Hierarchy & Control

[Vyckie D. Garrison]

Testing the Spirit of Quiverfull: Hierarchy & Control by KR Wordgazer

nolongerquivering.com/2010/06/11/testing-the-spirit-of-quiverfull-hierarchy-control/

A quick note: This "Testing the Spirit of Quiverfull" series which KR is preparing for NLQ is attempting to address Quiverfull teachings using the bible and Christian prinicples ~ the goal is to develop resources for the Take Heart Project which will enable questioning QFers to examine the ideas ~ ideas which they've accepted, embraced, and based major life decisions upon ~ in a different and hopefully, less burdensome light ~ without presenting the unthinkable challenge of giving up their very personal relationship with God and their trust in the bible as an effective guide to daily living.

Thanks for your help in keeping this discussion "Christian-friendly" ~ or at least not overtly anti-god or anti-bible.

[grandmalou]

Kristen, I could just (((HUG))) you for this post! A million thanks!
Our pastor's wife has expressed a concern over her own daughter and son-in-law becoming QF. They have three babies under three...oh...the little boy just turned 3 on the 7th.
Her pastor husband loves to quote John Piper and talk about
"I don't permit women to speak or teach"...

We walked and talked one day about discernment, and I quoted to her about "Testing the spirits"...and told her I wanted her to read some things from this forum to help her and her youngsters understand where this stuff is coming from...her whole family reads Vison Forum, Nancy Campbell, etc.
She answered "I exercise the right to DISCERN what I will read..."

I was, of course, stuck for an answer, never being too handy with a snappy comeback.
And here you are, with this great post, that I can e-mail to her, and MAYBE, just MAYBE, she will read it and pass it on!

[Ex-Adriel]

KR, I'm not christian anymore, but I was for the first 18 years of my life.

This is a very good series. I am truly impressed with your dedication and your talented exegesis.

Your honesty and clarity of message are really amazing. I am left thinking that you could be a pastor or a biblical social worker/therapist (if there is even such a thing)

There's going to be a lot of push-back from a series like this. It's threatening to have your "firm foundation" questioned by actual biblical information.

Keep it up - there are a lot of people out there who won't be traumatized to the point that they have to kick the entire package out the door. All of these people are going to need guidance and direction in figuring out their own comfort level with church ministries, and developing their own skills in discerning the meaning they can take from the scriptures.

[calluna]

I really enjoyed this post. I am still a believer...and honestly, when I *became* a believer (because I now realize I was working to be saved) is when the Lord started showing me how steeped I was in a works based salvation. Even though I thought I had been saved by grace the first time. Works were proof one was truly a Christian. I did these works to prove myself I was a Christian.

I bought into the quiverful, patriarchy lifestyle for about seven years. I always doubted if I was truly saved.

When I was in Bible College and pregnant with our first baby (and only married for three months when I did become pregnant) a preacher that wasn't of our stripe preached and I talked with him. He showed me the GRACE message of salvation.

When I embraced it, had assurance of my salvation, and still was stuck in our legalistic church, I was very confused. The messages were very different, yet similar.

It was hard to discern between the two. The Bible made more sense to me now that I clearly understood God's grace, but I still had legalistic teachings stuck in my head. It was hard to coralate between the two messages. Especially when the legalistic teachings were so authortive and "set" in stone. Like the lady wrote about in the post, from the quotes from those books. "This is the Bible, like it or not, don't get mad at me"


I really appreciate this post because, I really do think that most of "christiandom" doesn't understand the Bible. The Bible says to rightly divide the word. So many "Christians" are taking the Bible and creating cults and isms with it. It believe what this lady wrote is true. It's the whole counsel of the Word. Can't just pick one verse and take it out of it's context and cultural setting.

[usotsuki]

All too common that people take verses out of context and spin them in directions that would horrify the first-century Christians.

[maicde]

My life changed when I was 5 as my mom and dad divorced in another country (Eastern Europe) and she came to the U.S. with me and my baby brother who was only about 6 weeks old. We came to live with her sister (my aunt) and her husband, (my uncle). My uncle and aunt were living a somewhat patriarchal lifestyle - I guess that's one way of putting it. The best way of putting it is that he was crazy. Is that okay to say? He really was. He was a sadistic and abusive man when he wanted to be. He abused my aunt the most, my mom, and me (all females), but my brother never got any of it because he was "a male." (I still love my brother - he is 41 years old now, but he has a host of problems due to growing up in this dysfunction and never learning accountability and responsibility). Oh, my uncle also used to abuse the farm animals when they didn't "obey" him, I guess, or conform to the way he wanted them to be.

