Welcome to H&C,,, where I aggregate news of interest. Primary topics include abuse with "the church", LGBTQI+ issues, cults - including anti-vaxxers, and the Dominionist and Theocratic movements. Also of concern is the anti-science movement with interest in those that promote garbage like homeopathy, chiropractic and the like. I am an atheist and anti-theist who believes religious mythos must be die and a strong supporter of SOCAS.
Toby Willis figured his family could be as famous as the Duggars.
He was the patriarch of a quiverfull family — he and his wife Brenda have 12 children — and after performing on America’s Got Talent, they soon starred in a TLC reality show called The Willis Family
that focused on their traveling music/dance act in which they
entertained audiences while spreading the Gospel. The show was never as
famous as the Duggars’ and it ended after two six-episode seasons.
Months after the final episode aired in 2016, Toby Willis was arrested
on charges that he “had a sexual encounter approximately 12 years
[prior] with an underage female.” He pleaded guilty to all the charges
and, last July, he was sentenced to a total of 40 years in prison.
The oldest child in the Willis family is 26-year-old Jessica Fisher, who played fiddle and wrote songs for the band. Her birthday was on Friday, and she marked the occasion with a new website telling her side of the story.
Because Toby’s victims were minors, we never knew their names, but
Jessica says she was one of those victims. Right up front, she says she
has “come to realize that I feel a responsibility to the truth itself
and my conscience demands a public denouncement of the previous life I
helped hide for so long.”
Vyckie once again hits it out of the ballpark by naming names within the Quiverfull movement. If you remember Frank Schaeffer piece,
I Helped Start the Religious Right: Here's How We Tried to Undermine Secular America -- and Build a Theocracy:: Christian home-schooling is at the core of the project, many of the names should be familiar.
As one reads though, this is what becomes apparent, ",,,it seems that people like Nancy
Campbell who, by the way, have time and money to travel and speak, stay
in nice hotels and eat in nice restaurants, are on a slippery slope.
They insert themselves between a woman and her husband and tell her how
she needs to change her marriage. Where do they get THAT authority?
Think about that and let your mind wander how that plays out with the
men, huh? Don't the men realize that a woman is telling their wives
what to do and, by extension, a woman is telling the man what is going
to happen? And, further, I still laugh at Nancy Leigh DeMoss Wolgemuth
who only recently was married, being (I think) in her 50s. Kind of
amusing to hear her host programs about wives and children and husbands
and families, though she had not yet been married, and has never had
children."
Where I think Vyckie "learns me" something new is with the idea of "Titus 2 Women":
But honestly, no sensible woman would give these
misogynistic jerks the time of day if it weren’t for the influence of
dedicated Christian female mentors: the “older women” of Titus 2 whom
the apostle Paul charged to “teach the younger women” to be obedient
keepers at home.
Today, one of the leading ministries influencing Christian
women to adopt bronze-age roles of rabid fecundity and hyper-domesticity
is Above Rubies, a
magazine “to encourage women in their high calling as wives and
mothers” which has a worldwide circulation of nearly 200,000. The
magazine and correlating ministry are headed by a charismatic and
commanding woman named Nancy Campbell.
,,,
Not every mega-family gets their own TV show to finance their
procreative extravagance. The real reality is that many Quiverfull folk
are barely getting by. The ultra-conservative lifestyle demands that Dad
provides while Mom stays home with the kids. So these are one-income
families supporting an impossible number of children: often a new baby
every two years. Finances are further constrained when the family opts
out of free public education in favor of homeschooling (revisionist history and creation science
curriculum are not cheap!), refuses to accept any form of government
assistance (because socialism) including Medicaid and food stamps,
insists on debt-free living which means no home mortgages or credit
cards to fall back on in emergencies, and some go so far as to forego
home, health, and life insurance because it means trusting in a policy
rather than in God. Add to that the biblical mandate to tithe the first
10% of their income to the church and to generously support various
“pro-family” ministries with monthly donations.
Mother seeks information in 2014 murder case | WAVY-TV https://t.co/QCvpHXAxUL My nephew,,,almost 2 yrs,,,and still nothing :(
I have watched with interest the GOT/P reaction and rhetoric to the
unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia. At first glance, one may
think that Paul has a valid point,
“The president has said he
has the power basically to create immigration law out of nothing,” Paul
said. “He says he has the power to basically cripple entire industries
like coal without ever having been given that power by Congress. So see,
we have a Constitutional debate on whose powers is it, the president
or Congress? And I think the president sort of has a conflict of
interest here in appointing somebody while we’re trying to decide
whether or not he’s usurped power.”
Let that sink in for a moment. There’s a vacancy on the Supreme Court;
the Constitution empowers the president to nominate a prospective
justice; it’s the Senate’s job to consider that nominee. In Rand Paul’s
mind, however, President Obama “sort of has a conflict of interest”
because the court is sometimes asked to adjudicate the limits of the
executive branch’s powers.
If only the Constitution’s framers had been as wise as Rand Paul, they might have thought of this.
Of course, the flaw in the senator’s argument – well, one of them,
anyway – is that the Supreme Court also considers the constitutionality
of laws passed by Congress. Indeed, it’s one of the institution’s
principal functions. By Rand Paul’s reasoning, the confirmation
responsibilities shouldn’t rest in senators’ hands at all, since they
too “sort of have a conflict of interest.”
If it wasn't such a serious issue, it would be laughable.
I wasn't going to, but I had too,,,,this IS the best one yet. PSH gets Jones and Trump as well!
Wiles explained that the “Luciferian” “devil-worshipers” who
control the government are out for blood, noting that Lupercalia is
observed between February 13 and 15. Scalia’s body was discovered on the
13th. “There’s always human sacrifice involved,” he said, claiming that
Scalia was “killed” to mark the beginning of pagan fascism ruling over
the U.S.
“The 13th was the
44th day of 2016, Obama is the 44th president of the United States,”
Wiles said, “so you have this numerology thing taking place.”
Wiles said that the assassins who killed the conservative justice
“deliberately left the pillow on his face as a message to everybody
else: ‘Don’t mess with us, we can murder a justice and get away with
it.’ And I assure you, there’s a lot of frightened officials in
Washington today, deep down they know, the regime murdered a justice….
