This is a new series that I’m starting. I actually started writing about my history with the one person that impacted me the most during my days at the old church. I’m flip, I’m sarcastic in this series but mostly I am processing what happened to me because it seems like a plot straight out of the recently cancelled series GCB (Good Christian Bitches). After telling my therapist years ago about this man I was encouraged to write it all down. I did and if I didn’t laugh and poke fun I’d be crying right now. It was the most corrosive relationship I’ve ever been in and I didn’t even have the common sense to run from it. I’ve changed names and some small details because until recently this person still stalked me in an effort to make me return to my old beliefs. I have to believe his extreme inner hurt drove his behavior.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If there was one person that affected my journey both into and out of a Patriarchal Fundigelical church that man would be Tom Smith. He was there at the start and he still haunts me like a cackling insano Captain Ahab chasing Moby Dick around an endless ecclesiastical sea. He has a monomaniacal desire to either force me back into our old borderline fundamentalist way of life replete with a submissive attitude or to hound me about going to hell. Sometimes he seems to spit at me “ … to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. “ but it sounds more like, “You are going to HELL for going to THAT church with homosexual abortionists and unGodly UNSAVED!!!!” Eleventy1111111!!!!

Back when the husband and I were new believers we ended up going to the same church as he back in 1995, PCC. He and his wife pounced upon us at once, inviting us over to watch movies, play cards, or share a meal. We didn’t know anyone else in the church at that time and they, Tom and Tina, had four boys ranging from just older than our son to the same age as our daughter. The kids loved to get together.

From the first I was put off by Tom’s fake-seeming Jesus Freak persona. He would do things like stop in the middle of a movie or game to lecture about Jesus. He prayed very publicly in almost a showy fashion at the drop of a hat and constantly had Christian rock and roll playing at full blast. These things set off my internal bullshit detector but since we were newly minted kool aid drinkers I thought I was the wacky one.

But it always gave me pause. It was like the minute anyone was around Tom put on this Ned Flanders false self. But I swallowed hard and thought well, I’m the baby Christian, he’s been a Christian for more than twenty years, what do I know.

Around the same time our pastor at our new church pulled me aside and told me not to be so friendly with the Smiths because they ‘had issues’. Pastor didn’t tell me what those ‘issues’ were and I could not see anything besides Tom’s Olympian attempts to be “Super Christian – Savior of the Unwashed Masses of Sinners.” I wondered about that but I didn’t do anything. Even as my internal Lost in Space Robot was shouting ‘Warning Will Robinson!” every time we socialized with the family. But… I checked my common sense at the door because the kids loved hanging out with their boys and Hubby really liked Tom and Tina.

After awhile I noticed that Tom would do and say things to his wife Tina that just rubbed me the wrong way. Tina had progressive serious muscular skeletal disease very badly, had trouble walking and sometimes functioning in simple things. She also seemed to be one of the meekest, kindest ladies I’d ever met. Tina acted always like Tom was her knight in shining armor that could do not wrong.

Did Tom treat her well? No. He sometimes would ride her like a mule, ordering, whining, nagging her over some small things. I clearly remember one night when she was having a lot of trouble walking he ordered her to make a banana split for him. He didn’t offer to help, he just keep sitting there like king turd on a mountain of crap waiting to be worshiped. I thought this was pretty harsh behavior but it was nothing compared to what he did next. Tina brought him his ice cream, acting very servile, like a whipped dog sidling up to it’s master wanting mercy but expecting to be beaten. Tom started to berate her for forgetting to put wet nuts and cherries on his ice cream. She told him that they were out. His response was to order her out of the door in the freezing sleet that was coming down, drive to Wal Mart right then (around midnight) and get his cherries and a jar of wet walnuts in syrup.

Woman!!! Get me my wet nuts and cherries right now!

She did it. I so wanted to visit violence on him that night, give him real wet nuts, but again, what did I know? Tom was a MUCH more mature Christian than I.

Tom spent the rest of the night either telling Tina what a failure as a wife she was between telling Hubby that I needed to learn to be subservient like that. It’s Biblical, don’t ya know.

On the ride home that night I told Hubby exactly what I’d been itching to say all night, that it wasn’t Biblical submissiveness we were witnessing, it was a power tripping assclown verbally abusing his disabled wife. Hubby, bless his soul he always tries to see the best in folks, said that just because their marriage and way of dealing with each other was different than ours it was just their way. Sure, he said, if Tina was being abused she’d leave.

So time marches on, I grow enough in my religious faith that I become more and more uncomfortable with the treatment of Tom towards Tina. I befriend her and discover that she’s about an intellectual as a kumquat or a lump of coal for all her niceness and sincerity. I also discover that she really believes that she should be submissive to Tom in all things and all ways. She says if she were a better person or a better Christian that Tom would love her better, be happier and not have to correct her all of the time.

We still got together with the Smiths but I became even more disgusted with Tom’s high handed behavior and his superior judgmental attitudes. I only tolerated him because I worried for Tina and we were friends now. I tried and talk to her about the way he treats her but it’s like talking to a someone that’s been brainwashed by a cult. Hubby and I make other friends at church and start to withdraw from the Smiths quite a bit.

.During all of this time Tom wastes no time or tact telling me when he thinks I’ve screwed up, have a wrong attitude or don’t treat Hubby with proper Christian womanly deference. I grit my teeth and for the sake of both Hubby and Tina I don’t knock Tom’s block off or curse him out like I secretly itch to do. Maybe I’m the wicked one that needs Christ and Christian love I’m not feeling, I think.

Also two other couples came into our circle of friends. Mike and Cathy, from Vermont. Mike works at in federal office in our town and Cathy, like Tina and most of the women at the church doesn’t work. Mike and Cathy squabble a lot over dumb things but Cathy is feisty and smart, plus we both love antiquing and interior design. The other couple, Sam and Alice, are brand new at church and also have kids in the same age brackets as ours and the Smiths. Sam is a insurance agent and Alice is studying for her masters in arts. I tried to be friends with Alice but I kept hearing warning bells in the back of my mind about her for no reason I can see. I remember one get together when Alice, Cathy and I were dancing, taking turns swing dancing with Sam and Tom got very angry before declaring dancing a sinful tool of the devil. Yep, he was being a tool once again.

About three years after we start going to church my father has a stroke and I have to leave town with my Hubby for our far-away hometown. Because I trust Tina and know she’s a great mother regardless of Tom and I knew that my father’s death would create massive family drama I leave my two kids with Tom and Tina Smith.

When we come back ten days later something has happened, something no one will tell us about. Alice and Cathy were always in a huddle whispering, cutting me out of the conversation. Tina was clueless as ever along with Sam and Mike. Tom, oh Tom, kept acting like an egg-sucking dog looking for another hen house. It was just a very weird time, strange vibrations. It was a very strange time, I felt uneasy, that robot shouting “Danger Danger!!!” again my mind but I kept mentally berating myself for having a suspicious mind.

A couple of weeks later I run into Sam in town and he asks me how I enjoyed the Vermeer exhibit in a nearby big city. I tell him I don’t know what he’s talking about. He tells me that sure I must know because Alice and I spent last weekend in Big City before going to the exhibit. Sam tells me how night it was for me to treat Alice out to a hotel room at the Four Seasons and exhibit tickets. Unfortunately I have to tell him that Alice was not with me, I didn’t spend the night in the city and I’d seen the exhibit last month before my father passed.

