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Post by Vyckie D. Garrison on Oct 4, 2010 10:17:59 GMT -5
10 things that happen when you leave the Quiverful/Patriarchal movement by Ima Wakenow nolongerquivering.com/2010/10/04/10-things-that-happen-when-you-leave-the-quiverfulpatriarchal-movement/We were in the NLQ chat room last night making lists: 5 ppl you meet when you leave QF, 5 things I still like about QF (LOL ~ we couldn't come up with 5) ~ and then Ima Wakenow suggested this one ~ and instead of 5, we came up with 11 or 12 ... Please feel free to add to this list. Here are a few that I thought of: You finally get to a chance to enjoy the "blessings" of your children. You learn what PTSD is and what it means ~ and that you definitely have it. You finally experience that promised "JOY" which was so elusive when there was no "you" in qivering ... !!
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Post by hopewell on Oct 4, 2010 11:07:11 GMT -5
One of the best posts yet.
This says it all about Quiverfull: "Don’t think."
Amen.
Now, anyone else notice a bosch in the Duggar's industrial kitchen? I read somewhere that they at least "did" bake their own bread--not sure about current day. When I think back over Duggar episodes I've never seen bread bought at Aldis, but we only ever see them eat crap. The toast looks "brown" like possibly whole wheat bread--but is it commercial or homemade? And how did they escape the cloth diaper mania? And, at least since the tv cameras arrived, they have gone to doctors and dentists. And now, with Josie, they may even get flu shots. Seems like a few cracks in the facade here Jim-Bob!
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Post by whiteclover on Oct 4, 2010 11:35:18 GMT -5
EXCELLENT article!
Re: white bread and its affiliate crimes and laws.
I remember going to visit one of the deacon's wives. In the process of making us a cup tea (probably chamomile, bulk, from a "co-op"), she opened a cupboard to reveal shelves filled with canned vegetables and fruit, soup, ravioli, and Spagettios!
I was shocked and horrified. All poison. All from companies owned by satan worshippers and cults.
Where was her garden? Her jars of home-canned beans, tomatoes, and apples?
I thought, well, she is young . . . and not quite godly yet.
But a DEACON'S WIFE? Why hadn't someone informed her of the standard holy wives were to maintain? I felt so betrayed.
Re: doctors and illnesses.
Symptoms were NOT real. The more you dwelled on the pain, the fever, and the vomiting, the more you were relenting to the "spirit of death." Do not speak of your illness. Do not go to the doctor because doctors were "speakers of death" and would only reinforce the "deceptive" symptoms by telling you what your ailment was and offering a bogus treatment to make money for himself and the companies from which he was getting a kickback.
Any illness or injury MUST be denied and "walked off." Pray. And the woman was ultimately responsible for the "illnesses" in her brood, including the husband, for not praying enough, or not praying in tongues, and for acknowledging the illness.
To add to the list . . .
Finally able to . . .
Go to the hair salon and get a decent hair cut and even a little colour.
"Letting" myself be sick . . . and taking care of myself in the event . . . with a little sleep, a tablet or two from the doctor, and some (canned) chicken soup.
Care for and enjoy my home, even doing a little home decorating, without being judged as materialistic.
Buy potatoes
Grow flowers. LOTS of flowers.
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Post by Vyckie D. Garrison on Oct 4, 2010 13:10:42 GMT -5
Also, just to be sure that we are not painting leaving QF/P as absolute bliss ~ I'll add these: You get angry. When I realized that I willingly cooperated in ~ and in many cases, initiated ~ the systematic oppression of myself and my children ... yeah ~ sometimes I get steaming mad ~ at myself, at the patriarchs who push this shit on vulnerable families ~ and sometimes at God, when I'm in a mood to believe He exists long enough to cuss Him out royally. You feel cheated. Once I began to experience the peace, freedom and happiness outside of QF ~ when I saw my children blossoming ~ when I discovered that the "World" is not my enemy and "worldly" music, tv, movies, kids' programs, etc. can be fun, entertaining and enjoyable ~ and knowing as I do now that fun is good and happiness feels awesome ~ I sometimes feel totally ripped off and a bit depressed because there's no way to recover all those straight-laced years of "godly living." You have a mess of unhealthy thought patterns and a backlash of trauma to process. You don't hesitate to question authority and stand up for yourself and your children. This automatic response to the slightest perceived attempt to control can lead observers to conclude that you could possibly be developing Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Of course, when you see your children get into the act ~ they start to stand up for themselves, ask thoughtful questions, and completely freak out on anyone who would seek to abuse them ~ you know it's been worth the trouble.
