{"id":675,"date":"2013-04-29T17:19:30","date_gmt":"2013-04-29T17:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=675"},"modified":"2014-02-10T19:32:23","modified_gmt":"2014-02-10T19:32:23","slug":"quiverfull-a-journalists-account-of-a-homeschooling-sub-culture-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=675","title":{"rendered":"QUIVERFULL: A Journalist’s Account of a Homeschooling Sub-Culture, Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is the final installment of my treatment of Kathryn Joyce, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement<\/a>\"\".<\/p>\n

In my first post<\/a> I summarized the book’s content.\u00a0 In my second post<\/a> I offered a few critiques and generalizations.\u00a0 Here I’d like to offer some speculations about the movement’s future, drawing on a few personal experiences in the process.\u00a0 \"\"<\/p>\n

I mentioned last time that Joyce doesn’t really go beyond her journalistic description to offer\u00a0much analysis or interpretation of the movement.\u00a0 One exception to this is her assertion that the movement’s\u00a0internal conflicts\u00a0should not be interpreted as a sign of weakness,<\/p>\n

As with most diversity on the religious right, this is not the fracturing of the movement that pundits unceasingly predict but rather a sign of strength and sophistication, of a body fit enough to allow, and then absorb, dissent. (p.61)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The sense one gets from reading Joyce’s book is that this small but increasingly influential movement is slowly taking over American Christianity, both by population growth (8-18 kids per family and pretty soon you’ve got a huge movement) and by converting more mainstream evangelicals to the perspective.\u00a0 In addition, the children of this movement who are growing up totally isolated from all outside influence are even more radical than their parents, “eclipsing their parents’ devotion to the cause” as she says of one set of siblings. (p. 237)<\/p>\n

Joyce offers as an especially arresting illustration the spreadsheet created by Geoffrey Botkin, a prominent Quiverfull leader, who has plotted out a projected future family tree:<\/p>\n

Botkin’s personal plan plots major family accomplishments on his Excel sheet…and priorities are set out for the family that will unfold over the course of generations: a thorough listing of life goals set down for generations of children yet unborn.\u00a0 The generations themselves are projected as well:\u00a0 Botkin’s sons (still unmarried) are listed with their projected marriage dates, the projected births and number of their children, and their projected deaths.\u00a0 His grandsons and great-grandsons are charted as well until two hundred years’ worth of Botkin heirs and accomplishments have accumulated.\u00a0 At the end of his two-hundred year plan, Botkin estimates that he’ll have been the patriarch of some 186,000 male descendants, all of whom, he is confident, will begin their own two-hundred-year plans modeled on Botkin’s ideals.” (p. 229)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I personally find Both Botkin’s confidence in and Joyce’s fear of the future success of this movement far overstated, for four reasons.<\/p>\n

1. The Bible<\/strong>.\u00a0 The\u00a0crucial presupposition of the Quiverfull movement is that what they are doing is the Biblical thing to do.\u00a0 Southern Baptist leader Albert Mohler writes, “either the Bible is affirmed as the inerrant and infallible Word of God…or we must claim that the Bible is, to one extent or another, compromised and warped by a patriarchal and male-dominated bias.” (p.16)\u00a0 Joyce’s subjects repeatedly affirm that the only reason to do all of this\u00a0Patriarchy stuff is because it’s what the Bible teaches.<\/p>\n

But is it?\u00a0 This seems to me to be the first and most obvious flaw in the Quiverfull movement.\u00a0 Protestants have been arguing and splitting over doctrine ever since the beginning of Protestantism, and all Protestants think their version of Christianity is the Biblical view and that other groups are misguided in one way or another.\u00a0 Why does this keep happening generation after generation?\u00a0 In my view there are two reasons.\u00a0 First, if you’ve ever actually read the entire Bible you know that it’s not a single coherent book at all but rather a collection of 66 books (in the Protestant counting), all written in various times and places reflecting a wide array of cultural contexts, literary genres,\u00a0and Theological perspectives.\u00a0 Protestants have been trying for centuries to create systems\u00a0to unify\u00a0the diversity of voices reflected in the Bible, but the Bible\u00a0keeps transcending their systems.\u00a0 On the particular issue of Patriarchal leadership and female submission one can draw on certain passages, as the Quiverfull folk do, to make\u00a0one’s case.\u00a0 But you can just as easily draw on other passages to make a case for male\/female equality.\u00a0 The Christian Think Tank website has a very complete example of this more egalitarian approach here<\/a>, and the organization Christians for Biblical Equality<\/a> has been\u00a0arguing that gender equality is “the\u00a0Biblical view” for decades now.\u00a0 I’m personally not interested in whether Patriarchy advocates or equality advocates or some other option is right.\u00a0 My point is simply that the Bible itself is so polyvocal that it can be interpreted to say a wide range of things on this and many other topics by people who are committed to its authority.<\/p>\n

