Remember that thoroughly researched and eye-opening book I reviewed a few weeks ago called Quiverfull? Well, despite the fact that author Kathryn Joyce wrote an exhaustively detailed and accurate portrayal, free of the kind of snark that so often seeps into subculture journalism, she is being attacked by right wing fear-mongers. Doug Phillips, the director of Vision Forum Ministries, awards Kathryn with, I kid you not, “the 2009 Vulgaria Child Catcher of the Year Award.” The explanation:
The first mission of the book is to warn the radical left about America’s real threat — pregnant mothers who quote Psalm 127 and submit to their husbands. The second mission is to paint certain ministries and Christian parents as intolerant racists with a penchant for spousal abuse, and other even more unconscionable crimes (Message to Barack Hussein Obama: “Fearless Leader — forget, the fundamentalists in Iraq; these prolific Christians are the real bad guys!”) The idea here is to throw blood into the water and whoop the press sharks into a feeding frenzy.
But it’s not just Kathryn that gets heaps of scorn, it’s her publisher, Beacon Press:
None of this should surprise us, because Beacon Press, Joyce’s publisher, is well-known as a purveyor of ultra-radical, pro-homosexual, feminist, anti-Christian propaganda, including such books as: The Female Man; Changing of the Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions; and Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality as well as other titles too vile to name.
Score one for me. Beacon is also publishing my book about young people and social justice next year. I guess I’ll be in the running for “the 2010 Vulgaria Child Catcher of the Year Award” for talking about how young lost adolescents are trying to make meaning out of justice instead of captial G, God, or rooting their identities in critical thinking, kindness, and hard work instead of pumping out babies for the Christian army.
I say congrats on Kathryn for such a powerful and, in my opinion, respectful book, and congrats to Beacon, specifically editor Amy Caldwell, for being brave enough to publish ground breaking investigative journalism. It’s sad that leaders like Doug Phillips can’t acknowledge the quality of a book like Quiverfull and use it as the catalyst for a dialogue among those in his community and outside of it. Until we can speak respectfully (which is what I truly believe Kathryn was trying to do) across religious lines, we will never find common ground.
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I am so excited to read it! I checked it out from the library a couple of days ago. Once I finish The Purity Myth (which is great), I am going to dive straight in.
Does that award come with some kind of statue? That would be an one I’d proudly display on my mantel. If the “Christian” Right hates you so much they’re giving you an ironic award, you know you must be doing something right…
(Please disregard the superfluous and ungrammatical “an” before “one.” This is what I get for not proofreading…)
Me too. I want one now, goddamnit. I would be so proud to be called “vulgar” by these Christian morons. What a great honor.
Vulgarian Child Catcher? As in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?
That’s awesome.
well, they do say that there’s no such thing as bad press…
seriously, that article is so over the top it’s impressive, my fav. is that we’re ‘anti-life’, i had no idea…
Talk about grouping and clumping a diverse set of people with diverse beliefs together to mock. That’s what Phillips did in the first part of his article (well really, all of it, but mostly in the first part). His accusations that we’re all anti-family because we’re feminists are ridiculous. I am, and I’m sure other people on here too, are definitely not anti-family, which is evident in the fact that I’m becoming in Marriage and Family Therapist in order to keep families happy and successful. The difference between me and Phillips, however, which Phillips fails to see, is that I believe that it’s the woman’s/her partner’s choice when to start a family, and if she/they even want to. Also, as khw said, I was not aware that I was anti-life…I’m just trying to improve the lives of the women…
Nice ::eyeroll::
At first I thought it was an award for midwives or other birth professionals. You know, baby catcher of the year or something.
I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but Quiverfull was an absolutely fantastic book. I devoured it over the course of a long weekend & found the way it connected a fairly fringe movement to a much more powerful evangelical trend very eye opening. I’ve been convincing a number of my friends to read it.
The Child Catcher is awesome. It made a lot of sense when I found out it was a character Roald Dahl added in the screenplay.
It boggles my mind that people like the ones who dole out this award think they are helping their own cause. I think it would be entirely possible for them to articulate legitimate points of criticism about the book — but that’s not what they do — instead they take the position that anyone who talks about their views without fawning all over them is a toxic monster who is determined to “paint” them in a certain way. I can’t even tell whether they are truly paranoid or whether they are simply extremely inarticulate when it comes to explaining their views of the book.
And never mind that Beacon Press is a faith-based publisher owned by a solidly American religious institution — the Unitarian Church — that was well-established in the original 13 Colonies long, long, long before most contemporary charismatic, evangelical denominations were a mad gleam in their founder’s eyes.
And never mind that the Unitarians later merged with the also-solidly-early-American, and unabashedly trinitarian-Christian Universalist church.
The Quiverfullers and all their relative-newcomer ilk can bray like jackasses all day long about how they’re the “conservators” of religion in America waging a war of faith against atheism. But the cold, hard, unequivocal truth is they’re engaging in intolerant sectarianism against an original American church and its religious tradition.
