarchical family structure was difficult. We had to relearn how to live. We had to examine sincerely held beliefs and determine if they still were applicable to the new way we wanted to live our lives.

I realized that I had lorded over my family. I had dominated and controlled their lives, all in the name of Jesus. By doing so I had robbed them of the ability to live their lives independently of my control. Every decision had to have my stamp of approval. Nothing escaped my purview. After all, God had commanded me to be the head of the home. Someday I would give an account to God for how I managed the affairs of my family. I took the threat of judgment seriously.

The biggest problem we faced was that since I was the one who always made the final decision my children and wife lacked the skills necessary to make good decisions. My children quickly adapted to their new found freedom, shouting a Martin Luther King Jr. like FREE FREE AT LAST, however my wife did not fare so well.

Raised in a fundamentalist home, her father a IFB pastor, Polly had spent her entire life under the thumb of someone else. She rarely had to make a decision because there was always someone else making decisions for her.

To say our new found life was difficult for Polly would be a gross underestimation. Suddenly she was forced to make decisions on her own. For a time she panicked when faced with making a decision on her own. Simple decisions, like what to order at the Fast Food drive-thru or whether or not to put gas in the car, were monumental decisions for her.(1)

Over time Polly’s decision making skills improved. Several years ago she was promoted to a supervisory position at work. (2) One night she came home from work all upset. She told me that she had made a decision about something and several people were now upset at her. I laughed… I told her….rule number one about making decisions. You will likely piss someone off. (3)

Two years ago Polly returned to college. She struggled at first, and it took quite a bit of willpower for me not to bail her out, but over time she adapted to using the computer (she was computer illiterate) and doing the various things necessary to be a good college student. She graduates next Spring. It will be a proud and happy moment when she walks the aisle on graduation day.

Polly was over 40 years old before she ever wore her first pair of pants. Same goes for going to the movie theater, drinking alcohol, cutting her hair short, reading a non-Christian romance novel, etc, etc, etc. As many people know the IFB movement is all about what a Christian CAN’T do. Some of these choices were fearful choices, God lurking in the shadows of the mind, ready to punish her for making“sinful” choices.”

With change comes new life.In many ways we have been “born again.” In 2005 I left the pastorate and we began a slow, painful process of examining our Christian beliefs.. For many years my family believed what I believed, went to church when I went to church, and obeyed any and every command I gave, complete with proof texts from the Bible . Now it was different.

I told my wife and six children that I was setting them free. I was no longer going to be the spiritual head of the home. I was no longer going to be the spiritual patriarch of the family. They were free to be whatever they wanted to be. I sincerely meant this. If they wanted to be Wiccans I was fine with it. The bottom line was this….I wanted them to be happy. If they are happy I am happy.

This last decision has caused quite a bit of controversy and conflict. Freed from my control the entire family quickly abandoned the Evangelical church. I am now an atheist, Polly is an agnostic, and our children, for the most part do not attend church. (4) Religion is still a big topic of discussion in our family. I still like a rousing debate and discussion about religion, politics, or sports. The difference now is that there is no test of fidelity. No, “did you guys go to church today?” No, “what was the sermon about?”

Our family is a work in progress. As my wife continues to learn to make decisions I also have to learn to not make decisions. I have to learn to shut up and allow people to make choices for themselves, even when I think their choices are bad. I have a new rule I live by: If I think someone is making a bad decision on an important issue I will voice my opinion but that is the end of it. I stay out of my children’s business. They are responsible adults and I support whatever decision they make, even if I disagree with it.

We are far from a finished product. Polly still freezes at the drive-thru and I still know what I want before we pull into the restaurant. We still have the same peculiar character traits we have always had. You know……….those things that annoy and bug you. The difference now is that we have learned to embrace the peculiarities and we realize that our peculiarities are what make us unique individuals. (5)

It is good to be free.

(1) Even today she freezes at the drive-thru. We joke about it now but her freezing hails from a day when I ordered everything.

(2) One of the first steps of freedom for Polly was her getting a job, A job that she has held since 1997.

(3) I was well suited for the hierarchical family system and the pastorate. I am not afraid to make decisions. Snap decisions come easy for me. It felt very natural to me to make all the decisions. However, in the home, like at work, one person making all the decisions stunts the growth of other people and when they are put into a position where they must make a decision they are often unable to.

(4) I am hesitant to label my children’s current beliefs. Two of my children nominally attend the Catholic church with their wives. My other four children, for the most part, do not attend church. I would not classify them as atheists or even agnostics. They are still figuring out what they believe. It is exciting to watch, even if the IFB part of our extended family thinks we are committing spiritual suicide.