For the Quiverfull movement to really succeed like Botkin anticipates and like Joyce fears, it would have to be the case that the Bible really does clearly and unequivocally advocate what Quiverfull activists say it does.\u00a0 This is simply not the case, even if you\u00a0hew to\u00a0a naively literalistic hermeneutic.<\/p>\n

2. Capitalism<\/strong>.\u00a0 Quiverfull advocates have rightly discerned that earlier generations of Christians who wanted to maintain a coherent Christian world-view were inconsistent in their many accommodations with modern life.\u00a0 But one area of inconsistency remains for Quiverfullers–entrepreneurial capitalism.\u00a0 Without meaning to, Quiverfull leaders have let slip into their ideals a preference for free market capitalism that is fundamentally at odds with the premodern life they are trying to recover.\u00a0 As many of these leaders are the children of cold warriors, raised\u00a0to equate God and free markets and to\u00a0pair\u00a0Atheism and communism, this oversight is understandable.\u00a0 But\u00a0one could argue that it\u00a0was the Capitalist economic power unleashed by Protestantism that ultimately destroyed Puritan New England and the entire Patriarchal edifice of medieval Europe.\u00a0 As Cotton Mather himself put it, “Religion brought forth Prosperity, and the daughter destroyed the mother.”\u00a0 This is a lesson the Quiverfull folk have not yet learned.<\/p>\n

3. Internal Dissent<\/strong>.\u00a0 I must say that, given what I know about the history of Protestant Christianity, I disagree with Joyce’s assessment that the differences between leaders in the Patriarchy movement mean little.\u00a0 Joyce recognizes that most of these leaders have a Calvinist theological orientation, and she even notes briefly how R.C. Sproul, Jr. was recently defrocked by the Reformed Presbyterian Church.\u00a0 If she had a deeper background in the history of American Christianity she might not be so worried by this movement.\u00a0 American Calvinists have been arguing and splitting\u00a0since the very beginnings of the colonies.\u00a0 Reconstructionists, as I discuss in my book, have been especially adept at ripping one another apart.\u00a0 Botkin’s vision of a multigenerational patriarchal clan is just a recapitulation of Rushdoony’s similar vision.\u00a0 Rushdoony even bought a huge chunk of land for Clan Rushdoony to populate.\u00a0 But then he had a falling out with his son-in-law and heir apparent Gary North, who left in a huff for Tyler, Texas where he founded a Reconstructionist church that has since self-destructed.\u00a0 Rushdoony’s vision of a multi-generational clan birthing its way to millennial victory now seems laughable.<\/p>\n

To take another example, look at recent history of Patrick Henry College, founded by HSLDA’s Michael Farris, who after a few years stepped down from the presidency because he had alienated almost all of his faculty and was a major liability in the school’s many failed attempts to get accredited.\u00a0 Farris’ grand vision of PHC being the training ground for a new generation of Christian leaders who will “take back the land” seems more and more like a pipe dream every year.\u00a0 The school has survived, but it grows ever closer to the American mainstream as it confronts\u00a0economic reality and accreditation pressures.\u00a0[For details see Hanna Rosin’s God’s Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America<\/a>\"\"]<\/p>\n

I don’t expect anything different from the leaders of this movement.\u00a0 If past history is any guide, they will likely expend large amounts of energy fighting over particulars that to outsiders seem like trifles and end up alienating the vast American Protestant middle with their overbearing style and exclusivism.\u00a0 Their organizations over time will either move gradually\u00a0into the mainstream under\u00a0market pressures\u00a0or fade from the scene.<\/p>\n

4. Defections<\/strong>.\u00a0 Finally, I am very confident that 200 years hence there will not be 186,000 Botkins each with his own 200 year plan for how his family will help restore the Puritan\u00a0patriarchy to America.\u00a0 The original Puritan colonists, full of even greater zeal than Botkin, couldn’t sustain their vision for even two generations and had to create the “half-way covenant<\/a>” in 1662 just to keep their kids in church.\u00a0 A few generations later Harvard was more Unitarian than Calvinist.\u00a0 Over and over in American history we have seen how the zeal of the founding generation of whatever movement simply could not be sustained by their descendants.\u00a0\u00a0Many of these quiverfull children will no doubt continue in the path marked out for them by their parents, but even those who remain in\u00a0the movement\u00a0will not be the same, for they did not come to their convictions the way their parents did.\u00a0 Protestants who stress individual salvation like to say that God doesn’t have grandchildren.\u00a0 This will be a big problem for Quiverfull folk.<\/p>\n