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Post by livingforeternity on Oct 4, 2010 13:54:45 GMT -5
I love, love, love the part about the bread. That is one of my favorite digs at this movement. I say, "I never have been able to bake bread." It's true. I tried and tried, but I could never make anything that was even remotely edible. One thing I have learned since turning my back on all that mess is grace and mercy. There is no grace and absolutely NO mercy. That was the most damaging thing to our family was the total lack of mercy. There couldn't be any mercy, because you would appear to be compromising the rules and above all else the rules must be obeyed. How can you expect to have the perfect family if you broke the rules.
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Post by humbletigger on Oct 4, 2010 14:02:05 GMT -5
What is it with fundies and sickness? I know the charismatic tripe about symptoms being nothing but temptations to deny your divine health (HAHAHAHA! What a load!), but what is it with the non-charismatic fundies? My husband refuses to admit he is sick, to the point that he walked around for 24 hours with a broken leg before he went to the ER. When he first broke it- as a grown man- his friends urged him to go to the ER then but he refused to believe it was broken. He insisted on going home, taking ibuprofen and sleeping on it, to see if it was better in the morning! I know it's a family thing- they refuse to admit illness for the most part. It's a sign of some sort of weakness good Christians are immune too, I guess. But where does that come from? Is it merely a consequence of living in carefully constructed denial about everything else that just spills over into physical wellness/illness? Can any one illuminate me?
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Post by usotsuki on Oct 4, 2010 14:21:20 GMT -5
Might just be a *guy* thing.
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Post by fabucat on Oct 4, 2010 20:37:51 GMT -5
All of the QF insistence on naturalness and authenticity, i.e. homemade medicine and homemade bread, makes me wonder if the QF movement is a lot like a very conservative version of the hippie movement. Let me stress that to me it sounds like the hippie movement minus the (out of wedlock) sex and drugs.
(Oh when, oh when is the USA EVER going to get over the 1960s?)
This is definitely the smartest group of women I've encountered on the 'net. Does fundamentalist religion establish a baseline of critical thinking and literacy, or do walkaways from fundamentalist religion have a baseline of critical thinking & literacy?
Thanks once again for all of your courage.
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Post by nikita on Oct 4, 2010 21:00:27 GMT -5
In the case of me and my old friends, we had some things in common: we took life and all its implications very seriously so tended to do a lot of thinking about things within the context of our fundamentalist cult worldview. I for one didn't take much for granted, I needed to understand and know things. The second thing was that we weren't allowed to go to movies and watch television or anything like that, nor were we permitted to read whatever the evangelical/christian world was furiously publishing for fear of being corrupted by 'wolves' (thank God, we missed so many stupid doctrines and fads by following that particular edict), so we tended to read more (literature and non-fiction), and have deep conversations about things as a form of recreation and not just because we were in a class or forced to do so. It was like being in a college seminar forever, you know? That is still the most comfortable type of conversation for me. When I 'hang out' with regular people I am always amazed that they just sit there and/or talk about very boring nothing things -- I envy them, because I would love to be happy doing that but it both bores me and makes me nervous.
And this is years after leaving the cult. Sixteen years ruined me for normal stuff I guess.
