feminism

The Feminist Homemaker

HA Editorial Team4 Comments

CC image courtesy of Flickr, Jay Morrison.

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Jeri Lofland’s blog Heresy in the Heartland. It was originally published on September 3, 2015.

“And what do you do?”

It’s an innocent question, neither nosy nor rude. One that pops up in the most casual of introductions all the time. And yet it can haunt some of us for hours afterward.

Why am I a stay-at-home mom?

I found myself mulling uneasily over this question after a conversation this summer exposed my own doubts and I got defensive. When I am uncertain, I tend to flounder and feel guilty. Should I want a career? Should I want to stay home?

When I was homeschooling, the justification was simple. I was already doing a “job”. (In hindsight, it’s apparent I wasn’t aware I had other options.) I have no regrets about those early years of pottytraining and naptimes and going to the park and teaching my little bookworms to read. Still, now that they’re older and in school all day, I’ve felt the need to rethink my reasons for not earning a paycheck.

My feminist values tell me that I need to be pulling my weight, that I should have the resources to support myself instead of being financially dependent on a relationship. I’m also afraid of perpetuating an outmoded patriarchal family model or unhealthy expectations of what a mom should look like.

However… not working does not automatically put me in the same category as Michelle Duggar. 🙂 And I’m privileged to know other ardent feminists who are unemployed, by choice, for various personal reasons. And so, I ponder.

As for expectations, my children see me pursuing knowledge and new skills. They see me involved in the community. They see me actively promoting equal rights for women. They see that Chris and I have independent interests and relationships. They know women working in a variety of fields. And they know every family operates by its own rules.

Chris and I have shed patriarchy gradually and embraced gender equality together. While there has been some shading and blending as we’ve adapted to these values, he remains our household’s breadwinner. And yet, we are a symbiotic team. We eat better food less expensively because I stay home and cook (our meals average $1.25/person!). He can focus on his career from eight to five and college classes on weekends because I can run the errands, take the cars for service, schedule appointments, shop, and sign the field trip forms. I can take classes, volunteer, exercise, help kids with homework, and cultivate supportive friendships because he brings in the income. And since he currently works at home, we get all kinds of extra moments during the day to connect as friends, freeing us to better focus on the kids when they are at home.

While extra income could ease some stresses, we are financially comfortable enough. If I worked part-time, my earnings would quickly diminish in higher food, fuel, and insurance bills. If I worked full-time, we would have more stress around daily school pick-ups and drop-offs. I would have much less time for the self-care that helps me manage my mental health. And instead of relaxed evenings together, we would have to pack all the laundry, shopping, organizing, and meal prep into that time slot.

To us, that time to just “be” after dinner and homework is worth more than we would gain if I went to work. It is a matter of what we value most this year. Our schedule and priorities are always evolving and we are open to change. But for now, we are savoring that closeness and flexibility.

On a personal level, overcoming years of emotional trauma and cult mind-control has been a long journey and there are still days when the demands of motherhood on top of that seem overwhelming. I’m grateful that I’ve had the option of concentrating on those aims without trying to hold a job at the same time.

Reflection on my domestic role has been time well-spent. These days I find myself prouder than ever of what I do and of the ways I contribute to our family’s well-being. I am a feminist homemaker: a cookie-baking, jelly-making, youngster-shuttling thriving woman who thinks for herself while advocating for the right of every woman in our community to make her own choices.

When A Stay-At-Home Daughter Rebels: Reumah’s Story, Part Three

HA Editorial Team8 Comments

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Pseudonym note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Reumah” is a pseudonym.

< Part Two

Part Three: Escape

This roller coaster I was one wouldn’t stop. Me, hesitatingly trying to make a step forward, my parents instantly pushing me back. I bought a little pallet of eye shadow one day – my parents told me I looked like a whore. I bought a skirt with a hemline just at the knee. My parents said I was pushing their standards. I desperately wanted a job. My father sat me down and told me how I was actually losing money by taking a job outside the home….and that my skills were better utilized under his roof.

I finally got the job I so coveted, at the age of almost 21.

I must have looked completely lost, walking into the store that first day in a long skirt, unsure of how to behave or what to say in this unfamiliar environment. Over the next six months, I would meet so many new people that would open my eyes to the oppression that I was living in. I made so much progress in that six months, but my parents could only see the negative influences that the “world” was having on me. I had to lie, sneak around, and pretend to be someone I wasn’t to keep the peace in my household.

One morning when I came down for breakfast wearing my favorite pair of jeans, my father told me that he was ashamed of my immodest clothing, and that I wasn’t allowed to wear those jeans ever again in his house. As a 21 year old woman who’d tasted just enough independence to understand what she was missing, I was livid. I started keeping the jeans at work, and changing into them as soon as I left my parent’s house. My days of quietly obeying my parent’s directives were quickly coming to an end.

I applied for, and miraculously received, a full ride scholarship to a distinguished university completely across the country from my parents. I remember my Dad, sitting on the couch in our living room, telling me he would never approve of one of his daughter’s leaving his home to attend college. That he would never allow it. Would never give his blessing.

I remember crying in the living room, desperate for an escape from my prison.

My friends at work told me I had to go. Those women at my first little retail job were instrumental in helping me ease into the real world, and open my eyes to the fact that I NEEDED to move on with my life. Yes, it would be hard. Yes it was scary, especially without any support from my family. But I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to spend 4 years across the country from my family, becoming my own person. Because after so many years living my parent’s beliefs and being told what was right and wrong, I didn’t know who I really was.

After an agonizing summer, I went.

My parents, insistent that they would move the family across the country so I could stay under their roof, drove me out to my new college with the promise that they would be there within a semester. I secretly hoped their plans to move would fall through. Thankfully, they did.

I fell in love with dorm life instantly, and loved the absolute freedom I had over my life. My future opened up before me. Endless opportunities and freedom met me at every turn. I met so many wonderful people who were kind, helpful, selfless, and genuine. I marveled when I met folks who weren’t devout fundamentalists and had never heard of patriarchy, and yet were still amazing people. These students – most of them had been to public school, had been raised in normal American culture; and yet they weren’t raging pagans, criminals, and devils in disguise. How could this be? Maybe my parents had been wrong.

Fast forward almost three years to the present day. It’s been a long road.

The first year of college life was incredibly difficult. I couldn’t keep up with any of the conversations my peers were having. Pop culture references went straight over my head. I hadn’t seen any of the movies people talked about; I didn’t get the jokes my friends made. People were shocked when they learned I’d never had a boyfriend and never been kissed; horrified when they learned I’d never gone to high school, played a sport or gone on a sleepover. I didn’t know who the Backstreet Boys were, had never listened to a Michael Jackson song, and didn’t know the Disney Channel even existed. Eventually, I started leaving those details of my life out of conversations. I created a completely new “me”, and many of my friends never even knew of my life before college.

My relationship with my family is rocky these days. I now stand for everything they’ve ever been opposed to….done everything they always wanted to protect me from. They’re convinced that college has corrupted me in a thousand ways. They don’t approve, support, or accept the person that I’ve become over the past 3 years since I left the movement. On the surface, they’re friendly. They feign interest in my activities, and we talk on a regular basis. But deep down, they can’t stand what I’ve become.

My siblings are still at home, lost in the life from which I’ve escaped. Fortunately, one of my brothers decided to leave too, and he’s now traveling around Europe making up for lost time.

I’m incredibly proud of how far I’ve come. But I have a lot left to go.

While I don’t dwell on my past, it does shape the person that I am today. I still find traces of my upbringing from time to time. My boyfriend is constantly dispelling my twisted views of life, family, relationships, and myself that are still left over from my dysfunctional upbringing.

And it’s overwhelmingly difficult to know that I don’t have the support of my family.

And yet,

“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow.”  ~ Thomas Paine

End of series.