This is the way a dictatorial, fascist, police state regime takes
control of a nation.”
“The day the justice died, the day justice in America died,” he continued, “they got away with it.”
Wiles, declaring that he has “a pretty good sniffer for finding
crimes” based on gut feelings, said that the “murder” of Scalia proves
that “we’re being sucked into a police state where anybody who opposes
this regime will be at risk of extermination.”
He also
speculated that Scalia’s purported assassins put chloroform on the
pillow and burned all of the evidence in his hotel room.
“Like the Soviet Union in Stalin’s day, it’s like any police state and
now we’re in it,” Wiles said. He then speculated that he might be the
next victim of Stalinist pagan assassination: “It was a message to
everybody out there: ‘Don’t mess with us.’ That’s the message. And it’s a
message to people like me.”
Wiles is an idiot. Whether or not he is sincere in his crackpot conspiracy theory is up for debate.
Just plain disturbing and Vyckie seems to hit a nerve by the many responses and follow-up reports. This coming after Al Jazeera America's report http://america.aljazeera.com/…/does-america-need-saving-fro… that has left a sour taste as well.
There no way to introduce this but to say that a farmer doesn't always
give things away, you got to pay for your apples. The lesson, fathers
have lots of daughters so you can sell them.
The onerous quote above, which likens daughters to
apples and their fathers to farmers, is an apt representation of the
creepy objectification of young girls and women by their own fathers
which pervades the Christian purity movement. The message is clear: the
value of a young woman is in her virginity — a consumable commodity
owned by her future husband, kept in trust by Daddy. ,,, Kunsman
adds, “A good father loves and cares for his daughters and sees these
apples of his eye as beloved people, not objects. This meme reduces
girls (who are assumed to be daughters if not all women) to products for
consumption and men the devourers. But even the suitors who desire them
(because of nature, not the farmer’s nurture) are subject to bounded
choice. It appears that young men procure apples to devour, but they are
also subjects of the farmer. It’s amazing to me just how many dynamics
of thought reform and spiritual abuse this homegrown meme illustrates in
just a short narrative.”
Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks
offers his disgust at the several of the blatantly obvious elements of
the offensiveness of the meme that appeared on the Let Them Marry
website, and in the process of expressing his disdain for the ideas
conveyed, he misinterprets the origin of the name of what has become a
whole belief system and lifestyle. Suzanne Titkemeyer offers a nice
summary of his misinterpretations in the comments following an article at No Longer Quivering:
,,, Uygur’s disgust at the
meme highlights can be a wake up call to some who are still QF minded. I
always hope that such expressions will help followers recognize how
others outside of their bubble view these examples which they have
learned to take for granted over time. If you know QF followers who find
the podcast offensive, this is actually a good opportunity to get them
talking and thinking for themselves. Uygur can be a mirror for them and
can mark how striking the contrast in their lifestyles has or can
become. You can also be a mirror for them.
I post this more for posterity sake, a refernce so to speak into the cult mind-think of the "[e]xtreme Christian cultural
enforcers." For those that follow along with my ramblings, it has three of my usual targets Steven L. Anderson (Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona) via his wife Zsuzsanna Anderson (also Quiverfull), Michael (and Debi) Pearl - To Train Up a Child, and of course the Duggars.
Calulu, I think sums up how cut-throat the "ultra extreme" shtick is becoming and highlights that the best counter to the movement as a whole comes from those within.
This is the real Christian cannibalism – Extreme Christian cultural
enforcers and self-appointed leaders fighting like rabid dogs over a
sliver of rotten meat for a tiny slice of control over others, no matter
who they have to blame or shame. The real pharisees. Not the average
every day folks pointing out how hypocritical the Duggars have behaved.
A good look into the cultic mindset prevelent in the sub-culture.
In 2008 in a workshop examining the Patriarchy Movement, I referred to it as quite “non-monolithic,” characterized by clustering of activities, traits, and interests — though none of those variables were universal or definitive. In epidemiology and the study of the cause and transmission of disease, the term of ‘clustering’ explains this phenomenon of common features experienced or by clusters of people experiencing them that may or may not have a known causative connection. For that reason, I use the term to describe the connections among Patriarchy and Quiverfull lifestyles which are also now associated with Christians who homeschool their children.
People from across many different denominations bear many of these same common variables, and in some respect, I think that it may reflect the zeitgeist of the generation that is also common to the culture. (Look at Martha Stewart’s popularity which has fostered an interest in domesticity — something mirrored in this religious subculture.) Whatever the cause, there are what might be found as markers or possible and presumptive characteristics that often occur in tandem with one another.
This is a "work-in-progress" type of post; an experiment, so to speak. As "new" information or pertinent opinions become available I will be editing and updating as I want to explore how my personal views may morph. Since I laid the foundation of this post, hundreds of articles, personal opinions and the like have flooded the inter-web. I have barely made a dent in reading them all. Consider this a sort of highlight reel.
Although I was well aware of an issue issues involving Josh for many years (yes I use to watch the show or should I say, studied the show), I had pegged it as more of him being on my gaydar. I still believe that underlying all this is that very issue but that is just my opinion. And a whole nother ball of wax in light of the recent allegations and confirmation of said, my initial thoughts have changed, "Daddy Duggar may have actually turned his eldest son in for acting normally for his age."
But it is now obvious, that this is not "stealing a first kiss" (before it was confirmed some of his sisters where victims) or a "case of playing doctor". I still stand by my belief that due to the religious abuse and indoctrination, "none of those kids
will know right from wrong when they've spent their lives being told
every natural urge is wrong;" although there is some wavering as I am digesting more information as it becomes available.
For example, Vyckie in her most recent article makes this point (and do check out her sources, the demon one is mind blowing).
#3 - The Duggars frame dysfunction, abuse, and psychopathology in terms of sin, repentance, forgiveness, and grace … oh, and DEMONS.
I’ve written before
about the way popular Christian teachings about love and relationships
actually provide chapter and verse justification for “dysfunctional game
playing and crazy-making head trips.”
Like the
majority of fundamentalist Christians, JimBob and Michelle harbor a
grave mistrust of pretty much every respected, evidence-based approach
to behavioral issues: secular psychology is “spiritually dangerous,” modern medicine, therapy, and pharmaceuticals are equated with “witchcraft,” and abusive, criminal behavior is often attributed to “a heart issue,” or even demonic influence or possession.
