Kathryn Joyce Gets Vulgaria Child Catcher of the Year Award!

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.