(5) I have Obsessive Compulsive Personality (OCP) and Polly is happy with clutter. This is a match made in hell.  For many years my OCP dominated everything. I have had to learn that what I have every right to want things perfectly ordered, everything in it place, Polly also has the right not to want things perfectly ordered, everything in it place. We each have personal spaces where we are free to practice our peculiar habits and traits. We know to stay out of each others “stuff”. In the common spaces we try to find a happy medium though I must admit I have a hard time doing this. I put the following on the message board in the kitchen recently “Last Warning!! The table is not a catch-all.” Our three youngest children have followed after their mother so they tend to use the dining room table as a catch-all. This drives me crazy. 

Discuss this post on the NLQ forum! Comments are also open below.

Read all posts by Bruce Gerencser!

Bruce Gerencser spent 25 years pastoring Independent Fundamental Baptist, Southern Baptist, and Christian Union churches in Ohio, Michigan, and Texas. Bruce attended Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan. He is a writer and operates the Fallen from Grace blog. Bruce lives in NW Ohio with his wife of 32 years. They have 6 children, and five grandchildren.

NLQ Recommends ...

'Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment' by Janet Heimlich

‘Quivering Daughters‘ by Hillary McFarland

‘Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement‘ by Kathryn Joyce

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.

Practically speaking, the pastor is the final authority in the church. He is the law-giver and he alone has the final say on virtually everything. The Bible is clear, the pastor is to rule the church and church members are to submit to his rule. Pastors spend significant time reminding the church that God says he, the pastor, is the boss. The common phrase used to define this is pastoral authority. (1)

In a hierarchical system God and the Bible came first. Underneath God and the Bible was the pastor. Church members are taught that submitting to the pastor’s teaching and authority is pleasing to God and, if practiced, will bring the blessing of God.

As an IFB pastor I taught that the Bible clearly defined the roles of men (husbands), women (wives), and children. The Bible was clear; the husband is the head of the home and the wife is commanded to submit to the authority and rule of her husband. Like the pastor in the church, the husband is the final authority in the home. It matters not if he is worthy of such responsibility. A husband is disobedient to God if he refuses to be the head of the home. The wife, if she refuses to submit to her husband’s authority, is a Jezebel and risks the judgment of God.

I taught women that God’s highest calling for them was marriage, having children, and keeping the home. I discouraged women from going to college. After all why waste money going to college if you are going to be busy having children and keeping the home?

I taught men that God’s highest calling for them was to be leaders. Men were called to lead the church and the home. (and lead the government) The strength or weakness of any culture, church, or home depended on whether or not men were fulfilling their divine calling to lead.

Children were at the bottom of the hierarchical system. They were under the authority of God, the Bible, the pastor, their father, and their mother. (And according to my sons, the oldest brother) Children had one divine calling in life, obey!

Polly and I have been married almost 33 years. We have six children. Our older children went to a Christian school for a few years and for 17 years we homeschooled our children. For the first 20 years of  marriage we followed the hierarchical system detailed above. For the most part Polly didn’t work. I was the breadwinner. I pastored churches fulltime but, due to the notoriously low pay in IFB churches, I also worked a number of secular jobs. For years on end I worked 60-80 hours a week, neglecting my wife and children. Regardless of the neglect I was still the authority in the home. I was the final answer for every question. I ruled our home with a rod of iron and my family feared me. Of course I never called their fear fear. I called it a healthy respect for authority. I gave the orders and they obeyed.

For many years my wife (2) and I followed the general tenets of the quiverfull movement. (though we didn’t know it as that at the time) Our children are ages 32, 30, 27, 21, 19, and 18. Between our 27 year old and 21 year old we embraced Calvinism and became persuaded that using birth control was a sin. We believed that God was sovereign and He opened and closed the womb. Who were we to stand in the way of God blessing us with more children?

Our first child born under the “let God have his way” form of birth control was a beautiful redheaded girl with Down Syndrome. Two years later we were blessed with another beautiful redheaded girl. 20 months later our youngest child, a son (should I call him beautiful?) was born.

Before we could blink we had three more children, all in diapers. Polly was known in the family as Fertile Myrtle. I was persuaded that if I looked at her she would get pregnant. I have no doubt that we would have had 20 children if we had continued to abstain from using birth control.

Fortunately Polly’s doctor intervened and told us in no uncertain terms that Polly’s last pregnancy had taken a huge physical toll on her and any future pregnancies could kill her. We decided, God’s will be damned, that we were not going to have any more children. I was considered a hypocrite for not trusting God in this matter, but I had no desire to be wifeless with six children. (sadly my motivation was selfish) Several years later Polly had a tubal ligation and the rabbit died.

In a future article I plan to write about how the thinking mentioned in this post affected the churches I pastored and how it affected my family. I want to detail how this kind of thinking almost destroyed my marriage and how abandoning such thinking transformed my relationship with Polly and our children.