When A Stay-At-Home Daughter Rebels: Reumah’s Story, Part Two

HA Editorial Team3 Comments

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Pseudonym note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Reumah” is a pseudonym.

< Part One

Part Two: Trapped

I was trapped.

As I’d gotten older, my parents had gotten stricter, more isolated, and more focused on minute details of our lives.  We spent our mornings listening to my father read the Bible to us and decry the evils of the world, the culture, and anything he associated with it.  We weren’t allowed to watch films in the movie theater.  My brothers weren’t allowed to participate in organized sports, or watch football games; it took them away from family time and smacked of worldliness.  The only music in our home was hymns or peaceful praise songs. Even Christian radio was out of the question.    Dating was completely off the table…my parents were firmly entrenched in the values of courtship, and any potential relationship would be controlled completely by my father.

As time passed, I became less and less content with my life as a home maker in training. I’m not sure what changed. Perhaps it was just the passage of time, or perhaps it was the endless monotony of my days as they ran into each other. Getting up, weeding the garden, fixing breakfast. Washing the endless amounts of dishes, watching my little brothers, putting in laundry. Fixing lunch, lying around most of the afternoon on the internet or reading a book, then sluggishly helping put together dinner and going back to my computer to entertain myself until it was time for lights out. I didn’t have any friends, and nothing with which to break up my days.  I didn’t have anything to look forward to, and the glorious prospects of winning the culture war and raising a family of warriors for Christ began to seem a little bleak.  I began to envision the reality of the future I had willingly committed to, and it wasn’t a prospect I liked at all.

Yet, in spite of my growing restlessness, I was trapped.  No, I wasn’t being forcibly held at home.  My family loved me, and I loved them. But I slowly began to see the bars of the invisible prison into which I had unknowingly walked.

I was stuck. 

I had no discernible skills.  As a home school student, I hadn’t participated in any extra curricular activities, teams, or competitions for fear of being corrupted by worldly influences. I’d never held a job outside of my family, and didn’t have any means of getting one without a vehicle.  I’d briefly brought up the prospect of perhaps a part time job at our local library or a little boutique, but my father had quickly shot that down with a reminder about the Biblical role for women, and had placated me by piling on lots of mundane tasks he needed done for his own business. To him, I already had a job.

Without my father’s approval and permission, I wouldn’t be allowed use of the family vehicles to get to a potential job. So that was out of the question.  Without a job, I had no income.  And without income, I was powerless.  The money I did have came from my parents; wages I ‘earned’ for helping out around the house or for balancing my father’s checkbooks each month. I searched for ways to fill the void that wouldn’t clash with my parent’s ideals. I looked for ways to volunteer (online, of course), and tried to start a web based business. I explored the idea of beginning online classes in business; starting my college education was grudgingly allowed as long as I did it from the comfort and safety of my bedroom.  And, it was made clear, any post high school education would only be for the purpose of preparing me to be a better home schooling mother and a more helpful and supportive wife. Somehow, this didn’t sound very appealing.

I started blaming my situation on our location.  If only we would move to a different place, it would all be better. I would find friends. More importantly, I would find a husband.  Prince Charming, my future husband, would be the key to freeing me from my prison.  But after years of staunchly backing the patriarchal movement and spewing my legalistic views on Biblical womanhood to everyone who would listen, I felt embarrassed when I started questioning my long held ideals.

This inner turmoil haunted me for over a year and a half.  A constant battle between what I knew I “should” believe, and what another part of me was starting to explore.  I was curious about the world beyond the four walls of my home.  I caught snatches of secular music at the grocery store, and didn’t hate what I heard.  I saw commercials for TV shows that were well below my age level, yet I was still captivated with what I saw.  I noticed happy college students, books in tow, walking freely along the streets close to the campus of a nearby university, and harbored a quiet jealousy for the opportunities they had.

I started to resent my parents and their rules, and I started to resent myself for having trapped myself into a prison from which I saw no escape. I became angry for the time I had lost, the things I had never experienced, and the life that I saw slipping away from me.  I secretly resented my church, religion, and eventually the God I had believed in for so long.

The God who would send me to hell if I didn’t do what he wanted. 

Part Three >

When A Stay-At-Home Daughter Rebels: Reumah’s Story, Part One

HA Editorial Team6 Comments

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Pseudonym note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Reumah” is a pseudonym.

Part One: Return of the Daughters

My parents represented typical suburbia during my early child hood; my Dad with his upper middle class corporate job, and my Mom puttering around the house taking care of us and making our lives happy and healthy.   We had the brick three bedroom ranch-style home you see in the magazines; two or three cars in the garage, money in the bank, a good circle of friends, and a cute little church with a steeple we attended religiously on Sunday mornings.  Church services were always followed by lazy afternoons where my Dad grilled out on the back porch while we children played in the fading sunlight.

My parents had always been good Christian people. They raised us in the church, took us to Sunday school, taught us about Jesus and the Bible at home.  Christianity was a fundamental pillar of my early childhood. It fit comfortably into our lives, right along with everything else we held dear.  But sometime around my eleventh birthday, my parents transitioned from mainstream Christianity towards something more radical, conservative, and polarizing.

My parents became exposed to the teachings of organizations and individuals such as Doug Phillips (Vision Forum), Bill Gothard (IBLP), Geoff Botkin (Western Conservatory), and Mike & Debi Pearl (No Greater Joy). On the surface, these people seemed like admirable champions for morality, truth, and wholesome family values.  What could be better? My parents wholeheartedly subscribed to their teachings, and eventually steered the direction of our family away from mainstream Christianity and into the ditch of these extreme right wing fundamentalists.

These organizations promised the world if you followed their “Biblical” teachings; perfect families, obedient children, protected daughters, reprieve from all heartbreak, answers to every problem you could imagine. These God-like men fiercely taught the tenets of patriarchy; they eschewed all forms of feminism; paraded the perfection of male authority and total female submission; warned of the great dangers of the world, and lauded those who welcome as many children as humanly possible into their families.  After all, we were at war with the culture, and we needed to out-number them.

We left our mainstream church with the friendly steeple and started a “home church” with two or three families who felt the same way as my parents did. Home church consisted of singing hymns at home on our couch, while one of the fathers “preached” on the dangers of the world and how we needed to be protected from it lest we be corrupted.  Gender roles were strongly emphasized and the liberal agenda was held up as the devil of our age; something we needed to defeat lest the homosexuals, abortionists, feminists, and the government take over the world.

But my 11 year old mind couldn’t wrap around these concepts.  All I knew was that my parents were happy; they’d found the answer to their problems and the solution to all future familial woes. They taught us the principles they believed in, and as children we knew no different.

 We took to this new patriarchal fundamentalist culture like bees to honey; it was easy, we knew what the rules were, and it made us feel better than the rest of the lazy Christians our friends talked about.

But little did I know where these teachings and philosophies would lead our family, my parents, and myself.  How could I have known? I was just a kid, doing what I was told and learning what I was taught by my well-meaning parents.  How could I have foreseen the heartache, the lost time, the lost opportunities, the emotional bondage, and the dreams I would have taken from me before they even had a chance to develop?

Fast forward to 2008 – my excitement was palpable as I unwrapped the most recent birthday gift from my well-meaning parents; Vision Forum’s newest DVD release “Return of the Daughters” promoting Biblical womanhood and a return to the supposed woman’s role in the home.  I turned over the shiny DVD and read the beautifully crafted summary on the back;

“This highly-controversial documentary will take viewers into the homes of several young women who have dared to defy today’s anti-family culture in pursuit of a biblical approach to daughter hood, using their in-between years to pioneer a new culture of strength and dignity, and to rebuild Western Civilization, starting with the culture of the home.”

Christian patriarchy taught that the woman’s role was in the home.  Her purpose in life was to further the vision of her husband by supporting and obeying him.  Women were to be under the protection and authority of their father until they married, and the time after high school graduation didn’t include college or jobs outside the home. These were deadly distractions that would only corrupt our innocent minds and hearts with feminism and the liberal agenda.