The sad fact is, the Duggar family called Josh’s sexual abuse of minor girls a “teenage mistake”
and they naively believe that because the boy repented, humbled himself
before God, and asked forgiveness, God’s “grace, mercy, and redemption”
have changed Josh into a new man who can be trusted not to molest minor
children.
Obviously that is NOT the case if he can make jokes about dating his sisters (see below).
In discussing this debacle, my mind harkened back to a posting I made two years ago. It was a response to a Steven Hassan video in which he refers to techniques used within a cult setting - "thought stopping" and the implanting of phobias (making people believe something is dangerous when it
is not).
Starting at the 6:25 mark, listen to how Hassan explains it, paying particular attention at about the 7:21 mark we he talks of how his family in some cases drove him deeper because of his programing, "I was already programmed to expect persecution."
At the 8:05 mark is where he speaks of thought stopping which is like a mantra they are taught when faced with conflicting evidence regarding their brand of dogma
"He continued to do what he was taught. [I know] who Josh really is –
someone who had gone down a wrong path and had humbled himself before
God and those whom he had offended," she says. "Someone who had received
the help needed to change the direction of his life and do what is
right."
In other words he experienced even more "forced" indoctrination.
Cognitive dissonance much? How could she not get creeped out by this?
One point over-looked in regards to Anna's initial statement and
should be a cause for concern, how truthful was Josh in his disclosure.
Let's say the reports concerning the Hutchen's
are correct, "that Jim Bob told him about only one incident of
molestation and that,
in part, is why he decided not to report Josh to the abuse hotline."
Wouldn't it be safe to assume that Josh, taking his cue from daddio, did
the same during his courtship of Anna; that he vaguely told her he made
a
mistake(s) without getting into what he actually did? Does that make
her collateral damage, or a willing a accomplice?
Anna
is now married into this cash cow machine. She is expected to
toe-the-line for the good of "the family" and stand behind her
husband. She's also pregnant with 3 small children, no job skills
and married to a man steeped in patriarchal values. A man who has been
publicly
humiliated is now unemployed and (one can only hope) unemployable. All
of which puts
her at risk.
One can only hope that she and her family are taking a serious look at all that has transpired. The disconcerting aspect of all this is we may never honestly hear what the "girls" have to say.
As a foreshadowing of what is to come, think Michael and Debbie Pearl, To Train Up a Child and blanket training. How does cultish tactic not fuck with a child's mind?
Currently TLC is mulling over what to do, 19Kids has not, as of yet, been cancelled; just pulled of the air for now. According to reports, TLC is considering just removing Josh and continuing with their cash cow. I believe the whole show needs to go.
The former star of another TLC reality show is angry about the apparent double standard
the Duggar family is enjoying despite revelations that they covered up
their son’s molestation of young girls – including his sisters.
“Mama
June” Shannon, who appeared in the cable network’s “Here Comes Honey
Boo Boo,” said she is considering a lawsuit against TLC – which promptly
canceled her popular show in October after she began dating an accused
molester.
Interesting to note, and this is from The Guardian,
It remains to be seen whether TLC will suspend 19 Kids & Counting or
cancel it. The network has recently thrown significant marketing weight
behind a show featuring the Bates family, another large Christian
family who has been friendly with the Duggars and appeared on 19 Kids.
They may have been TLC’s backup plan in case the bloom went off of the
Duggar rose.
I would be curious to know just what the Bates' are thinking about now. First would they want to be compared to the Duggars? And second, would they want to be in anyway associated with 19Kids or TLC
1] As WaPo reports, Mama clown car has stated in her book, "The onus to protect your purity is on you. If someone steals your purity, you are a ruined bicycle with warped tires and a ripped seat. Your value has been stolen. Your parents’ dreams are ruined. You are used and cheap and valueless." As well as comparing an individual who deviates from their idea of "purity" is no better than a cup of spit.
According to the Duggars, female bodies are a source of irresistible
temptation to boys and men. Upon learning of their oldest son’s fondling
and groping of the younger girls, JimBob and Michelle’s first reaction
was undoubtedly to question the girls’ - as well as their own -
culpability rather than immediately believe it was Josh himself who has a
problem. ,,, Was 14-year-old Josh actually responsible for his behavior? Strange as
it may seem, JimBob and Michelle would definitely have had serious
doubts as to whether or not their son could help himself. Rather than
recognizing immediately that Josh needed professional help, the Duggars
were more likely to believe that demonic forces were at work … the Devil
made him do it.
,,,the belief that women need to cover their bodies to prevent men
from being attracted to them, because sexual attraction is lust that
leads to sin and death for both. The modesty doctrine is not the same
as wearing conservative clothing. You can do the latter without
believing the former. The modesty doctrine is found in fundamentalist
Christianity, Judaism and Islam, with milder echoes in mainstream
Western culture. ,,, The modesty doctrine frames this idea in terms of clothing to preserve
the veneer that women are somehow to blame for this, and that there’s
something they can do about it. There isn’t. The modesty
doctrine revolves around the assumption that a man has a right to sex
with every woman he finds attractive. In Christian fundamentalism, he
only has a right to sex with his wife. Therefore, other women who are
attractive to him seem to taunt him with something he can’t have
(extramarital sex). That’s why certain women get singled out as
threats, despite trying their hardest to be “modest.” It doesn’t matter
what they wear; if men find them attractive and can’t marry them, they
must be punished. This disproportionately happens to curvy women because
their sex is impossible to erase. [Emphasis mine]
Sierra continues further,
Feminists will probably find all of this annoyingly familiar. What am I saying, after all? The modesty doctrine is rape culture.It is inseparable from patriarchy. It is the very means by which patriarchy reduces women to mere flesh.
