By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator
Due to the controversy over the lack of indictment of Darren Wilson in the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, American Christians are having heated conversations about racism in the United States. One of these conversations was provoked by an article written by Voddie Baucham for The Gospel Coalition. Baucham’s article, entitled “Thoughts on Ferguson”, was immediately criticized by fellow conservative Christian Thabiti Anyabwile. Today four Christian leaders of color — Austin Channing Brown, Christena Cleveland, Drew Hart and Efrem Smith — condemned Baucham for an “assault on black people” that was “dishonoring the image of God in black people, especially at a time when so many black Americans are in pain.”
As all these conversations are happening, it seems a lot of people who didn’t grow up in the conservative Christian homeschooling world are wondering: who is Voddie Baucham? Well, as people who did grow up in the conservative Christian homeschooling world, let us assure you: oh we can tell you. For those unfamiliar with Baucham’s extremism, here are 6 things you should know (and share with anyone who’s sharing Baucham’s article):
1. Voddie Baucham was a featured speaker at a male supremacist homeschool conference that called for dismantling child protection systems.
Voddie Baucham is one of the most outspoken proponents of “Christian Patriarchy,” an extreme movement within conservative Christian homeschooling that advocates for male supremacy and men ruling over their wives and children, especially female children. Two of Baucham’s fellow Christian Patriarchy advocates, Doug Phillips and Bill Gothard, now stand accused of sexual abuse and harassment.
In 2009, an exclusively male group of such homeschool leaders descended upon Indianapolis, Indiana for a “Men’s Leadership Summit.” Voddie Baucham was one of the featured speakers at the summit. This summit included calls for girls needing to have an entirely home-focused education, the need to defeat “feminism” in homeschooling, the concern that “the female sin of the internet” (framed as equal to “the male sin of pornography”) was blogging, and the necessity of men taking back their rightful place as head of their own households. The summit also featured Doug Phillips declaring the entire child protection system should be dismantled. During his speech, Baucham himself complained that, “The homeschool movement is now rife with parents who do not know their roles” — a reference to the strict roles demanded by Christian Patriarchy.
2. This creepy quotation from Voddie Baucham:
“A lot of men are leaving their wives for younger women because they yearn for attention from younger women. And God gave them a daughter who can give them that. And instead they go find a substitute daughter….you’ve seen it, we’ve all seen it. These old guys going and finding these substitute daughters.”
As Libby Anne said last year when this quotation was going around,
“There is nothing wrong with arguing that a strong father/daughter relationship is important—if, that is, you’re also arguing that strong parent/child relationships in general are important. But there’s something weird when you elevate the father/daughter relationship above these others and start arguing that fathers and daughters should find in each other what they would otherwise go looking for in sexual and romantic relationships. Voddie Baucham says that middle aged men should turn to their teenage daughters to get the attention and fulfillment they would otherwise look for through an affair with a young secretary.”
3. Voddie Baucham is a proponent of the “stay-at-home daughter” movement.
The “stay-at-home-daughter” (SAHD) movement, promoted by the disgraced Vision Forum president Doug Phillips as well as the cult-like Botkin family, is best encapsulated in the documentary movie Return of the Daughters. Here is a trailer of that movie, in which you can see Voddie Baucham featured:
The Wartburg Watch explains the SAHD movement in the following way:
“Young girls and single women are encouraged (perhaps coerced?) to be “keepers at home” until they marry. They are forbidden to attend college or seek employment outside the home (that is, their parents’ home). These maidens spend all of their time honing their “advanced homemaking skills”, which include cooking, sewing, cleaning, knitting, etc. A stay-at-home daughter is under her father’s “covering” until he transfers control to her husband.”
True to form, Baucham has not allowed his daughter Jasmine to leave their home. She has to “live under the discipleship of my parents until marriage.” While she has completed higher education, it was only through an online, conservative Christian homeschool college program.
