More on Mistaking Metaphors for Maps and Territories: Why Patriarchy Misses the Point On Purity and Beyond

In the previous post, I mentioned an exchange I had with someone who stated that “the metaphor is not the map.” It came up in a discussion about how some in the artful side of science find solutions to problems, but not knowing everything about how they work, they “create” an explanation with little to know basis in fact. It's not honest to then teach these things to others as though their speculations or perhaps even their astute hypotheses are hard facts. I wrote to him to thank him for the axiom, and he told me about the original source.

The saying came from a scientist and philosopher named Alfred Korzybski who launched the study of how human understanding and the nervous system intersected, particularly concerning how language shapes our perceptions. He was a Polish-born Russian who served in World War I as an intelligence officer, but he became a citizen of the U.S. In 1940. (I'm certain that his experience expanded his interest in the subject.)

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“Masturbation Lawsuit…” I Couldn’t Even Make This Stuff Up if I Tried!

The other day I tweeted about the laughing I do over some of the titles of articles and publications that have quoted me over the years concerning the Quiverfull/Patriarchy Movement (QF/P).  Journalist Grace Wyler sought me out to answer questions for her article for Vice Magazine, a media company in which Rupert Murdock’s $70 Million has given him a 5% interest.  Wyler recently wrote a very good article about the sexual abuse problem that is ignored on many Christian Fundamentalist college campuses, and she sought me out for additional information while investigating the lawsuit filed against Doug Phillips and Vision Forum.

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Has Christian Fundamentalism Become Synonymous with Sexual and Domestic Abuse?

Note: For background info, please visit the embedded. The following is packed with them, and you may need a scorecard.]

After posting a link to a new article in the New Republic entitled Sexual Assault at God's Harvard in social media today, Eric Pazdziora drew attention to it. (Eric is an exceptionally talented musician, composer, and graduate student who was a featured contributor to the book, Quivering Daughters and has written much on the topic.)

Note: Patrick Henry College (PHC) designed for homeschoolers by the founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association and was referenced in as “God's Harvard” in the title of Hanna Rosin's book.

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When your Religious Leader Falls Off the Pedestal

Most people walk away from high demand religion on their own because some event or series of them bursts the bubble of wonder that such systems create. A vital part of that process for me involved “gradually waking up” to see the very negative side of my pastor – the side that I denied through most of the time that we were in contact. I was moved to write this after reading about Peter Bradrick's experience who seems to have had a more abrupt awakening and a much longer indoctrination period during a more impressionable time in his life.

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Revisiting Botkin Family Dynamics and Patriarchy's Daughterhood Movement: A note to a reader.

I recently received a private inquiry from someone who visited either Under Much Grace or (the renamed) Enmeshed for Jesus blog, but when I tried to email a private response, I received a delivery failure notice. As it is always good to review some of this kind of info and in the hope that the person who made the inquiry will see this post, I offer it here on both websites.

The reader writes to ask what the Botkin Family Model is called when you pull the dynamics out of a Christian or religious context. The reader hopes to find as much information about the problem from a variety of perspectives, particularly secular ones, and Borderline Personality Disorder was specifically mentioned in the correspondence.

Here is my response:

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A Botkin Update and a Botkin Success Story

February 2019 Edit:  The Botkin Family contacted me recently to protest very dated posts about my criticisms and observations about their model for family.  They contend that the information here consists of lies, though I'm not entirely sure how they will explain that to those from their family's history who remember their parents from their previous affiliations in real life.  I guess that one man's cultic Totalist Aberrant Christian Organization is another man's think tank and holy, orthodox Christian life.  Read more HERE.

>>>>
I don't exactly get it myself, but many people find them fascinating, and posts about them here on this site remain among the perennially popular. I just see the family as a typical example of those who transitioned out of one cultic group to enter another, changing very few of their beliefs in the process. Spiritual abuse is spiritual abuse.

The Botkin Family seems to be ramping up for some new activities after having purchased a new camp-style compound in Tennessee which I assume means that they won't be running off to New Zealand. I've heard that “visionary lord of his home” Geoffrey Botkin is officially awaiting the birth of grandchildren now, so he can finally get cracking on that 200 Year Plan for his offspring. I'm not sure what he's going to do about his written plan to make his son Prime Minister of NZ since they no longer reside there. Maybe they tabled that idea? The revision sounds like a lot of work.

In the meanwhile, the Visionary Daughters who apparently have not yet been permitted to court have written a book of advice on how young women in homeschooling's aberrant patriarchy movement should relate to young men. (To their credit, I understand that it is not nearly as disturbing as their first book, So Much More.) Their beautiful, insightful, and well-educated cousin, has written about her honest response to her beautiful first cousins' new book. Katie Botkin who writes the review is the daughter of Geoff's brother Gregg and his wife who were both involved with the Great Commission cult under Jim McCotter in the seventies (along with Geoff) but departed from and disavowed the group's system long ago. Geoff who was recruited at about the same time as his brother remained with the Great Commission and then remained with McCotter as a business partner until 2002. His Great Commission beliefs made for an easy transition in the similar spiritually abusive system of Vision Forum.