“If I can see it, it’s mine” is the motto of a thief. If a woman’s body
is the “it,” it’s the motto of a rapist. “If I can see it, she’s
defrauding me” is the motto of Christian patriarchy. The Christian
patriarchy movement attempts to obliterate a woman’s sexual agency in
several ways: First, it demands she cover up to keep men from wanting what they see. Second,
it sanctions sex with a woman based not on her consent but upon
marriage vows (“it’s impossible to rape your wife because her body is
yours”). Third, it places control over marriage vows in male hands through courtship (father and husband). Consent is therefore farcical. Fourth,
it demands that women, not men, face the consequences of sex: either
the guilt of adultery for the imagined sex a leering man has with a
woman he finds attractive, or the perpetual pregnancy resulting from
marital relations, as birth control is forbidden. [Emphasis in original]
If this sounds familiar, it should, it is the exact same ideology that drives the misogyny prevalent in Islam. And as one source puts it in response to a question I posed - do have a good article/source that discusses the Islamic idea of modesty? The reply was, it's so prevalent that he didn't know of one source that summed it up neatly.
What I did find I think is even worse, where as momma Duggar is just gross, Islamic beliefs border on justifying death (if one were to read between the lines as to what happens to "rabid" animals):
Islamic scholars consider modesty to be a quality that distinguishes human beings from animals. Animals follow their instincts without feeling any shame or a sense of right or wrong. Hence, the less modesty a person has, the more he resembles animals. The more modesty a person has, the closer he is to being human. Islam has mandated certain legislations which induce this sense of modesty within humans. These legislation range from seeking permission before entering any room and distancing one from others while relieving oneself, to mandating certain manners of dress for men and women alike. Another way that modesty may be attained is by associating with modest people - people in whose presence a person feels embarrassed to do anything shameful,,,
Both sources cited, it is to be noted, are excellent examples of Hassan's "implanted phobias" as well.
Jim Bob Duggar told Springdale detective Hignite in 2006 that he sent
his son to a Christian ministry in "the old Veteran's Hospital in
Little Rock." Duggar said he couldn't remember the name of the program,
but it involved "hard physical work and counseling."
Michelle Duggar told police that the place her son was sent "was not
really a training center" but that Josh went to work for a "guy they
knew in Little Rock who is remodeling a building." Asked whether the guy
was a mentor, Michelle Duggar replied, "kind of."
Pulaski County assessor's records show the nearly 500,000-square-foot
former VA hospital building was purchased by Hobby Lobby in 1998.
The craft-store company then donated the building in 2000 to the
Institute in Basic Life Principles, an Illinois-based ministry founded
by televangelist Bill Gothard.
Shortly after the institute acquired the building, Gothard began
renovating the space, saying it would be used for the Little Rock
Training Center, which would house "court-referred youthful offenders in
the organization's Bible-based rehabilitation program," according to an
April 2000 article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Oh and I am not buying that he didn't stay there, the Duggar clan has been trying to distance themselves from Gothard since last years revelation of his 34 sexual mis-deeds. Although a bit over simplified, The Guardian makes this observation:
For people who had never pried beyond the Duggar persona
presented on TV, the news must have come as a tremendous shock. But for
those of us who have been following the family’s ascent over the past
few years, it is not completely unexpected. The family is known for
their support of Bill Gothard,
a hyper-conservative Christian who has advocated for homeschooling,
modest dressing and living debt-free. Many of his followers, including
the Duggars, belong to the Quiverfull movement,
which is based on a Bible verse about God filling “quivers” with
“arrows”, interpreted to mean “wombs” and “foetuses”. Each Duggar child
who got married – in addition to Josh, Jill and Jessa Duggar both had
televised weddings in which they spoke of their “purity”, or virginity –
said they would trust God with the size of their family.
Although Gothard’s name was never invoked on-air, his
philosophy was everywhere on 19 Kids and Counting. Jim Bob bragged that
his family stayed debt-free by living frugally and “buying used and
saving the difference”, even though in later years it became clear that
the family’s affluence was largely bankrolled by TLC and by the
byproducts of their fame, including multiple book deals and paid
speaking engagements. The Duggars also attended Gothard-sponsored events
around the country like the one in Big Sandy, Texas, where Josh met his wife. Gothard was brought down in a scandal of his very own recently, accused of sexually assaulting more than 30 women. The Duggars may be the world’s best-known Gothardites, but they somehow survived the scandal unscathed and unimplicated. [Emphasis mine]
4] The there is this, if Oprah "knew" in 2006 when exactly did TLC find out? And who is actually complicit in this crime?
5] Something to ponder in all this, and why I am hesitant to put ALL the blame on Joshieboy; although that is changing as information comes out.
A boy grows up in a controlling, cultlike family that rejects Enlightenment values and closes off much of the outside world. He is deprived of any conception of morality separate from a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. His intellectual and ethical development is stunted by reactionary, dogmatic views about gender and sexuality. He is told that women were made to be subservient to men, to be obedient to their masters. How should we react when it comes to light that this boy repeatedly molested young girls?
,,,
The leaders of the Duggar clan are undoubtedly hypocrites of the highest order. Josh’s heinous crime merits our utmost moral condemnation, and his victims deserve sympathy and compassion. But it would be shortsighted to treat Josh with nothing more than mocking, scornful ire. Josh may be a monster—but as 19 Kids and Counting demonstrates, his path to depravity was lighted by the twisted beliefs of his parents. [read the second citation in (#1) for better context]
In other words, the real perps are JimBob and Michelle for indoctrinating all their children. Josh was the weapon with the girls being the ultimate targets.
Now I have heard some say that Josh should have been able or should be able to reason his way through the public's reaction to these accusations. I would tend to agree if this mind-set wasn't so prevalent. Not only was he engrossed in it at home but his job as well.
According to the “eternally happy ending” story which the
Duggars are telling themselves, the little girls whom Josh allegedly
groped and fondled are not victims or even survivors of sexual abuse,
but are instead equated with the “highly favored” Old Testament Joseph
whose brothers sold him into slavery: What Satan meant for evil, God
used for good.
Suffering in this life is insignificant - even trifling - compared to the faith-strengthening
and soul-saving purpose of trials which will be richly rewarded with
eternal life in Heaven … so praise the fucking Lord for whatever misery
He sends to you and your children.
The Duggar
delusion is so deeply ingrained that even in the midst of this
horrifying revelation, JimBob and Michelle are hoping that the onlooking
world will be inspired
by their family’s witness: “We hope somehow the story of our journey —
the good times and the difficult times — cause you to see the kindness
of God and learn that He can bring you through anything.”
One just needs to examine the responses of some of their minions supporters as cited above. To them, Duggars included, Josh did not commit a crime but sinned. Even if Josh could reason himself out of this scandla, why should he (besides the fact it is the right thing to do).