Anyhow, my life was filled with legalism and patriarchism in a strange mix of the SDA religion, mental illness (my uncle), and just plain old dysfunction. Put all three of those together and you get my aunt who ended up in a bonafied mental institution receiving electro-shock therapy trying to undue all the damage that was done to her. Witnessing that in the 70's while I was in the latter years of my elementary school years burned a very deep impression in me. The impression it left was to NEVER allow anyone to rule or control me as my uncle did to my dear aunt.

Oh, we tried to "save her" (me and my mom even though we lived in the same nutty household), but she always fended us off as if we were the "bad guys" while she defended her husband, her abuser. She read the bible A LOT by the way.

When I read various biblical verses and the way they've been perverted to serve the agenda of the abusers, it really, really makes my blood boil. I abhore those who try to control others, manipulate them, make them "less than", guilt them and manipulate them by taking biblical verses out of context, twisting them, contorting them, etc., in order to basically ruin other people's lives.

[dorayp]

I am so thankful for this series! I was a Christian before I got sucked into the patriarchal movement, and I'm still a Christian. I believe God HATES the QF/Patriarchal movement and wants to deliver His people from it. There have been many times that I'm discouraged because so many people seem anti-Christian when they leave the QFPatriarchal movement. I despair of reaching my friends still entrenched in the movement, because there's an unwritten rule against speaking out against other church's practices. What those pastors don't realize is, the pastors in the patriarchal movement not only speak out against other churches, they NAME NAMES!!! If more pastors would address this cult-like movement, happening sometimes right under their noses in their own churches, less families would be sucked in by the false doctrine!

What a great post!
Thank you so much!
Dorinda

[nikita]

If more pastors would address this cult-like movement, happening sometimes right under their noses in their own churches, less families would be sucked in by the false doctrine!

The thing that astounds me is that I was in an actual cult for sixteen years, and everybody was very disapproving of 'cults' at that time. Yet here we are in 2010 and the QF/P movement is more cultish than anything we ever dreamed up in the sixties and seventies yet no one ever utters the 'C' word about them. They are just 'another church', 'another doctrine', 'overzealous believers', whatever. No. It's a cult movement. It has it's own cult leaders, it has it's own tight discipline, shunning of those who leave, tearing apart families in the name of purity of faith and home... People talk about MacArthur and Piper as though they were the second coming, and even Phil Lancaster and the Pearls are talked about with disapproval but no one ever accuses them of being part of cults. Doug Phillips and the Vision Forum folks are just dismissed as well. It's astounding. To me they are much more dangerous than the old cults because they have slowly taken over more mainstream church denominations, church by church, until they have achieved some legitimacy. Pastors have said that they don't know what to do when such families arrive at their church doors, and other families start to be influenced by them. They are so used to being welcoming that I think it runs against their training to call the wolf who and what it is. It's very discouraging.


Anyway, I have friends from long ago who came out of our cult days and went into the QF/P movement and they are impossible to talk to about it. Especially for me, as one of the husbands (who was closest to me out of all of them) refuses to permit a 'woman' to discuss or be part of any conversation with him regarding theology. You get shooed away to talk about gardening or children or cats or something. And no one ever hears from his wife, she's at home in the wilds of Alaska raising their thirteen homeschooled children. She's doing a fantastic job with them though. The ones who have 'graduated' are doing great out of the home now, although they married a little young. And their photos are breathtaking, if you don't mind 50 below weather and a diet of elk steaks. I had a huge crush on him thirty years ago. I really dodged that bullet.

[krwordgazer]

Wow, I'm glad this is helpful to people, and I so appreciate all the comments! My husband got his graphic design degree yesterday (Yay!), and I've still got a houseful of relatives here for the graduation-- but I'll respond more fully as soon as I can.

[margybargy]

Outstanding article. Outstanding. Well reasoned and thought out. It's amazing what happens when you put favorite QF/P verses into context!

[ambrosia]

I don't know how many of you here read Slacktivist. Despite the fact that he is an evangelical christian and I am an atheist, I find his observations on many things truly thought-provoking in the same way that these posts do.