To my innocent and sheltered sixteen year old mind, this sounded like the ultimate ideal. Controversial? Check. Counter cultural? Check. Revolutionary? Check. These ideas all sounded so exciting to me, post high school and bored as I was.

After graduating from high school at the age of seventeen, I hadn’t given college a second thought. According to the teachings of Christian patriarchy, college was no place for the Godly woman. Modern day institutions of higher learning, I was taught, were bastions of liberal thought and hatred for God, and no good could ever come of me leaving my father’s protection for such a place. If higher education was to even be considered, online classes in herbalism, nursing, teaching, or other such womanly arts were the only options I had available to me. But I was far from being deprived by my parents – I’d been taught these ideals for so long that I was the one vehemently asserting that I would never attend college.

My place was at home, waiting for Prince Charming to come along and sweep me off my feet.

So, there I was; post home school high school, insanely bored, and more sure of what NOT to do with my life than what TO do with it. The Botkins’ revolutionary documentary Return of the Daughters was just the fanatical fodder I needed to fuel my ever increasing disdain for modern ideals of the woman.

By this time, we’d joined an actual church that sadly subscribed to all the same beliefs as my parents. One Sunday, in lieu of a sermon, this stomach churning documentary was shown in church. Looking back, the thought of all the little girls (and boys) sitting in those pews watching a film teaching them that girls weren’t mean for education, experience, or college life makes me sick to my stomach. But back then, it was the norm. I watched in awe as my female ideals, Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin, looked into the camera with their poised grown up demeanor and proclaimed their truth; that feminism was all a lie. An evil ploy by secular humanists to destroy the family and take women away from their God given sphere. A Communist plot to chip away at the fabric of Christian society. That by going to college, holding down jobs, and leaving our father’s protection, we were unwittingly playing right into their hands and helping them destroy God’s design for families. And what’s worse, is it all sounded so plausible. So righteous. So moral. And I ate up every word.

As a home schooled sheltered child, I’d never been exposed to anything different. Anything resembling a feminist idea had been quickly removed from our home, and we’d been consistently taught that women were to be in submission to men. That by submitting to our father, we were practicing for the day when we would be submitting to our future husband. According to the Bible, our job was to support and obey our husband. Our sphere was the home; cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and raising the children while our male authority figure went out to do battle with the real world. Anything not directly supporting this God given mission, we were told, was only the world’s attempt to draw our attention away from our purpose in life.

With this background, I had no trouble swallowing what Anna Sophia and Elizabeth Botkin were all too eager to dish out. In their documentary, they portrayed graceful young women in their early twenties busily staying at home helping their mothers, teaching their young siblings, cooking delicious dinners for daddy, and sewing modest clothing just like the Proverbs 31 woman.

They made it all look so important. So purposeful. Godly women were submissive. Godly women were graceful and modest. Godly women respected and revered their fathers. Godly women spent their days being a servant to their family, without thought to their own wants or desires. And one day, if we were Godly enough and obedient enough, we would be rewarded with a husband of our own – the ultimate goal for a stay-at-home daughter.

I embraced my mission in life vehemently. I cooked, cleaned, and ironed with a passion. I crocheted blankets, sewed skirts, baked bread, copied recipes for my own collection, and washed dishes. After all, I didn’t have to worry about where to go to college, or how to survive on my own as an independent woman. I didn’t have to worry about finding a job, or picking a career. Money wasn’t my problem…..I would be provided for by my future husband.

But my personal version of paradise wouldn’t last.

I was trapped.

Part Two >

Silenced Voices, Unspeakable Questions: Lena Baird’s Story, Part Two

HA Editorial Team3 Comments

Homeschoolers U

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Lena Baird” is a pseudonym specifically chosen by the author.

< Part One

Women’s voices weren’t the only ones silenced.

LGBT students were condemned, or presumed to be nonexistent.

In a class called “Principles of Biblical Reasoning,” we read a book on natural law by J. Budzizewski. The author argued that all physical acts have inherent, universal meaning, and that a specific sex act between men was literally equivalent to valuing death instead of life. We discussed it in the abstract, without any acknowledgement that we might know gay men. Lesbians were not even mentioned. I cannot imagine how painful that classs must have been for gay or lesbian students. As a straight cis-woman, my voice was often silenced, but at least my existence was acknowledged and (selectively) validated.

Even straight male voices were sometimes silenced. I think it was my junior year when a male student wrote an op-ed for the student newspaper. It was called “Is Bono a better Christian than you?” He argued that concern for the poor might be an essential part of Christianity. While Bono was trying to help the poor, many evangelical Americans focused on less important things.

Apparently, this was a radical statement. The following week, Michael Farris (then-President of PHC) delivered a chapel message in response to the op-ed. He informed the entire student body that Bono was definitely not “a mature Christian.” Mature Christians, according to Farris, do not drink, smoke, or swear. Bono (again, according to Farris) does all of these things. Therefore, he’s not an a mature Christian, and no one should view him as role model.

Even at the time, I thought this was heavy-handed and misguided. What’s the point of a student paper, if students can’t express their opinions? Was this opinion really so shocking that it had to be refuted, publicly, without any opportunity for discussion? Was it really the college president’s job to tell us what to think?

*****

This episode was a harbinger of things to come.

Disagreeing with Farris was dangerous—not just for students, but also for professors.

I was a senior the year of the Great Schism, when several professors who disagreed with Farris left the school (one was fired, several others resigned in solidarity). That story is well documented elsewhere, but it was a dramatic upheaval for the college. When I was a student, I had classes with almost every professor on the faculty, and the few whose classes I didn’t take still knew my name. Eight years later, there are only three professors at the school who would recognize me, including Farris.

I was upset by the professors’ departure. I liked and respected them. Many of us had come to PHC thinking we had all the answers. These professors challenged us, pointing out that we weren’t asking the right questions yet. They encouraged us to respect other points of view—to really understand and engage with other ways of looking at the world, instead of just quoting Bible verses. I didn’t feel like all my questions were addressed, but in their classes, I did not feel dismissed or silenced.

Farris responded to their resignations with personal attacks. He immediately went on the defensive, informing the student body that these professors did not have “a high view of Scripture.” He repeatedly attacked their faith and their character, essentially calling them bad Christians. He did everything in his power to silence them, and to tell the student body that there was only one right side, only one valid opinion: his.

*****

My first two years at Patrick Henry, I had more freedom and more friends than I’d had since I was ten. My high school years had been lonely and isolating, and I was starving for friendship. While some classes were frustrating, others were led by excellent teachers, and I enjoyed the readings the class discussions. I even enjoyed the challenge of final exams, once I realized they weren’t going to kill me.

But by my senior year, I felt lonely and isolated again. Through a summer internship, I’d glimpsed an exciting world outside the small bubble of PHC. When I returned to campus, I felt trapped, like I was returning to a place I’d outgrown. I was also clinically depressed, and didn’t know it. I was processing trauma.

I was asking questions no one wanted to hear.

When things went wrong, my friends said: “God is in control.” They seemed to find it comforting. I didn’t know how to tell them that the idea of a sovereign God made everything worse. If God not only didn’t stop traumatic events, but actively caused them to happen, God was a monster. I couldn’t say that to them. So, once again, I was silent.

I think there were other students I could have talked to; but by senior year, I felt locked into my particular clique on campus. I was one of the good kids—one of the studious, rule-following lit majors. The “rebellious” kids had their own clique, and I’m sure they regarded me with suspicion. I thought some of them seemed cool, but I didn’t know how to reach out, and didn’t want to be disloyal to my friends. I’d broken a few rules, in my quiet way. I drank at my summer internship. I watched French art films on my college-issued laptop (nudity and sex scenes were against the rules). I’d started swearing, mostly in my head, but occasionally out loud. Once, in the dining hall, I almost dropped my tray, and a quiet damn slipped out. I looked around in terror, afraid that someone had heard me and that I would be called to the Dean’s office for a reprimand. Fortunately, no one was listening.