Tina calls me and references the same thing except she tells me how nice it was that I met Tom in Big City for the exhibit and that I didn’t have to give him the hotel stay for the night. One of the hotels near the museum was giving out those hard to get exhibit tickets for the Vermeer show. I make vague noises and get off the phone without telling her I was no where near the exhibit last last weekend.

So I call up Tom and Alice separately, confronting them about why each of them used me as an alibi. Alice bursts out crying and tells me it’s nothing, just a platonic friendship. When I reach Tom he tells me to my horror that he’s deeply in love with Alice, they are going to both leave their spouses and be together living the hipster outre life of artists.

Now this is a guy I’ve known for 3 or 4 years and never once heard one word of interest in art before. He starts babbling out that Tina has the mind and intellect of a 12 year old, that he doesn’t love her and never did. His life is crushing him, blah blah blah… and it gets worst.. to be continued.

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

Calulu lives near Washington DC , was raised Catholic in South Louisiana before falling in with a bunch of fallen Catholics whom had formed their own part Fundamentalist, part Evangelical church. After fifteen uncomfortable years drinking that Koolaid she left nearly 6 years ago. Her blog is Calulu – Roadkill on the Internet Superhighway

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A few weeks ago I took my daughter out for an celebratory lunch at her favorite Greek restaurant. She’s gotten acceptance letters from all of the colleges she’s applied to plus we really needed to touch base, take a time out together from the busy of our lives. Over sovlaki and hummus she started talking about what she would say to our former pastor Patrick if she ran into him again. She had run into him an few months ago and had been so surprised she’d just hurriedly muttered out pleasantries before leaving him as rapidly as a man with his pants on fire would run for the lawn sprinklers.

I had to ask her what she would say to Patrick if they were face to face. She blurted out something like “F**k you, motherf**ker and thanks for ruining my f**king childhood!” before laughing. We both laughed imaging the faces of those sycophants and hanger on-ers Patrick was always surrounded by if she let the F word fly.

That’s one big marker of a cult-like unhealthy church atmosphere, if everyone treats the pastor as if he is either the world’s most famous rockstar or the big toe of Jesus touching down on the earth to be adored. We saw that, participated in the pastor-pleasing behaviors too, perhaps not to the depth that many did but we did it as a family. It’s dangerous business for the most part. When everyone is busy kissing the rear end of the pastor or bowing down to his every whim and word it starts to look like a one man show with no real room for the Lord or anyone else. Plus the pastor starts to think he’s in control or assumes control. It also breeds unhealthy competition among the members all vying for the attention and favor of the pastor.

There were certainly those at Possum Creek Church that courted Patrick’s opinion on every subject conceivable or at least enabled him to control most facets of corporate life at our church. Patrick picked the praise songs, rehearsed the worship team, picked out the study materials for all classes, picked who was allowed to do what and ordered others to do other things. I hosted our yearly baptism for years because Patrick ordered it so and I never thought to say no even as it was a huge amount of work for me. Baptism used every towel in my house, meant I’d have wet people traipsing in and out of our home and that I’d had to shock treat the pool with chemicals a few times before and afterward. Huge imposition but I didn’t think I had the option to nix.

He also preached that if you were good and holy you’d be rewarded here on earth. Patrick owned three houses and told us he obtained them by “God’s Favor” He flew out to the West Coast for his doctorate studies on the church’s dime. Patrick lived a life style much better than most everyone in the church with the exception of the one wealthy family.

We had a number of families in serious debt in our church that seemed to think it was okay to spend, spend, spend on their credit cards because, after all, God was going to bless them financially. It was their right since they lived lives of pure righteousness. I cannot tell you how many bankruptcies stemmed from this thinking at the church, but if I recall correctly it might have been as high as ten percent. This was when the economy was strong too. No telling how high the rate is now. Prosperity gospel mixed with the Rock Star Pastor mentality tends to use up your time, energy, emotions AND monetary resources.

Once the economy tanked and some of us that had good jobs left the church it seems that tithing dried up. It got so bad that Patrick issued a stern letter to the congregation stating that everyone who was a church member must attend plus bring their paycheck stubs. He was demanding to see exactly what everyone made and to extract a contract from them agreeing to tithe their full ten percent on the gross pay.  Well, this went over like a lead balloon with the congregation and some still there simply refused to tithe penny one or allow the pastor to know exactly how much they made.

When Patrick left PCC it all fell apart since it was all cohesive around him as the center. One of the big bombshells of his leaving is that it came out as the church had started to lose members during these tough economic times that Patrick had indulged in a little creative money management to keep drawing his salary. He’d drained other accounts, such as a building fund and endowment funds, to pay himself until all the accounts hit pretty much zero. That’s the sort of thing that can only really happen at these one man show places. I heard later that the elders knew what was going on but felt that they had no authority to stop him.

Now the few people left at the old church are struggling to raise enough funds just to keep the electricity on much less come up with the funding for a new pastor.

Unfortunately this isn’t exactly an isolated incident. Last week I heard of a large very popular church in our area that is going to lose the entire property their church sits upon. Why? Their long time pastor moved on after convincing the elders of that church to take on huge debt to build his personal dream, a large community center. Attendance and membership dropped off after Pastor Ted left. The few remaining folks not following Ted around are stuck footing the bill for something they can ill afford. The bank is calling in the unpaid mortgage and will be seizing the building soon. My new church has absorbed many members from the fall out there.

A few days ago while reading the news on a popular online news aggregate I saw that even Brownsville Assembly of God Church in Pensacola, Florida is in similar straights after Pastor John Kilpatrick departed to start a new church in nearby Daphne, Alabama, Church of His Presence. Once the Brownsville Assembly of God church was hosting nightly revival meetings attracting thousands from around the world. This went on for years. I’ve been myself many times to the revival services. (against the wishes of Pastor Patrick, he hated it when we went off to conferences at Brownsville, or Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship or Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s Life Center Church)

I remember that the name “John Kilpatrick” was in the lips of many attending, discussing the teachings or planning to go. He was a big fish in the pond of Brownsville. The revival had already started to dwindle off before Pastor John left but it seems his leaving was something of a final straw. Many left followed him just right across the state line into Alabama to his new church.

Now I don’t know for sure that Pastor Kilpatrick was a Rock Star Pastor with a huge following but it sure seemed that way to me from my visits. The aftermath of huge debts and very few members at Brownsville makes me think that he must have been perceived that way by many. I’m not saying he urged anyone at Brownsville to go into massive debt. I’m merely observing there seems to be some markers there that the church had run amok at some point, following in the ways of those that are now trying to overcome bad decisions made by their superstar pastors.

The Rock Star Pastor can wreck a place without the pastor leaving at all. These last few weeks I’ve been reading many articles about the upheaval and allegations about TBN and it’s founders Paul and Jan Crouch. Another perfect example of control by the pastor and everyone going along with it, even if it borders on illegal and bypassed immoral ages ago.

I don’t quite think this is what Jesus had in mind with the 12 apostles or those that came after him, not controlling large groups of people or trying to live like a rap star. I think He’d be pretty aghast at what’s taken place in His name.

If your pastor is trying to preach the prosperity gospel while living like a petty dictator at the behest of his subjects then your church has morphed into a cult. Leave. Leave as soon as this starts happening because it’s not going to end well for anyone.

Finding it very sad that people can be led like sheep to abandon their own sense to follow not faith or belief but another human being just as flawed as all of us are off proverbial cliffs. Putting your faith in some Spiritual Superman is always dangerous. What I experienced with Pastor Patrick has led me to avoid the pastor at my current church much of the time. I have the opposite reaction now, I only want my own approval of my spiritual journey. Never again will I seek out the approval of pastors or put aside my own feelings and needs.