4. Voddie Baucham wants you to hold an “all-day session” of spanking your toddlers to “wear them out.”
From Baucham’s November 4, 2007 speech on corporal punishment:
Spank your kids, okay? (laughter from audience)
And, they desperately need to be spanked and they need to be spanked often, they do. I meet people all the time ya’ know and they say, oh yeah, “There have only been maybe 4 or 5 times I’ve ever had to spank Junior.” “Really?” ‘That’s unfortunate, because unless you raised Jesus II, there were days when Junior needed to be spanked 5 times before breakfast.” If you only spanked your child 5 times, then that means almost every time they disobeyed you, you let it go.
Why do your toddlers throw fits? Because you’ve taught them that’s the way that they can control you. When instead you just need to have an all-day session where you just wear them out and they finally decide “you know what, things get worse when I do that.”
5. Voddie Baucham wants you to punish your children for being shy.
Also from Baucham’s November 4, 2007 speech on corporal punishment, on what Baucham calls “the selfish sin of shyness”:
The so-called shy kid, who doesn’t shake hands at church, okay? Usually what happens is you come up, ya’ know and here I am, I’m the guest and I walk up and I’m saying hi to somebody and they say to their kid “Hey, ya’ know, say Good-morning to Dr. Baucham,” and the kid hides and runs behind the leg and here’s what’s supposed to happen. This is what we have agreed upon, silently in our culture. What’s supposed to happen is that, I’m supposed to look at their child and say, “Hey, that’s okay.” But I can’t do that. Because if I do that, then what has happened is that number one, the child has sinned by not doing what they were told to do, it’s in direct disobedience. Secondly, the parent is in sin for not correcting it, and thirdly, I am in sin because I have just told a child it’s okay to disobey and dishonor their parent in direct violation of scripture. I can’t do that, I won’t do that.
I’m gonna stand there until you make ‘em do what you said.
6. Voddie Baucham wants you to punish infants if they’re not immediately obedient.
Baucham is an advocate of “first-time obedience,” a staple of Christian discipline books advocating the physical abuse of children, such as Gary and Anne Marie Ezzos’ Growing Kids God’s Way and Michael and Debi Pearl’s To Train Up A Child. First-time obedience has been criticized by many Christian parents because it “neglects the child’s basic well being”, cripples “the development of critical thinking”, and is based on “works-based salvation” and a “gross lack of grace.” According to Cindy Kunsman at Under Much Grace, Baucham “defines any ‘delayed obedience’ in black and white terms as intolerable, an unqualified disobedience to parent and God, something he requires of a two year old.”
Homeschoolers Anonymous 
That comment about men seeking substitute daughters through affairs is sick, chilling, and just plain wrong. It’s hard to believe anyone could possibly think that way. It has to be a psychosis.
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It’s straight out of “Craster’s Keep” from Game of Thrones.
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If he ever invites you to a wedding, run the other way!
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No wait, I got him mixed up with Frey…. D’oh!
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i think the idea he is espousing here is *NOT* to have some sort of creepy romantic relationship with your daughter, but along the lines of how people say if a son has a good, healthy relationship with his mom, he’ll have a good relationship with his wife. Kind of like the flip side to that. Mom is happy in her ‘mom’ role to her son, and happy in her ‘wife’ role to her husband and doesn’t seek out a mommy-lover role to a younger man. Similarly then, a dad would be happy in ‘his place’ as a father figure without any sexual over/undertones, rather than being someone’s “sugar daddy” Am i making sense? Yikes, that’s a lot of quotation marks ;P Anyway not a big fan of the writer’s use of that quote; i think in this particular case of the daughter thing the article is misleading.
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Great comment. I can’t stand it when people take things out of context. There’s obviously missing words here as well as as well as clear intent to slander this person. To quite a few of man speeches lately and I don’t see anything like that coming from him. I see he does a pretty good job of backing up the things that he teaches with the Bible, and not in the way that says I’ll just take this scripture and squeeze it till it fits what I want to say.
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There is no way that you can equate men having sexual affairs with younger women with having a good relationship with a daughter. Men who cheat on their wives with younger women do it for one thing only..THE SEX!