*****

After graduating, I kept trying to be the good Christian girl. It was the only role I knew how to play, but it chafed, like an outgrown pair of shoes. One evening, in a worship service, the pastor preached about David and Bathsheba. He got to the part where the prophet rebukes David, and I realized the prophet—speaking on behalf of God—was rebuking David for stealing another man’s property. Bathsheba was property. She was like a pet lamb.

In a quiet moment of de-conversion, I decided the prophet was wrong, and the God of that story was wrong, too. I was no one’s property. And I was sick to death of silence.

I entered that room thinking that I was still an evangelical Christian. I left it knowing that I was a feminist, and that I would rather have my own story—with all its doubts and questions—than the stories I’d grown up with, where the Bible was infallible, and women’s voices were devalued, and answers preceded and superseded questions.

Life hasn’t been easy since then, but I am finally free. In becoming myself, I became everything a PHC alumna is not supposed to be. I’m single. I’m not a virgin. I’m a feminist. I support marriage equality. I’m pro-choice. I voted for Obama (though I preferred Jill Stein). I don’t smoke, but I enjoy wine (red) and beer (stout), and tequila makes me believe that, while God may not be in control of much, she does love us.

And yes: I still believe in God—just not the patriarchal, sovereign, infallible God of the homeschool world.

I believe in God because I believe in love, and I believe in love because I’ve experienced it. Because I know people, gay and straight, agnostic and atheist, Buddhist and Lutheran, female and genderqueer and male—who live their lives with love, with freedom, with honesty. People who tell their stories, and accept the stories of others, without judgment. People who have given me the freedom, at last, to tell my own story with my own voice—and to be heard.

End of series.

Orange Hair and Feminist Leanings: Mallory Faulkner’s Story

HA Editorial Team6 Comments

Homeschoolers U

To those it may concern,

Hi! My name is Mallory, and I’m a Sophomore at PHC. A friend forwarded me your request for stories about experiences with the college, so I thought I’d tell you mine.

My experience with PHC has honestly been wonderful.

I’ve wanted to come to this school since I was 14. In 2011 and 2012, I was lucky enough to be able to come to TeenCamps and had an absolutely amazing time. I had always been a weird unhappy outcast in conservative Christian homeschool circles, even being raised in said circles. I got to PHC and was instantly welcomed and loved and made to feel as though I was a member of a family, orange hair and feminist leanings and all.

I am a self-identified feminist with a tendency for crazy hair colors, rock music, inappropriate humor, and combat boots. I was a little apprehensive about being a full time student at PHC, especially with the dress code. I knew it was what God wanted me to do, though, so I went and found out I was completely wrong. I tend to keep my hair a bit more conservative at school in the interest of being professional but I’ve found friends who like music even louder and harder than mine, people from all walks of life who share my faith and sense of humor and still get good grades. I’ve been blessed enough to find friend who share my views and ones who will challenge them as well.

PHC has been accused of being narrow minded and a bubble environment. Some of that is true.

PHC can be a bit of a bubble and we all share a common Christian background but it’s surprising how much diversity there is within that. The faculty and staff have worked very hard to create an environment where students are allowed to discuss, think through, and hold many different views. Dr. Spinney, for instance, teaches History of the United States 1 and 2. He spends a lot of his class time moderating student discussions on various moral issues including Aztec sacrifices, women’s roles throughout history, and policy questions like the Mexican War. He usually states his views on the debates and what he believes to be the truth at the end of class but allows students to discuss whatever they’d like. He, above all, never insists in any way that students agree with him.

All of the professors try to strike a balance between expressing their views of truth and allowing for other ways of thought.

They make mistakes sometimes, of course, but they’re very good at striking that balance. My experience has been that, many times, Dr. Favelo, who teaches History of Western Civilization 1 and 2, goes out of his way to make students consider points of view other than their own. Our Theology professor, Dr. Cox, is especially good at giving an even handed overview of all points of view on any given subject – even subjects of theology that are rather controversial such as speaking in tongues.

This is getting long so I’ll wrap it up.

I really can’t sum up my time at PHC in one email. There have been so many moments where I’ve been challenged academically, emotionally, and spiritually. My time there has stretched and grown me in some ways I could never imagine. PHC has also given me a loving community and a family that accept me just the way I am. None of us are perfect, and PHC has it’s share of frustrating bureaucracy and the growing pains that come with a new and expanding community. However, these people know my quirks and they respect me, worship with me, challenge me, and encourage me on a daily basis.

My time at the college has been some of the best of my life. 

False Dichotomies: “Homeschooled Girls vs. Feminists”

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Samantha Field blogs at Defeating the Dragons. This piece was originally published on her own blog on December 18, 2013, and is reprinted with her permission.

So, Robert Knight, an extremely conservative writer for Townhall and whose articles occasionally appear in publications like the Washington Times, wrote an article last Tuesday called “Homeschooled Girls vs. Feminists.” Since the article spends most of its time talking about grown women, I have to admit to some mild annoyance to the persistent infantilization of women in conservative circles.

College-aged females are women, thank you.

My real problem with his article, however, is the false dichotomy he frames in the title and then argues in the piece itself. Just a quick review: a false dichotomy, also known as the false dilemma, is an attempt to reduce a complex, nuanced argument down to two separate, extreme positions. This type of argument is probably more familiar to people as “black and white thinking.” Knight’s article is an excellent example of how fundamentalists approach almost any issue– it’s us against them. Good, godly, homeschooled “girls” (grr) verses those big, bad, bra-burning, man-hating feminists.

First of all, I’m a homeschooled graduate and a feminist. My existence flies in the face of Knight’s argument. Also, there has not been any backlash against homeschooling led by feminists. If a feminist figure says anything at all, it’s to comment on the sexist attitude in religious homeschooling culture. Also, the feminist who said that, Laura Collins Lyster-Mensh, homeschooled her children and published that article in Home Education Magazine. The only people who really seem to be saying that feminists oppose homeschooling are homeschoolers. In fact, there are many feminists who choose to homeschool– women like Sara Schmidt. And Suki Wessling.

But it’s not an uncommon reaction for homeschooling advocates to point at people like me who want to see common-sense policies introduced and start shouting “you’re all a bunch of feminists!”

See Robert Knight, and “Overhere” (who was commenting on a secular homeschooling forum). In these sorts of discussions, feminists get painted inaccurately, and motivations are attributed to us that fall right in line with the anti-feminist rhetoric that’s existed for decades. We’re just selfish. We think homeschooling means signing ourselves into a “concentration camp” (which, granted, that comparison comes from The Feminine Mystique…).

Which is, le sigh, not true.

But, I’d like to address how Knight sets up this dichotomy in his article. He’s responding to an article I can’t read, “Feminism’s Worst Nightmare: Educated Women,” by Lou Markos for The City (published by Houston Baptist University), but giving the somewhat paranoid nature of most of his writing, I’m going to assume that this essay is pretty typical fare, and probably falls inside CBMW and CWA -type arguments, which Knight seems to share.

Knight shares Markos’ presentation of the “homeschooled girl”:

They possess a razor-sharp wit with which they can cut pretentious people (especially males) down to size, but they rarely use this skill, and only when they are sorely provoked …

They have a firm knowledge of the Bible, but they (unlike my biblically-literate male students) don’t engage in forensic debates over minor theological points of controversy; they will, however, step in if the boys get too contentious or triumphalist …

Home-schooled girls have wonderfully synthetic and creative minds that make connections across disciplines … they are gifted in the arts; almost all of them can sing and most play instruments and draw. …

They have not bought in to the lies of our modern consumerist state: that is to say, they do not judge their value and worth on the basis of power, wealth, or job status.

There are some pretty specific attitudes that Markos (and now Knight) are praising.

