Tag: dominionism

Dispelled ~ One Girl’s Journey in a Home School Cult ~ Part 4 : The Darkness Sets In

November 18, 2010

Please note: The content contained herein does not necessarily reflect the values and opinions of the NLQ blog and its administrators.

by Chandra

The next morning was back to business as usual in our home. There would be no mention of my suicide attempt until I would bring it up, nearly ten years later. I knew waking that morning that Christ himself had pulled me through last night, even at fourteen. I didn’t know though, how I would get through the days and years ahead of me, that I had yet to live.

Emotionally I was spent. Going through puberty was difficult enough, and even more difficult because that also was a topic off limits to discuss. Sexual “things” were just not dealt with in our home, and like everything else that my mom and dad wanted to hide from, was swept under the rug. I had been on an emotional roller coaster in the last several months, ranging in emotions from being openly rejected to wishful hoping that somehow this scandal could be reversed: and I would once again be welcomed into loving arms by the only community that I knew.

Once everyone’s positions and the issues had been exposed, I was left alone. Alone. I hate that word…what I had remaining in my life were three things: my journal, my Bible, and my cat. I sank into a deep, deep depression.

Oh, I covered it well. I had to. But deep down there was a daily nagging, a restless wondering of, I have no one. I have no friends and no one to confide in. No one to talk to. Nightly for years, I would cry myself to sleep on my pillow, silently praying out to God “to just give me one friend, any friend, someone that I can talk to.” Those are still painful moments for me to remember and recall.

Dispelled ~ One Girl’s Journey in a Home School Cult ~ Part 3: Drinking the Kool-aid

November 12, 2010

by Chandra

I was a tender fourteen when my world fell apart. My parents had become entrenched and enmeshed with The Movement and because of this, The Movement had become everything in our life. The Movement had become a feudal lord, demanding everything from us: time, money, and resources. My family felt that The Movement WAS our family and it was The Movement that we served- from the rising of the sun to the setting of it.

John and Candi, and their four children, had become to us closer than blood. It was The Movement that joined us- heart, body, mind, and spirit. We lived and breathed for The Movement, and followed John and Candi’s every lead. My mom and dad were John and Candi’s devoted second-in-command leaders. Our two families were a potent force, having climbed The Movement’s social ladder to the head of the State of Missouri’s homeschool organization in just a few short years.

But through all of cult-like demands of The Movement, and my family’s worship of it, there was a teenage girl who longed to be free, understood, and accepted.

Justice is No Lady: Chapter 4 ~ Second Prison Break and the Norfolk Years

October 29, 2010

Warning: This story series contains descriptions of physical abuse.

by Defendant Rising

It was 1995. Nate’s grandmother’s basement was orange. It was wallpapered in a fifties motif with little vinyl record albums. My husband, the newly minted Christian attorney, had been in this basement on his laptop computer, hooked up to the internet, for six months.

I sat and looked out the basement window, the bottom of which was level with the dirt, and begged Nate for the thousandth time to disconnect and spend some time with his wife and three babies. Nate would come out of the basement only for food, sex (I had the wrong lingeré still), evening TV, and excursions to the grocery store. And to sleep.

Nate’s grandmother seemed perfectly content to have her beloved grandson remain in her house, eating and procreating and tying up the phone line, for the remainder of her natural life.

Nate would not get off the computer. He would not get a job. We lived in his grandmother’s house, sponging off his grandmother, for most of Moriah’s infancy. I nearly went mad with boredom and loneliness. Even my usual job of waiting on Nate hand and foot had been usurped by Grandma. Nate left his dirty dishes by the computer and television and Grandma cleared them away.

Nate was depressed for weeks at a time. Then, it was as if aliens had kidnapped him and injected him with super-caffeine. He would talk me to death long into the night, night after night. He had a brilliant idea that would make him millions of dollars—“wait until you hear this, baby”—building cool cars! No, he would write a book about true Christian faith, setting down once and for all proper biblical doctrine, the book of theology to end them all, and it would be called. . .”

Created To Be His Help Meet ~ An Open Letter to Debi Pearl

October 21, 2010

by Africaturtle

Dear Debi,

It’s been a few years now since I read your book Created to be His Help Meet for the first time.

I am married to a Mr. Command Man, as per your book’s description. My mom gave me your book for Christmas the first year I was married (six years ago now). She told me it was the best book she had read on the subject, and after reading it I was convinced it was too. (I had already read many other Christian books and periodicals on godly womanhood, including those of Mary Pride, Nancy Campbell, and a few from Vision Forum.) As a new wife and soon-to-be mother (I was pregnant within the first month after our wedding) I soaked up all of your stories and advice, expecting wholeheartedly to put these lessons into action and experience the heavenly marriage I was destined for!

May I also note that I had been very careful in choosing a godly, Christian man. Someone who welcomed the idea of children as a “blessing”, that served God wholeheartedly (we were involved in campus ministry together) and who respected my ideas and encouraged me to be a “keeper at home”, as described in Titus 2. I was sure we were destined for something great and unique as a family, and that our lives would be a testimony of faith and God’s greatness in a place that was in dire need of the light of the Gospel (we were living in Europe, not the US).

Justice is No Lady: Chapter 3 ~ Company of the Faithful

October 19, 2010

Warning: This story series contains descriptions of physical abuse.

by Defendant Rising

At Regent University, I had lots of role models. Sweet-tempered women were submitting to their husbands, keeping their student apartments immaculate, and having babies right and left. I learned to buy wheat berries from the local co-op and grind them to bake bread. We were Stepford Wives, only hugely, proudly fertile. We grew herbs. We read books on natural childbirth. We prayed for God to make us more meek and submissive. And we prayed for our dear darling hubbies over at the Christian law school who were going to usher in a new American Revolution and turn this country around. “Shh! Quiet! Daddy’s studying!”

