As the content of our faith changed, so did our conceptualization of Jesus.  He was no longer a God of love, but a muscle-bound tyrant. … And thus over the gradual course of time we became foot soldiers in a zombie-army, doing the political bidding of our Christian Right masters…

by Jonathan W. Rice for No Longer Quivering

Recently I was looking at a thread on a Web forum for women who’d escaped from the Quiverfull/Christian Patriarchy (QF/CP) movement. For those unfamiliar with QF/CP, it’s a faction within fundamentalist Christianity, some of whose proponents are Doug Phillips of Vision Forum, Mary Pride, R.C. Sproul, Jr., Voddie Bauchum, and Nancy Campbell.  It’s been popularized by the Duggar family’s TV reality show (they have 19 children at the time of this writing), and made infamous by Rusty Yates who, goaded by a fanatical minister, coerced his clinically psychotic wife Andrea to continue having baby after baby until she finally snapped in June, 2001, drowning her five children in the bathtub of their Houston home. (Rusty went on to remarry and is now siring replacement children.)

The word “Quiverfull” is taken from Psalm 127: 4, 5, which reads:

As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.

In a nutshell, the QF/CP movement bans all forms of birth control; families should have “as many children as God gives them.” These children are homeschooled for the most part, in the hopes that they’ll become an army of the Lord’s mighty warriors who, through sheer demographic force, reclaim America for God.  Females are kept in perpetual servitude from earliest childhood, where they are considered the property of their fathers and spend their days caring for younger siblings. When a girl reaches puberty she must pledge her virginity/purity to her father (often in writing).  Once the father finds a suitor to his liking, he transfers his ownership of the young lady to her husband.  Adult women in the movement are not allowed to work outside the home, and usually forbidden to speak in church (obviously, they can never be ordained!).  And based upon a quirky interpretation of an obscure biblical passage (Isaiah 3:12), they are also forbidden to vote.

Lurking beneath the QF/CP lifestyle lies the teachings of R.J. Rushdoony, the leading exponent of a dire and militant form of Calvinism called “Christian Reconstructionism.” In his massive tome Institutes of Biblical Law, he advocated the overthrow of modern democracy, replacing it with a theocratic state in which all the laws of Leviticus are imposed (including the death penalty for disobedient children, adulterers and homosexuals).  Also, as per his reading of the Bible, the theocratic state would reintroduce slavery.  Hard-line QF/CP believers think that creating a population explosion of their own is the most effective means of bringing this dystopic vision to fruition.

In late 2009, I learned that a journalist had written a book about the Quiverfull movement.[1] I ordered the book and also discovered an online forum for survivors and refugees who’d fled from it (No Longer Quivering). As far back as 1989, I’d known several families who fit the description but could never really understand their rationale. I hoped the NLQ forum and the book might shed some light on their beliefs. I was not disappointed.

In mid-February 2010, a thread title on the forum caught my eye: How did you get yourself into this mess? The author, a female refugee from the movement, was wondering how she and so many others could have fallen for it in the first place. After reading it, I again realized how closely the QF/CP movement intersects with mainstream evangelicalism and fundamentalism; and how easily I too could have been recruited, given the wrong circumstances.

How, one may ask, do people get into such a seemingly bizarre religious movement? And how had I (in the past) been in danger of being sucked in myself?

The answer boils down to one simple word: “gradually.”

The substance of my gradual experience, which I’ll summarize here, is the shared story of countless rank & file believers who come under the broad labels “Pentecostal,” “charismatic,” “evangelical,” and “fundamentalist.”

In the beginning, as a teen in the mid 1970s, my cousin, followed by my mother, became born-again Christians. It was really positive in those days: God loves you and has a wonderful plan, and so forth. It was all about having a new life, full of purpose and meaning. A life in which the very Creator of the Universe actually cared about little people like us!

In her adolescent southern California manner, my fourteen-year-old cousin would say, “I used to get high on weed, but now I get high on Jesus!” She gave me a copy of The Way, a hippie-friendly version of The Living Bible, which I actually enjoyed. (At age 15, while terrified and deranged from a drug-trip gone bad, I picked it up and read about 20 pages, after which I felt calm enough to endure the next few hours.)

And the early Jesus-music to which they exposed me (Chuck Girard and others), though not nearly on par with The Grateful Dead or Emerson, Lake & Palmer, still spoke to me in a profound manner.

By the time I finally became a Christian at 17, this was my milieu. Sure, I was exposed to some disturbing signs of things to come at my Christian high school, but neither I nor my new friends shared the views of the newly-founded Moral Majority, which we thought to be vestiges of an old religiosity on the verge of extinction.

It was all really positive in those early, idealistic years. Loving Jesus, hoping to save the world, helping homeless people, having an abundance of real friends who stood with me through thick and thin: it was all good; really good. The song that often brought tears to my eyes in the early days was written by Keith Green immediately upon his conversion (before he’d entered into his extremist phase):

Like waking up from the longest dream

How real it seemed

Until your love broke through

But gradually…

A radio program called Focus on the Family that I used to hear doling out advice to crisis-wracked families, was becoming politicized. Through the show, and then through the warnings of Tim LaHaye and others, I began learning of sinister threats being hatched against us by people called “Secular Humanists.” LaHaye, in a breathless, frenzied spiel, warned of the threat as follows. Humanists, he said:

have been “planted” in strategic places in the United Nations, they teach children in public schools “to read the words scientific humanism as soon as they’re old enough to read,” and 275,000 humanists control the American government, education, and media.[2]

As conspiracy-paranoia mounted, politics in church began to subvert the innocent, Jesus-loving expressions of faith I’d known in the beginning. Our churches started distributing candidates’ score cards in the foyers, telling us to vote accordingly.

And then there was a radio preacher, William Steuart McBirnie, whose Voice of Americanism program daily rehashed senator McCarthy’s and Carl McIntire’s Red Scare fundamentalism, updating it for the mid-1980s. We had much to fear and many to loathe.

Music-wise, instead of hearing to how great it was to know Jesus, I discovered Steve Taylor, who was often promoting Christian Right propaganda in his angry, caustic songs.. Listening to and agreeing with Taylor could make my blood boil, and I heard him frequently; so much so that sixteen years later I can quote lines verbatim from memory—like this one from the 1984 song “Meat the Press”:

When the godless chair the judgment seat

We can thank the godless media elite

They can silence those who fall from their grace

With a note that says, “We haven’t the space.”