(1) Pastoral authority, IFB style, leads to dictatorial autocrats ruling over, and controlling virtually every aspect of church member’s lives. Some churches recognize the problem with one man having so much power so they have a plurality of elders, or a board of elders or deacons. Sadly, all this does is make a group of men dictatorial autocrats ruling over, and controlling virtually every aspect of church member’s lives

(2) I don’t like using phrases like my wife and my children. While most people see these phrases as harmless they are a reminder of the past, a past where Polly and the children were treated like slaves and property. I try to avoid using these phrases, but in some instances they cannot be avoided.

Discuss this post on the NLQ forum!  Comments are also open below.

Read all posts by Bruce Gerencser!

Bruce Gerencser spent 25 years pastoring Independent Fundamental Baptist, Southern Baptist, and Christian Union churches in Ohio, Michigan, and Texas. Bruce attended Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan. He is a writer and operates the Fallen from Grace blog. Bruce lives in NW Ohio with his wife of 32 years. They have 6 children, and five grandchildren.

NLQ Recommends ...

'Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment' by Janet Heimlich

‘Quivering Daughters‘ by Hillary McFarland

‘Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement‘ by Kathryn Joyce

Thick summer haze blended with the spirals of smoke belching from the backyard grill. A teenage girl in a sepia-colored seventies outfit poked at the flames with a stoic face, silently urging them to gulp up more pages from the notebooks she fed them, one after another. The fire surged with joy and then abated, leaving only charred fragments sinking into dust or drifting lazily into the air. The  grill was stuffed, but not for long. Soon the makeshift altar had reduced its sacrifices to embers. The girl sighed with relief, though the anger blazing in her chest had not subsided.

Her mother had read her diaries. They had to be burned. Her most private thoughts unmercifully exposed, her trust breached, the girl vowed to herself that no one would see those words again. As I would discover thirty years later, she also made a promise to her future daughter: she, unlike my grandmother, would never so mistrust and mistreat her own offspring.

“I trust you.” My mother said, over and over again. “I will never invade your privacy.”

I kept journals sporadically, largely as an outlet for childhood frustrations. When other girls shut me out of their circle, I scribbled furiously about it. When I realized guiltily that Christ had commanded us to love everyone, I hastily amended, “Ignore my last entry. I love everyone, those girls especially!” Sometimes the pages were filled with incoherent childhood rage: “STUPID STUPID STUPID!!” I vented. I knew more emphatic words, but good Christian girls never swore.

Despite knowing that my diaries would never be read by mortal eyes, I nonetheless resisted uttering any religious fears or insecurities. I had been told that Satan could not read our minds but could definitely hear what we said. I surmised, though I was never told, that the devil was probably smart enough to read, too, so I avoided showing fear or doubt in the pages of my journals. I alluded in the vaguest possible terms to crushes I had on boys, convinced that to have a crush was to succumb to sinful lust and thus to leave an opening for Satan. Those thoughts were evil, and must be repudiated and denied.

In time, new media burst on the scene. I sent my first email at 11 years old. My mother, still adamantly adhering to her promise to trust me, didn’t stand over my shoulder or vet my communication. I was free to email my friends at church as though we were having a private conversation. At least, that was my assumption. I was quick to discover, yet slow to appreciate, how different the lives of my peers were.

The internet was new to most people I knew, but some guidelines had been established rather quickly: the first rule was to remember that the people in chat rooms weren’t always who they said they were. The second was related: never share identifiable information. Armed with this common sense, I  boldly entered chat rooms and held conversations with strangers. Their potential wiles and innuendos flew over my head like a fleet of supersonic jets. If they were there at all, I was none the wiser for a long time.

Among the interests I pursued on the internet were websites for other children who played the Catz video game, which allowed the player to raise and breed virtual pets and show pictures of them to others. I also discovered MIDI files, which exposed me to music I had never heard before and yet held none of the threats of Satanic infiltration like rock music on the radio. MIDI files had no beat or lyrics. They couldn’t infiltrate my brain with images of sex and drugs. This latter discovery soon led to my first jolt of surprise at the exceptional quality of my mother’s trust.

I had taken to downloading MIDI files in bulk and listening to them with musical enhancement software that made their tinny sounds more realistic. I also forwarded a few to my friend Sara, the pastor’s daughter. I shared the ones I liked best and least, along with the ones that sounded most unlike any other music I’d heard before. With all the enthusiasm (and abuse of punctuation) of a twelve-year-old engrossed in a new toy, I attached my latest MIDI in an email to Sara with the subject line, “THE WEIRDEST MIDI IN THE WORLD!!!!~!!!~!!!!!”

Within hours I received a sobering reply – not from Sara, but from her father.