It was a total time warp. Everywhere you looked, it was Ward and June and Wally and the Beav and Wally and the Beav and Wally and the Beav and little Chastity Grace Mary Martha Hope Cleaver.

I got right into the spirit of the place by watching the “700 Club” and getting pregnant. I still didn’t have the right lingeré—speaking of which, for some odd reason, pornography was being mis-addressed to our mailbox with my husband’s name on it. This was a sure sign that we were under Satanic attack. “I swear, honey, Nate swore, aghast, “I don’t know how they got my name. “That needs to be destroyed. Give it to me.” And with eyes brimming with tears at the sorry sinful state of the world, Nate went off to destroy it. Oh, that devil was a wily one, but nothing could deter my husband from his calling in the Lord.

Dan Webster’s Religious “Family Values” – Disguised Misogyny: Former devotee speaks out

October 5, 2010

For Immediate Release: October 5, 2010. For more information, contact Vyckie Garrison.

Women are conditioned to be submissive to their husbands, discouraged from using birth control, and prohibited from working outside the home. Gothard-style worldview and lifestyle overburdens women, enslaves the daughters and destroys families.

Vyckie Garrison was involved with Webster ally, Bill Gothard’s teachings for 14 years; after following the fundamentalist teachings of the ‘Quiverfull’ movement, Garrison was subjected to mental abuse and told to ignore medical advice not to have more children because her job as a woman was to obey God by submitting to her husband – an act that allegedly afforded her physical and spiritual protection.

“On the surface, Bill Gothard’s wholesome message seems to promote happy family life, but in actual practice, the lifestyle perpetuates heavy burdens and unrealistic standards for women.

“Gothard’s teachings stress that safe and proper, ‘godly’ living comes from submission to authority. A woman must submit to any and all whims of her husband, including all types of domestic abuse,” said Garrison. “Anyone concerned about women’s equality and empowerment should be alarmed by this religious movement.”

Justice is No Lady: Chapter 2 ~ First Prison Break

September 27, 2010

Warning: This story series contains descriptions of physical abuse.

by Defendant Rising

1993 was a rough year. It was the year that Nate was fired from his engineering job in Tazewell, Virginia, and first started thinking about studying the law. It was the year when we went to a conference and met a pastor who advocated corporal punishment for wives, and Nate took to his teachings like a duck to water. It was the year I had Jack, who was conceived a few months after Daniel’s birth. Most notably, 1993 marked my first attempt at a separation from Nate.

Daniel had been born at home. Nate and I were part of the Christian separatist movement of the late ’80s and early ’90s, rooted in the belief that liberals and “secular humanists” would destroy the moral fiber of America. Christian separatists— right-wing religious splinter groups including white supremacists, Y2K survivalists, secessionists, reconstructionists, and so on—believed that the upstanding patriotic Christian Americans needed to separate themselves and create a fortress of Christian homes where the true leaders of tomorrow would be raised.

We were associated with the Quiverfull movement too, which meant that we rejected birth control so that we could physically produce a lot of the leaders of tomorrow: God’s Army. Home birth, home schooling, even home church were big trends. Anything that kept the faithful tucked away in their righteous enclaves and away from the godless masses. Whole communities sprang up where Christian right-wingers could turn on (Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy), tune out (the liberal media establishment—many of us even tossed out our television sets), and drop out of mainstream American life.

We were the counter-counterculture. We were fanatics. We were darned proud of it. Quiverfull, in particular, was a philosophy that any married couple in the Christian Right could buy right into. It was so easy: Exercise Dominion! Please Jesus! Take over America! Using Tools You Probably Have Around the House!

Dispelled ~ One Girl’s Journey in a Home School Cult ~ Part 2: The Early Years

September 9, 2010

Please note: The content contained herein does not necessarily reflect the values and opinions of the NLQ blog and its administrators.

Grade school. A time of innocence, that captures the magical essence of childhood. A time of wonder, excitement, and joy; unadulterated by social concerns and pressures of adolescence. My grade school years were different.

Most homeschool mothers are proponents of making learning enjoyable, easy, and memorable for their students, using “real-life” experiences and hands-on activities to reinforce concepts. My mother was no exception. Using a combination approach, she adored and followed Charlotte Mason and loosely implemented Konos unit studies. In her mind, and in her heart, she believed that she was teaching my younger brother and myself. She had read the books by Charlotte Mason, and had underlined nearly every page in For the Children’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer McCaulley. Better Late Than Early by Raymond and Dorothy Moore and Honey for a Child’s Heart by Gladys Hunt were books she recommended relentlessly to new homeschool moms in years to come. She swore by these methods.

Practically speaking however these concepts took root in a very different form. My mother had no formal training in education and had no idea what a child needed socially, physically, or mentally, apart from what these select authors were telling her. Practically, what she took away from these methods was “Don’t push your kids. They will pick up on what they need to know academically if you allow them to play and read.” Teach them to read is all they need, is a main tenet of the homeschool religion.

And so, my brother and I did nothing. We did one unit study on Jewish feasts and Old Testament history while I was in grade school. We did another when I was in seventh grade on Medieval history that Beautiful Feet books had published. My math was shameful. Between kindergarten and twelfth grade I completed A Beka’s 3, 5, 7, Algebra ½ curriculum. My younger brother completed half as many as I did. The thesis behind this was, “Don’t push your kids. If you teach them to read, they will be able to teach themselves anything. Workbooks are boring and not the way to foster a love of learning. They are tedious. Your children do not need repetition. As the parent you know whether your child has gotten the concept or not.”