After the release of Taylor’s first album in 1983, Francis Schaeffer lavished gushing praise upon him.[3] (Francis, especially through his books How Should We Then Live?, Whatever Happened to the Human Race? and A Christian Manifesto, was the Godfather of the New Christian Right.)  On the album Meltdown, which contains the song Meat the Press, Steve Taylor thanked Francis Schaeffer for his encouragement.*

I met Francis Schaeffer and his son Franky in the spring of 1984, when they spoke at my college (Francis sat in a chair for the few minutes he spoke, being in the final stages of cancer. Two weeks later he died). It was the angry, energetic Franky who took center stage, bashing the “secular media establishment,” the vast Secular Humanist conspiracy, and even the bastion of evangelicalism, Wheaton College, which, he claimed, was compromising in some manner. “If I ever disappear,” he roared in a histrionic fit, “you can find my body buried in the swamps behind Wheaton!” Franky’s rage was contagious, further fueling my anger.

Most cults have a well-planned program for the indoctrination of new recruits, in which they deceitfully hide their more bizarre teachings from seekers (an exoteric/esoteric truth divide). The new convert is only taught the vision piecemeal; gradually gaining deeper (and weirder) knowledge over a period of months or years.

But with us, although it may have appeared that way, it wasn’t exactly so. I later realized I was living in the midst of a drastic change in popular American Christianity. The movement still really was (for the most part) benign when I joined. The resentful loathing was added gradually, not as a planned indoctrination program, but because the church genuinely was in the midst of radical transition during 1980s and ‘90s.

And thus by 1985, my original faith, though still there, was mixed with anger, resentment and fear—a sense of being under siege.

After another few years, the Rev. Don Wildmon, who Max Blumenthal would later describe as “churlish,”[4] started telling us to boycott Mennon Speed Stick deodorant because it was advertised on a TV show which he, and therefore God, didn’t approve of.

Then, in 1990, James Dobson openly began using the language of civil war: “Nothing short of a great Civil War of Values rages today throughout North America. Two sides with vastly differing and incompatible world views are locked in a bitter conflict that permeates every level of society.”[5] Whether the timing of Dobson’s drum beating was cunning or just plain lucky, I don’t know. But it certainly was fortuitous. In September of that same year, PBS aired its nine-episode Civil War series, the most popular program in the network’s history. As Entertainment Weekly’s Albert Kim recalls, “The Civil War mesmerized 38.9 million viewers, upsetting the networks’ fall premieres.”[6] Or as Dave McCoy, in the official Amazon.com review puts it:

While [Ken] Burns is a historian, a researcher, and a documentarian, he’s above all a gifted storyteller, and it’s his narrative powers that give this chronicle its beauty, overwhelming emotion, and devastating horror…Burns allows us not only to relearn and finally understand our history, but also to feel and experience it.[7]

Due to the gripping popularity of the series, it mattered not whether one was an avid history buff or history-illiterate. Freshly burned in the psyches of those who read and heard Dobson’s 1990 Civil War cry were graphic images of America when it was in the throes of its most self-destructive conflict.

Civil War. What a great idea! Brother against brother. A woman against her coworker. Neighbor against neighbor. Divide and conquer. A nation’s unity destroyed. And when all was said and done, Dobson emerged from the fray as the new Republican Kingmaker.

In such a milieu, those negative traits of resentment and fear had become almost central, my original faith being sickly, barely alive and far beneath the surface. We were now in the midst of full-blown culture-war. And all that the churches and Christian mailing list materials were trumpeting was also confirmed by an outside source: The Rush Limbaugh show.

By 1992 I’d made the full transition from a spirituality of awe, joy and wonder to one of hatred, fear and all-around loathing. We Christians were under siege. “They” were taking away our freedoms. “They” had planted Secular Humanist agents in every ‘government school,’ brainwashing the next generation. Not only that, The New Age Movement (painted as a well-organized conspiracy rather than the loosely knit spiritual fad that it was) was out to forge a One World Government and wipe the final vestiges of Christianity from the face of the earth.

Around that time, I heard a song by the excellent alternative Christian rock band, The Swirling Eddies. One of the lines said, “…and it scares me just how angry I have grown.” This was a bit unsettling, but I felt my anger was justified. After all, hadn’t Franky Schaeffer written a book called A Time for Anger?

As the content of our faith changed, so did our conceptualization of Jesus. He was no longer a God of love, but a muscle-bound tyrant. Speaking of the Christian Right in 2009, journalist Max Blumenthal’s following description also summarizes the view of Jesus that was gaining ascendancy among us in the 1990s:

The movement’s Jesus is the opposite of the prince of peace. He is a stern, overtly masculine patriarch charging into the fray with his sword raised against secular foes; he is “the head of a dreadful company, mounted on a white horse, with a double-edged sword, his robe dipped in blood,” according to movement propagandist Steve Arterburn. [Mega-church pastor] Mark Driscoll…stirs the souls of twenty-something evangelical men with visions of “Ultimate Fighting Jesus…”

A portrait of virility and violence, the movement’s omnipotent macho Jesus represents the mirror inversion of the weak men who necessitated his creation. As [Erich] Fromm explained, “the lust for power is not rooted in strength, but in weakness [italics in original]. It is the expression of the individual self to stand alone and live. It is the desperate attempt to gain secondary strength where genuine strength is lacking.” [8]

I knew three Quiverfull families back in those days, though I didn’t yet know the term. Two of them had become discredited in my sight, one badly so. The other had moved far across the country to the Bible Belt, and thus their influence on me was minimal.

But: supposing a well-spoken, polished QF/CP promoter, who in outward appearance had an exemplary life and family, had befriended me then. And supposing this theoretical person had possessed a charismatic personality. Had this happened, I very well could have bought into the QF/CP vision.

The angry and ever-intensifying Christian Right machine had changed our churches into pre-stocked ponds in which QF/CP and other extremists fished. I was one of those pre-stocked fish. I just happened (by no virtue of my own at the time) to always be on the other side of the pond when people like Nancy Campbell, R.C. Sproul Jr., Doug Phillips, et al., went fishing.

That’s why I find it no surprise that so many of the former QF/CP people (like Vyckie Garrison, for example) are so smart and articulate. People don’t join the movement because they’re idiots. On the contrary, they join because they’re thoughtful, intelligent human beings who really care about their country; who are concerned about the kind of world in which their children and grandchildren will live. But these same good qualities became a curse when cunning fascist leaders subtly began to channel them for their ends.

And thus over the gradual course of time—sometimes even a decade—we (both “regular” believers and QF/CP Christians) became foot soldiers in a zombie-army, doing the political bidding of our Christian Right masters.