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

Calulu lives near Washington DC , was raised Catholic in South Louisiana before falling in with a bunch of fallen Catholics whom had formed their own part Fundamentalist, part Evangelical church. After fifteen uncomfortable years drinking that Koolaid she left nearly 6 years ago. Her blog is Calulu – Roadkill on the Internet Superhighway

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“Where do you get your energy?!”

This is a question which is frequently asked of Quiverfull moms by amazed and admiring onlookers who cannot imagine being able to keep up with the exponential demands of “biblical womanhood” including: perpetual pregnancy, child-bearing, adopting sibling groups, breastfeeding, baby wearing, chronic sleep deprivation, raising half a dozen or more closely-spaced, “stair-step” children, homeschooling - year round through chronic illness, child-training, character training, tomato-staking, discipling children, homemaking, penny-pinching, organic gardening, baking from scratch, once-a-month cooking, homesteading, sewing modest clothing, showing hospitality, operating a “cottage” business, staying trim, fit and healthy, and of course, serving as loving helpmeet … all without the modern woman’s “village” of helpers: daycare, preschool, play dates, public school, the boob-tube babysitter, pre-packaged and frozen foods, day spas, “me time,” credit cards, government assistance, “allopathic” medicine, Sunday School, youth group, therapists, Ritalin for the kids, or Xanax for mom.

Even a cursory perusal of the above-linked Quiverfull blogs will leave a woman feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. “Where do you get your energy?” is the obvious and unavoidable question.

The most flippant, unprofitable, guilt-inducing, and insincere responses often sound the most spiritual:

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

“With God all things are possible.”

“He will not give us more than we can handle …”

or how about this “encouraging” little pep-talk: “Just like a battery charger, the Holy Spirit dwells in us–with unlimited power and energy!” Oh joy! Christian moms of many just need to get “plugged-in” … and there is a handy dandy list provided of even more things we need to do in order to get “connected.”

Thanks. That’s really helpful.

An important aspect of energy which I have never seen discussed in Quiverfull circles has to do with how our interaction with other people affects our energy levels. Specifically, the difference between introverts and extraverts is never addressed in relation to large-family dynamics.

While an extravert is energized by frequent social involvement, an introvert gains energy through quiet, private reflection.  Being surrounded by people makes extraverts feel happy, enthusiastic, animated, and pumped full of optimism, but constant interaction drains the introvert’s energy and leaves them feeling tired, irritable, anxious and angry. It is absolutely essential to an introvert’s health and well-being to be able to get alone for significant periods of time in order to restore and recharge their own personal energy.

While it is popularly believed that introverts are shy while extraverts are out-going and sociable, there are many “social-butterfly” types who are in fact introverts because, even though they thoroughly enjoy the company of their friends and peers, when the party is over and the guests go home, the “life of the party” is wiped-out … sometimes for days afterward. Conversely, there are extraverted people who absolutely need to interact with others in order to gain energy and ward off deep depression, who unfortunately are socially awkward and have difficulty making friends.

Another important distinction is that extraverts tend to think as they talk which means that during conversations they are actually processing their thoughts, while introverts need to think everything through before they feel comfortable verbalizing their thoughts and ideas.

The difference between introverts and extroverts is not some modern psychobabble notion dreamed up by secular humanists to deter true believers from pursuing large families.

Think about it for a minute. Where do YOU get your energy? Do you feel energized after a pleasant chat with friends? If even congenial conversations which you very much enjoy leave you feeling drained of energy, you are probably an introvert. It’s not that you do not welcome the company of others, it is simply that you fill up your emotional energy reserves from within rather than drawing from other people.

With this concept in mind, consider for a moment: what if a person attempting to live the Quiverfull ideal tends to be naturally introverted?

What if all the socializing required for Dad’s job leaves him wrung-out like a wet rag by the end of the work day and desperately feeling the need to relax and breathe in the quiet seclusion of his own home?

In “A Full Quiver,” Rick Hess sloughs off the valid concern of “time” with this pious admonishment:

Worried if you will be able to stand the sacrifice of giving up your time? As one who has been there, let me reassure you that you will be rewarded many times over for giving more and more of yourself to your children.

Already sucked dry? Not a problem! All you need to do is give more and more of yourself …

What about moms like Michelle Duggar who, “spend more time together than the average family that may have two or three children just because we’re home day in and day out homeschooling and doing all our things that go along with that”? If Mom’s an introvert, how does she not go crazy from all of the non-stop interaction with her quiver full of children?

To these overextended women, Nancy Campbell offers a simple solution:

To be an encourager, you have to stop thinking about yourself and give some room in your mind and heart for others. I will never forget some words God spoke to me years ago. .”Nancy,” He said, “how can I reveal to you the needs of others if you are always thinking about yourself?” Oh how true this is.

As troublesome a problem as introversion is for Quiverfull parents, at least Mom and Dad have chosen this lifestyle. They are grown-ups with access to a broad range of coping strategies.

But what happens to the introverted children in Quiverfull homes?

This is not simply a large-family issue, it is specifically a Quiverfull problem because not all large families are as excessively family-centered and discipline-oriented as homeschooling, homesteading, family-integrated, “dare-to-shelter” – type Quiverfull families. I spent a whole day digging through pro-Quiverfull books, publications, websites, and family blogs; all of which poo-pooed the idea that children might actually need their own space and prolonged alone time.

Amy at Raising Arrows acknowledges that having their own space is important for everyone, including children in large families, though she insists that her 13-year-old son likes sharing a room with his two little brothers, and by “giving them space” she means lock boxes for older children, personal shelves, several short “brain breaks” throughout the day for children afflicted with Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), headphones, and random one-on-one time with Mom and Dad.

“However,” writes Amy, “we do not allow insurmountable amounts of time spent “alone.”

Children left to themselves are problematic. (Prov 29:15)  Minds left to wander without boundaries and guidelines tend to gravitate toward foolish pursuits (Prov 22:15).  And often there can become a craving for escape.  They want more and more and more time alone, and pretty soon you find they are totally disconnected from the family.

I first learned about introversion from my daughter’s speech therapist.  As it turns out, her speech impediment was a symptom of the frustration and extreme vexation she was feeling as a result of not getting adequate space from her siblings in order to recoup all the energy she expended on interacting with them day in and day out for weeks and months and years at a time.  A simple explanation of her need for ample alone time was all her dad and I needed to motivate us to address the problem. We arranged for our daughter to “chill out” by herself and almost overnight, she was transformed as if by magic into a much more pleasant person.  Her speech improved dramatically. She became more cooperative and personable.  Her concentration and study skills improved. She developed a refreshingly positive outlook on life.

And it occurred to me that I am an introvert too.  An introvert who was constantly surrounded by my extraverted husband and a passel of children and a martyr’s mentality which rejected and disdained the very concept of “me time.”  No wonder I felt utterly frazzled, bone-weary, spiritless and despondent.  When I felt it would be impossible to squeeze out one more drop of energy from my bankrupt inner being, I was “encouraged” by the Titus 2 women to persevere even while I was bed-ridden.