  • These young women are quiet and submissive, meek and gentle– they rarely react, and only when “sorely provoked.”
  • They understand what their place is when it comes to the Bible; they always let men lead discussions and refuse to become involved in discussing theology or become a part of a debate– they only lovingly point out that a debate has become “contentious.” They know better than to think they can engage with men on theological issues.
  • They pursue stereotypically feminine talents.
  • They find their value in the patriarchal attitudes of being a mother, wife, and homemaker and see employment as inconsequential.

Knight follows this up with talking about how Jane Austen and Downton Abbey are so popular– which he attributes to these works as not catering to “politically correct feminist lenses.” All that claim does is demonstrate a rather astonishing lack of historical awareness of either the Regency Era or WWI-era Britain. Trying to appropriate Jane Austen as some sort of anti-feminist figure is ridiculous. I’m not overly familiar with Downton Abbey, but many of my friends love it for explicitly feminist reasons.

And, apparently, feminists are engaged in the “real war on women” because we have some sort of campaign to encourage promiscuity and convince women not to ever, ever get married. Which is a pretty typical conservative phrasing of feminist arguments– they take the sex-positive, anti-shame, you-can-get-married-when-you-want-to-who-you-want narratives of feminism and completely flip them upside down.

Feminists also supposedly scream a lot about how there’s no differences between men and women and about how much we hate femininity and feminine women:

They have the wit and discernment to perceive that the feminist is finally a greater threat than the male chauvinist: for whereas the chauvinist demeans femininity, the feminist dismisses it altogether as a social construct that has no essential grounding in our God-created soul. It’s no wonder feminists hate the feminine Sarah Palin with white-hot intensity.

I would like to actually address this issue, because it’s something that as a feminist I bump into a lot, and I think it’s the essential disagreement between egalitarians and complementarians. Feminists and egalitarians both assert that while biological factors exist (besides the obvious reproductive differences, there’s also different skeletal and muscular structures), that substantial and essential differences don’t. Men and women are both created with the imago dei, both receive spiritual gifts, and both can serve in equal roles. Egalitarians recognize the variety and complexity of all people, and are uncomfortable with dividing that variety according to patriarchal stereotypes.

So yes, feminists actually believe that “femininity” is a social construct that has little grounding in biological sex–  men, women, and trans* persons can have traits and attitudes reflective of socially constructed “feminine” and “masculine” traits. Knight isn’t wrong here.

However, what Knight believes is that there is absolutely a fundamental difference between men and women– and it’s doubtful if he recognizes the legitimacy of trans* persons (which would be an attitude he shared with some). He believes that this difference is a part of our “God-created soul” and arguing any differently is akin to arguing against God and his Holy, Inspired, Infallible, Inerrant Word (instead of just a traditional interpretation of it).

It’s interesting to note that Knight spends so much of his article recognizing women he describes in terms of Proverbs 31– as “strong” and, at many points, very capable and intelligent. I think it’s possible that if Knight could engage with feminism, he’d realize that the feminism he’s portrayed here is nothing more than a straw man. I think the views he’s expressed here are sexist, but they come from this conservative preaching-at-the-choir that’s happened for decades now. Organizations like CBMW and CWA have spent a long time telling Christians what feminism is and what feminists do, and it’s gotten to the point that many Christians accept these portrayals without analysis or research.

Feminists don’t hate men.

Feminists want a world where gender privilege no longer exists, where people are treated the same regardless of their sex or gender identity, where women and trans* persons are no longer oppressed by violent systems. That’s it, really.

Sorry Gentlemen, This Homeschooled Girl’s a Feminist

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on January 29, 2014.

You know those moments where you step back from something and you’re not even sure what you just read? I’m having one of those moments, because I just stumbled upon Louis Markos’ article, “Why Homeschooled Girls Are Feminism’s Worst Nightmare.” Speaking as a homeschooled girl and a feminist, let’s see what Louis has to say, shall we?

I have become famous (or infamous) at my university for my ability to spot immediately a homeschooled girl, at least the kind of homeschooled girl who majors in the Humanities (English, Writing, History, Philosophy, Christianity, Art, Music) or who joins an Honors college devoted to a classical Christian curriculum. What is my method for spotting such literary homeschooled girls? If when I speak to a freshman girl I feel that I am speaking (literally) to a character out of a Jane Austen novel, then I know that she was homeschooled. (To date, my success rate is about 85%).

I . . . feel . . . objectified? I am no one’s specimen.

I’m also slightly disturbed by his equation of “homeschool girl” with “Christian homeschool girl,” and not just that but “super conservative Christian homeschool girl.” I’ve met secular homeschool girls who were complete tomboys. Actually, strike that, I’ve met spades of super conservative Christian homeschool girls who were tomboys—and then were taught, over the years, to repress it. But for many of us—most of us, probably—it didn’t work. I never fit the perfect feminine ideal, and I knew it. I was always too loud, or too clumsy, or too forward. Actually, I’m feeling more erased than objectified at the moment. Or maybe both.

Speaking of years, why is Louis calling these college students “girls”? I get that to a professor undergraduates can look increasingly young, but this isn’t an article about children, it’s an article about women. When I hear the term “homeschool girl,” I don’t think of a grown woman, I think of a twelve year old in braids. Perhaps Louis thinks young adult female homeschool alumni—which is what he’s really talking about—need to be forever infantilized as “homeschool girls.” But why he would infantalize individuals he is claiming are a threat to feminism—unless he thinks the real threat to feminism is for women to never grow up—is beyond me.

On the surface, the link between the homeschooled girl and Elizabeth Bennet is part educational and part linguistic. Most homeschooled girls—henceforth, I will be focusing on the literary type—spend a great deal of their time reading great books, especially eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels. They therefore possess a much higher level of diction and understand the finer rules of etiquette. They value good conversation and are able to participate in it without succumbing to arrogance or false modesty.

First off, do you know why we spend so much time reading great books? It’s often because our math and science education is given comparatively less time and emphasis—and because we don’t have a lot of time with friends. Second, we learn these “finer rules of etiquette” because we are quite literally taught them (Charm Course anyone?), as though our parents have a grand plan for sending us back in time two centuries. These things are not coincidental.

But the link goes far deeper than that. The Jane Austen connection only rests partly on the homeschooler’s ability to speak with eloquence and wit and to conduct herself with grace and charm. She resembles Elizabeth Bennet because she shares with all of Austen’s heroines a firm and rooted sense of herself as a female member of the human race.

Sigh. It is true that as a “homeschool girl” I learned to tie my identity closely in with my femaleness—and the fact that I was destined first and foremost to be a wife and mother. But honestly? All of this eloquence and wit and grace and charm is way over the top. Louis may be describing some ideal he has, but he is not describing the homeschool girls I grew up with. Although, to be honest, he’s doing a pretty good job of describing someone I’ve met as an adult—and she was a Christian school graduate, not a “homeschool girl.” We most of us were simply normal—though we did wish we could be what Louis describes, for that was the ideal constantly held out to us.

What I have found in my homeschooled students is what one used to find frequently in Catholic girls who attended parochial school. Such girls do not consider their femininity a limitation to be overcome or a weakness to be hidden, but something special and unique that must be nurtured and developed. The properly Catholic-educated girl of the past, like the homeschooled girl of today, is less likely than her peers to engage in pre-marital sex: not because she thinks sex is dirty or men are pigs, but because she views her own sexuality as a gift to be treasured by her and by her future husband.

You know, I actually think Louis is making a mistake in assuming that all feminists everywhere flee their “femininity.”

I don’t think this is true.

While many feminists are queer or prefer an androgynous look and affect or just don’t like gender boxes, plenty enjoy being feminine. But then, I think the problem here may be one of definitions. Louis seems to think that the true essence of being female is exhibiting innocence, being shy, demure, and untainted by the world. He seems unaware that femaleness can be something very different entirely, that it can also be fierce, and independent, and worldly. The fact that we do not exhibit our femaleness in the way that Louis wants us to does not mean that we do not have a firm and rooted sense of ourselves as female members of the human race, as he suggests in the end of his previous paragraph.