My desertion from the zombie-army largely came about through some unexpected developments. In 2002, my family and I moved to Colorado Springs where I worked for an evangelical ministry until we left the area in late December, 2007.

As I headed toward Colorado in a U-Haul van, my knowledge of that city was minimal. I knew it was America’s new evangelical Mecca, populated with scores of Christian organizations; and I loved the beautiful Front Range Mountains I’d seen on my visit a month before. But my main source of information was a book I’d read seven years prior, Ted Haggard’s, Primary Purpose: Making It Hard for People to Go to Hell from Your City.[9] In it, I’d read the amazing story of how Haggard and his initially small band of followers had transformed the supposedly pagan, anti-Christian city into God’s own country. Through spiritual mapping (identifying the ruling demons in a given area) and systematic warfare-prayer walks through each neighborhood (in which those demons were expelled from the region, presumably to resettle in Washington state, California, New York and Massachusetts), Colorado Springs was now the godliest place in America: truly a city that was “hard to go to Hell from.”

Or so I thought…

Although the organization that employed me was benign and apolitical, through my involvement with it I was exposed to the other big ministries in the area. Year after year I witnessed countless episodes of hypocrisy and self-congratulatory backslapping amongst Christian Right leaders. I soon felt uneasy amongst people I’d once greatly admired.

The church we attended turned out to be a de facto outpost of the Republican Party, and according to the pastor’s bizarre interpretation of an Isaiah passage, God had foreordained Republican Jesus to defeat Babylonian Saddam Hussein. By 2005, the church was showing a smiling picture of Sam Brownback each Sunday on the large overhead screen. The pastor would then instruct us to stretch forth our hands and pray fervently for him.

Brownback, dubbed “God’s Senator” by Jeff Sharlet, was a near-perfect embodiment of America’s new civil religion. He was a syncretic marvel who could glide effortlessly between his (Fundamentalist) Topeka Bible Church, Roman Catholicism, and a smattering of Orthodox Judaism. One cold winter Sunday, the pastor excitedly told us of the senator’s latest mystical experience: Brownback, the pastor claimed, had just been to Valley Forge with a group of prayer leaders. There, he knelt at the exact spot where George Washington had once famously prayed. While on his knees in the snow, Brownback had received “the spiritual mantle of George Washington,” an anointing which would send him to the Whitehouse in 2008—but only if God’s people prayed long and hard enough.

Growing weary of weekly political rallies, we soon dropped out of the church.

As the Iraq War went sour and the federal deficit went into the trillions under the “godly” Bush, I became increasingly disillusioned. Then came wave upon wave of varied Republican scandals; so many that they soon became an endless blur in my mind, and would have remained so to this day had Max Blumenthal not compiled them all under one cover in Republican Gomorrah. I realized that we’d been duped by the Christian Right: the politicians they promoted were not godly at all. They’d exploited a few causes that people felt passionately about, using them to con millions of voters. It had nothing to do with God’s will, only the will to power.

In early 2006, I heard our daughter, a student at Cheyenne Mountain High School, make reference to “Meth City” in a conversation. When I asked what it meant, she said Colorado Springs has such a bad Meth (methamphetamine) abuse problem that her fellow students had aptly renamed their city. (The things people learn from their kids!) At an elevation of over 6,000 feet, I was living in a Meth City on a Hill. Speaking of which…

Ted Haggard’s famous New Life Church was a few miles up the freeway from my office; we’d visited on several occasions over the years. On November 3, 2006, seized with morbid curiosity, I drove to New Life the day after Haggard had been exposed for his affair with male prostitute & bodybuilder Mike Jones, and for using Meth. The parking lot was jammed with major media vans broadcasting their stories and interviews. Entering New Life Church’s “World Prayer Center” on the campus’s east side, I noticed that the homoerotic paintings (macho, muscular, semi-clad men; one a blacksmith, another in chains, and an African-American angel), which I’d seen just a few months prior, were gone. It looked like a hasty job. No new paintings were in their places yet, and the picture hangers were still lodged in the now-bare walls, which had scratch marks from the rubbing of the frames over the years.

But it was impossible to remove the heavy sculptures with the same haste. As I went from the World Prayer Center over to the vast foyer of the church, the huge sculpture of an angel named “Exalter” was still prominently on display. It had the appearance of a steroid-sodden bodybuilder. Its massive arms were raised in adoration of the universe’s ultimate Alpha Male: the super-macho Christ of the Religious Right. Haggard’s consort, Mike Jones, had a physique quite similar to this sculpted angel. Was it merely a coincidence? Obviously, the people who’d scrambled to remove the paintings in the World Prayer Center either that morning or the night before knew it was not.

A few weeks before we finally left Colorado, a local news station did a major exposé on human trafficking in Colorado Springs. It turned out that kidnapped Asian women were stocking the city’s many massage parlors. An expert on the show informed viewers that if they saw massage parlors with barred doors and windows, the women inside were probably being held captive.

Droves of sex-prisoners languishing in God’s own Paradise? How could it be?

During that season I also learned we’d been lied to. Contrary to the jeremiads of the Christian Right’s propaganda industry, it wasn’t “America’s godless, secular intelligentsia” who had removed the Bible and the knowledge of God from our educational system. In reality, Christians themselves had caused it nearly 200 years ago. By the 1820s, America’s public schools were in a dilemma. Calvinists wanted the schools to teach only Calvinism, but Arminians (mostly Methodists) wanted them to teach only their doctrines. Several other sects were making demands of their own. And all of them agreed that no matter which version of Christianity won out in the classrooms, it should never be Roman Catholicism, which they all abhorred with equal passion. The endless infighting overwhelmed school authorities, who eventually gave up on the teaching of religion, substituting a vague, generic moral science in its place.[10]

The same thing goes for taking Bible reading out of public schools. No, it wasn’t a cabal of Secular Humanists in the early 1960s, but Christians themselves who brought it about, through viscous infighting between Protestants (most of whom championed the King James Bible) and Catholics who could only accept the Douay-Rheims translation. Speaking of the “Bible Wars” in the mid-nineteenth century, Stephen Prothero writes, “The most visible battlefield in these early culture wars was Philadelphia, where Protestant-Catholic riots over whose Bible would be read in public schools left over a dozen people dead and Catholic churches burned to the ground in 1844.”[11] In addition to outright violence and murder, the endless polemical clashes between these groups caused school administrators to become weary and wary.

As a result, by the 1870s, public schools in many states had not only done away with Christian education, but Bible reading and hymn singing as well. Contrary to what we’d learned from the Christian Right, the rulings of 1962 and ’63 were merely the final few nails in the coffin—not the beginning of a cultural decline engineered by Secular Humanists.