I mean *if* they want to play faith against faith that way they can, but… the confidence and generosity of faith of the Unitarians who run Beacon press belies the astonishing insecure and parsimoniousness of theirs. Which leads one to wonder who’s faith is more authentic.
And finally, not to sound *too* starchily conservative about the Vagina-Is-Too-A-Clown-Car Quiverfuls, but exactly where in the Gospels does Jesus say semen-izing up a new infant every 48 weeks as the path to salvation?
%!#$!~)@*!Y% apostates!
figleaf
This stuff absolutely fascinates me.
I *loved* Joyce’s book and highly recommend it – I even snuck chapters as I was studying for my finals this semester – it’s that good.
If you’re interested in other Christian Patriarchy websites besides Doug Phillips’ Vision Forum blog (spectacularly creepy in its own right), I would recommend:
ladiesagainstfeminism.com
visionarydaughters.com
And for one particularly terrifying Doug Phillips youtube video, see below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO95zmotEaw
(on TeaBagging day or whatever the fuck that was)
I’m sure Doug Phillips, like the Ayatollah Khomeini, hasn’t read the book he’s condemning.
Side note: I think I posted a link to this before, but it’s worth re-posting: No Longer Quivering, a blog by and for ex-Quiverfull women.
This makes me want to read the book even more.
Having read the book, part of me understands why they are upset. While Joyce does a beautiful, beautiful job of respecting her sources and letting them largely speak for themselves, she unquestionably approaches her analysis from a feminist perspective, which most Christian right-wingers find abhorrent. If a Christian right-winger wrote an analysis of the feminist movement, I’m sure we’d be pissed.
At the same time, it’s sad that they can’t get over their pissy-ness and see the potential value of Joyce’s book for their own movement. As a feminist with a background in counter-cultures, one of the take-away messages I got from Quiverfull was the striking similarities between Quiverfull and feminist critiques of mainstream culture. I didn’t change my views about values of the Quiverfull movement, but it did give me some measure of empathy.
I want to go to Vulgaria.
To me, the most startling part of Joyce’s book Quiverfull, is the section towards the back entitled “Daughters.” Actually, I am ashamed to admit that I used to look at Anna Sophia and Elizabeth Botkins with awe and envy ~ why couldn’t my girls comprehend these Visionary Daughters’ inspiring insight on godly femininity? I actually bought So Much More: The Remarkable Influence of Visionary Daughters on the Kingdom of God for Angel’s birthday and sent it to her in Nashville in the hopes that she would finally understand how much simpler her life would be if only she could “get” the idea that the only way to true liberation and peace is to follow her father and submit herself to his authority.
When I talked to Kathryn Joyce over the phone as she was interviewing me for an article on Salon.com, I told her I found it very affirming that for most of the book, she simply sticks to quoting the movement leaders ~ often with no commentary at all. “What that said to me,” I explained, “is that to those who aren’t steeped in this particular worldview, the craziness of it all is self-evident. There’s no need to say, ‘This is total crap!’ because anyone who isn’t already convinced can clearly see that it’s truly insane to try and live this way.”
Something else I really appreciate about this book ~ Quiverfull puts the whole movement on display all at once. The reason this is important is that for most families, getting into this lifestyle is a step-by-step process ~ a progression from “peculiar” to seriously bizarre which takes place incrementally over a period of many years
Twenty years ago, if I would have read Quiverfull, I believe seeing the big picture of where we were headed would have shocked us enough to cause me to take a good, hard look ~ no doubt, I’d have gone elsewhere in my search for solutions to the everyday problems of family life. No way could you interest me in a harsh, demanding lifestyle of lots of babies (well, you still maybe could have convinced me of that part, since I do love babies), home schooling, home birth, home business, home church, no children’s programs, no teenagers (Quiverfullers do not have teenagers), no dating, parents choosing their children’s spouses, husband making all the decisions and wife not daring to make the slightest commitment without first obtaining her husband’s approval, no TV, only G- and some PG-rated movies, and absolutely NO Harry Potter.
Taken as a whole ~ there really is no appeal to the Quiverfull / patriarchy lifestyle ~ no matter how “biblical” it is and how “godly” a family might become by following those God-ordained family roles. It is my contention that this way of living is a package deal. Once a family takes that first step ~ if they’re living it logically and consistently ~ they’ll eventually find themselves living out pretty much the whole program ~ the “Vision” which, in its entirety ~ as clearly depicted in “Quiverfull” ~ turns out, in practicality, to be a very real, living nightmare.
Vyckie from No Longer Quivering
What do Quiverfullers do with their teens? marry them off asap?
“If a Christian right-winger wrote an analysis of the feminist movement, I’m sure we’d be pissed.”
Probably for very different reasons, though.
But how come only Vulgarian Child Catchers are getting an award?
What about the Vromanians?
And the Vgreeks?
And the Valbanians?