My Life As a Daughter in the Christian Patriarchy Movement
Deep within America, beyond your typical evangelicals and run-of-the-mill fundamentalists, nurtured within the homeschool movement and growing by the day, are the Christian Patriarchy and Quiverfull movements. This is where I grew up.
I learned that women are to be homemakers while men are to be protectors and providers. I was taught that a woman should not have a career, but should rather keep the home and raise the children and submit to her husband, who is her god-given head and authority. I learned that homeschooling is the only godly way to raise children, because to send them to public school is to turn a child over to the government and the secular humanists. I was taught that children must be trained up in the way they should go every minute of every day. I learned that a woman is always under male authority, first her father, then her husband, and perhaps, someday, her son. I was told that children are always a blessing, and that it was imperative to raise up quivers full of warriors for Christ, equipped to take back the culture and restore it to its Christian foundations.
Christian Patriarchy involves the patriarchal gender roles and hierarchical family structure, while Quiverfull refers to the belief that children are always a blessing and that big families are mandatory for those following Gods will (some eschew birth control altogether). While these two belief sets are generally held in common, they can technically exist separately. Now, not everyone who holds these beliefs actually claims the term Christian Patriarchy or Quiverfull. My parents certainly didnt. In fact, I never heard those terms growing up. What matters is not the name that is claimed, but the beliefs outlined above.
For the entire article, written by "Libby Anne," go here
(Reposted to Good Reads by request.)
longship
(40,416 posts)My dear mother would not have taken any of that bullshit. I am proud to be her son. And my father thought the same way as my mother. I am lucky to have had such parents. And I was born in the 40's.
murielm99
(30,745 posts)But it is very hard to escape a controlling set of parents, and entire community. I respect those who have.
TY to the OP. I read the entire article. I hope she keeps writing about this. It needs mainstream exposure.
chervilant
(8,267 posts)I cannot quantify the amount of grief I've taken about that decision.
I am distant from my siblings; deliberately so. My nieces and nephews exhibit a range of commitments to organized religion and belief in various forms of popular woo, perhaps as reactions to the stuff they experienced in childhood.
My oldest niece called me Tuesday to "take my temp," so to speak. I was rather blunt about the family grapevine lighting up, and my suspicion that some of my family is curious about "how I'm doing" (since I've successfully established boundaries), and that she is expected to report back. She didn't deny it.
"They're concerned about you," she averred, as she discussed wanting to come visit me in May.
Family... sigh.
Anyway, I agree. I hope this author continues to post.
chervilant
(8,267 posts)I think the author is rather plucky.
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)That's 7 Mountains/New Apostolic reformation theology.
chervilant
(8,267 posts)Is "barefoot and pregnant" the imperative for this theology?
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)K&R
chervilant
(8,267 posts)I think so, too.