Most of us have done things we wish we
could take back, and in some cases, the consequences of our bad choices
and sinful actions last for decades. Yet with the Lord, no matter how
great the stigma of our sin, if we will humble ourselves before Him, He
can take those stumbling blocks and turn them into stepping stones, to
the point that the worst things that ever happened to us become the best
things that ever happened to us.
“When I was a kid, it was often called “playing doctor”, there
were just as many girls initiating this kind of behavior as boys. Most
of those never went on to perp horrible things. The Duggers, who I have
never watched–am not a fan, did it properly and the 14 year old boy
should probably be left alone to live a good life, just like girls who
do the same thing.”
Honestly, I am blown away by the incredible double standard that is
applied to Christians. We don’t claim to be perfect; we claim to be
perfectly forgiven. We don’t claim to be better; we claim to be better
off. We can forgive because we have been forgiven. And yes, we do use
Christian morality to judge. Haven’t you noticed that everyone is using
Christian morality to judge people?
Isaac, when a Christian admits
his sin, goes to the proper authorities, pays the penalty, repents of
his actions, is up front and honest with the world, and has made things
right with the victims, then he has done exactly what God has commanded
him to do. Why would you say that Christians are applying a double
standard?
In reality, it is evolutionists who apply a double standard. If
evolution is true, then there is no absolute right and wrong. If
evolution is true, Josh should not have admitted his faults over a
decade ago because what one evolved bag of molecules does to another bag
of molecules just doesn’t really matter. If evolution is true, there is
no ultimate Judge who will hold every man, woman, and child responsible
for their actions. And if evolution is true, you will not give an
account for every idle word you speak.
The truth is, we all use Christian morality to judge people. The very idea of judgment comes from Christianity.
Since the scandal became public, the Reich has circled
the wagons to protect one of their own from facing the consequences of
his actions and hypocrisy.
BUT,,,
There is this to consider, Josh would have been 19 when this action took place:
The Josh Duggarmolestation case did
not end when Springdale, Ark. police closed their investigation in 2006
because the statute of limitations had run out, In Touch Weekly is reporting exclusively.
Police referred the matter to the Families in Need of Services
agency, which has jurisdiction over minors. The Department of Human
Services (DHS) was then brought into the case, In Touch
has learned. Nine months after those agencies entered the Duggar
molestation case, Josh Duggar sued the Arkansas Department of Human
Services. A trial was held on August 6, 2007.
The results of the investigation into the Duggars and Josh’s trial
are sealed. But a source familiar with the Duggar investigation told In Touch
it was likely that Josh “appealed the DHS decision or finding from
their investigation.” The source notes that DHS had the authority to
apply “restrictions or stipulations about him being at home with the
victims.
“Josh would be considered an in-home offender, giving DHS the authority
to do an investigation. As part of your appeal rights you can request a
DHS hearing to challenge what they found and their ruling.”
What's that old saying, "actions speak louder than words,,,
6] And then there is this, Mike Huckabee, one of many whose influence will be wielded.
A few things in all this, if I or any everyday citizen of this country were to have committed these acts as a 14 year old we would have been put into the juvenile justice system until the
age of 21. Because of their celebrity (pre and post show), and the notion that this family is considered a bastion of purity and a moral example for all of us to aspire towards, they were able to use their contacts in law
enforcement and local government to avoid any public mention of this all
the while parading on TV to condemn others for their sins. But yet "we" are the ones being demonized for asking questions and demanding that a full accounting of what transpired be undertaken.
Second, I am still wavering on the culpability of Joshieboy. There is his age to consider, he was 14 when he molested his own sisters. And, as many comments have pointed out in various forms (this paraphrased from an acquaintance):
Such actions from an adolescent, are indicative of their own molestation unrecognized and untreated, which the adolescent attempts to process by "mirroring" the abuse onto others. Since there was no investigation (regarding Josh's actions) the original child molester is free and clear and most likely still offending.
The current debacle was initially hidden for a year, with none of the children getting any legitimate counseling. That being the case, it makes all of them victims likely to repeat the cycle as statistics show.
[Same-sex couples] wouldn't be asking for this relief if the law of marriage was what it was a millennium ago. I mean, it wasn't possible. Same-sex unions would not have opted into the pattern of marriage, which was a relationship, a dominant and a subordinate relationship. Yes, it was marriage between a man and a woman, but the man decided where the couple would be domiciled; it was her obligation to follow him.
There was a change in the institution of marriage to make it egalitarian when it wasn't egalitarian. And same-sex unions wouldn’t — wouldn't fit into what marriage was once.
Just as Hobby Lobby wasn't just about contraception, neither is Obergefell just about marriage equality. Gregory Lipper of AU terms it as, "old-fashioned discrimination on the basis of sex." Or in Renee's case Religious Trauma Syndrome It is religiously based discrimination that is taught from the pulpit, preached on TV, and espoused by politicians.
That is basically how I introduced our discussion, a discussion loaded with important talking points: Christian patriarchy, Quiverfull, covenant marriage and a whole lot of other creepy stuff. It is religiously based discrimination that is taught from the pulpit, preached on TV, and espoused by politicians. And in some cases, it is what is being taught to the children under the guise of home schooling; specifically Christian home schooling.
Often our conversations go in various directions covering many topics, such was the case on Monday. Below are some "resources" used in preparing that may be of interest:
A powerhouse of information, a great
illustration of how poisonous religion is in the lives of human beings.
Further along in the article is an "outline" of the history of the home
school movement based in Christian ideology, as well as, the influence
of the Quiverfull movement. A veritable who's who of the Reich and those who do battle against them.
Why did she stick with
homeschooling for so long, despite her difficulties? “We were convinced
that it would be better for our kids not to have an education than to be
educated to become humanists or atheists and to reject God,”
,,,
Garrison believes that homeschooling has become so popular
with fundamentalist Christians because, “there is an atmosphere of real
terror among some evangelicals. They are horrified by the fact that
Obama is president, and they see the New Atheist movement as a vocal,
in-your-face threat. Plus, they are obsessed with the End Times, and
believe that the Apocalypse could happen any day now...They see a demon
on every corner.