Speaking of Secular Humanists, were they really a threat, or were they mere boogey-men, the creation of our Christian Right overlords? Veteran journalist and author Chris Hedges observes:

The obsession with the evils of secular humanism would be laughable if it were not such an effective scare tactic. The only organized movement of secular humanists who call themselves by that name is the American Humanist Association (AHA), which has about 3,000 members… Its Humanist magazine has a miniscule circulation. In terms of influence, as Barbara Parker and Christy Macy wrote, “these humanists rank with militant vegetarians and agrarian anarchists, and were about as well known—until the Religious Right set out to make them famous.” But it is not important who is fingered as Satan’s agent, as long as the wild conspiracy theories and paranoia are stoked by an array of duplicitous, phantom enemies that lurk behind the scenes of public school boards or the media.[12]

A far cry indeed from LaHaye’s whopping 275,000 Secular Humanists who supposedly control the entirety of American life and polity!

Finally, what ever became of the angry young evangelical, Franky Schaeffer? He eventually tired of the whole scene and converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. Then, in 2008, he denounced the Christian Right in his book, Crazy For God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of it Back. In a candid interview with Max Blumenthal, Frank (he no longer goes by “Franky”) said:

We [Christian Right leaders] thrived on bad news, we thanked God that education was falling apart and teen pregnancy was going up. We couldn’t peddle solutions unless there was a crisis. We were in business in the same way an oncologist was—if there was no cancer he’d be out of business. Quite simply, we were trying to manufacture crisis.” [13]

In the same interview, Frank also said that his father Francis, on his deathbed, deeply regretted his role in founding the Christian Right. “He was convinced that he had created a monster.” [14]

Living in Colorado Springs and learning what I did there was like Neo swallowing the red pill. I’d seen the truth about The Matrix. I could never go back; life couldn’t continue as it had before.

But unlike some of my QF/CP-escapee friends, I didn’t pay a heavy price for leaving. No loss of friends or family, no painful divorce, and no “shunning” by fake former brethren in an abusive house-church. The Christian group with which I’m affiliated has never endorsed QF/CP. On the contrary, they aggressively promote the ordination of women. Nor are there any political litmus tests which members must pass. They range from very conservative to quite progressive. A group closely networked with ours has orphanages and schools across Mozambique, and in mid-2007 my family and I spent six weeks there.

While a gentle breeze off the Indian Ocean kicked up tiny swirls of reddish-brown dust in the large Pemba compound, I asked the co-founder, a vibrant expat woman from southern California, her opinion of American politicized Christianity. With a troubled look she replied slowly and deliberately, “Those of us who work among the poor have no fondness for the Religious Right.” Being just one week off the plane from Colorado Springs, I couldn’t believe my ears. But I had heard correctly, and most of the hundred or so other visitors we met during those weeks shared similar views. A few weeks later I heard music and saw a crowd of Pemba residents gathered under a large tent on the compound. When I asked the co-founder what the meeting was about, she replied that it was a UN-sponsored AIDS awareness program. “We let them use our place for free,” she said. “They’re trying to save peoples’ lives.”

Waves of relief washed over me as I came to a realization that should have been so obvious all along: “I don’t have to be fascist to be a Christian!”

Leaving, for me, was more an act of remembering; recalling what being a Christian was supposed to be in the first place. It was like “waking up from the longest dream, how real it seemed…”

Now that I’ve renounced the politicized spirituality of fear and loathing, I am so very relieved. Sure, I still get angry at times, like when I read about Fundamentalist parents Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz, who, following Michael and Debi Pearl’s No Greater Joy child-rearing manuals, allegedly beat their seven-year-old adopted daughter to death with plumbing supply line because she repeatedly mispronounced a word during a home-schooling lesson. In cases like this, there really is “A Time for Anger.”

But there’s a big difference. Because I deny Christian Right demagogues and their talk-radio allies access to my mind, I’m not simmering with anger and resentment. I really enjoy life again. This is not to say I’ve simply reverted to a facile Sunday School type of faith.  Such a second naivety is neither possible nor desirable.  Theologically, philosophically–and in every way really–I’ve been through many changes.  There was no “restore to default” button for me to click; no way to un-swallow the red pill once it was digested.

What I have been able to do, though, is make a return to a spirituality of awe and wonder, in which I no longer look to self-appointed authority figures and ‘experts’ for guidance. And I’ve utterly lost the Modern, Cartesian illusion of “geometric certitude,” which was so deeply ingrained through years of studying “Christian Worldview” materials. I now revel in the thought that the universe is, as the poet Robert Hunter put it, full of “mysteries dark and vast”; mysteries that my little ant-brain will never begin to fathom.

For these reasons I find a deep kinship with those (both female and male) who have fled the QF/CP movement. After all, they were once in that same pre-stocked Christian Right pond, swimming right alongside me.

And like them, I’ve also escaped that pond and know better now. We’re no longer taking the bait.

Born and raised in northern California, Jonathan W. Rice is a freelance writer, teacher and speaker. He can be contacted at twelvmnkys@aol.com.

ENDNOTES

[2] Tim LaHaye, The Battle For the Mind (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1980), pp. 27, 74, 97, 179. Summarized in George M. Mardsen, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism ( MI: Wm.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1991), p. 109.

[3] “I Want to Be a Clone” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Want_to_Be_a_Clone). Accessed 23 February 2010.

[4] Max Blumenthal, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party (New York: Nation Books, 2009), p. 203.

*Steve Taylor, Vinyl LP edition of Meltdown (Sparrow Records, 1984). Liner Notes (single-page insert inside the LP jacket). The acknowledgment expresses gratitude to “Francis Schaeffer for encouraging words.”

[5] James Dobson, Children at Risk (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1990), pp. 19-20.

[6] Albert Kim, “The Filmmaker Behind PBS’ ‘Civil War’ Steps Up To The Plate With His Epic ‘Baseball’” (http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,303684,00.html), accessed 25 February 2010.

[7] Dave McCoy, “The Civil War” (http://www.amazon.com/Civil-War-Film-Ken-Burns/dp/B000BITUE8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1267037976&sr=1-1), accessed 25 February 2010.

[8] Blumenthal, Republican Gomorrah, pp. 9, 10.

[9] Florida: Creation House, 1995.

[10] Stephen Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—And Doesn’t (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), pp. 109-120.

[11] Ibid, pp. 121-127.

[12] Chris Hedges, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (New York: Free Press, 2006), p. 27.

