But I’ve come to recognize the value of apprehension – because fear which is not squelched or pacified by the mental hocus pocus of pious devotion can be a great motivation for necessary change. Without the thought-stopping effect of 365 biblical “fear-nots,” these days, when I am afraid, I have no other option than to actually figure out: What is so terrifying? Why am I scared? What should be done to prevent my fears from materializing in reality? What do I need to do differently?
The spring of my sophomore year of college I was president of my university’s Students for Life chapter. The fall of my junior year of college I cut my ties with the pro-life movement. Five years later I have lost the last shred of faith I had in that movement. This is my story.
A quick look beneath the surface reveals that America’s most celebrated Quiverfull couple believe and espouse decidedly unhealthy ideas when it comes to sex and babymaking.
When I moved to Canada in 2008, I was a die-hard conservative Republican. I believed based on my politics that government mandated health care was a violation of my freedom.
By keeping her daughters out of the pool and off the beach, away from real women in bathing suits, what Michelle’s doing to her daughters is setting them up for a life of shame and self-hatred.
Christian woman’s advice to abused wives reads like a handbook for ascetic self-mortification.
In the same way that the fundamentalist Christian God allows people to exercise their free will by choosing between worshipping and serving Him or else burning in Hell forever – the Quiverfull woman must make the decision to trust God and perhaps die physically, or trust in the Pill and her own common sense and die spiritually for all eternity. That’s not a choice – it’s an ultimatum.
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.
There’s one “little” detail in THE FAMiLY LEADER’s “Marriage Vow” that critics have overlooked – small, subtle, and yet glaringly obvious once you see it: Simply stated, women who are unwilling to subordinate and sacrifice themselves to populate America’s economic and political war machine are selfish with a capital “I” - s.e.l.f.I.s.h.