Of course, it could just be that we're really really special and better than everybody else. ;D
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Post by rosa on Oct 4, 2010 21:48:21 GMT -5
Fabucat, there are repeated waves of back-to-the-land movements in the US that predate the electrical grid, so you can't even call them all off-the-grid movements. There was an agrarian political movement in the post-Civil War depression, and another in the 1920s that got some legitimacy during the Great Depression - Ralph Borsodi, a self-sufficiency rural homesteading proponent, was also an official in the Roosevelt administration and there are two towns founded by moving destitute city people to rural areas where they could raise their own food and run their own industries (Greenbelt, Maryland was one and still exists, though it's all privatized.)
Plus, even in the '60s there were a bunch of naturalistic back-to-the-land Christians. Christian culture isn't that divorced from mainstream culture, no matter what they think - not only the Jesus People and all the various Christian cults of that time, but also individuals like Carla Emery, the author of The Encyclopedia of Country Living.
Actually, a lot of times reading about the Serena Joy types who make their livings teaching other women to stay home and not work, I think about Carla Emery. She seems (seemed? My edition of her book is from 1992, I'm not sure she's still living) like a very nice person, but she started this little home-based business of writing a book on a subscription basis while homesteading and cloth diapering and (I think) homeschooling...but then she got successful and famous and traveled a lot selling books and was on TV and her marriage fell apart, her homestead was neglected, and her kids missed her - because she was out selling the dream of her beautiful alternative family-centered life.
Of course, she's a real genuine, sharing person and told that story in her book as it went on, instead of disowning angry children and acting like all was well.
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Post by tapati on Oct 5, 2010 3:02:59 GMT -5
Let's not forget the Shakers! Reading about them brings so many parallels to the Hare Krishna farm communities.
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Post by justflyingin on Oct 5, 2010 10:03:17 GMT -5
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Post by whiteclover on Oct 5, 2010 12:29:24 GMT -5
Were you hearing this at church or at Home school conventions? I guess I've only been to one but I think it was just a Christian ed convention. Of course, this was 20 years ago. I've never been to a home school convention. If it was at church, what kind of church was it (exactly)...Sovereign Grace, Baptist, Pentecostal, Bible, etc.? At church, and more specifically at ladies' Bible studies. Sometimes, there'd be little "notices" on the bulletin board telling us of the subversive and wicked activities of certain companies and that we should boycott those brands and even avoid certain stores and businesses altogether. It was an Evangelical Free church. I've never been to a homeschool convention, either, even though I homeschooled for 22 years. I have belonged to several homeschool forums, though, and were often "advised."
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Post by justflyingin on Oct 5, 2010 14:37:23 GMT -5
OK. Thanks. I'm sorry about people did in the name of "Christianity". Usually when people start in on that kind of rhetoric (evil companies, addressing food as a spiritual issue, esp. things like whole wheat, baking from scratch, etc., I close down. It is virtually impossible to live in the modern world as we know it if we want to stay "untouched" by some evil influence/company. Following that logic is impossible. You really can't do anything without interacting and somehow giving your money to someone/something/some organization whose ideologies are quite a bit different from yours. What kind of reasoning did they use as to companies? I mean, how would you know which labels you could buy as so many are conglomerates and connected to each other or owned by a bigger corporation? And how is one supposed to know who actually owns and runs that company? Yikes. Shopping would take forever because of all the research you'd have to do first!
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Post by humbletigger on Oct 5, 2010 16:54:57 GMT -5
An E-Free church was that weird? I heard it from Gothard people, that white flour will kill you. I thought E-Free was pretty mainstream. Live and learn.