Given that those individuals who are prone to careful contemplation and thoughtful deliberation, as well as a significant majority of “gifted” persons, generally tend toward the introverted end of the extravert-introvert spectrum, it’s a sure bet that introverts actually predominate in Quiverfull homes. This may be a key reason why, when dynamic, industrious, enterprising, indefatigable Quiverfull believers finally snap, they crash and burn in the most spectacular manifestation of downright mania.  Men abandon their families. Mothers drown their children. Kids cut themselves and attempt suicide.  How much misery and destruction could be avoided if individual family members were simply allowed an adequate amount of personal solitude?

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

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(Editorial note: What follows below is my own personal thoughts on this, no one elses, I’m not speaking for the group, just me. I cannot stay silent to this. If you’re offended or triggered I’m so sorry. Warning if you are triggered by scriptures or the like.)

This morning several of us at NLQ were directed to look at “Women’s Prayer Group Praying That the Women at MRFF All Get Incurable Breast Cancer”  posting on  Free Thought Blogs.

Apparently there is a group of ladies calling themselves Christians who’ve decided to make praying for the death of anyone connected with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation their number one priority. And why is that? Perhaps because the MRFF is a watchdog organization that keeps the the Dominionist evangelical Christians in the military from discriminating, harassing or intimidating people that believe or don’t believe differently than them. Yes, the MRFF protects the religious FREEDOM our country was founded upon. Oh how very evil!

When I first read through it my immediate response was what the hell? What. The. Hell. Is. This … well you know the word. I felt like going all nasty dung-throwing rantiness on it. But I get the sense that’s sort of what they’re looking for so that this group can justify their own nastiness with a ‘See, see how EVIL they are!!!’. I wanted to throw up my hands and shout “WTF!”

I have to laugh and agree with both Chris Rodda on Free Thought Blogs and Leah Burton of POLITICUSUSA about how completely UNChristian these women are. I also want to know if in the eyes of the Lord does spelling count when issuing imprecatory death prayers. They’ve been sending around an email spelling out the names of people they are praying to be stricken with breast cancer along with some very, um, interesting spelling. Below is the email:

“Mickey Wienstien, we called you on the weekend to advice you that our womens prayer circle at our church will be ending your wickedness against Christ Jesus and his anointed of the USA in our military. In America which is Jesus’ country we can pray all we want for anything we want. you hung up on us and were rude to our leader. but will that stop us or Christ Jesus? No it will not and never could have, wicked Mickey. Our prayer circle has never failed to acheive our hosts granting of the scripture we pray. for direct intervention against you as you are a true demon to America. Luke 9:1 We will not stop our prayers until you stop the evil you do with Lucifer on a daly basis. Luke 9:1 But not against you Mickey. We know by your internet site and your book who it is to be. Now for our prayer, we pray that the women who work in your MFRR and the women in your family will befall fast moving breast cancer which can not everbe cured. We pray this for Leah Bruton, and Becki Miller, Patricia Corigan, Chris Rodda, Edie Disler, Vicky Garrison, Kristin Leslie, Melinda Moeton and Joan Slish. And you evil clan too, we pray this for Bonnie Wiensten and Amanda and Amber Wienstein and the woman lawyers Cariline Mitchel and Katherin Ritchy and all women of all who work at with for Military Freedom Against Religon Foundation. know that we pray and pray hard all the days until you stop your destruction of our American army and accept Christ Jesus as Lord and join His army.”

Guess none of them ever read Luke 6:27 through 36 or they’d know that you’re supposed to bless your enemies, pray for them and do good to them. Or are they just ignoring that part of Luke because it doesn’t line up with their personal agenda? You cannot have it both ways, either you love the Lord and seek to keep His word or you aren’t really Christians because you don’t even follow what you say you believe.

Also, Luke 9:1 that they cite in their email has nothing to do with Lucifer or their prayer circle or America. What is says “When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases,” I seriously doubt any of them are part of the Twelve. Driving out demons and curing diseases is also very diametrically opposed to praying for disease to kill someone. It’s emotional murder, harboring the spirit of murder as surely as pointing a gun and pulling the trigger. The desire is there.

Actually the only real thing that their email does expose is the condition of their hearts, that they don’t have love in their hearts, that they’ve chosen curses instead of blessings. Chose today, blessings or curses. Pretty easy to see what they’ve chosen. I’d be curious to see what the outcome in their own lives will be in six months or a year as a result of their choice to curse. One of the things I’ve learned in my years as believer and before that, be very careful what you wish on other people because the universal law of reciprocity tends to bring that thing you’re wishing on others straight back to you. When you pray for judgement on others or bad things then you’re telling the universe or God that it’s alright with you to release the same thing on you. It never ends well. Better to forgive, forget and live in peace, move on. Or you might find yourself eating a rubber biscuit. The kind you throw at someone else to hurt them, it bounces off the wall and lands right in your big old trap to poison you.

Karma can be a big old nasty bitch. I’m almost afraid for these ladies because what they’ve released in the spiritual realm can’t be a good thing. Look what happened when someone cursed King David in the Psalms 109:28 “Let them curse, but You bless; When they arise, let them be ashamed, But let Your servant rejoice” David knew enough of who he was and who the Lord is that he asked God to bless him and to outdo the curse and then turned the curse back on those that uttered it.

I remember back when I was working for a big computer company in the Virginia Technology Corridor I came to work one day just in time to see people huddled fearfully in groups here and there in the parking lot. Spray painted on the side of the building were upside down crosses, 666 and the words “Satin Rules”! Someone had thoughtfully placed a big black Hefty bag filled with dead chickens on the main door step, right smack dab on the welcome mat. Several of my coworkers were shaken up by all of this because dead chickens left on the steps of a building are a curse of death on the occupants in black arts and voodoo. One lady started crying, refusing to enter the building, thinking she was going to die. I had to point out to her that it was likely it was just one of our loonier disgruntled former coworkers that did this and that they couldn’t be much of a Satan worshiper if they couldn’t even be bothered to spell their master’s name right. It was strictly a tactic to make people fearful and fall into a self-fulfilling prophesy.

This is just more of that I think. Silly ecclesiastical posturing in an attempt to sow fear.

To those praying for death I have only to say chose carefully, blessings or curses this day. I would hope you’d chose blessings.

PS. Reminds me of this song

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

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by Latebloomer

I was not the type of daughter that my mother wanted. I was a tomboy.

My hair was very short and I preferred blue clothes. I wanted to run faster and climb higher than anyone. I wasn’t afraid of slimy frogs and worms, and I could kill a spider without batting an eye. I looked with confusion and disdain at the passive little girls with their hair-bows, sitting and talking about clothes and boys. If I had known the term “badass” back then, I would have applied it to myself with pride.

When I was young, my mom was more tolerant of this. After all, in the early days, there were mostly boys in my age group in our small homeschooling community. So I was free to run wild with the boys and join their sports games during our weekly park days.

However, puberty was looming, and it signaled the end of my adventurous life. It was time for me to learn to act like a “lady”, and the means of teaching was through one sentence: “That’s not very ladylike”.

I was a difficult student; after all, the rules seemed very arbitrary and I couldn’t see any advantages that compensated for the extra restrictions. The heart of the message seemed to be that I had to become extremely aware of my body in order to keep other people from being aware of it. A lady did not run. A lady did not sit with her knees apart. A lady did not lie down in public. A lady did not make random bodily noises or find them amusing. A lady did not use crude language like the word “crap” or “fart.” A lady did not wear tight or revealing clothing–for awhile, that meant no shorts or sleeveless shirts. A lady never pointed to or discussed her own body in public. And most of all, a lady never called boys or invited them into her bedroom (not even when I was 23, in a group, with my family home and my door open! WHAT did my mom think I was going to do, have a blatant daytime orgy before my first kiss??).