A second problem that will likely emerge is the simple difficulty of the life being recommended by the leaders.\u00a0 There are good reasons why modern people don’t typically have 14 children.\u00a0 In my research into homeschool history I found that many girls who spent their childhoods mothering younger siblings grew to lament their lost childhoods and decided not to have children themselves.\u00a0 Joyce documents the tremendous levels of self-sacrifice and self-denial required of these Quiverfull mothers.\u00a0 Their personal commitment to the lifestyle gives them the strength to carry on (except when it doesn’t).\u00a0 But will their daughters, who may not have the same level of personal investment, continue the practice?\u00a0 Will their sons, raised outside of the secular world, have the burning moral indignation of their fathers?\u00a0 Will second-hand convictions be enough to keep the stringencies of this faith intact?<\/p>\n

After college I spent a couple of years at the Yale Divinity School studying classics and Church history.\u00a0 The Div School is a bastion of old-line liberal Protestantism.\u00a0 Though there is a small and vibrant evangelical community there, the dominant ethos is very liberal.\u00a0 As I met other students there I was fascinated to hear over and over again the same basic life story.\u00a0 A VERY large percentage of these future liberal pastors, many of them gay\u00a0or lesbian, were the children of fundamentalist Christian parents.\u00a0 They often carried with them deep wounds from an upbringing they saw as abusive and dangerous.\u00a0 I was for a time the AV guy at the div school, recording sermons for preaching classes.\u00a0 Over and over I heard autobiographical illustrations delivered with great emotion whose point was some variation on the theme that the Gospel must be rescued from these crazy bigoted fundamentalists.\u00a0 Overbearing fathers were almost always the source of the pain.\u00a0 As I read Joyce’s book I couldn’t help but think that in a few years Yale Divinity School might be full of young adults trying to recover from being raised Quiverfull.\u00a0 Some of them might even be named Botkin or Phillips.<\/p>\n

For a plausible future for this movement we might look to other groups of Americans who have been doing for generations what Quiverfullers are trying to do now.\u00a0 I’m\u00a0thinking of the Amish, Old Order Mennonites, and Mormons.\u00a0 Many Amish have a tradition called rumspringa<\/a><\/em>, or “running around” wherein they give their teens\u00a0freedom to leave the confines of their closed community to see what the world is like.\u00a0 Some of the children like what they find and leave the Amish community.\u00a0 Many return with a newfound personal commitment to Amish values.\u00a0 Mormons, to take another example, send their\u00a0young adults\u00a0on two year mission trips all over the world (girls go for 18 months).\u00a0 Even though such teens often fail to make a single convert, the experience of being on one’s own, free (to a point) from the oversight of family and community, is often a life-changing experience for them.\u00a0 While most Amish have held the cultural line, many Mennonite groups and most Mormons have gradually adapted to modernity in various degrees (and are still doing so).\u00a0 So far Quiverfull folks do not have a rite de passage <\/em>that will help secure loyalty to group norms and weed out those who choose another way, and they have not been around long enough to create institutional structures\u00a0like the Amish and Mormons have for deciding exactly what forms of modern life are acceptable and what are not.<\/p>\n

In short, I predict that when the dust settles Doug Phillips and his fellows will have created yet another separatist Protestant denomination that over time will either become something of a historical curiosity like the Amish or will move toward the evangelical mainstream.\u00a0 Because of the instability of the Biblical text on these matters, the cultural compromises required by capitalism, and the likelihood of internal fissures among leaders and defections among their children, I don’t think this movement is going to take over America.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Milton Gaither, Messiah College, author of Homeschool: An American History<\/a>\"\"<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is the final installment of my treatment of Kathryn Joyce, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement. In my first post I summarized the book’s content.\u00a0 In my second post I offered a few critiques and generalizations.\u00a0 Here I’d … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8,19],"tags":[638,243,639,607,640,641,642,643,644,645,612,613,271,646,647,619,648,649,650,622,623,651,652,653,626,654,655,656],"class_list":["post-675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gender","category-parental-motivation","tag-albert-mohler","tag-amish","tag-christian-right","tag-doug-phillips","tag-gary-north","tag-geoffrey-botkin","tag-gods-harvard","tag-half-way-covenant","tag-hanna-rosin","tag-harvard-college","tag-jr","tag-kathryn-joyce","tag-michael-farris","tag-mormons","tag-old-order-mennonite","tag-patriarchy","tag-patrick-henry-college","tag-protestantism","tag-puritans","tag-quiverfull","tag-r-c-sproul","tag-reconstructionism","tag-religious-right","tag-rousas-j-rushdoony","tag-rousas-rushdoony","tag-southern-baptist","tag-unitarianism","tag-yale-divinity-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=675"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1091,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675\/revisions\/1091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}