Friday, March 27, 2009

Who's Your Daddy? The Christian Patriarchy

Seems that many lately are reading Kathryn Joyce's, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement. If you haven't read it, then you've likely seen an online review at least. Last month, Christianity Today posted the review by Elrena Evans. And since December, the bloggers at feministing.com have referenced the book or its subject at least half a dozen times, with their longest review, by Courtney Martin, published yesterday. Surprisingly, none of the bloggers at "Complegalitarian: Building bridges between [Christian] complementarians and egalitarians" has formulated any response yet. Meanwhile, self-identifying patriarchs like Mike Southerland are defining "Christian Patriarchy" for others and themselves. And, more bravely, two women who have come out of the movement researched by Joyce have started their own incredible blog: Vyckie Garrison and her friend Laura are, with much courage, telling their stories and dialoging with others at No Longer Quivering.

I don't really have anything to add, except for this:

Isn't it interesting that this latest version of Patriarchy claims Christianity?

And yet its members don't know WHO THEIR DADDY IS:
  1. They use the sexist absolutist elitist reasoning methods (i.e., the phallogocentrism) of the ancient Greek patriarchs without ever once anywhere or anytime giving Father Plato or Father Aristotle their due.
  2. They appropriate Jewish scriptures from far away and long ago (such as from the polygamist, womanizing king David's Psalm 127: "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They shall not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate"; and this line - "Be fruitful and multiply" - from Daddy Moses's Genesis creation account and from his post-flood passages on Pappa Noah).
  3. They don't entirely dismiss the Pope.
  4. They are narrowly limited to North Americans (maybe only in the USA) - perhaps imagining that they owe something to the Founding Fathers and their colonizing efforts.
So Joyce rightly and succinctly notes, "It's a cross-denominational movement among evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants who have adopted some Catholic arguments against contraception and who have spread their ideas through the booming conservative homeschooling community."

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