And besides the extra restrictions, there were also extra responsibilities. I had to learn to sew and cook, things that my brother was exempt from. I tried and tried, but I was never able to enjoy these womanly skills. Eventually my mom gave up on me and moved on to teaching these skills to other more grateful homeschool girls, leaving me feeling jealous and rejected.

It didn’t help my situation that my sister took naturally to wearing cute dresses, having tea parties, and making crafts. She didn’t even need coaching, while I was unsatisfactory even with coaching. As I watched my brother leave for his many outdoor adventures with other boys, I felt cheated and limited, having been born a girl.

In some ways, I was lucky compared to many other girls in the Christian Patriarchy culture that attended Hope Chapel with us. I was never required to wear only dresses or have long hair. I didn’t have to take care of innumerable younger siblings. But most importantly, I was actively encouraged to go to college.

For many conservative Christians, higher education is seen as suspect because of the so-called “secular liberal bias” of universities and professors. That was the case for my family as well. However, my parents were unusual in our church and homeschooling community because they believed that even a daughter should be educated enough to support herself if necessary. So they encouraged me to attend a very conservative Christian college such as Bob Jones University, Pensacola Christian College, or Moody Bible Institute. They advised me to choose an area of study that would allow me to supplement my future husband’s income by working from home after I had children.

So, why didn’t I head off to college right away? After all, I was completely miserable at home due to the extremely authoritarian parenting style that my church promoted. There were really two reasons: first, my severe social anxiety made the thought of college overwhelming and terrifying. Second, my parents’ pro-college message was drowned out by the sexist anti-college message of my church.

A couple more years of worsening family relationships, of increasing depression, of a sense of purposelessness, of no prospects of a church-approved way out of that mess–that was exactly what I needed to reach my breaking point. My exact thought process at the time was this: “I’ve been praying for guidance about my future for years, and I haven’t heard anything. I can’t go on like this. I’m going to just start moving and hope that God will steer me if I go the wrong direction.”

As I left home for the first time at age 23, I felt small, weak, timid, and vulnerable, heading out into the great wide world all alone. There was no trace of my former badass self from childhood. So is the Christian Patriarchy right about women after all?

People tend to live up to the expectations of those around them, what others believe they are capable of. The sexist beliefs then become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The women in the church were told over and over that they were easily deceived and easily swayed by their emotions and needed a man’s protection/guidance. But denying women education and experience is what made them that way.

College was a time of transformation for me; I was overcoming my severe social anxiety, discovering my true identity, learning to be comfortable with sexuality, and learning to set boundaries and take responsibility for myself. Marriage has only continued that process, as my husband and I work to maintain an equal partnership–something truly beautiful that I didn’t know existed 7 years ago.

Now I am a feminist stay-at-home mom. I stay at home because I want to, because I love the bond I have with my little one and the adventures we have together as I introduce him to the world. I can understand his excitement as he discovers what he’s capable of….because I’m finally feeling it too.

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

Latebloomer is on a journey away from the ideals she was raised with in the conservative homeschooling culture. Becoming a wife and mother has prompted her to re-evaluate her childhood experiences in an effort to avoid repeating those mistakes.  Her blog Past Tense Present Progressive is her place for sorting through her thoughts.

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by Calulu

(or be careful who you tell your secrets to..)

Bless me Father for I have sinned… told you I’d been raised Catholic. One of the big rituals from my days in Catholic school was the time of confession. At first I found it frightening, going into that big wooden closet-like structure, sitting down with only a metal grill separating you from a priest. You usually couldn’t make out exactly which Father was hearing your confession.

It was always awkward, trying to scare up a list of all the bad stuff you’d done that week. I was a shy bookish young girl and nervously squirmed in the confessional trying to come up with my wrong doings, only to sometimes whisper out stuff I didn’t even do just to have something to say. I’d blurt out that I’d thrown a rock at a bird or told a lie because I just froze, my brain going into some sort of crazy lock up. The priest would tell me something like it was important to recognize your wrong doings, that the Lord forgave us, give me a simple penitence such as saying the Rosary a number of times before dismissing me with the words to go and sin no more.

Like that was going to happen. None of us is perfect, me least of all. So the next week I’d find myself back in the box confessing again in a haze of guilt and shame. Shampoo, rinse, repeat ad infinitum.

When I was a teenager it became a game among some of my friends and I to try and invent the most outrageous of tales to shock the priest during confession. If you could get him to react in surprise, like drop his Bible or sigh it was bonus points.

When I started going back to church, in my early fundigelical days, our pastor took us through the study of the power of confession and breaking through barriers that hold us back. We went through a few months of studying Neil T Anderson’s “The Bondage Breakers” The crux of the book and study was that you had to recognize, confront and confess those things that were holding you back. As we finished up the series we were all issued companion workbooklets titled “The Steps to Freedom in Christ”

Recently I found this booklet in our storage room, among the things I’m sorting to either throw away or give to Goodwill. It was Jim’s book and I idly leafed through it. It had things in it such as the ‘Non-Christian Spiritual Experience Inventory’ and tons of formulaic prayers to renounce such things as past abortions, homosexuality, pornography, eating disorders. There were even special sections dealing with past sins such as being baptized in urine as Satan’s own and any wedding ceremony to Satan.

We were issued these booklets with the strict instructions to take them home, pray for a long time to have the Lord open our minds and then work through the materials. On the next Sunday we were supposed to bring the booklets back, all filled in, talk about the experience before the Pastor collected them all and locked them away in a file cabinet. He explained the reasoning for locking them away as so that we would be accountable in the long term, knowing our spiritual inventory sheets were saved.

Oh I well remember the weekend Jim and I each did ours. I remember weeping, on my knees, begging Jim to forgive me for many of the things I’d done wrong in our marriage. I also remember that against my own best judgment I brought my booklet back to church to turn in. Jim wisely refused to turn his in.

As we talked about the experience in our study the pastor encouraged people to stand up, tell their confessions and how they would be changing.

At first people got up and told their stories, small things like learning to be more patient and they repented from read horoscopes in the past. But as the teaching hour rolled on the confessions got more bizarre, much more awkward to sit through, people started to squirm. One member stood up to say he repented from his bad temper, that sometimes he felt like killing others as a result of their actions and he knew that was wrong. Later he did kill someone and I wonder now if perhaps his uncomfortable confession was a warning sign we all missed.

But one poor sixteen year old boy named Danny broke my heart. He stood up and started to rant in great graphic detail his daily struggles with masturbation. He shouted out that he’d had a bonfire to burn all his porno magazines and he’d smashed his computer so he couldn’t look at porn there either. He went on and on and on to the point where you could feel how embarrassed most of us were for this kid. I remember shrinking back into my chair wishing that the floor would open and swallow me just so I wouldn’t have to listen to this child proclaim his mastery over a ‘sin’ that was more biological normal drive than any amount of evil.

I know I had to be beet red listening to Danny’s words. More than anything I longed to tell him that his desire to masturbate was no sin, it was part of the development of his body, his awakening sexual drive. That he was blessedly NORMAL! But I didn’t dare because I knew there were too many at my church that viewed anything that wasn’t one man and one women having sex in the dark in missionary position to try to have a baby as the blackest of sins. Slippery slope to hell.

Finally, mercifully it was over after a few more sexual confessions from others. We’d veered from simple confession to complete too much information time. Pastor collected the work booklets to lock away. In the years to come the information on the sins confessed were used by the church leadership to sort of bully those that had confessed into behaving.