Coincidentally, a recent post there discusses the lunacy of incorrectly reading the bible as a rule book. slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2010/06/sex-money-part-3.html

[kisekileia]

I love Slacktivist, but I think he's a bit disingenuous in referring to himself as an evangelical Christian. I don't think many evangelicals would accept him as one of their own--his approach to the Bible and his views on sexual morality are too liberal. (I love them, though )

[cherylannhannah]

Jun 12, 2010 1:16:24 GMT -5 krwordgazer said:

Wow, I'm glad this is helpful to people, and I so appreciate all the comments! My husband got his graphic design degree yesterday (Yay!), and I've still got a houseful of relatives here for the graduation-- but I'll respond more fully as soon as I can.

I really hope you get to dealing with the verses that deal with wives submitting to and obeying their husbands. I confess that I am really struggling with this concept now given what I was subjected to in the past.

It is hard for me to contemplate going from a position of independence and not answering to anyone to having to do that. It feels like trading in my status as an adult for one of a child.

If I weren't a follower of Christ, I would think my ideal relationship would be to have a lover for companionship and intimacy, but it wouldn't restrict my freedom to go places and do the things I want to do when I wanted to do them. That perceived restricition is what keeps me back from contemplating remarriage with any man unless I could have a relationship that was more of a partnership/team than being a subordinate in a hierarchical system.

[krwordgazer]

Hi, Cherylannhannah! We are discussing this very concept right now over at Women in Ministry:

strivetoenter.com/wim/

The long and the short of it is that submission as envisioned by Paul is supposed to be a mutual yielding and deferring to one another, not putting ourselves under authority. The authority structures of the ancient world are acknowledged, not endorsed, by Paul.

But wives are never actually told to "obey" their husbands at all. The place in the KJV that is translated "be obedient" is actually that same word "submit" in the Greek-- and it means to yield or defer; all Christians are to "submit" to one another per Eph. 5:21 and 1 Peter 5:5.

Anyway, yes, I will be doing a FAQ on this issue when I can.

[nikita]

The other side of it too is that the scriptures, where it does indicate a yielding to another, speak to the yielder not the yieldee. In other words, no where does it say that one person has the right to force another to yield to him. The attitude and the action are directed at the one doing the voluntary yielding, not as one dominated and being forced to submit. The marching orders for husbands is to love, not exert power and control.

Funny how the patriarchalists kinda missed that, huh?

[cherylannhannah]

Jun 14, 2010 0:03:50 GMT -5 krwordgazer said:

Hi, Cherylannhannah! We are discussing this very concept right now over at Women in Ministry:

strivetoenter.com/wim/

Thank you for this! I spent some time reading through some of the posts and found them very helpful.

[dorayp]

Jun 13, 2010 23:14:26 GMT -5 cherylannhannah said:

Jun 12, 2010 1:16:24 GMT -5 krwordgazer said:

Wow, I'm glad this is helpful to people, and I so appreciate all the comments! My husband got his graphic design degree yesterday (Yay!), and I've still got a houseful of relatives here for the graduation-- but I'll respond more fully as soon as I can.

I really hope you get to dealing with the verses that deal with wives submitting to and obeying their husbands. I confess that I am really struggling with this concept now given what I was subjected to in the past.

It is hard for me to contemplate going from a position of independence and not answering to anyone to having to do that. It feels like trading in my status as an adult for one of a child.

If I weren't a follower of Christ, I would think my ideal relationship would be to have a lover for companionship and intimacy, but it wouldn't restrict my freedom to go places and do the things I want to do when I wanted to do them. That perceived restricition is what keeps me back from contemplating remarriage with any man unless I could have a relationship that was more of a partnership/team than being a subordinate in a hierarchical system.

I think this word, submit, is so misinterpreted. Strong's exhaustive concordance says this about Ephesians 5:22:

"This word was a Greek military term meaning "to arrange [troop divisions] in a military fashion under the command of a leader". In non-military use, it was "a voluntary attitude of giving in, cooperating, assuming responsibility, and carrying a burden"."

How much more fulfilling marriage is when we "cooperate," and "carry burdens" together! My marriage is NOT a military unit!!! I am NOT a troop member, that needs to be "arranged."

The night my hubby and I researched that one word and found it meant to "cooperate," it healed so many wounds. I have the word submit crossed out in my Bible and I wrote cooperate in its place. I would encourage you to do the same.

Blessings!
Dorinda