[13] Blumenthal, Republican Gomorrah, p. 30.

[14] Ibid, p. 27.

Quiverfull is not a denomination – there are no membership rolls or doctrinal statements to sign. Quiverfull is a philosophy and its consequent lifestyle which Jim Bob and Michelle have demonstrably adopted.

by hopewell for No Longer Quivering

Q: Are the Duggars Quiverfull?

By their own admission, Jim-Bob and Michelle were so “grieved” after reading the information pamphlet in a birth control pill package that they turned their fertility over to God. (“About Us” para.1 See also, Dallas News). That decision has been the reason for their incredible family size of 19 children.

Recently the media has offered several profiles of just who are “Quiverfull” families.

Increasingly, the presence of such large, ideologically driven families is being documented through the medium of the age: reality TV shows and lifestyle cable channel specials, all of which campily depict Quiverfull life as like regular motherhoood, but amplified – more kids, more laundry, more merriment.

The most famous of these families, Michelle Duggar and her husband, Jim Bob…. Their fame sprouts primarily from their novelty: in 2008 Michelle Duggar was pregnant with her eighteenth child so far. “So far” is a ubiquitous phrase in the movement… that cutely restates a Quiverfull family’s continuing trust in God’s control of the womb. But such theological underpinnings are glossed over to make room for the novel details of large family life. (Joyce, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, pp 138-139).

Does the decision to trust God and not birth control in their family planning alone qualify them as Quiverfull? Yes. Here’s why:

The Duggars wrote:

As conservative Christians, we believe every life is sacred, even the life of the unborn. Due to our lack of knowledge, we destroyed the precious life of our unborn child. We prayed and studied the Bible and found a host of references that told us God considered children a gift, a blessing, and a reward. (FAQ #2 para. 3).

Among that “host of Bible references” is Pslam 127, verses 3—5, the verse on which the Quiverfull movement has been built:

Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD:
and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man;
so are children of the youth.
Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them:
they shall not be ashamed,
but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate. (Pslam 127:3-5 K.J.V.)

The website www.Quiverfull.com says “We exalt Jesus Christ as Lord, and acknowledge His headship in all areas of our lives, including fertility.”(para.1). Mary Pride, a founder of the Quiverfull school of thought has written: “Family planning is the mother of abortion,” (Mary Pride, The Way Home, quoted in Newsweek, para. 4).

The Duggars frequently speak out about “causing” Michelle’s miscarriage by the use of birth control pills. They also adhere to Biblically-based abstinence for a set number of days following the birth of a boy or girl. This also supposedly ties in to the teaching of the Institute for Basic Life Principles, the pseudo-Christian organization founded by Bill Gothard. Gothard teaches couples to only have intercourse when the woman is at her “fertile” time each month.

Even breast feeding, which can be a barrier to conception is not to be prolonged for this reason. Back when the couple had a mere 13 children, Jim-Bob was quoted in the New York Times as saying he had “14 [children], really, since my wife is pregnant and life begins at conception’.” (New York Times, para. 11). An admission of such beliefs by a politician in a paper with worldwide circulation can only mean one thing: He believes it.

The Quiverfull idea began in the backlash against feminism. Mary Pride’s book The Way Home and a book by A Full Quiver by Rick and Jan Hess are most frequently cited as giving birth to the Quiverfull lifestyle. Both reject birth control. These books, with the Bible, and often the teachings of Bill Gothard’s Institute of Basic Life Principles and materials from the dominionist Patriarch group, Vision Forum, constitute the “How-To” manuals for prospective Quiverfull couples. (Joyce, Nation, p. 11).

The Duggars have been eager and thorough students.

On their TV show, Michelle has always said “children are like flowers, you can’t have too many flowers.” Jim-Bob frequently has said that he leaves the decision of having another child up to Michelle…..but is that true? In Gothardite families the husband is the undisputed leader of the family. “[W]omen live within stringently enforced doctrines of wifely submission and male headship,” (Kathryn Joyce – Quiverfull Book, para. 1). If he wants to have sexual relations the wife says “yes.” Since the wife is not able to use birth control or to refuse her husband is the decision to have another child really hers? Would he really forgo his pleasure if she said she couldn’t handle having another child? Maybe. Certainly in other times men have made such a decision.

Today, with birth control the norm, we find it hard to believe. Many a Catholic couple of years gone by have lived out a platonic marriage– at least until the wife’s child bearing years have ended. Given the frequent, enthusiastic kissing and other shows of affection on their TV show though, it is doubtful that he would agree to a platonic life. Given their fervent belief in the rightness of allowing God to control their fertility and that they clearly see “that a woman’s constant sexual availability to her husband is not only her wifely “duty,” but also at the heart of her “ministry” as a believing Christian” (Byrnes, T A (Summer 2009). Patriarchy: the glue that holds the culture war together. Conscience, 30, 2. p.52(2).

I doubt that a platonic marriage will ever exist between Mr. and Mrs. Duggar.

““Our bodies are meant to be a living sacrifice,” write the Hesses. Or, as Mary Pride, in another of the movement’s founding texts, The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality, puts it, “My body is not my own.” This rebuttal of the feminist health text Our Bodies, Ourselves is deliberate.” (Joyce, Nation, p. 11).

One reviewer recounts Kathryn Joyce’s relentless documentation of the Quiverfull lifestyle’s “pretty distasteful practices… including early arranged marriages; constant pregnancy and childbirth; absolute female submission to male authority, whether in the person of a father, a brother, a husband or most cringe-inducing, a self-appointed pastor. Joyce recounts story after story of girls being raised for submission….. ((Byrnes, T A (Summer 2009). Patriarchy: the glue that holds the culture war together. Conscience, 30, 2. p.52(2).

Joyce herself has defined Quiverfull families thus: “Quiverfull parents try to have upwards of six children. They home-school their families, attend fundamentalist churches and follow biblical guidelines of male headship—’Father knows best’—and female submissiveness.” (Joyce, Nation, p. 11).

Do the math on this alone and the Duggars add up to 100% Quiverfull.

Another aspect of the Duggar’s life that speaks plainly to being Quiverfull is the isolated life-style they have chosen and which they show us on their TV program. (I am told this, and their religious beliefs, were made very clear in the original airing of “14 Kids and Pregnant” which has since been re-edited. I have only seen the re-released version.) The family generally does everything together. Friends are discouraged except from like-minded families and in fully supervised settings. Children are not allowed to enroll in sports leagues or other activities that “disrupt” family life. The individual never comes before the family and reflects the Duggars oft-repeated maxim “Jesus first, others second, yourself last.”