How so? When I joined worship team during the interview I was asked specifically about some of the sins I’d listed. Particularly if I still practiced that demon-inspired exercise Yoga. The only reference I’d ever made to anyone at church about Yoga was in my spiritual inventory booklet. It could only have come from there. Found out later that I wasn’t the only one asked about things they’d repented from in that booklet the pastor now possessed.

I didn’t think then and I sure don’t think now that Yoga is ‘sinful’ but then again the spiritual inventory listed such things as Magic eight ball, Martial arts and Dungeons & Dragons as hideous sins. Have a incubi or succis visit you in the night? Going to hell. Drink someone’s blood? Going to hell. Do the downward facing dog position in Yoga? Going to hell (according to their standards)

So what is my point, I bet you’re saying. My point is that confession for the purposes of unburdening yourself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But confession as a means of gaining information about you to be used against you later is something a cult would do. A cult seeking to control you, wanting to know all your little dirty secrets.

It all boils down to control, not attempting to help you recover from some self harm. If the faith community you are a part of seeks to control what you think, your sexual life, your relationship with your spouse, what type of exercise you do then you can be pretty sure they’ve slipped into cult territory.

Confession has it’s time and place, the middle of a church wide Bible study is not that place usually. I like that the Catholics had confession as something between you and God with a priest intermediary, not checkmarks in a book filed away or shocking the pants off everyone in the congregation.

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

Calulu lives near Washington DC , was raised Catholic in South Louisiana before falling in with a bunch of fallen Catholics whom had formed their own part Fundamentalist, part Evangelical church. After fifteen uncomfortable years drinking that Koolaid she left nearly 6 years ago. Her blog is Calulu – Roadkill on the Internet Superhighway

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by Libby Anne

In Part 1 I discussed the definition of emotional incest, in Part 2 I discussed its relationship with Christian Patriarchy, and in Part 3 I pointed out just how easy it is to slip into the harmful emotionally incestuous dynamics (the “daddy’s girl” effect). I am now going to turn to the problems and pain emotional incest causes.

But first, I want to note that emotional incest can happen in any family (not just one involved in Christian Patriarchy) and that it can happen with sons as well as with daughters. In focusing as I have on daughters, and also on Christian Patriarchy, I have of necessity left a lot out.

Emotional incest causes a multitude of problems, but I’m only going to address the three I see as most significant: first, it creates a relationship triangle between the parents and the child; second, it makes the child responsible for the parent’s well-being; and third, getting out of this situation can have the same effects as a really, really nasty breakup.

A relationship triangle

In the case of father/daughter emotional incest, a sort of relationship triangle forms between the father, the daughter, and the mother in which the mother can become shut out. The father can find affirmation and emotional fulfillment in his daughter rather than in his wife, and the father can make his daughter, rather than his wife, his partner in plans, dreams, and hopes for the future.

In Christian Patriarchy, the husband is in charge and the wife acquiesces. In this sort of a situation, it is not uncommon for the husband to have very little respect for his wife’s intellect and judgement. Furthermore, wives in patriarchal relationships aren’t always completely happy with their situations, even if they believe it’s what God has commanded, and this can lead them to chafe at being under their husbands’ authority and to nag or resist in little ways.

Daughters in Christian Patriarchy, however, were generally raised with these ideas from the very beginning. Thus the friction that may be present in the parents’ relationship will often not be present in the relationship between the father and the daughter, and the daughter will instead adore her father and think of him as perfection itself. Furthermore, a daughter can offer her father the chance to shape and create his ideal woman, complete with intellect and the heartfelt adoption of his goals and dreams. (Think of the Botkin sisters.)

The result is that the father may make his daughter his confidant, and prefer to bask in his daughter’s adoration than to face his wife’s discontent. In this way the daughter can come between her parents, and even replace her mother as her father’s confidant and as his partner in dreaming and planning for the future.

An unfair responsibility

Next, emotional incest results in the child feeling responsible for the well-being of the parent, and in the parent’s well-being becoming dependent on the continued affirmation of the child. The result is that the child becomes stuck. The child must continue to feed the emotional needs of the parent, or else risk hurting the parent and feeling responsible for doing so. The ability to destroy the parent is placed in the child’s hands.

I’ve written before that my father carefully shaped me into his perfect ideal, and that when I broke out of his mold and started forging my own way, it was like I suddenly became broken and ruined in his eyes. I sometimes think that I was like a perfectly chiseled statue that came to life and, by moving out of the pose I had been set in, dashed the hopes and dreams of the craftsman who created me.

Watching my father withdraw into his shell because I questioned his beliefs and refused to conform to his ideal was one of the most painful experiences in my life. Watching the horrible pain I had caused him by stepping out of his mold and refusing to be his ever-adoring confidante was quite simply excruciating. Looking back, I’m not sure how I did it.

For a time, I felt incredibly guilty about the pain I had caused. But the conformity that was required of me was simply too much to acquiesce to, and at some point I’d gone through enough pain myself that I just wanted out at all costs, regardless of what shattered pieces I left behind. I just needed to get out on my own, to shut the door to what was behind, and to have a fresh start. And this is exactly what I did.

What I felt most guilty about was leaving my mother and siblings with the aftermath of the pain my flight had caused my father. I felt bad that they had to pick up the broken pieces and clean up the mess I had so unwittingly helped create. But somewhere deep inside of me I knew that my father’s emotional well-being should never have been in my hands in the first place, and that what had happened was not my fault.

Going through a breakup

In order to form my own beliefs and opinions and choose my own life path, I had to break up with my dad. I realized recently that the dynamic between my father and I when I return home is, I would imagine, very like the dynamic between a couple who were together for years and then experienced a very nasty breakup. There’s the knowledge of what you used to have together, but also the memory of the pain of the breakup and what led up to it.

Of course, for this analogy to truly work you have to remember that the relationship that was broken off was not one between two equal adults. Imagine a relationship in which an older partner feeds off the adoration of a younger partner and requires conformity and obedience. Then, when the younger partner resists this obedience and conformity, a long and painful breakup ensues, beset by emotional manipulation and attempts by the older partner to get the younger partner back by whatever means possible.

I adored my father so much growing up that I frequently said I wanted to marry someone just like him in every way. I literally thought my dad was perfect – as in, I thought this when I was 17, not just when I was 7. I gave my dad my heart and practically worshiped him. And then I lost him. The moment I started questioning the beliefs he had taught me, he closed himself off from me. Our relationship ended that day, and all that remained was anger, manipulation, and guilt. I was left to grieve the loss of my father while wading through the storm of pain that was raining down on me.

It’s funny, the purity culture teaches that girls are supposed to give their hearts to their fathers for safekeeping. This way the girl will not give her heart away to some boy and have it broken, or so the argument goes. There is never any consideration that a girl’s father might break her heart.

Conclusion

This post isn’t all that long, but I’ve nevertheless written and rewritten it a dozen times. This subject is difficult to discuss because it still hurts, somewhere down inside of me, and because remembering the pain is not pleasant. And really, I’ve just scratched the surface: emotional incest manifests itself in many different ways and with many different variations.

I think it is important to address this problem in order to bring healing to those who have suffered through it and hope to those who are still dealing with it, and I also think it’s important to point out that the possibilities for emotional incest to occur are magnified in families who practice Christian Patriarchy, and also in fundamentalist and evangelical families (and Christian homeschooling families) in general.