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Well said, you captured the very simple idea that Voddie was trying to convey. The idea put forth was simple, but being ridiculously misrepresented as everything from slavery to sex.
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As an elderly lady I am amazed that what was the norm in society during my childhood has now become considered wrong. When I was at school, girls studied “Home Science” at school where we learnt to sew and cook and clean. We got the cane at school if we stepped out of line and so we learnt to respect authority. We were expected to live at home until we got married. I greatly miss those days when girls felt safe and protected, when marriage really did last until death, when one wage was sufficient to meet all of the family’s needs, when you didn’t even need to close your front door when you went shopping, when children were safe to roam wherever, when children respected parents, teachers and police etc. Germaine Greer and the feminist movement (among other things) took all the good things away from us. Oh, and by the way, after I had stayed at home and raised my four sons, I then went to university with them and studied for my Masters in Educational Studies. In my old age I am so glad that I got my priorities right – 1st God, 2nd Family, 3rd other things. Sounds to me like Voddie Baucham is someone I should listen to.
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“I greatly miss those days when girls felt safe and protected…”
You mean those days when marital rape was legal and so was raping women of color?
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Hmmm so the daughter trains up the father? Because he is not advocating a healthy relationship with a daughter for the sake of the daughter, he’s advocating it so that the father won’t lust after his secretary. That’s creepy and weird.
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Very easy to take quotes out of context which is what you have done throughout the entirety of this blog. Sad …
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So many of the patriarchy crowd are supporters of the Confederacy at the least, and supporters of American slavery at worst. More than a few think slavery is morally acceptable, and some teach that Southern slavery was a positive experience for the slaves. How can an African American support those ideas? Does he never comment on Doug Wilson or Doug Phillips?
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Voddie is anti-black, as Christena Cleveland, Austin Brown, et al, point out in the link above.
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Yeah, Voddie’s Ferguson piece definitely is a travesty, as Brown, Cleveland, Hart, and Smith articulated very well.
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If you read Voddie’s works he is not anti-black but rather anti CRT, anti-BLM, anti-victimhood mentalities. He is a solid Bible believing Christian and as such doesn’t play the race card. He bases his decisions on character, personal responsibility, traditional family structure, traditional marriage, etc. The author of this article appears to be making conclusions based on the cultural Marxist worldview.
Voddie is someone who desires a sea change to help restore this nation back to greatness based on a Christian Worldview (ie Western Civilization) vs the cultural Marxist transformation that the Progressives and liberal extremists are nose diving this nation into.
So, if Voddie is considered an extremist who is actually right on the Western Civilization, constitutional republic center then that would place the name caller way on the extremist left which is at a totalitarian system of governance for a collectivist society that has to toe the Politically Correct line or be relegated to the Archipelago or other equivalent fate. That is the only outcome for the cultural Marxist march to the left.
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Slavery IS always “morally acceptable” as long as YOU’re the one Holding the Whip instead of Feeling the Whip. Maybe Voddie figures he’s going to be one of the former regardless of color.
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Pastor Voddie is so far out there on so many things. In this particular piece, however, he is exactly correct. Just like the terrorists in Ferguson picked the wrong test case to prove their otherwise valid point, you picked the one thing Voddie Baucham did right and use that to try to condemn him. DOH! Go back to he drawing board with those same 6 points and find an article where he is nuts and print that. You blew your entire wad on negating yourself.. smh
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…this isn’t a response to Baucham’s Ferguson piece.
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But let’s imagine it is and “Boom”‘s racism is called out for the mess it is.
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Beat G4 Fluttershy enough and she’ll turn into G3 Rainbow Dash?
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Hum… The bible calls shyness a sin. In this case, M. Voddie Baucham was just quoting 🙂
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Reblogged this on Opineaway and commented:
Because knowledge is power.
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If you truly believe knowledge is power (and I agree), go watch his videos and know the Bible so you know whether or not what he is saying is correct.