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Post by whiteclover on Oct 5, 2010 17:45:45 GMT -5
An E-Free church was that weird? I heard it from Gothard people, that white flour will kill you. I thought E-Free was pretty mainstream. Live and learn. Ah, but "this" E-Free church subscribed to Gothard's teaching and were wholly into it. Justflyingin, I'm not sure where exactly they got their info from re: companies and brands. Word of mouth, maybe, from sources elsewhere who were "in the know" and therefore they took as Gospel truth? Some of it was silly . . . like the little moon symbol on Tide, so they were owned by the Moonies . . . and Safeway was owned by a specific 'cult' . . . and one of the local convenience stores sold Hustler so we couldn't buy our gas there. One of our elder's sons actually worked at one of these companies. It was considered unconscionable. I asked "the powers that be," how then are we to remain untouched by the world? Following their own logic, I challenged them not to shop at the local grocery store because it sold Lysol and vanilla, cheaper substitutes for alcohol. I challenged them to return their (generous) income tax refunds to the gov't because it was funds received through alcohol sales and taxes. (Our liquor stores are gov't regulated.) It fell on deaf ears, because that's . . . well . . . different, somehow.
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Post by lucrezaborgia on Oct 5, 2010 18:06:23 GMT -5
When I 'hang out' with regular people I am always amazed that they just sit there and/or talk about very boring nothing things -- I envy them, because I would love to be happy doing that but it both bores me and makes me nervous. My mother says that I'm incapable of chit-chat, so when she met my fiance she was floored that I found someone nerdier than myself. I've gotten into more than one argument at the bar over Manifest Destiny and other topics.
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Post by teach2010 on Oct 5, 2010 22:36:18 GMT -5
Carla Emery died 11 October 2005: www.carlaemery.com/Fabucat, there are repeated waves of back-to-the-land movements in the US that predate the electrical grid, so you can't even call them all off-the-grid movements. There was an agrarian political movement in the post-Civil War depression, and another in the 1920s that got some legitimacy during the Great Depression - Ralph Borsodi, a self-sufficiency rural homesteading proponent, was also an official in the Roosevelt administration and there are two towns founded by moving destitute city people to rural areas where they could raise their own food and run their own industries (Greenbelt, Maryland was one and still exists, though it's all privatized.) Plus, even in the '60s there were a bunch of naturalistic back-to-the-land Christians. Christian culture isn't that divorced from mainstream culture, no matter what they think - not only the Jesus People and all the various Christian cults of that time, but also individuals like Carla Emery, the author of The Encyclopedia of Country Living. Actually, a lot of times reading about the Serena Joy types who make their livings teaching other women to stay home and not work, I think about Carla Emery. She seems (seemed? My edition of her book is from 1992, I'm not sure she's still living) like a very nice person, but she started this little home-based business of writing a book on a subscription basis while homesteading and cloth diapering and (I think) homeschooling...but then she got successful and famous and traveled a lot selling books and was on TV and her marriage fell apart, her homestead was neglected, and her kids missed her - because she was out selling the dream of her beautiful alternative family-centered life. Of course, she's a real genuine, sharing person and told that story in her book as it went on, instead of disowning angry children and acting like all was well.
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Post by rosa on Oct 5, 2010 23:12:16 GMT -5
Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. My copy of her book is battered and written in and stained and much-lent-out.
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Post by humbletigger on Oct 6, 2010 8:26:55 GMT -5
If there is a hell for wicked men to burn in for all eternity, Bill Gothard will surely be there. His aberrant teachings have ruined more people's lives than any single person in America.
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maicde
Junior Member
Posts: 69
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Post by maicde on Oct 6, 2010 9:50:42 GMT -5
Glad for those who got out of this very repressive movement/lifestyle which is very soul-sucking indeed. However, I have to say that even without ever being involved in the QF/Patriarchal movement, I still wrestle with just plain everyday life as a wife and mom of a large family. I can imagine that having the rest of the sh*t yoked on you makes it about a hundred times worse though. Oh, I love the word, "yoked" by the way. Every time I hear that word, it reminds me of a team of oxen who get that yoke strapped on them before they go plowing in the field. That word alone should have people running for the hills WAAAY before they get involved with Bill Gothard or similiar teachings.