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

Libby Anne grew up in a large evangelical homeschool family highly involved in the religious right. College turned her world upside down, and she is today an atheist, a feminist, and a progressive. She blogs about leaving fundamentalist and evangelical religion, her experience with the Christian Patriarchy and Quiverfull movements, the problems with the “purity culture,” the intricacies of conservative and religious right politics, and the importance of feminism. Her blog is Love, Joy, Feminism

We would love to feature your personal story on No Longer Quivering. Please submit what you have to say via our submissions form.

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by Sierra

[Editors' note: At the time of writing, Libby Anne and Sierra were unaware of the controversy surrounding Hugo Schwyzer. The discussion of his critique of emotional incest is not an endorsement of Schwyzer by NLQ.]

My last two posts, and indeed all my thinking on the subject has led me to some conclusions about the ways that Christian Patriarchy and purity culture enable and even celebrate emotional incest. The following are the cliff notes:

Christian patriarchy turns marriage from a relationship to an institution, effectively reversing the historical trend from business partnerships and heir insurance to bonds between two free agents based on love. Evangelical culture says that marriage takes three: you, your spouse, and God. It also promotes self-denial and the sublimation of one’s own desires to those of Christ. Therefore, any two evangelical Christians should be able to marry each other and have a godly, fulfilling marriage, given enough work and prayer. Purity culture says that chemistry and personality don’t matter. What matters is following the Word of God. Husbands and wives should love each other because it’s commanded in God’s Word to do so; loving his wife is a husband’s “first ministry.” Similarly, a wife “ministers” to her husband by submission and love. The core of marriage in Christian patriarchy is the commitment to be loyal to God and to the marriage, not attachment to the person of the spouse. This is why evangelical courtships are more focused on purity than the prospective partners getting to know each other personally; what matters is getting to the altar without regrets. The love in marriage flows from commitment rather than the other way around, mirroring the logic of arranged marriage.(Note: Most evangelical Christians do acknowledge the importance of an emotional bond between the bride and groom that develops before the wedding day. Most evangelical Christians do want their children to marry people whom they find attractive, companionable and fun. If you are one of these Christians, you’re not the one I’m critiquing. (Congratulations! You’re normal!) What I do find problematic is the branch of evangelical-fundamentalist Christianity led by people like Bill Gothard, Matthew Chapman (who famously didn’t ask his wife to marry him), Doug Wilson, Jonathan Lindvall, et al. who expect young people to marry with hardly any knowledge of each other, rigid parental oversight and laundry lists of abstract virtues rather than personality traits in mind.)

The institutionalization of marriage in Christian patriarchy leads to relationships based on order, hierarchy and duty rather than affection. Husbands are commanded to be leaders of their wives. Wives are commanded to submit. Husbands are commanded to love. Wives are commanded to reverence. Marriage is reduced to performance of a gender role. Although individuals frequently subvert this, the ideal is that husband and wife will relate to one another as master and subordinate, with two distinct spheres of duty.

Women who must obey their husbands turn to their sons for more equal partnerships. Most evangelical-fundamentalists do not place the son’s authority higher than the mother’s, though some do. A mother can share interests with her son, disagree with him, choose their mutual activities and challenge her son in ways that she cannot challenge her husband. This promotes emotionally incestuous mother-son relationships in which the son becomes his mother’s main source of emotional support.

Husbands whose wives are constrained with childbearing and homemaking turn to their daughters for emotional affirmation. Wives are required to respect, obey, and love their husbands. Daughters are, too, but their devotion and admiration are more often the natural results of kind parenting than coercion or dogmatic instruction. (I fully acknowledge that many daughters don’t love their fathers, because their fathers are distant, abusive, etc. I am one of those daughters. However, a daughter whose father raises her kindly will usually love him without hesitation.) A daughter’s love is more spontaneous, and hence may feel more genuine than a wife’s love. A daughter is also less inhibited by years of conflicts, submission and moral instruction. She is simply younger and (usually) more enthusiastic. As a child, she is also more inclined to want to please her father – especially as that trait is cultivated in girls. As Libby Anne also points out, a daughter is more susceptible to her father’s influence, and has the potential to be molded into the ideal partner.

Christian patriarchy cultivates father-daughter emotional incest through purity pledges and purity balls, father-daughter dating, stay-at-home daughterhood, “practice” homemaking and the courtship process that gives fathers veto power over a girl’s relationships. Daughters are explicitly taught that they should submit to their fathers as their “heads” until they marry, that the father-daughter relationship is practice for marriage, that fathers should treat their daughters the way they want their future husbands to treat them (as opposed to being an example by treating their wives the way they want their daughters treated). With your father “guarding your heart,” you can hardly form relationships that don’t include, or indeed center on, him.

Purity culture limits young people’s access to one another through courtship and sex-segregated activities.This means that contact between the sexes is extremely formal, and many children of large families form their deepest bonds with their parents and siblings. This can stunt their ability to make friends or find partners on their own, further cementing parental control over spousal choices. It also limits children’s access to other families that could show them alternatives to the kinds of relationships that exist within their own families, leading them to think that their own family dynamic is “normal” even if it isn’t.

Quiverfull families normally rely on the eldest children (usually daughters) to parent younger siblings. This can artificially elevate the eldest children to the status of co-parents or partners for their parents. Normally, emotional incest occurs between a parent and his or her eldest child (though there are undoubtedly exceptions).

This is not to say that only patriarchal Christians are vulnerable to emotional incest. It is, however, to point out that some central tenets of Christian patriarchy and quiverfull enable those relationships to flourish unchecked. The results, when they are terminated, can be devastating for both parents and children. These relationships can have ripple effects that prevent children from forming healthy bonds with their own partners in adulthood. In the case of stay-at-home daughterhood, however, this flaw is considered a benefit. If daughters remain at home, serving their fathers, well into their own adulthood, they are treated as success stories. They shouldn’t be.

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 phoenix and the olive branch

We would love to feature your personal story on No Longer Quivering. Please submit what you have to say via our submissions form.

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by Libby Anne

[Editors' note: At the time of writing, Libby Anne and Sierra were unaware of the controversy surrounding Hugo Schwyzer. The discussion of his critique of emotional incest is not an endorsement of Schwyzer by NLQ.]

In Part 1 I looked at the definition of emotional incest and in Part 2 I looked at how integral emotional incest is to Christian Patriarchy, but in this segment I want to look at how easy it can be for even ordinary families to be sucked into (admittedly, less intense) patterns of emotional incest.

I recently came upon an article called “Princesses, Princes, Daughters, and Dads: Against Emotional Incest.” The author explains his own experiences as the father of a young daughter and the measures he plans to take to ensure that he does not fall into the trap of emotional incest. It was such a good article that I’m going to quote from it at length and then finish with some discussion.

Becoming a parent for the first time in one’s forties has myriad advantages, not least that one has had the opportunity to watch a great many of one’s peers “do it all first.” And I’ve seen, a time or nine, an unhealthy triangulation occur with dads, moms, and their daughters. While the dangers of physical incest and abuse are real, there’s a kind of emotionally incestuous dynamic I’ve witnessed between fathers and daughters, one in which dads seek from their daughters the validation and affirmation that they feel they are entitled to, but are not receiving from their wives.

Little children adore their parents. Really, it’s a lovely thing to come home each day and be welcomed, as I invariably am, with gales of excited laughter and delight. My daughter’s love is an impressive thing to feel, especially as she’s gotten better recently at wrapping herself around my neck and squeezing me tight. No matter what has transpired during the day, no matter what I’ve said or done (or failed to say or do), Heloise seems to adore me….