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This post is slanderous and WAY out of contest on every issue… listen to Voddie’s own defense of the father/daughter/younger woman issue…
http://www.gracefamilybaptist.net/blog/november-question-month-update-edition-2009-11/
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Here is Karen Campbell’s critique of that defense:
http://thatmom.com/2009/11/19/voddie-baucham-explains-the-video-clip-on-older-men-yearning-for-younger-women/
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Usually I read all the HA posts, but someone I missed this one. Point two really bothered me. Also I apologize in advance because my blood pressure goes up when I read these things and my writing skill deteriorates.
It was some many years ago I can hardly remember, but probably prior to 2004 when I woke up and stopped being a homeschool and patriarchy sycophant. I believe we were at a Doug Phillips father & son retreat on the Leininger ranch in Texas. The speaker (can’t remember who it was) was talking about daughters and dating. He said something along the lines that daughters were becoming easily sexually entrapped by their voracious worldly boyfriends because they were not getting the physical affection needed from their fathers. Being a young impressionable guy at the time who put Doug Phillips and his crew on a pedestal, it aligned with all the patriarchy stuff I was taught and so made sense.
Even though it made sense in the courtship / patriarchy context the level of affection my father showed my two sisters did not. Someone outside our circle once asked me why my dad was so affectionate with my adult sisters, having them sit in his lap etc, I happily, naively explained that it was to help them avoid seeking the affection of boys. I’m sure that person was probably concerned that other things were happening and was probing me to find out, but I was rather oblivious at the time, living in my happy homeschool bubble and didn’t notice. However it did raise the question in my head and was one of the bigger issues for me when I left the movement.
What made me really uncomfortable without anyone needing to ask is that my father used to nap with my sister. Always with the door open and fully clothed, but it was spooning and it made me incredibly uncomfortable.
I’ve also seen so many pictures of these creepy daughter daddy dances that the patriarchy folks like. I can’t tell you how much it makes me uncomfortable and I wonder too if some of these girls will have affection issues with their husbands because they feel inwardly that the level of affection they are receiving from their fathers is inappropriate, causing misplaced guilt to damage their future relationships.
To this day I am very confused about what is appropriate and what’s not. My little sister, whom I’m very close to, used to like to try to hold my hand in public which made me very, very uncomfortable. She’s naturally affectionate with just about everyone, but with my confusion on the issue, I don’t let her do it. I come from a rather affectionate family and am so myself, but I have a hard time showing what might be considered normal affection with my siblings (close hugs, etc) without being confused if it’s appropriate or not. I also fear that my daughters will fear rejected by me because I hold back too much in fear of crossing a line. I do believe that daughters do need some affirmation by their fathers, not to replace their boyfriend/future husband/whatever, but to help them feel beautiful and approved. Perhaps teenage and older girls sitting in their father’s lap is just fine, I don’t know, however it will always make me uncomfortable.
God has given me a beautiful wife who is very affectionate. I can’t even imagine that yearning for attention from younger women could ever be right. Voddie’s tying the wonderful relationship between fathers and daughters to sleaze bags who chase younger women is just appalling.
I would love to hear feedback from other HA readers about this issue. Especially from a daughter who grew up with these overly affectionate dads. Am I just being paranoid?
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Thank you for sharing your story. I hope this opens up a dialog with others who share your experience.
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Doug Phillips routinely sexually abused a just above legal aged young woman who had grown up in his church under his tutelage. He got her to live with them as a nanny to his younger children, isolated her, and then started molesting/ raping her, if I’ve understood correctly. She can’t have been much older than his oldest kids.
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Frustrated HS Guy: Your gut instincts are accurate so please always listen to them. It is not okay for adult girls to sit on a father’s lap. It is NOT okay to nap with them. Always trust your God-given instincts. Talk to those you trust in a total and complete way for their brutal honesty and ask questions when you are confused, check and double check so you can feel confident that what you are thinking is truth.
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You have definitely made a good explanation on the limitations. And I agree with you, Voddie sounds really sick, a man comparing a relationship with his daughter like an extramarital affair with a younger woman! You are not paranoid! I understand the difference.