“We homeschooled because we wanted to
protect our children from what we viewed as the total secularization of
America. We listened to people like Rush Limbaugh, who told us that
America was in the clutches of evil liberal feminist atheists.”
Now that I am over my 50 year old fangirl crush (sorta), I realized that there was one question I did not ask Vyckie: If someone from a secular perspective, or even a liberal/progressive Christian perspective, suspects that a friend/family member/co-worker is falling into the quiverfull or patriarchal trap, how should or can we help?
I have been in this situation and I'm still at a loss myself as to how to help?
Why the answer is important is summed up by Vyckie with this point:
It is essential to seriously consider this question because, truthfully ~ if you are only interested in picking apart your friend’s lifestyle choices and criticizing her for whatever seems to be wrong with the way she’s living ~ you cannot help and, in fact, you will only be contributing to her misery.
Regretfully, I fucked up royal and allowed my "angry atheist" mode to get the better of me. As Vyckie explains,,,
Truthfully, these people only made the situation worse for me and my children. At one point, our family began attending a church which was not strictly fundamentalist. Our large, homeschooling family definitely stuck out and almost immediately people began to “snoop around” ~ asking the children about our lifestyle choices. This sent Warren into a frenzy of panic and defensiveness and he became all the more difficult to deal with.
When unhealthy families feel threatened, they withdraw ~ isolating themselves even further and creating more potential for abuse. That’s what we did. We left the church ~ and it’s too bad because if we’d have stuck around, we would likely have been exposed to a more balanced approach to the bible.
We have received some wonderful feedback concerning this episode, I am just thrilled that BTTP was able to give both Renee an Vyckie the platform to share their experiences. Unlike what the Duggars present weekly, there are more thorns than roses.
I have read this article five times now trying to get a feel as to what to highlight. It is packed with a lot of pertinent information for those of us trying to get a handle on exactly what the Reich's game-plan is and what the fuel behind the movement may be. So as I read this again, some thoughts that come to mind,,, Schaeffer begins with the primary method of "Christian" indoctrination outside the church, education or the Christian Homeschool Movement. "[Y]ou can’t understand the modern Republican Party and its hatred of government unless you understand the evangelical home-school movement. Nor can the Democrats hope to defeat the GOP in 2016 unless they grasp what I’ll be explaining here: religious war carried on by other means." Although Schaeffer lumps the entire GOP into this mix, I wouldn't go quite that far. There are some within the party who I believe have not bought into Dominionism and Reconstructionist ideology (what I call the Reich) but are to weak and/or too scared politically to have an impact. (Rob Portman comes to mind, specifically after lending his support to Marriage Equality. Touted as a potential running mate of Romney in 2012, I will be interested to see just how much clout he has left in 2016.) For those that don't follow Dominionism and Reconstructionist ideology, this statement may sound over-inflated, "believe me when I tell you that the evangelical schools and home school movement were, by design, founded to undermine a secular and free vision of America and replace it by stealth with a form of theocracy."
"This happened because Evangelical home-schoolers were demanding ever-greater levels of “separation” from what they regarded as the Evil Secular World. It wasn’t enough just to reject the public schools. How could the Christian parent be sure that even the Evangelical schools were sufficiently pure? And so the Christian schools radicalized in order to not appear to be “compromising” with the world in the eyes of increasingly frightened and angry parents."
Now bare in mind, one of the spheres of control in Dominionist ideology (via the 7 Mountains Mandate) is education. One of the pillars of education is science, which leads us to (que the music from Jaws) the foundation of biological science, the Theory of Evolution. At a glance one may pass "the controversy" off as just a bunch of hyper-literal Bible nuts, but it goes much deeper. First is the Wedge Strategy or Wedge Document which appeared in 1998/99,
The wedge strategy is a political and social action plan authored by the Discovery Institute, the hub of the intelligent design movement. The strategy was put forth in a Discovery Institute manifesto known as the Wedge Document, which describes a broad social, political, and academic agenda whose ultimate goal is to defeat materialism, naturalism, evolution, and "reverse the stifling materialist world view and replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions." The strategy also aims to affirm what it calls "God's reality." Its goal is to change American culture by shaping public policy to reflect conservative Christian, namely evangelical Protestant, values. The wedge metaphor is attributed to Phillip E. Johnson and depicts a metal wedge splitting a log to represent an aggressive public relations program to create an opening for the supernatural in the public's understanding of science.
[Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross delve into the Wedge Strategy in their book Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design. A book I just recently started to read and why Schaeffer's article has hit a nerve.] Couple that with a 2002 statement made by Ken Ham that I have highlighted before,
Many Christians, including most Christian leaders, don’t understand the connection of evolution to the social ills of our culture and the difficulties in getting people interested in Christianity. They see evolution as something totally separate from such issues. I think the main reason for this misunderstanding is because many Christians have been indoctrinated to believe that evolution is factual science,,,. What I am saying is that the more a culture abandons God’s Word as the absolute authority, and the more a culture accepts an evolutionary philosophy, then the way people think, and their attitudes, will also change.
A point re-iterated by Ham and his lackey Terry Mortenson's in 2014:
Sitting with Ken Ham and Terry Mortenson, a historian of geology and a theologian on staff, I asked why it is so important to convince their visitors—more than 2 million since the museum opened seven years ago—that Genesis is a book of history. "There’s a slippery slope in regard to authority,” Ham replied. “If you say that the history in Genesis is not true, then you can just take man’s ideas as true. When you go outside of Scripture, why shouldn’t you just reinterpret what marriage means? So our emphasis is on the slippery slope regarding authority.” ,,, Mortenson stayed on the subject of gay marriage. “The homosexual issue flows from this. Genesis says that God created marriage between one man and one woman. He didn’t create it between two men, or two women, or two men and one woman, or three men and one woman, or two women and one man, or three women and one man. If other parts of Genesis aren’t true, then how could this idea of marriage be true? If there were no Adam and Eve and we’re all evolved from apelike ancestors and there’s homosexuality in the animal world and if Genesis is mythology, then you can justify any behavior you want.”
Which brings me to a point made by Wayne Besen, "[f]ind inflammatory wedge issues and scapegoats to divide people and force them to choose sides." The topic of homosexuality in all its iterations is a prime example of the "Evil Secular World" that Schaeffer mentions; transgender issues are a close second. Schaeffer continues, touching on two prominentfoundational leaders in the movement whose influence is still felt today.