And as for the bit about premarital sex—I am pretty sure Louis has never been inside of the head of a woman raised in the purity culture that pervades conservative Christian homeschooling, so I don’t know how he could possibly insist that these “homeschool girls” he knows are truly at such peace with their sexuality.

Louis then turns to “other admirable qualities” of homeschool girls, offering a bullet point list that includes such gems as these:

They know what they believe and have a firm knowledge of the Bible, but they (unlike my biblically-literate male students) don’t engage in forensic debates over minor theological points of controversy; they will, however, step in if the boys get too contentious or triumphalist.

See actually, I and the other homeschool girls I knew spent scads of time engaging in forensic debates over minor theological points. What could be so fascinating as trying to bring out the nuance of a Greek word! (That is actually not sarcasm.) But in a world where so much was off limits, this was a way we could exercise our minds within the safety of our subculture.

Like the aristocratic ladies of the Old South, they are gifted in the arts; almost all of them can sing, and most play instruments and draw.

I can’t sing, I hated to play my instrument, and I couldn’t draw a stick figure. But I wished I could do all of those and well, because I knew feminine accomplishments were important if I wanted to attract a godly suitor.

They proudly identify themselves as daughters, sisters, and granddaughters, and aspire to be identified as wives, mothers, and grandmothers—a self-identification that enhances, rather than diminishes, their sense of themselves.

They desire to be helpmeets in the full biblical sense and to have their husbands trust in them and call them blessed; they desire as well to be mothers who will raise up godly children.

And this would be because this is all they know, and all they have been allowed to know. I know, I’ve been there. When you’ve never been allowed to dream other dreams, it can be surprising how universal your and your friends dreams all seem. How coincidental!

Though not all of them plan to be stay-at-home moms, they all make it clear that if they have children, they will put them first.

You know, I don’t think I have ever met a mom who doesn’t make it clear that she puts her children first. And it’s not just children—it’s family. Most people value family, whether the family the were born to or the family they create. Including feminists. Shocker, I know!

The glorious and unashamed femininity that radiates from my homeschooled students is a beautiful thing that at times brings me close to tears. These young women will give all they have to nurture the children God puts in their care and to make their home a humane and creative place where faith, hope, and love can thrive and bear fruit. And they desire to do this, not because they do not think they can contribute to the business world, but because they consider motherhood a high and noble calling.

Oh good grief.

Try to imagine, for a moment, that you are told from early childhood that your role in life is to be a wife and mother, and that women who are so selfish as to have careers—or even want them—will live lives of pain and sorrow in rebellion against God’s plan for their lives.

Try to imagine, for a moment, that you are taught form early childhood that wives must submit to husbands, and daughters to fathers, that women are to always be under male headship and authority—and that the woman who steps out from under her male head has stepped into danger and will likely come to untimely end.

Try to imagine, for a moment, that you live in a world where finding a godly husband to support and care for you and your future children overshadows every other thought from age twelve on, and where you are told that you must attract a husband through your feminine skills—your cooking, your sewing, your sweet voice, your delicate beauty.

Try to imagine, for a moment, a world where any male characteristics or attributes you may exhibit are fretted over by your mother and the other mothers, where you are put in ballet and put through etiquette classes, where you are told to mind your posture, lower your voice, and not be so rowdy, or who will want to marry you?

Try to imagine, for a moment, a world where your virginity is your most precious asset, where losing it risk utter ruin, where even a stray dalliance that comes to no more than talk can sully your reputation, where bringing your virginity to your wedding day is the most important thing you can do for your husband.

That, gentle readers, is what it is like to grow up female in the super conservative Christian circles of the homeschool world.

And do you know what I just realized? That is also what it was like to grow up in the world of Louis’s beloved Jane Austen. And now I’m not sure what to think.

I read Jane Austen’s books as a girl because they were some of the most steamy love stories available to me that were also approved reading. I read the scenes where Darcy proposes over and over. I reveled in Elizabeth’s wit—a wit that pushed the boundaries, but was careful not to digress so much as to bring censure. I wanted to be a character in one of Austen’s books—but then, I really didn’t. That was the ideal were were taught to aspire to, but even then I could see that women got a raw deal. You see, I read Austen’s other books as well—Persuasion, and Northanger Abbey—and I knew that on some level these were tragedies in the dress of romantic comedy. Perhaps, in some sense, it was Jane Austen who set me on my first step toward feminism.

I’m not going to finish going through Louis’s article. You can read the rest yourself, if you like. I want to finish, I think, on a slightly more somber note. Louis is wrong in his monolithizing of homeschool girls—and he seems unaware that many of us “homeschool girls” join the dark side and proudly take up the title “feminist”—but he is right that this is the ideal so many homeschooled girls are raised to embrace. It is the ideal I wanted—and yet somehow internally resisted. It was an ideal I was unable to obtain, and for years, that tortured me. But no longer.

Being a feminist is not about rejecting family, or rejecting compassion for others.

In fact, I would argue that feminism is very often a fulfillment of both. For me, feminism is the revealing of my inner self, a self that is fierce and somehow calm—a self I tried to hide for so long as a girl. For me, feminism is about unhindered compassion, global interconnectedness, and created community. It is about righting wrongs and asking questions. It is about separating who I am as a woman from the toxic messages of passivity and submission. It is about releasing myself to the wind, and finding myself again. It is about being loud, and being deathly quiet. It is about building new families and forming new relationships—families built on undemanding love and relationships built on honest trust.

It is about a storm, and a calm.

And it is beautiful—more beautiful than that “homeschool girl” ideal I strove for so unsuccessfully for so many years.

Ready for Real Life: Part Two, Ready for What?

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Ready for Real Life: Part Two, Ready for What?

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Ahab’s blog, Republic of Gilead. Part Two of this series was originally published on September 30, 2013.

*****

Also in this series: Part One, Botkins Launch Webinar | Part Two, Ready for What? | Part Three, Are Your Children Ready? | Part Four, Ready to Lead Culture | Part Five, Science and Medicine | Part Six, History and Law | Part Seven, Vocations | Part Eight, Q&A Session | Part Nine, Concluding Thoughts

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As discussed in a prior post, Geoffrey Botkin of the Western Conservatory of the Arts and Sciences is hosting the “Ready for Real Life” webinar series. “Ready for Real Life” is a seven-part audio series on how Christian homeschooling families should educate their children. Alongside his wife Victoria, his son Isaac, and his daughters Elizabeth and Anna Sophia, Geoffrey Botkin praises Christian homeschooling as a means of resisting a supposedly overbearing government and striving toward Christ. I purchased access to “Ready for Real Life”, and over the next few weeks, I will post content and commentary from the webinar series.

In webinar #1, “Ready for What?”, Geoffrey Botkin argues that Christian homeschooling is more than just education inside the house. Rather, home education is Biblical education. He acknowledge that homeschooling is demanding on parents, especially mothers, requiring a great deal of time and emotional investment. However, such hardships are worthwhile for the sake of one’s children and country, Geoffrey Botkin claimed.

At the 3:50 mark, he assured homeschooling mothers that their efforts were a declaration of defiance against “political enemies” who despise Christ.

“Did you mommies know that simply keeping your children at home and teaching them that B says ‘buh’ and G says ‘guh’ is such a powerful declaration of freedom and academic integrity that your political enemies — and yes, you have political enemies that hate what you’re doing and and all the powers who hate Jesus Christ are losing sleep over your act of defiance and heroic political will. You mothers really are heroes. We want you to know that!”

Christian homeschooling constitutes some of the most important work for the kingdom of God taking place in the 21st century, he told listeners. Homeschooling families are changing the world by teaching math, language arts, and “real” history, he said (an asserting that made me cackle in light of Botkin’s participation in a revisionist history conference this summer).