When the Duggars made a rare made-for-TV-appearance at a local elementary school this was well illustrated: all of the Duggar children in attendance were below or above the age appropriate to the school. When one of the eldest girls was asked to recommend a favorite book to the children, she struggled to come up with a Quiverfull-favorite “Before You Meet Prince Charming: A Guide to Radiant Purity” by Sarah Mally—a book wildly inappropriate to the age and setting.

While we have seen the Duggars go to “broomball,” (a sport few have even heard of) they naturally went as a family and while there were a few outsiders on the ice, their interactions were very stiff at best. The “friends” we have been introduced to on “16/17/18/19 Kids and Counting” are all like-minded and most are openly members of Bill Gothard’s ATI/IBPL organizations. While we have been told the Duggars participate in home church (often another tell-tale sign of Quiverfull life) we have not been introduced to all the families. This leads me to believe that all may not be members of ATI, but are simply “like minded.”

The Duggar children have been shown to be clueless of such things as the rules of baseball or why Dolly Parton is famous. They knew only that “Miss Dolly” promotes reading and likes kids! Right…. There are no minorities visible in their lives, although that is not a-typical of white middle class families in suburban and rural areas. Finally how many “average” teenagers would ask for quotes from “the Founding Fathers” to adorn their bedroom walls or to share a bedroom with siblings ranging in age from birth to 18? Probably none—outside of those educated in revisionist Christian Dominionist history and born into a Quiverfull family?!

On the TV special “16 Kids and Moving In” we met the Holt family. Jim Holt is a long-time friend of Jim-Bob and is also active in Arkansas politics. His similarly large family had been linked to the Duggars publically thru their “fellowship” gatherings and thru broomball at the local rink. Duggar and Holt campaigned for each other as well. In the show the children are shown mingling and talking with the adults—evidence of how well “socialized” they are compared to public school kids who spend all day with age-mates. Mysteriously, the friendship cooled after the Duggars TV shows began.

There have been unconfirmed rumors that the eldest Duggar child, Joshua, was “betrothed” to one of the Holt girls, but that betrothal never went forward into marriage, possibly due to some transgression of rules by Joshua Duggar. (Google “Duggar – sin in the camp.”)

Another family, the Forsyths, own Fort Rock Family Camp and were featured an the episode in which we were invited along on a Father/Daughter camping retreat. While the Forsyths have only two children, they clearly live a family-centered, Patriarchal lifestyle—as was shown on an episode of “World’s Strictest Parents.” While on this retreat we also saw Jim-Bob being a “father to the fatherless–” reaching out to girls who had lost their father to death. This was to show that the Duggar children DO have friends beyond their siblings.

Then there is the Bates family. Gil and Kelly Bates are long-time friends of the Duggars who have recently become closer as their mega-families (all of similar age) begin reaching Courtship age. They have connected at ATI family events and the Duggars have been shown designing and helping build almost an entire new home for the Bates family. Like the Duggars, the Bates speak openly about changing their thinking to allow God to plan their family. In fact, Kelly Bates said “I always told my family I wasn’t going to have any children….I was very career oriented.” “[Kelly] said she wanted to work with special needs children or in some kind of ministry.”

It is my belief that a few ideas have been “road tested” for the Duggars by the Bates. One such is the idea of grown unmarried daughter continuing her education after her GED. In the last season of “18 Kids and Counting” we were introduced to the tremendous musical talent of Erin Bates and were informed that she had turned down a chance to study music in college. Apparently this did not go down well with viewers. Erin was allowed to take a music theory course at a local ultra-conservative Christian school—Crown College. One of the older Duggar girls even got to go along to see the college. The second “test drive” by the Bates is the possibility of college study on a larger scale than merely a necessary class. They have acknowledged that that their eldest son “Zachary earned a high score on his ACT test, has a high school degree and is now immersed in college-level studies.” Could this be testing the waters for a Duggar boy or Girl? Not likely, given Gothard’s teachings, but still a possibility.

Another way we know the Duggars are Quiverfull is by their children’s pat answers. In each of the episodes when a new baby has been announced the kids are always “thrilled.” So, too, are the Bates children—shown “celebrating” Mom’s positive pregnancy test early in the morning on the long drive to the Duggar’s home. We were treated to a family “vote” on the new baby’s name, too [for Jordyn]. It is very telling that the older girls speak of “our little kids” in ways normally only a mother would speak. A hallmark of such families is to have the older children (especially the older girls) help out with the housework and child care. The little children are routinely shown being helped, instructed, scolded and comforted by their big sisters. Still, it is “Daddy” whose word is law. The command “Daddy says no one is to play outside,” was shown in one episode to elicit immediate obedience.

The Duggar children, after age 8, are expected to help their younger siblings thru the family’s “Buddy System.” The “big Buddy” helps the little one get dressed, do school work and even help them learn to play the piano or violin. Jim-Bob has written in their book that “The buddy system brings much joy to our home.” The family also uses what they call “jurisdictions” which divide the household chores among the children. “Many hands make light work,” is a favorite Duggar saying. The most arduous chores—such as meal preparation and the never-ending laundry, however, are in the hands of the elder girls and have been since they were pre-teens. [“14 Kids…” “16 Kids…” “Raising 16 kids”]. In the early Duggar TV specials the older girls were visibly exhausted and shown bizarrely wearing dress coats and carrying diaper bags and shoulder purses all before reaching their teens.

The older children also are expected to uphold the teachings and standards imposed by the parents. Viewers were recently treated to Joy-Anna Duggar [a preteen at the time] covering a TV screen and using the family code word “Nike” to prevent her younger brothers from seeing something inappropriate. She did not want them to be “defrauded” by the image on the screen, but could not really define the term “defraud.” Her sheepish Grandmother explained that Joy-Anna had been taught to do this. Very recently we saw Josh Duggar and wife Anna back home helping care for his siblings while Michelle and baby Josie were hospitalized. He spoke of having to reassert his authority as the eldest sibling.

Various Duggar children were shown at the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival enjoying “wholesome” family entertainment, such as the movie “Fireproof” and speaking out about how badly this is needed. Strangely, many of the Duggars watching these films were way below the target audience age, but being a Quverfull and Patriarchal family, they all went together.

The kids have all been shown participating in activities at an ATI family event in Big Sandy, Texas and, we have been told, Josh Duggar met his wife, Anna, in a concession line at one such event. While the boys mostly went off to enjoy themselves rappelling and doing other fun things, the older girls were volunteer helpers with all the little children’s activities at the event and only enjoyed a break for the combined orchestra’s practice and performance. Later in the same year, the oldest girls earned a break from housework and child care and attended an ATI girls retreat designed to reinforce the teachings they have grown up with.