The Evangelical home school movement was really founded by two people: Rousas Rushdoony, the extremist theologian, and Mary Pride, the “mother” of fundamentalist home-schoolers. I knew them both well. ,,, By contrast, the leaders of Reconstructionism believed
that Old Testament teachings—on everything from capital punishment for
gays to the virtues of child beating—were still valid because they were
the inerrant Word and Will of God and therefore should be enforced. Not
only that, they said that biblical law should be imposed even
on nonbelievers. This theology was the American version of the attempt
in some Muslim countries to impose Shariah (Islamic law) on all
citizens, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
And a third Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Prides' successor in the Patriarchy Movement and instrumental in the formation of the Quiverfull Movement which piggy-backs on the writings of Roman Catholic philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe.
,,,the wealthy
author/guru Nancy Leigh DeMoss, was also one of those
do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do best-selling career women doing high-paid
speaking gigs while encouraging other women to stay home and submit to their men. Nancy Leigh DeMoss happened to be the daughter of a former friend of my mother’s, Nancy DeMoss,
who was instrumental in my parents’ rise to Evangelical superstardom.
Nancy DeMoss was also pivotal in the role of facilitator and financier
when it came to seamlessly merging Reconstructionist ideology with the
“respectable” mainstream Evangelical community. ,,, But unlike the Schaeffers, the DeMoss clan had tens of millions of
dollars with which to back its pet far-right schemes, one of which would
be the Quiverfull Movement– a group dedicated to early marriage and
huge families.
Are you confused yet? Have you figured out why I don't sleep? You now know why it has taken me five readings of this article. To an outsider, it sounds as if Schaeffer is a name-dropping, raging lunatic with a conspiratorial mind-set.
,,,Good minds by themselves, however, are no guarantee against obsessions,
rants, and angry vendettas. I have no idea why Frankie Schaeffer is so
hostile. This article impresses mostly by name-dropping, by assigning
dark motives to most of the Christians that Schaeffer once knew, and by
grand conspiracy theories,,,. They simply wish to pass down perspectives and values that are
important to them. 95% of American Christians are not involved in the
kind of right-wing politics that has Schaeffer so upset. It would be
well for all of us to practice some civility.
And the above comment is correct, "Not all Christians are Dominionist, but all Dominionist claim Christianity." It was aptly stated by Leah Burton. But as Michelle Goldberg points out, (and an ideology I highlighted here),
For believers in Dominionism, rule by non-Christians is a sort of
sacrilege—which explains, in part, the theological fury that has
accompanied the election of our last two Democratic presidents.
“Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy
responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ—to have dominion in
civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness,”
wrote George Grant, the former executive director of Coral Ridge
Ministries, which has since changed its name to Truth in Action
Ministries. “But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice ... It is
dominion we are after. Not just equal time ... World conquest.”
To remain silent is to condone. What Schaeffer is offering, a behind-the-scenes history lesson. Back to the name-dropping,,, Antonin Scalia because of his friendship with, Robert George; a name I was not familiar with prior to Schaeffer's article. A name we all should get to know. As David Kirkpatrick writes in a 2009 piece for the New York Times:
FOR 20 YEARS,
George has operated largely out of public view at the intersection of
academia, religion and politics. In the past 12 months, however, he has
stepped into a more prominent role. With the death of the Rev. Richard
John Neuhaus, a Lutheran minister turned Roman Catholic priest who
helped bring evangelicals and Catholics together into a political
movement, George has assumed his mantle as the reigning brain of the
Christian right. And he is in many ways the public face of the
conservative side in the most urgent culture-war battle of the day. The
National Organization for Marriage, the advocacy group fighting same-sex
marriage in Albany and Trenton, Maine and California, has made him its
chairman. Before the 2004 election, he helped a coalition of Christian
conservative groups write their proposed amendment to the federal
Constitution defining marriage as heterosexual. More than any other
scholar, George has staked his reputation on the claim that same-sex
marriage violates not only tradition but also human reason. [,,,] In the American culture wars, George wants to redraw the lines. It is
the liberals, he argues, who are slaves to a faith-based “secularist
orthodoxy” of “feminism, multiculturalism, gay liberationism and
lifestyle liberalism.” Conservatives, in contrast, speak from the high
ground of nonsectarian public reason. George is the leading voice for a
group of Catholic scholars known as the new natural lawyers. He argues
for the enforcement of a moral code as strictly traditional as that of a
religious fundamentalist. What makes his natural law “new” is that it
disavows dependence on divine revelation or biblical Scripture — or even
history and anthropology. Instead, George rests his ethics on a
foundation of “practical reason”: “invoking no authority beyond the
authority of reason itself,” as he put it in one essay.
George's list of friends reads like a who's who in America politics and jurisprudence. Not only is he (very) smart but connected and not necessarily in a "bad" way. George is founder of the American Principles Project, a past chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, and co-founder of the Renewal Forum. He is also the originator of a document called the Manhattan Declaration, "a 4,700-word manifesto that promised resistance to the point of civil
disobedience against any legislation that might implicate their churches
or charities in abortion, embryo-destructive research or same-sex marriage." Not only is George a friend of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, but Justice Clarence Thomas as well:
My introduction to PeterKreeft came via my unusual interest in C.S. Lewis. After listening to a few of his lectures concerning Lewis (and Tolkien), I decided to explore some of his philosophy-minded talks when I realized I was listening to the Catholic version of William Lane Craig. It wasn't until two years later that I discovered he really was a Roman Catholic apologist. What I didn't know at the time was just how entrenched and active in the Reich's warfare against us common folk he was. According to Schaeffer, Kreeft sounded a rallying cry for a"jihad against the secular West" writing a book titled, Ecumenical Jihad:
Ecumenism and the Culture War in which he envisioned Christians, Jews and Muslims joining together, "[t]hese groups did not share each other’s
theology, but had a deeper link: anger at the “victimhood” imposed on
them by modernity."
Kreeft and Neuhaus were calling abortion
murder. Thus, the logic of their argument was that of my father’s, too:
The U.S. government was enabling murder and was thus disparaged as a
“regime,” even a “counterfeit state,” that needed to be overthrown.