At the 5:25 mark, Botkin celebrated Christian homeschooling as a challenge to “all controlling” governments, demonizing the American government alongside Russia and China. 

“Home education is the most effective challenge to every runaway, all-controlling government from Germany to Russia to China — every nation that has surrendered liberty to a national curriculum, and that’s what our country has done.”

Homeschooling is more than a “lifestyle option”, he insisted, but rather serves as a way for parents to lead their children through a “very treacherous battleground”. Christians do not want their children to be pushovers for government or culture, he said, so they must find ways to raise their offspring with wisdom, no matter how “confused” the church becomes on real-life issues.

Geoffrey Botkin told listeners that he wanted his children to face the 21st century with “boldness” and stand tall when “enemies scream at them”.

A Biblical foundation for children’s education, he explained, is a correct attitude toward children. Citing Luke 1:17, he invoked John the Baptist turning the hearts of the fathers back to their children to prepare for the Lord’s arrival as a metaphor for the right parental attitude. Geoffrey Botkin used himself as an example of a father whose heart was turned toward his offspring. Initially, he described himself as a former “bad guy” who was once a “disobedient Marxist” before he embraced Christianity. Now, he has rejected the Marxist vision of social transformation in favor of the fundamentalist Christianity vision of changing cultures through families. When his wife Victoria was pregnancy with their first child, Isaac, God turned his heart to his child, he told listeners.

Next, Victoria Botkin spoke at length about motherhood and homeschooling. At the 15:00 mark, she claimed that our “culture of egotism” has encouraged women to see their children as annoyances and assume that their lives are their own (!).

She casts feminism not as a movement that liberates and values women, but as a negative force alongside materialism.

“We have been raised in a culture of feminism and materialism, and of course, those things have been around a very long time. But our generation, I think, may be unique in that we have been raised in such a culture of egotism. Women have been encouraged to think that the only thing that’s really important is self-fulfillment. We’ve been strongly encouraged to think of our lives as our own. We’ve been encouraged to think of our children as a nuisance.”

Victoria spoke of her life as a mother of young children, when she found it difficult to balance child rearing with other activities. For instance, she loved sewing, but quickly grew annoyed when her children would interrupt her sewing time. After reflecting on Matthew 18:9 (“If your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out”), she gave up sewing completely so that she could devote more attention to her children. In another example, she heard another woman holding up Maria from The Sound of Music as a role model because she loved being with children. Victoria liked this idea and wanted to have such a relationship with her own children, but struggled to balance time with her children with household duties such as cleaning and cooking. If she incorporated children into household tasks, he realized, she would not need to take time out away from them.

As Victoria continued, she continued to depict Christian homeschooling and child rearing as a task without rest for mothers. At the 18:29 mark, she explained that full-time motherhood and homeschooling meant no opportunities for recreation or socializing.

“We had a relative visiting, a woman about my age who asked me, ‘Well, do you ever get to do anything YOU want to do?’ Her question stopped me cold, and I knew what she meant. She meant going out shopping with a friend, or going out to lunch and an art exhibit like she did. And for a minute I was tempted to go down the road of self-pity because no, I never did do any of those things. But then, it was like a little voice inside me pointed out that this was a trick question, and all of you who’ve been to public school know what a trick question is. And I realized in reality, I got to do what I wanted to do all the time, and not just once a month or once a week or whatever like she did. I got to do what I wanted to do all the time because I loved being with my children. I loved taking care of them and living with them and learning with them, and it was just exactly what I wanted to do, and I got to do it all the time.”

Quoting Psalm 37:4 (“Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart”), Victoria claimed that when she chose to find delight in her offspring, God made that the desire of her heart.

Victoria Botkin’s commentary troubled me, and not just because of the cognitive dissonance.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the life of a stay-at-home mother, but neglecting all other activities is unhealthy. I love my job, but if I worked in the office from sun-up to sundown seven days a week, I’d be a basketcase. I take great pleasure in gardening, but if I spent every waking moment cultivating my garden without any time set aside for hobbies, volunteering, or a social life, I’d be miserable. Victoria Botkin’s advice is a recipe for burnout, as she fails to recognize the need for balance and rest in mother’s lives.

Victoria elaborated on the content of homeschooling, citing Deuteronomy 6 as a foundational text. Parents not only need to teach children to love God, make disciples, and take dominion of the earth, but also need to teach reading, writing, geography, science, and current events so that they can operate in the world. For instance, homeschooling parents should teach children history so they can see “God’s workings in the affairs of men”, civics so children know how government works versus how it’s “supposed” to work, and media literacy so children recognize how the media “twists” coverage of current events to manipulate viewers.

At the 22:40 mark, she rejected the idea of teaching academic subjects apart from God, insisting that it would render subjects “meaningless”.

“The public schools pretend to teach all these things, but there’s one big difference, and it is a colossal difference. If we are obedient to God’s sacred command to parents in Deuteronomy 6, we will be teaching all these things in light of the sovereign God who made all things and who rules all things by his might forever. And we simply cannot pretend that math, science, or history are secular subjects and they’re neutral. Being taught as kids are in public school that science, math and history were and are random happenings makes them meaningless, and that’s why these are the subjects that were especially boring in public school. Meaningless, random facts aren’t interesting or relevant. As Christians, I believe we need to teach our children to love learning about God’s ways and God’s deeds, and that includes loving to study science, math and so on.”

Children will love what their parents love, Victoria claimed, and thus parents should model a love of learning to their children. If Christians love God, they will long to understand God’s workings in all things, including science and history.

But what if science and history show your children facts that don’t agree with fundamentalist Christianity? What will you do if knowledge leads them to question your fundamentalism? I thought.

Geoffrey Botkin stressed that parents must cultivate correct knowledge about their children. Children are “godly seed”, not pupils or accessories, he argued. The Bible teaches that children are weapons of war, he added, asking listeners if they were truly acting like warriors.

Like other fundamentalist voices, Geoffrey Botkin described children as torchbearers for a fundamentalist agenda.

On the subject of discipline, Geoffrey Botkin insisted on absolute obedience from children. He spoke approvingly of spanking and “the rod”, and discouraged parents from countenancing any form of disobedience from their offspring.

“Discipline is not an option in your home. You have to bring discipline and order to your home. Disobedience is not an option in your home. Children cannot disobey parents, ever, either outwardly or passively. They can’t roll their eyes … We have to be very quick to rebuke them and reprove them in a way that we want. The rod and reprove give wisdom … Did we spank our children? Yes, we did spank our children. And there were times that there were children who were easy to spank, and children that were literally impossible and difficult to spank. And did we want to give up on that? Sure we did. And there were many times when I would come home and I would need to encourage Victoria and say, ‘Honey, were you faithful in obeying the Lord in this? Because when you discipline your children, they will delight your soul, and they haven’t delighted your soul today.'”

Throughout the webinar, the Botkins addressed listener comments. One commenter asked the Botkins how he and his wife could “detox” from the “garbage” they learned in public school. Geoffrey Botkin replied that they must replace their old public school teachings with “Biblical truth”. Public school teachings are part of a larger flawed culture, Geoffrey Botkin claimed. We live in a “dirty toxic nation” that is “pagan”, he insisted, lamenting that many Protestant churches have embraced dubious ideas steeped in Greco-Roman thought.

WHICH Greco-Roman ideas? I thought. Greek and Roman thought was not monolithic. Why are you lumping it all together and discarding it?

Geoffrey Botkin’s disdain for Greek and Roman cultural contributions ran deep. Another listener asked about the role of Latin and classical texts in home education, to which Geoffrey Botkin gave a polemical response. At the 56:11 mark, he associated Latin with “pagan” indoctrination, caricaturing classical thought as anthropocentric and monolithic. 

