This is the final part of the problems the far right is now experiencing. It is about degrading women. I’ve theorized the real problem is the fact that we’re dealing with men who don’t like women. We’re dealing with a group of very insecure men who are terrified of women, that a woman will do better in life than they will. Consequently, they must completely control women.
“...The view of all human interaction as hierarchical in nature also serves their gender paradigm. Vision Forum followers have also been criticized as potentially in violation of the US Equal Protection Clause law due to the practice of sexist homeschooling restrictions that limit opportunities to young women because they are restricted from entering the workforce and should remain only within “the sphere of the home.” As per the Botkins own restrictive teachings regarding women, all women are to remain only in the home or are said to be harlots if they work because their feet wander from home, quoting the language of the Proverb in the Bible. Daughters are basically treated like property, they are taught to be fearful of any independence as sin and danger when not under direct supervision of a man, must be “sanctified” by a man, and are given in marriage for a bride’s price that is paid to the father by the groom at the wedding, though the bride is sexually pure. Another person within this system teaches that daughters are created to fulfill an older man’s needs for affection from younger women. My greatest concern regarding this group is that of the women and young girls who do not have temperaments and personalities that can be conformed to the group’s overtly submissive ideal and are punished socially, psychologically, and spiritually as a consequence….”
The culture leads to abuse of women and girls.
“…It’s no accident that so many allegations of serious abuse have arisen across SGM’s churches. The combination of patriarchal gender roles, purity culture, and authoritarian clergy that characterizes Sovereign Grace’s teachings on parenting, marriage, and sexuality creates an environment where women and children—especially girls—are uniquely vulnerable to abuse.
Critics of evangelical sexual mores have noted the connections between demands for female modesty and chastity and a culture where these same bodies are constantly exposed to sexual violence and abuse. As E.J. Graff put it her analysis of the global implications of the gang rape and murder of Indian medical student Jyoti Singh Pandey, purity culture, whether in India or America, casts “women’s bodies [as]…primarily for procreation or male pleasure… a culture in which women must cover up or be threatened is a rape culture.” [Emphasis mine]
If, as Graff writes, purity culture is rape culture, then the submission culture that exists in many conservative evangelical churches is abuse culture. The level of deference and obedience that children are expected to pay to parents, wives to husbands, and girls and women to an exclusively male leadership is so extreme that it encourages—and sometimes outright demands—submission to men who use their power to abuse….”
“…These teachings are not unique to SGM. Evangelical leader John Piper—a friend to SGM—has taught that women must maintain attitudes of submission even toward abusive husbands. Wives may, he says, have to,“endure… being smacked one night” if abuse is “simply hurting [them]” and “not requiring [them] to sin” in some way like “group sex.”
It’s such a romanticization of saintly submission in the face of violence that Harris’ exceedingly brief disclaimer that “this isn’t a call [for wives] to be on the receiving end of abuse and violence” (like Piper’s recent clarification of his remarks) comes across as hollow.
If children are taught that assault is divinely sanctioned, and that their bodies belong to adults, girls in particular are trained to see their bodies as male property, starting with their fathers. These lessons come from the top. C.J. Mahaney and his wife Carolyn, herself a popular writer on “biblical femininity,” teach that every piece of clothing girls and married women purchase should be inspected for “modesty” by fathers. And Mahaney encourages his followers to confront girls and women in their congregations whose clothing they find immodest…”
Unfortunately…..
We have a problem. There is a bit of information, archaeological, that is not getting much play. I can see why. According to the Vatican, we’re dealing with frescoes of women praying. That’s nice, but in these newly restored masterpieces, in the catacombs of Priscilla, well, there is a depiction of a woman leading a Christian worship service. Yep – a woman of the early church, in vestments, leading a worship service.
Contrary to the abject ignorance spewed today by the minions, the uneducated minions of the far right, Christian Reconstructionists who don’t know much about history, women, in the early, First and Second Century church were equal to men.
The other day I read something truly repulsive. Debi Pearl, the wife of child beating advocate Michael Pearl has written a book that is abjectly ignorant. Created to Be His Help Meet, is about women and how they are to submit to their husband. Something that truly appalled me was the fact that Debi Pearl has managed to brainwash at least two generations of abjectly ignorant women into believing that:
“...that a woman/wife bears responsibility for a man’s/ husband’s sins, going so far as to say a husband’s complete sanctification and deliverance from temptation is provided to him through his wife and her actions. It seems to teach that women are deceived by Satan but men are not, and that men’s primary weakness is their desire for (or to please) women. Therefore, women cause men to sin (or not) by their actions and submission….”
Women are the reason men sin. They are the cause of sin. They are the cause of men feeling lust, sinful, evil lust that must require them to be hidden. This young man says that a man’s eyes are drawn to pleasing shapes, comparing women to a Corvette.
“…As a saved family man, I must adhere to the Bible command to entreat or regard “the younger [women] as sisters, with all purity” (1 Timothy 5:2), even if those sisters are dressed in a way that catches my eye. If I give in to the temptations based on what I see, I am guilty of sinning. However, you women who think you are absolved from responsibility in this area are wrong. Why make it difficult for me and your brothers? Why not love me as a brother in Christ and dress in a way that does not make me conscious of what I used to do and be? …Likewise, as a former porn reader, porn movie viewer who liked self-gratification to satisfy his wild drive, I don’t want to see those curves. I keep my eyes up. My wife edits magazines we get (like Popular Mechanics) which have those kinds of pictures, before I or my sons get to look at them, and that’s the way I want it.