“This is very serious and I think you need to talk to your mother right away,” ran the email. “I have deleted this file and you need to do the same. Hotel California is a rock and roll song and I will not have it in my house.”

Scathed and ashamed, with tears brimming in my eyes, I dutifully searched out my mother and led her to the screen. “I had no idea it was rock and roll,” I explained, utterly unfamiliar with the song. At once I felt horrified, guilty and betrayed – no one had told me that Sara’s dad read her emails! Furthermore, the MIDI had no words and no bass! How was I supposed to know it was Satan’s music? If I had been caught smuggling LSD into Sara’s bedroom, I couldn’t have felt more guilty, more dirty, more wrong.

My mother rolled her eyes at the email and told me not to worry about it. The next time I saw our pastor, though, I was convinced that his eyes were burning a hole through my skull, probing for my darkest sins. He knew what a terrible girl I was, duped by rock and roll. The evil that lived in me clamored to get out. I felt my sin bubbling near the surface, about to burst forth and condemn me to death and hell in one great, horrible bang. I avoided the pastor. I avoided Sara. I avoided the computer. But time was strong enough to make me forget, or at least to think that next time might be different.

“Sometimes I struggle with all these doubts. I’m not sure the Bible is really true. I’m not sure God exists at all,” Sven wrote over instant messenger. We were seventeen.

I sucked in a sharp breath. He was confiding in me! My heart fluttered with honor and with fear at the gravity of his confession. What should I say?

“I know what you mean,” I finally responded, hesitantly. “But I’m usually afraid I’m not one of the elect. I mean, why me, of all the people in the world?”

“Hmm,” wrote Sven. “No, I don’t worry about that at all. Sometimes I just feel like it’s all made up, like there’s nobody on the other side when I pray.” Apparently realizing our depth, we soon retreated to safer topics, but the sobriety of that moment clung to me like static electricity.

Sven and I had begun chatting online whilst playing video games, an activity that caused many heads in our church to wag in consternation. Soon, however, our conversations took more serious avenues. We plotted group excursions to the Renaissance Faire, and talked about the books we’d read and the few movies we’d seen. We shared aspirations to open small businesses one day and to see more of the world. The internet was a lifeline to me, stuck at home in a rural area with no wheels, no work, and no school. Talking to Sven made me feel connected. But I wasn’t prepared for the next jolt to my misplaced sense of trust and confidentiality.

Minutes after Sven confessed his doubts about the existence God, he began to type: “My mom says…” and my heart froze. The rest of the words blacked out in my head. Had she been there the whole time? Had I just bared my own soul, unawares, before the woman who hated me? Sven’s mother had been trying for a decade to break up our friendship: she forced him to discard the gifts I gave him and forbade me to see him alone, then invited another girl to stay in their home and sent them off to run errands together in the car (a privilege and trust that I apparently never merited). When groups of his friends gathered in their house, I was conveniently shunted from the list, though the rest of the church seemed to know. Even as far back as second grade, I could recall her telling my mother that we couldn’t play together anymore, lest I seduce him with my deadly seven-year-old wiles. I had not forgotten this litany of insults, and was horrified to think that I had just given her new ammunition. “She isn’t even saved,” I could imagine Sven’s mother saying of me snidely. “She admitted it: she isn’t one of the elect!”

My mind whirled. Was it a test? Had she read the logs from every conversation we’d had together? How could I be so stupid as to think we were allowed to talk alone? Boys and girls were never allowed that! Then anger rushed into my head: why hadn’t he told me? How could he have that conversation, so obviously private and confidential, right in front of her and not think to let me know she was there? I felt a sting of shame that I had dared to hope for confidentiality in the first place: what I said to him, I should be willing to say to her, too, right? That was what it meant to abstain from the very appearance of evil, wasn’t it? Still, I chafed at what felt like betrayal.

Hesitantly, I asked as casually as I could if she’d just walked in, hoping that the question didn’t raise even more suspicion. To my vast relief, he said she had, and that she’d left again. Perhaps she’d missed our sacrilegious doubts. I remembered my mother’s statement, “I trust you,” with fierce pain and pride. Was I the only one whose mother trusted her? I had been spared this time, but now I knew that Sven’s mother might walk in and read his screen at any moment. No written conversation was safe, no confession private. No friendship existed between only two people.

When my mother said, “I trust you,” she was unique.

Discuss this post on the NLQ forum.

Sierra is a PhD student living in the Midwest. She was raised in a “Message of the Hour” congregation that followed the ministry of William Branham. She left the Message in 2006 and is the author of the blog The Unspoken Words: A Non-Prophet Message.

Read all posts by Sierra!

NLQ Recommends ...

'Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment' by Janet Heimlich

‘Quivering Daughters‘ by Hillary McFarland

‘Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement‘ by Kathryn Joyce