George and Colson and the others who wrote and then signed the
“Manhattan Declaration” (like Kreeft) also called for fundamentalists to
unite if need be for civil disobedience to stop the U.S. government
from doing its worst—in other words, to pass laws that did not comply
with their religious “values.”
Buried in this section concerning Kreeft's influence are two more names. One should be familiar to those of my generation, Charles Colson of Watergate fame and founder of Prison Fellowship. The other, Richard John Neuhaus, may not be familiar to anyone not following the Reich but he came on my radar way back in 2005 when Time magazine published The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America. I was an angry atheist back then and did not understand the ramifications of what I was reading, or what I was posting. Many of the current power brokers where on that list: Rick Warren, James Dobson, Billy and Franklin Graham, Richard Land, Joyce Meyer, Rick Santorum to name a few. Here is what Time had to say about Neuhaus:
When Bush met with journalists from religious publications last year,
the living authority he cited most often was not a fellow Evangelical
but a man he calls Father Richard, who, he explained, "helps me
articulate these [religious] things." A senior Administration official
confirms that Neuhaus "does have a fair amount of under-the-radar
influence" on such policies as abortion, stem-cell research, cloning and
the defense-of-marriage amendment.
Neuhaus, 68, is well-prepared for that role. As founder of the
religion-and-policy journal First Things, he has for years articulated
toughly conservative yet nuanced positions on a wide range of civic
issues. A Lutheran turned Catholic priest, he can translate conservative
Protestant arguments couched tightly in Scripture into Catholicism's
broader language of moral reasoning, more accessible to a general public
that does not regard chapter and verse as final proof. And there is one
last reason for Bush to cherish Neuhaus, who has worked tirelessly to
persuade conservative Catholics and Evangelicals to make common cause.
It's called the conservative Catholic vote, and it played a key role
last November.
So why are Kreeft, George, Neuhaus and Colson important? It goes back to the Manhattan Declaration and what David Badash said in regards to the Thomas photo-op with George, "But it's Robert P. George that the LGBT community and all on the left really should know better." As Schaeffer explains,
So if the U.S. government legalizes gay marriage and thus “compels” all
Americans (including church groups) to recognize gay men and women’s
civil rights, the government need no longer be obeyed when those laws
affect religious people who disagree with them. The “Manhattan
Declaration” called believers to “not comply.” And just as Neuhaus
dismissed the U.S. government as a “regime”—and my father did the same
when saying the government was a “counterfeit state”—George and his
co-signers also used dismissive and demeaning language about the U.S.
government.
The “Manhattan Declaration” called laws with which its signers disagreed
“edicts,” thereby conjuring up images of dictators handing down
oppressive rules, rather than legitimately elected democratic bodies
passing legislation. In other words, when the right loses in the
democratic process, “other means,” like civil disobedience, are
encouraged. In fact, George, who authored the “declaration,” then headed
up the group that successfully won on the Hobby Lobby case and also won
the Evangelical Wheaton College suit to allow them to not cover
contraception for women.
I'm not going to dig too deep in the Manhattan Declaration and what it is or isn't. What is surprising, not all within Christendom are on board with its tenets and their reason may surprise you. From Matt Slick of CARM:
However, it is with sadness that CARM cannot sign the declaration for
one significant reason: it includes Roman Catholics as Christians.
If CARM were to sign the declaration, it would be inadvertently
supporting the anti-Christian teachings within the Roman Catholic Church
by implying that Roman Catholicism is Christian when it is not. Does
this sound harsh? I suppose it does. But, more important than
Christian unity is the truth of God's word. We must not sacrifice "the
faith once and for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3) for a
can't-we-just-all-get-along type of sentiment even if the the intent is
truly noble. CARM stands for orthodoxy and fidelity to the word of
God. Therefore, we could no more sign a declaration that included
Mormons as Christians any more than we could sign the Manhattan
Declaration which calls Roman Catholicism Christian.
Even those of the Catholic persuasion are not convinced and leery. From Frank Cocozzelli writing over at Talk To Action in his piece The Madness of Robert P. George:
As an American Catholic I find the religious and secular views of Robert
P. George maddening. While giving lip service to religious freedom in
the Manhattan Declaration, the statement's content actually promotes
religious supremacy. Reading between the lines of Kirkpatrick's The New York Times
piece, George is saying that American law must be based upon an
unyieldingly orthodox form of Catholicism. Other faiths may be tolerated
provided they cede to his subjective interpretation of
Christianity on issues of life and death. Catholics who, like me, view
dissent as healthy and the Gospels as an on-going journey of
understanding appear to have no place at all in the theoconservative
world according to George. While George claim's that his view of natural law "... disavows
dependence on divine revelation or biblical Scripture - or even history
and anthropology" it all-too-subjectively draws upon a thirteenth
century version, one where the state and Catholic Church were
intertwined. Nowhere in this calculation is any reliance upon Richard Hooker,
the sixteenth century Anglican theologian whose views on natural law,
latitudinarianism and religious tolerance greatly influenced John Locke
and in turn, the Founding Fathers.
For shits-and-giggles, I may have to devote a posting just to George and his masterpiece. What Scaheffer has done is provide, as he calls it, "the ideological background noise" that has set the stage for the
Quiverfull and Patriarchy movements. "They gave a gloss of intellectual
respectability to what was nothing more than a theocratic, far right
wish list." As Schaeffer notes, "we lashed out at 'godless America' and demanded political change,,,yet also urged our followers to pull their own children out of the public schools and home-school them." Schaeffer then goes on to highlight Evangelical Protestant efforts that support(ed) that bizarre dichotomy.
In the minds of Evangelicals, they were re-creating the Puritan’s
self-exile from England by looking for a purer and better place, this
time not a geographical “place” but a sanctuary within their minds (and
in inward-looking schools and churches) undisturbed by facts. Like the
Puritans, the post-Roe Evangelicals (and many other conservative
Christians) withdrew from the mainstream not because they were forced to
but because the society around them was, in their view, fatally sinful
and, worse, addicted to facts rather than to faith. And yet having
“dropped out” (to use a 1960s phrase), the Evangelicals nevertheless
kept on demanding that regarding “moral” and “family” matters the
society they’d renounced nonetheless had to conform to their beliefs.