The Duggars are also part of the “debt free” and “self supporting” wing of the Christian right. Jim-Bob gives credit to ATI’s financial guru, Jim Sammons–even linking to Sammon’s program on the family web site. The Duggars and their most visible friends eschew jobs in favor of family-owned businesses. Keeping the family together in the home, in homeschool and in family- and home-based business is essential to Quiverfull thinkers.

Jim-Bob Duggar has been very “blessed” by some of his real estate deals. Examples shown on their show were land rented out for a cell phone tower as well as a former chicken hatchery that is leased as commercial and warehouse space. In their book he gives even more details of fortunate real estate deals. Michelle explained on the show that they worked “really hard” when they were young to be able to “relax” now.

The Duggar sons are expected to follow this line of thinking in their own careers. To date 3 sons are now done with their “education,” have a GED and are in business. Josh, following in his father’s footsteps, has a used car lot. John David, again in his father’s footsteps, has a towing business. Joseph, who is currently at the family home with elder brother John, has not been identified as having his own business but is said to be helping John. To mainstream America, these boys are not educated to the point of having a job at much more than McDonalds. In fact you cannot even enlist in the U.S.Marine Corps with a GED! But in Quiverfull families, this is normal.

The Duggar friends all have similar business—the Stanleys have a construction company, the Bates own a tree service company, the Maxwells have a family business producing materials for family scheduling. In their book, the Duggars provide mere lip-service to the idea that their children could realistically aspire to more:

“If one of our children is called to a specialized field, such as medicine, we will help him or her prepare for it. But our main educational goal is to give them as much knowledge and as many skills as possible to prepare them for adult life. While we value academics, we also want to prepare them to run a household or support a family with skills such as cooking, sewing, carpentry, plumbing, electrical, mechanical, money managing, negotiating, and sales experience.”

The Duggar daughters have been shown via the Discovery Health Channel’s web site to have career goals. The joke is on the readers however, as each girl has chosen a Gothard-approved goal like nurse, midwife, missionary, beautician. Helpfully, ATI has training programs in each of these areas. The Duggars also have shown how they teach the girls to change the oil in the car or change a flat tire as well as showing the boys learning to cook or doing some housework. This particular episode of the show seemed hopelessly “staged.” Especially when the girls were shown in the garage learning about the car—all while little Johanna toddled about in such an inappropriate setting!

The Duggars show up consistently as visitors for “fellowship” with other openly Quiverfull families on their family blogs. The Maxwells, a family who sings and ministers together and whose adult children continue to live with their parents and under their authority, have not only been seen visiting with the Duggars, but have had their “Chore Packs” and “Managers of Their Homes” Scheduling product featured on the Duggar’s show. Links to other family visits:

Maxwell Family: Fellowship on the Road

Joel’s Journey: Visiting the Duggar Family…

Staddon Family: Meet the Bates Family

Dotrignac Family: March 14th 2006

Sam Baldwin: Duggars and Baldwins

Jim-Bob and Michelle Duggar, their friends Gil and Kelly Bates and others would not be speaking at ATI/IBLP events unless they fully toed the “party line” of Bill Gothard. The Duggars are the “cash cow,” the “draw” for the organization. That party line is “Quiverfull” with a capital “Q”. Do they agree with the idea of “militant fecundity”—i.e. “outbreeding” the liberal right? (Newsweek, para. 6-7). I believe so. After all Joyce writes:

Quiverfull women are more than mothers. They’re domestic warriors in the battle against what they see as forty years of destruction wrought by women’s liberation: contraception, women’s careers, abortion, divorce, homosexuality and child abuse, in that order. (Joyce, Nation, p. 11).

The Duggars, in years past, were active in the Right-to-Life movement, attending protests as a family. Recently the tabloid press has reported that Michelle’s elder sister is a partner in a long-term lesbian relationship. While that sister has been shown on the TV show there was no discussion of her lifestyle.

Jim-Bob has been active in politics for years. Eldest son, Joshua, was once known as “the Little Governor” for trailing his Daddy around the Arkansas State House. Josh has also stated his goal of entering politics, although that has not been mentioned on the TV show. For a while at least, Joshua had a part-time business doing “communications” work for politicians. Sadly, his name is the only thing that will help him compete against homeschoolers graduating from Patrick Henry College and other conservative political training grounds. Even his once stated-goal of attending Bill Gothard’s online law school would not help him. Graduates of that institution are reportedly allowed to sit the bar exam in only a few states—possibly only in California. Even the oldest Duggar girl’s have had political experience on the campaign for their Dad and for former presidential candidate and family friend Mike Huckabee.

So, how does all this mesh with a TV reality show? Not very well. There are a few possibilities here.

• First, that Jim-Bob and Michelle, like most parents, have moderated their standards and expectations over time. A household with kids ranging from birth to early adulthood has very, very different needs than a family of under-5s. That the kids, especially the oldest 6, are sporting trendier, but still modest clothing, and better hairstyles is a sign of growing up and of more prosperous financial times for the whole family.

• Second, that they are “white washing” or “soft pedaling” on the Gothard part of their lives to be more attractive to a wider audience. This may also be a requirement in their contract with TLC. Gothard’s true membership figures are not known and the Duggars could be a great recruiting tool to other like-minded families who would not otherwise learn of the organization. Things like the “family uniform” put off “seekers” who might be enticed to become ATI and Quiverfull families. So too are many of the disciplinary practices touted by Gothard’s organization. These would not appeal to a broader audience

• Third, they may have “given” a little on dress in order to conduct “friendship evangelism.” The family’s stated goal in going on TV was to reach others for Christ. As then 15-year old Jana Duggar put it in one interview: “’We’re able to share with others about Christ and what he’s done in our lives,’ she said, stressing the family’s primary message: ‘Children are a blessing and not a burden.’” Out-of-style clothing and bad hair are noticed in all the wrong ways. Looking like “everyone else,” if a bit more modest, helps newcomers to see their lifestyle as attainable and enjoyable.

Which is the truth? While nay-sayers will quickly vote for “selling out for commercial gain,” it’s likely some of each is a possibility. Still, the Duggars would not be invited to speak at all kinds of ATI/IBLP or Vision Forum events without being card carrying members of the Quiverfull party. I believe Jim-Bob and Michelle, as the world’s most visible adherents to Gothard’s teachings, have the organization’s permission to style themselves in a more mainstream mode.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck …

So, bottom-line time:

Quiverfull is not a denomination – there are no membership rolls or doctrinal statements to sign. Quiverfull is a philosophy and its consequent lifestyle which Jim Bob and Michelle have demonstrably adopted.