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It’s sad to see how Voddie Baucham’s remarks were all taken out of context… I guess it makes a good article for all of the anti-Voddie Bauchams out there…
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“It’s sad to see how Voddie Baucham’s remarks were all taken out of context”
There is no context in which his words would be moral or acceptable.
“I guess it makes a good article for all of the anti-Voddie Bauchams out there…”
I’m just going to go ahead and Godwin Law your ass, by noting equally that an article about the holocaust makes a good article for all of those anti-Hitlers out there (by violating Godwin’s Law in this case, I showed how absurd it is to insinuate that “anti-Voddie Baucham” is a bad thing).
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Re: Voddie’s article about racism. For him to avoid a thorough investigation into racism in America is akin to him ignoring the bigotry his religious circle holds toward female and children. He obviously was raised into the brainwashing he so vehemently believes.
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Wow. What a “tolerant” crowd we have commenting.
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Yes. Some things are intolerable. Incest and child abuse among them.
Curious that you find that surprising.
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“Wow. What a ‘tolerant’ crowd we have commenting.”
I don’t tolerate anyone, least of all, fools like you.
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“He obviously was raised into the brainwashing he so vehemently believes.”
Uh, he was raised by his Buddhist single mom.
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Uh.. no. He (and others like him) created ‘the brainwashing’ that he preaches. Many or most of the people commenting were in fact raised into ‘the brainwashing’, were deeply harmed by it and reject it vehemently.
Furthermore, the commenter you are quoting was discussing his attitude towards race in America- something not related to either his mother’s religion or her singleness, as his Christianity and patriarchalism could be construed as being.
Its entirely possible to internalize someone else’s unjust and harmful opinion of your race. It is entirely possible to raise your child into believing it too.
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What are you calling brainwashing? The family’s sovereignty over their own kids and the right to teach them in their home?
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“The family’s sovereignty over their own kids…”
Ah yes, that old distraction. Let me restate your sentence to say what you really mean: “The family’s right to molest their kids…”
Parents don’t have rights. Kids do. Deal, child molester.
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The kind of sovereignty over one’s family /children, NEVER should include physical, emotional or sexual abuse-ever !! Sounds like V.Baucham may be having a knee jerk reaction to his father deprived upbringing, and perhaps his own mother beat him. He doesn’t say. I saw a website-don’t beat black kids- and anther-spare the rod- both set up by Black women exposing the travesty of such abuse in the Black community and the desperate need to get rid of this. And I do wonder why Baucham could ever honor those who brought the Africans over here against their will ??
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Having come out of an authoritarian, abusive NeoCal church (I was in it for 8-years) I noticed that the biggest name proponents of comp doctrine – my former pastor (California), Mark Driscoll (the imploded Mars Hill Church in Seattle), Voddie, and countless others – all have something in common: Poor to non-existent relationships with their own fathers. Their fathers were either Missing in Action or Abusive or Alcoholic or some combination like that.
Why are we taking lessons from men who are flailing at being men, who over-due it, because they have NO clue what they are doing and can’t and won’t admit it?
I tossed Voddie’s books in the recycling.
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Ha ! Best place for such tomes.
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A very good article by a Georgia mom about Anna Duggar and the whole patriarchy/homeschooling thing
JESSICA KIRKLAND’S FULL ‘BREATHE FIRE’ POST
I know everybody is laughing about this Josh Duggar story. Oh, a DUGGAR on Ashley Madison, it’s so rich! I wish more people would talk about Anna. I normally keep things light on Facebook, but let’s talk about Anna. Let me tell you: Anna Duggar is in the worst position she could possibly be in right now. Anna Duggar was crippled by her parents by receiving no education, having no work experience (or life experience, for that matter) and then was shackled to this loser because his family was famous in their religious circle. Anna Duggar was taught that her sole purpose in life, the most meaningful thing she could do, was to be chaste and proper, a devout wife, and a mother. Anna Duggar did that! Anna Duggar followed the rules that were imposed on her from the get-go and this is what she got in reward- a husband who she found out, in the span of six months, not only molested his own sisters, but was unfaithful to her in the most humiliating way possible. While she was fulfilling her “duty” of providing him with four children and raising them. She lived up to the standard that men set for her of being chaste and Godly and in return, the man who demanded this of her sought women who were the opposite. “Be this,” they told her. She was. It wasn’t enough.