Of course, spouses aren’t the same as children. My wife loves me, a fact of which I blessedly have no doubt. But she most certainly doesn’t have me a on pedestal, doesn’t think I’m flawless, and doesn’t greet me with shrieks of joy everytime I walk into the house. Eira engages with me as a partner, and she challenges me and pushes me and asks me for things; I do the same for her….

Here’s the thing: I’ve seen men play their daughters against their wives, mistakenly believing that the way in which their daughters see them (as heroic and perfect) is the way that their spouses ought to as well. If a man hasn’t done his “work”, he may find himself looking at his daughter, gazing up at him with adoration, and he may start (resentfully) to contrast his girl’s fierce and uncomplicated devotion with the somewhat less enthusiastic reception he may be getting from his overworked and exhausted wife. In most cases, this doesn’t mean the papa will turn to his daughter sexually, … [b]ut he may find himself relying more and more on the affirmation he gets from his adoring baby girl.

…a great many dads (and it wasn’t until I became a father to a baby girl myself that I realized how common this was) start to rely more and more on the simple intensity of their daughter’s love rather than doing the much more difficult work to remain connected with their wives. I’m certainly not saying every father of a daughter does this, but it is common — and if you ask the mothers of daughters, as I have, you’ll hear plenty of anecdotes about this.

Plenty of daughters grow up with a sense that they are somehow responsible for taking care of their fathers emotionally, for being the good and understanding woman in his life (as opposed to the mother/wife figure, who is invariably cast as judgmental and cold.) To do this to a daughter is child abuse, and I am determined not only not to do it myself, but to be bolder at calling out other fathers of daughters when I see the signs of what can only be called emotional incest.

Heloise may or may not choose to be a princess as she gets a bit older. But in her little games, I will not play the part of the prince. I’m a father, and that is something utterly and wonderfully different. And if I need validation, I need to go and get it from my equal, my peer, and my partner — the one who will make me earn that validation, as she should.

I quote from this article both to point out how common emotional incest is and to emphasize that emotional incest is not simply a result of Christian Patriarchy. Rather, emotional incest can occur in any family. And I think this article moved me especially because it sounded so very, very familiar.

What Christian Patriarchy does do, though, is institutionalize this dynamic. It takes the problematic father/daughter relationship this author describes and glorifies it. While the author here sees it for the problem it is, Christian Patriarchy holds it up as the ideal – and then takes it even a step further.

And this article also points out the problem I pointed out in the previous segment: father/daughter emotional incest creates a triangle between the father, the mother, and the daughter, and can result in the father essentially shutting the “troublesome,” “demanding,” or “cold” wife for the warm love and affection of his adoring daughter.

And I’m sitting here with emotion flowing through my body because I know the pain this dynamic causes. I’ve experienced it. I am going to write one more segment in this series, and that one will be the hardest. Writing this series – and doing the internet research needed to do so – has opened wounds and rendered me raw. It hurts. But it’s also how we heal. I can’t move forward without admitting the past, without confronting the past, acknowledging that it happened, and staring it down.

I’m writing this series even though it’s hard because, well, someone needs to write it. Someone needs to talk about it. Someone needs to put this out into the open. Until the problem is seen for what it is, the pattern will just keep repeating.

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

Libby Anne grew up in a large evangelical homeschool family highly involved in the religious right. College turned her world upside down, and she is today an atheist, a feminist, and a progressive. She blogs about leaving fundamentalist and evangelical religion, her experience with the Christian Patriarchy and Quiverfull movements, the problems with the “purity culture,” the intricacies of conservative and religious right politics, and the importance of feminism. Her blog is Love, Joy, Feminism

We would love to feature your personal story on No Longer Quivering. Please submit what you have to say via our submissions form.

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(Editor’s Note: Millipede has been recounting her history of how she came to join a patriarchal lifestyle on our forum starting about six months ago. She’s graciously agreed to allow her writing to be reposted here. We thank her for that!)

To tell it in a nutshell; my husband and I became part of a reactionary milieu, joining a “movement” which addressed various issues such as gun rights, survival ism and so on. I still hold my beliefs pertaining to these issues and so this is not an indictment of “right wing extremism”. In fact those early years were wonderful and I would gladly join such a group.

I was not new to such views. Years before I even met my husband, I had been active in various causes. In the intervening years I had become inactive and so when my when my husband and I started exploring various issues I felt joy at becoming politically active again.

I am giving background, not getting up on a soap box.

Anyway, the road to patriarchy was at first slow. Even in right wing “extremist” circles there is quite a diversity of beliefs concerning patriarchy. Also, there are some who may on the surface appear to endorse patriarchal belief systems, but are actually pretty mild if not “enlightened” in their views and treatment of women. There are even some who could be called feminists. Again certain causes attract all sorts of people. It was sort of our version of the “popular front” so to speak.

In years past I had rubbed shoulders with the ultra patriarchal crowd from time to time. However I was always turned off by their views and always kept them at arms length, preferring instead to associate with those who were not so hung up about women. There were plenty of channels to travel that did not lead to the patriarchal camp.
Becoming active again several things were different. Ironically, this was a milder crowd, not near as “out there” on certain views. More importantly, I was no longer single, but was involved as the wife of a spouse who was in the course of searching out his views. This should have been something great, but little did I know.

My husband and I became involved in what one might call a patriot group. During that time I met a lot of wonderful people, many of whom I still call friends this day. It was an exciting time, I was so happy that my husband who at first was reluctant to become active was involved alongside me.

During the next few years we saw factions split off, people go different ways, new people join. Such was the life in such a group. In the later years, not long before the group dissolved, we started a close friendship with a particular member. This gentleman came from a conservative Christian background. Intelligent and kind he was not only exploring political issues, but was on a theological journey. At the time my husband was not religious. In fact, he had not been in church since he as a teenager, having rebelled against a conservative religious upbringing.
In the group my husband heard much about restoring America as a Christian nation even if it was in a loose and undefined sense. To most Patriots, it was more about the acknowledgment of America being a Christian nation coupled with the idea that Christians should be allowed to worship and serve God without government interference. It often went no further than that.

As the friendship grew we became friends with a circle of Christians that we met through this man. Most had not been involved with the Patriot movement, but were friends of his who were dissatisfied with the churches of their childhood and were searching for answers. They were decent and kind people and we “clicked” as a group. My husband’s interest in the Bible was rekindled and he rediscovered his Faith. I was overjoyed at first. What better a way them for husband and wife to make a journey side by side.

The Patriot group imploded in time, while most members formed small groups, we slowly drifted away, seeing less of them. A few did hang on the periphery of this circle, also interested in studying the Bible. By that time we had started to regard most Patriot types as somewhat hypocritical; always talking about American being a Christian nation and yet not bothering to go to church or really trying to live by God’s Laws. We thought this more and more as we studied the Bible, discussed various passages and their meanings. We weren’t just mouthing empty platitudes, but were actually trying to live by the Word.

At first our group was a “home church”, meeting at various members’ houses. Our friend dreamed of having a real church building where we could worship together. In time the opportunity for this to happen materialized.
As I stated before These were exciting times, while the Patriot group had been a great start, it was only that-a start. Now, we were concerned with more important things.

It was at this time that other things were becoming apparent, at the time they were only minor disturbances. However, in hindsight, they were a great importance.

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

We would love to feature your personal story on No Longer Quivering. Please submit what you have to say via our submissions form.

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