Are the Duggars Quiverfull? You bet your life!

Are they Patriarchal? Of course!

Michael Pearl has issued a scornful brush-off of critic’s charge that No Greater Joy Ministry’s “child-training” advice incited Kevin and Elizabeth Statz to beat their 9-year-old daughter, Lydia to death using quarter-inch plumbing supply line.

by Vyckie

I am nearly speechless with anger after reading a link postedby NLQ forum member, Asteli which highlights Michael Pearl’s “Laughing” Facebook note response to his critics.

“It has come to my attention that a vocal few are decrying our sensible application of the Biblical rod in training up our children. I laugh at my caustic critics, for our properly spanked and trained children grow to maturity in great peace and love.”

A vocal few? Who Is Speaking Out Against Abuse? ~ I’d say there are more than a few “caustic critics” who are outraged over the “application of the Biblical rod” which lead to the death of Lydia Shatz.

“Numbered in the millions, these kids become the models of self-control and discipline, highly educated and creative-entrepreneurs that pay the taxes your children will receive in entitlements. When your children finally find an honest mechanic or a trustworthy homebuilder, it will be one of ours. When your children apply for a job it will be at a company our children founded. When they go to a doctor, it will be one of our Christian children that heals them with cutting edge innovation. When your adult kids go for therapy it will be one of our kids-become-psychologist that directs them to the couch and challenges them to release their self-loathing and embrace hope for a better tomorrow.”

Numbered in the millions ~ that’s a terrifying thought ~ but it is true that No Greater Joy Ministries is a 1.5 million dollar a year business. If no one was buying, reading, and implementing the Pearl’s potentially-deadly child training advice, we could laugh right back at him ~ but as it stands, this is no laughing matter.

Models of self-control and discipline? Yes ~ undoubtedly, children trained by Pearl’s methods will have extraordinary self-control and self-discipline ~ anyone whose ever survived the terrorism of physical and emotional abuse as a child will testify to their ingrained ability to tow the line ~ to jump when the abuser yells, Jump! and to never dare let go and just be a carefree, happy, inquisitive child uninhibited by the abusive parent’s seemingly-omniscient watchfulness and omnipotent control.

So far as Michael Pearl’s boast regarding the superiority of NGJ-trained kids ~ it is doubtful that children whose natural inquisitiveness has been stifled by their parents’ expectation of “instant, joyful obedience” will retain the sort of creative, flexible, risk-taking personalities which characterize entrepreneurs and successful business professionals.

I well remember paging through my copy of To Train Up A Child as a dreamy-eyed young mother desperately seeking the very best, most godly way to raise my children.

In his book, Michael Pearl suggests tempting a child with a bite of their favorite food ~ placing a morsel within the child’s reach ~ and when said child instinctively reaches out for the food ~ Switch their hand once and simultaneously say, ‘No.’ Repeat as many times as necessary until the child is trained not to automatically grab for whatever he or she wants ~ but rather, to automatically look to the parent for permission before reaching out to take the desired food.

Even in my Quiverfull-induced stupor ~ I recognized the cruelty of such parenting advice ~ to deliberately tempt your child and then smack them when they take the bait?!! I remember thinking, didn’t Jesus teach us to pray “lead us not into temptation”? If it’s not okay for our Heavenly Father to lead us into temptation ~ how can it be right for earthly parents to do this to their children? I did not bother to finish reading the book.

Thankfully, I joined the local Le Leche League group for breastfeeding support and was introduced to Dr. William Sear’s “attachment” approach to parenting which jived with my natural inclination for gentle mothering. Admittedly, I still did occasionally spank my children ~ but thankfully, I stopped short of purchasing the quarter-inch plumbing supply line in my quest to have happily obedient children.

“When your children grow old and realize their mortality and seek to make peace with their Creator, it will be one of our children that shares with them the message of God’s love and forgiveness.”

Holy shit! ~ I am having difficulty finding words to express the anger ~ the fury ~ which I felt rising up within me as I read Pearl’s utterly preposterous claim that children raised according to his methods will be sharing the message of God’s love. Pardon my French, but ~ WTF?!!

Since the No Longer Quivering website was started almost a year ago, former Quiverers and their children have taken the opportunity to share their heart-wrenching stories of spiritual abuse ~ and the sheer horror of it all is so overwhelming that readers are sickened and often need to take a break ~ it’s just too much to bear!

Sadly, many of us ~ myself included ~ cannot hear the words “God” and “love” in the same sentence without a roll of the eyes or the need of a barf pail.

“My five grown children are laughing at your foolish, uninformed criticism of God’s method of child training, for their kids-my 17 grandkids-are laughing . . . because that is what they do most of the time. They laugh when Daddy is coming home. They laugh when it is time to do more homeschooling. They laugh when it is time to practice the violin and piano. They laugh when they see their Big Papa coming (that’s me) because Big Papa is laughing and they don’t care why just as long as he laughs with them.”

God’s method of child training. Need I say it? This man is delusional!

“My granddaughters laugh with joy after giving their baby dolls a spanking for ‘being naughty’ because they know their dolls will grow up to be the best mamas and daddies in the world-just like them.”

Not to mention sick and twisted.

“People all around the world, in places like Russia, China, Germany, New Zealand, Guatemala, Peru, Africa, and fifty other countries are laughing with joy because after applying the Biblical principles found in our books they finally have happy and obedient children.”

Take note people: parents around the world are laughing with joy because after beating their children into unquestioning submission, their kids no longer have the will to resist the extinguishing of their personhood and the murder of their very souls.

Do you think that Michael Pearl’s lunatic ranting cannot possibly get any worse? Think again:

“Even my chickens are laughing . . . well, actually it is more like cackling, because they just laid another organic egg for my breakfast and they know that it was that same piece of ¼ inch plastic supply line that trained the dogs not to eat chicken.”

Shameless and unrepentant, Michael Pearl shows not an ounce of remorse or regret ~ not even an inkling of pity for Lydia Shatz or her parents who are living the nightmare of knowing they killed their child for the glory of God.

Revolting as Michael Pearl’s mockery is ~ the response of his followers is all the more disturbing:

“Laughing with you Mike and Debi!!! LOL”

“Strangers and friends alike, are always asking why our kids are so happy! Thank you, Pearls, for your consistent encouragement over the years.”

“The world needs more laughter, of the wholesome kind!”