What is Anna Duggar supposed to do? She can’t divorce because the religious environment she was brought up would blame her and ostracize her for it. Even if she would risk that, she has no education and no work experience to fall back on, so how does she support her kids? From where could she summon the ability to turn her back on everything she ever held to be sacred and safe? Her beliefs, the very thing she would turn to for comfort in this kind of crisis, are the VERY REASON she is in this predicament in the first place. How can she reconcile this? Her parents have utterly, utterly failed her. Think of this: somewhere, Anna Duggar is sitting in prayer, praying not for the strength to get out and stand on her own, but for the strength to stand by this man she is unfortunately married to. To lower herself so that he may rise up on her back.
As a mother of daughters, this makes me ill. Parents, WE MUST DO BETTER BY OUR DAUGHTERS. Boys, men, are born with power. Girls have to command it for themselves. They aren’t given it. They assume it and take it. But you have to teach them to do it, that they can do it. We HAVE to teach our daughters that they are not beholden to men like this. That they don’t have to marry a man their father deems ‘acceptable’ and then stay married to that man long, long after he proved himself UNACCEPTABLE. Educate them. Empower them. Give them the tools they need to survive, on their own if they must. Josh Duggar should be cowering in fear of Anna Duggar right now. Cowering. He isn’t, but he should be. He should be quaking in fear that the house might fall down around them if he’s in the same room as she. Please, instill your daughters with the resolve to make a man cower if he must. To say “I don’t deserve this, and my children don’t deserve this.” I wish someone had ever, just once, told Anna she was capable of this. That she knew she is. As for my girls, I’ll raise them to think they breathe fire.
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Proverbs 18:17 The first to state his case sounds right, until another comes and cross examines him.
Just one of many admonitions from our Lord to practice discernment judiciously. Yet reading the author’s statements, presented without full context, and the comments that follow, what I see are itchy ears on one side and a willful intent to deceive on the other. I will say this about the author, you are skillful in your employment of logical fallacies. Pat yourself on the back.
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Confused. Homeschoolers ANONYMOUS. “We SECRETLY homeschool?? Or… we don’t like the way nationalized education indoctrinates kiDs so we are INDOCTRATING in out own special way AND we have a grievance BLOG….???
Don’t know everything about Voddie and all his positions but, venture to guess that the ANONYMOUS ( ?) author disagrees and has a better idea…. Just as the internet has provided us with ALL prospective knowledge… so the blogosphere has provided it’s daily bread of opiners.
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This wasn’t written anonymously.
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I know this is meant to be a hit piece but it just make me like him more. He’s 100% right on every item. His wisdom seems like foolishness to those who are perishing. Grace comes to the humble: if you don’t understand, try by asking someone wiser than yourself. If you don’t know someone wiser than yourself… well you have your sign…
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I have read some of these comments and realize that it is apparent they are meant to bash a man of God. We all have opinions and rightfully should. I don’t look at the man I listen to the written word of God. My parents raised us in a church that taught from the bible. They got divorced because my fathers idea of teaching was to beat people into submission including my mother. Being a tyrant is not what it meant to be head of the house. To this day I have difficulty with my relationship with my father. He is 99 years old and still mean as a snake, Selfish and cares only for his needs. Although you have to disect what he is talking about to understand the meaning I do not believe he is racist, or sexists’. I open my heart , mind and bible to his teachings
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I this whole article quite distrubing. His comments taken out of context is obvious. As an African American female I appreciate this brother’s teaching and find them grounded in the word of God. If anything, reading your articles will cause me to run from your wedding.
Glad I’ve come across your link. I’ll pass on for others to be aware of bias toward homeschooling, etc.
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