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Post by amyrose on Oct 6, 2010 12:07:17 GMT -5
I attended E-Free churches where the whole brands/store boycott thing was huge. It had nothing to do with Gothard. I think it came from Christian radio and the "culture wars". Most of the denominations and families that were represented in the Christian school I taught at were not affiliated with Gothard or any similar extreme movements--those groups tend to homeschool, after all--but product, brand and store boycotts were a huge part of their beliefs. And they were often very illogical in how they went about it. I remember that for a time they were boycotting KMart because they owned Waldenbooks and Waldenbooks allegedly sold Playboy and the like at some locations. Except most of them didn't actually know why they were boycotting KMart, though they did it fervently, and sometimes shopped at Waldenbooks.
There was a play I was tempted to do when I worked there that satirized and parodied a lot of the 'sacred cows' of evangelicalism. It had one scene with a woman coming home from the grocery store distraught carrying nothing but a bag of cat litter and giving her husband a long convoluted explanation of all the different boycotts that meant that was all they could buy. I thought it was hilarious. But I would have been thrown out of the place on the spot and never did that show.
Thinking back on all of this, I seem to remember that there was something satanic about Proctor and Gamble and all of its subsidiaries had to be boycotted. This amuses me since my husband's company is now owned by P&G.
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Post by zoeygirl on Oct 6, 2010 14:49:48 GMT -5
Yes, I remember the whole P&G thing. It was because they (or one of their companies) sold Ouija boards.
I dated a guy in college who refused to buy Nike shoes because they were evil. Why? Because P&G owned Nike. He also would only kiss me on the cheek.
Why DID I date that guy? LOL
I also was told not to shop at Stater Bros. or to buy Coca-Cola because both companies were secretly owned by the Mormons. It was quite a relief when I finally decided I was not responsible for investigating the religion and values of every business that I shopped at.
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Post by anatheist on Oct 6, 2010 14:51:18 GMT -5
This is definitely the smartest group of women I've encountered on the 'net. Does fundamentalist religion establish a baseline of critical thinking and literacy, or do walkaways from fundamentalist religion have a baseline of critical thinking & literacy? One of the big reasons that I started thinking about leaving religion at a young age was because in my community, critical thinking wasn't considered a "female" necessity. It was important for women to think about prayer, babies and homemaking. It was good for them to read simplistic books about Christian women obeying god and therefore having the right Christian man court them. It wasn't important for them to think about academic subjects, and especially not math and science. Many of the girls that I grew up with have left strict fundamentalism. They went to Christian college and are SAHMs, but aren't QF or completely segregated from the world. More evangelical than fundamentalist - they'll still go on about what a "blessing" it was to have a fundamentalist "education". And they definitely aren't people I'd consider well read or critical thinkers. I'm not nearly as harsh on them as I was as a miserable highschooler when I considered them hopelessly dumb and fluffy, but they're still not the epitome of rationality. And I do blame our fundy upbringing to a large extent. We were told what to think and how to think about everything, and most people who share my background continue to take that for granted, except when it gets in the way of something they want to do. Obviously everyone's experience isn't the same as mine.
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Post by humbletigger on Oct 6, 2010 15:20:43 GMT -5
I remember the KMart boycott! I thought about keeping it, but they had the cutest little girl's shoes, plus they sold Superman ice cream cones and white cherry slushies. The boycotts definitely come from Christian radio! Oh yes, I remember I actually used to listen to those programs. Now since I still a Christian, I sometimes listen to the Christian radio in addition to my teenagers stations and classic rock. But I refuse to listen to a speaking program. I don't want to waste my time. Maybe Ford is going to break the trend. You aren't supposed to buy Ford because they give money to lobbyists for gay marriage. But they are the only American car dealer not involved in the bailout. Coincidence? Probably, but anyway the boycott doesn't seem to be hurting them. So no Gothard isn't behind all the boycotts, but he is behind every teaching about authority covering you have ever heard. He started spewing this stuff in highly popular seminars in the '70s. Later he started his home school angle, ATI, and that was where I first heard the "white bread will kill you" stuff. From a QF daughter around 7 yrs old, who gravely asked if we ground our own flour at the playground, and when I said no, was deeply concerned that I was poisoning my children. She was a child. That makes me so sad. Wonder where she is today.
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