I tell my boys about the dangers of a woman who dresses like “Lydia.” My son, 6 years old, sees women in public and observes how they dress. “Daddy, is that a ‘strange lady?” He’s referring to the “strange woman” of Proverbs 7. I answer, “I don’t know if she is, but she certainly dresses like one.” And we have seen them at “church.” Do you want my son to look at you and think of you as a “strange lady”? How about your daughter, would my sons think she is strange? My sons won’t marry a woman who doesn’t respect a man’s propensity to visual temptation. They’ll marry a woman who reveals herself to them and them only….”
They have completely perverted Christianity.
“...Page 230: “Just as my husband finds security and meaning in submission to his head, so I become the person God created me to be in submitting to my head – my husband. …our submission to our husband should be viewed with the same love and fervency as our submission and love for Christ. The text says that we submit “as unto the Lord,” as if we were submitting to the Lord. Since my husband’s authority is delegated by God, when I submit to my husband, I am recognizing God’s authority, and I am indeed submitting to God.”…”
I think it is about emasculating men, or how some pathetic little men feel about it. Remember, Doug Phillips basically based his ‘theology’ on Rushdoony.
“….There’s a lot of talk in American mainstream media lately about the diminishing role of men—fathers, in particular. Have feminism and reproductive technology made them obsolete? Are breadwinning wives and career-oriented mothers emasculating them?
No such uncertainty exists in the mind of Doug Phillips, the man quoted above. The San Antonio minister is the founder of Vision Forum, a beachhead for what’s known as the Christian Patriarchy Movement, a branch of evangelical Christianity that takes beliefs about men as leaders and women as homemakers to anachronistic extremes. Vision Forum Ministries is, according to its Statements of Doctrine, “committed to affirming the historic faith of Biblical Christianity,” with special attention to the historical faith found in the book of Genesis, when God created Eve as a “helper” to Adam. According to Christian Patriarchy, marriage bonds man (the symbol of Christ) to woman (the symbol of the Church). It’s a model that situates husbands and fathers in a position of absolute power: If a woman disobeys her “master,” whether father or husband, she’s defying God. Thus, women in the Christian Patriarchy Movement aren’t just stay-at-home mothers—they’re stay-at-home daughters as well. And many of them wouldn’t have it any other way.
The stay-at-home-daughters movement, which is promoted by Vision Forum, encourages young girls and single women to forgo college and outside employment in favor of training as “keepers at home” until they marry. Young women pursuing their own ambitions and goals are viewed as selfish and antifamily; marriage is not a choice or one piece of a larger life plan, but the ultimate goal. Stay-at-home daughters spend their days learning “advanced homemaking” skills, such as cooking and sewing, and other skills that at one time were a necessity—knitting, crocheting, soap- and candle-making. A father is considered his daughter’s authority until he transfers control to her husband….”
This is not a small movement:
“...Such sexist views of women’s roles are certainly not limited to the Christian Patriarchy Movement. But unlike other extremely conservative religious groups such as the Amish or fundamentalist Mormon polygamists, which are typically closed off from the rest of society, the stay-at-home-daughters movement and the CPM might be capable of seeping into the already-booming populations of evangelical and fundamentalist churches and Christian homeschoolers, which already advocate a less-rigorous version of female submission. In this sense, stay-at-home daughters might feel that they are the most pure, and most righteous, of Christians….”
It is also about total and complete control of the woman.
“...He goes on to explain what steps a husband should take to ensure submission from his wife. After confessing his own sins, a husband is encouraged to sit his wife down and explain to her that things need to change and that she needs to start doing her duties:
[H]is expectations for change should not be exhaustive, but rather representative. He should want to address the problem in principle, not in toto. The purpose of this discussion is not to present a twenty-year-old list of grievances–love does not keep a record of wrongs–but rather to help her learn to do her duty, and to lead her as she learns what is, for her, a difficult lesson. She can learn on a representative problem. She would be overwhelmed with a requirement that she change everywhere, all at once. If, for example, the problem is one of poor housekeeping, he should require something very simple, i.e. that the dishes be done after every meal before anything else is done.
The first time the dishes are not done, he must sit down with his wife immediately, and gently remind her that this is something which has to be done. At no time may he lose his temper, badger her, call her names, etc. He must constantly remember and confess that she is not the problem, he is. By bringing this gently to her attention, he is not to be primarily pointing to her need to repent; rather, he is exhibiting the fruit of his repentance.
He does this, without rancour and without an accusative spirit, until she complies or rebels. If she complies, he must move up one step, now requiring that another of her duties be done. If she rebels, he must call the elders of the church and ask them for a pastoral visit. When the government of the home has failed to such an extent, and a godly and consistent attempt by the husband to restore the situation has broken down, then the involvement of the elders is fully appropriate….”
One of the enduring legacies of my aunt, Mabel Perkins, were words of wisdom. “Men gave us the right to vote. Because they gave it to us, they can take it away from us. We must be ever vigilant in our suffrage, and vote. We must vote every time the polls open. It is up to you (she was talking to me) to tell the next generations of the women in our family that we have always been raised to be the equal of men. Our family has a tradition where women were educated to be the equals of men. We were raised to do anything we wanted in life. Men are not to control our destiny. They never have and they never will.”
Mibsy was 95-years-young when she told me this. She went on to say that the tradition in our family has been there for nearly a thousand years. I thought she was kidding, until I started working on our genealogy. Sure enough, I found, generation after generation, a legacy of very strong women who refused to be subdued or allow men to dominate them. It all began around 1189 or so with William Marshal, the 1st Earl of Pembroke and his wife, Isabel de Clare. He required that his daughters be the equal of men. His wife was the equal of men. While he was hanging with Richard Coeur de Lion, Isabel was left to run not only his estates, but those of the king.
It has been a requirement in our family, ever since, that women were the equal of men. I think it’s a good tradition.