“Latin was basic to the initiation process of pagan or deeply compromised academics to gain control over the training of each generation of Christian leaders in England and America. And it was the kind of thing that we must be careful about because the classics are pagan. Greek and Roman literature and philosophy is pagan. They were based on the premise that man is the total measure of everything, than man’s reason is ultimate. It’s such a toxic thing if our children begin to pick this up and become arrogant.”

In conclusion, the Botkins’ first installment of the “Ready for Real Life” series urged parents to homeschool their children with fundamentalist principles at the forefront. Their webinar placed great importance on parental involvement, the Bible, and studying subjects through a fundamentalist Christian filter.

Several recurring themes became apparent.

  • Children as Torchbearers — Christian homeschooling, for the Botkins, is a deeply political act. Geoffrey and Victoria Botkins saw their Christian homeschooling efforts as a means of raising children for future Christian dominion. Children were compared to weapons and arrows in a quiver, and their home education was intended to produce future Christians who would resist messages from society and the state. 
  • Dominionism — The Botkins repeatedly presented Christian homeschooling as a means by which Christians were to exercise dominion and train the next generation for dominion. Geoffrey Botkin spoke warmly of spoke of the Christian reconstructionist author R. J. Rushdoony, whose books were required reading in the Botkin household. He even celebrated Rushdoony’s Institutes in Biblical Law as a “dinner table reference book” in the family’s conversations about current events. 
  • Christian Patriarchy — The roles that Geoffrey and Victoria Botkin prescribed for parents and children were heavily gendered. Women were expected to be stay-at-home mothers and devote themselves entirely to the education and upbringing of their offspring. Geoffrey Botkin also encouraged mothers to treat their sons like men, not boys, so as to prepare them to be future leaders. Revealingly, he did not say the same about daughters.  
  • Obedience — The Botkins called for children’s absolute obedience to their parents, as well as parents’ absolute obedience to God and the Bible.
  • Disdain with the Outside World — The webinar was riddled with condemnation of the state, public schools, humanism, feminism, alleged “political enemies”, and society in general. Christian homeschooling was presented as a form of resistance to “runaway, all-controlling government”, in keeping with Geoffrey Botkin’s fears of statism. Public schools were denigrated as ungodly learning environments that stuffed students’ minds with “garbage”. “Anyone who went through the American public education system in the last thirty years is not totally ignorant, but mostly ignorant,” Geoffrey Botkin insisted at the 58:25 mark. Society at large was demonized as “dirty” and “pagan”, with Christian dominion as the only true antidote to its ills. In short, the outside world, with its diversity and secularism, was framed as a malevolent force that Christian homeschool families must resist.

Stay tuned for commentary on the rest of the Botkin’s “Ready for Real Life” webinar series!

*****

To be continued.

When Your Daughters are The #1 Threat to Your Agenda

HA Editorial Team16 Comments

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Julie Anne Smith’s blog Spiritual Sounding Board. It was originally published on October 15, 2013 with the title “Are Daughters the Biggest Threat to the Christian Patriarchy Movement and Reconstructionism?”

Whether they say it publicly or not, I believe that Christian leaders in the Reconstructionist and Homeschool Movements view adult daughters to be the biggest threat to their agenda in furthering their ideologies.

In this video trailer of The Return of the Daughters, you can hear the urgency of this movement, the fear-mongering blaming the feminists as the primary cause of the destruction of the idolized godly family image.

Stay-at-home daughters — it’s a matter of choice

I want to be clear what my beef is with this movement.

It is not the idea of daughters staying at home if they choose to stay at home.  It’s about an adult daughter not being allowed to make choices for herself.  It’s the idea that if daughters don’t stay at home under their father’s “protection,” they are not being biblical – that the only right way is if a daughter has her father’s blessing on all of her choices, including marriage – and that marriage is very selective as the father wants to make sure that his future son-in-law holds to the same Patriarchal beliefs as he.

I am sick and tired of the implication that young ladies who go to college are trying to perpetuate the feminist agenda and destroy families, simply for making the adult choice to further their education.

In studying the patterns of abuse in churches, the control tactics the proponents of this movement use are similar.  

Why does this issue have to be so black and white?  Because it’s about control.  We see love-bombing of daughters, building her up in her femininity, her homemaking skills, but there is no allowance for an adult daughter to question of authority, to have differing viewpoints, to have a mind of her own.

If adult daughters are not sold on the concept of first being comfortable at being stay-at-home daughters, and then stay-at-home moms, the authoritarian position of the Patriarch, and thus, the entire Movement, is diminished. Any diminishing of their role as Patriarch by a daughter challenging or questioning them would be looked at as disobedience and sin and divisive, just as in spiritual abuse patterns, any questioning of a pastor’s authority would be labeled as divisive.  Do you see the parallels?

Their ideology is that husbands will be spiritual heads of the home, will rule over their wives and families and wives will humbly submit without question to everything they say.  They will be reproducing babies and raising them with the same ideologies:  boys will grow up to be men and heads of households and will rule their families spiritually.  Daughters will grow up and embrace their “biblical role” as submissive wives/mothers.

But ask these folks what happens when abuse enters the picture?  

Does the wife and children get support?  Or what about a death of a husband or disability or unemployment?   Does the church assist these families in real and practical ways?  Or is the family abandoned and the wife accused of sin when she attempts to earn income for her impoverished and broken family?

…O, treason of the blood!
Fathers, from hence trust not your daughters’ minds
By what you see them act.  ~ Othello

Daughters who are allowed to think for themselves, make their own choices, are viewed as a threat

It is my belief that daughters who go against this system, who go to college, learn how to think for themselves, are viewed as a threat. It is wrong to challenge, to question, undermine, speak out against this destructive movement.

I’m certain that Patriarchs know this real threat and that is why we are seeing so much building up daughters positively by glorifying the godly wife role and encouraging the relationships with fathers and daughters.

Patriarchal fathers must win their daughter’s heart at a very young age, win her approval and trust, in order to successfully perpetuate this cycle.

I am now convinced that for many Patriarchs, the agenda is not to honestly build the relationship between the father and daughter. Rather, fathers are using their daughters to instill in them what they believe to be the godly ideology and sell the daughters on their role in continuing and supporting this ideology. This is accomplished through purity balls, purity covenants, books, videos, conferences or retreats like this:

God’s Word speaks volumes to the relationship between fathers and daughters: His most sacred duty is her protection and preservation from childhood to virtuous womanhood. He leads her, woos her, and wins her with a tenderness and affection unique to the bonds of father and daughter. Success in his life mission is directly related to the seriousness and compassion with which he seeks to raise her as an industrious, family-affirming, children-loving woman of God.

She, in turn, looks to her father as a loving picture of leadership, of devotion, and of care. Her relationship with her father will help to define her view of the worth of a woman, the meaning of fulfillment and contentment, and her vision for virtue. When these relationships are realized and cultivated, the generational mission of the Christian family is secure.

Is it any wonder that Satan is on the prowl seeking to tear the hearts of daughters from their fathers, and driving wedges of indifference between them — fathers with no time for their little girls, and young ladies who have replaced the love of their fathers with the acceptance of peers and inappropriate romantic relationships? The Vision Forum Ministries Father & Daughter Retreat is one step on the journey of recovering the preciousness of this relationship so crucial to the kingdom-building work of the Church. (from Father & Daughter Retreated Sponsored by Vision Forum)

Sadly, I also think that some fathers are unknowingly climbing aboard this fast train of destruction.

They don’t understand the system in which they are caught.  

They believe what they are doing is good for their families and daughters and don’t understand the price it will have on their family. It really is not about a relationship for many.  It is about an agenda.

As I have been following trends in the Homeschool Movement, what I am seeing is that those fathers who tightly control their daughters and their lives — do not allow them to have educational and work choices, do not allow them to make important life decisions,  do not allow them to think for themselves spiritually or own their own faith — will likely lose their daughters in adulthood.

They may in fact lose a relationship with their daughters forever.