I understand that Katie stands in stark contrast to the stay at home daughter ideal that her cousins teach, epitomizing some of the very things that her Visionary Daughter cousins warn against. But I rejoice to see that, though her parents departed from a restrictive and spiritually abusive lifestyle that they still maintain a good relationship with Geoff and “Vicky” Botkin (as “Victoria” was known to her friends in the “Saints” in the Great Commission in Norman, Oklahoma when they participated in the cultic group). Families like Gregg's and their children like Katie encourage me so much because I tend to focus on the numbers of people who contact me for help with the negative fallout which results in the lives of their children as a consequence of their own spiritual abuse experience. The second generation is often required to pay the price of pain as the lasting legacy of spiritually abusive groups.

I see Katie Botkin as a success story, and she is living proof to parents who struggle with the aftermath of spiritual abuse and the effects that it has on their children. I'm also glad that she has what I understand is a loving relationship and good communication with her extended family, even though they remain part of a such a spiritually abusive system. It is my hope that in years to come, she will be a resource and a testimony to them of what can be possible if and when they decide to depart from the system. I hope that the many parents who contact me and read here will take encouragement in Katie's example, living proof that children whose parents were involved in spiritual abuse can go on to live very full, rich, rewarding, and meaningful lives. I have heard nothing but encouraging things about her family through mutual friends and acquaintances, and that is something worth celebrating.

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Courageous: Just the Theological Stuff (. . . Not Much More than a Vision Forum 'How To' Video)

 A friend wrote to me today to ask if I could change my review of the film, Courageous, so that the theological issues introduced by the film cold appear first. Rather than do that, I've decided just to repost only the section of the review that deals with the disturbing, subtle theological problems posed within the film in an additional blog post. If you'd like some perspective on the cinematographic aspects, directing, and writing, you can LINK HERE to the original full review in the previous post to read more.

Excerpted from the full review of the film, Courageous, by Sherwood Films

by Cindy Kunsman

(Also, don't miss the review of the film at 

the Freedom for Christian Women Coalition!)

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Rethinking the Madness of Vision Forum

Spiritually abusive groups keep their followers malleable and suggestible by always keeping them a bit off balance. A group member can never quite become a master of all the demands of the group because the group is always in flux, inventing new demands, new doctrines, or twists on new doctrines. In order to remain acceptable to group leadership and maintain one's status, a follower must constantly strive to stay current with the latest musings of the leader which are usually accompanied by a unique code of language as well as a particular focus of content. The follower can never rest on their laurels, for they must continually work to remain connected to the group and acceptable to the group.

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Some Family Integrated Satire

Enjoy a little humor for the weekend, though it's a sad commentary on a sad reality.  I found the video on a blog comment that added that "the Quiverfull Movement will be barren within a decade if this keeps up!"  The second video points out well the truth that very few homeschoolers within the hardcore end of the Quiverfull/Patriarchy Movement encourage their sons to serve in the military.

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The Significance of McCotter’s Great Commission at the University of Oklahoma Campus, Geoffrey Botkin, Vision Forum, New Zealand and Homeschooling

 

For those who follow Vision Forum’s homeschooling ideology and teachings, the Great Commission’s problematic history of college campus evangelism proves to be of great significance because not only because the problems manifested by Vision Forum’s “vision” match the very same problems of the Great Commission group (GC) at the height of their activities, it should also be noted that Geoff Botkin of Vision Forum worked with and for this cultic and aberrant evangelical Christian group for approximately 30 years. I’m told that the group leader and founder, Jim McCotter, was quite impressed with his creative ideas for evangelism dating back to their association in Norman, OK in the 70s on the campus of the University of Oklahoma (OU). I have found no documentation or testimony noting that Geoff Botkin renounced the past abuses of the Great Commission teachings and practices, actually now using Vision Forum to perpetuation the same core ideas. This information is also significant, because it relates to Geoff Botkin’s claims of a history of Marxism in his family and/or early history. (Please refer to this previous post with links to documentation the history of McCotter and his relationship with Geoff Botkin.)

The religious system that developed from Jim McCotter’s efforts quickly became an aberrant group, getting caught up in the peripheral aspects of the Christian faith by focusing on pet doctrines, performance standards, and a demanding submission to church authorities. There were many other churches that developed in the 1960s and ‘70s that fell into this same error, and this movement in evangelical Christianity became known as the Shepherding Discipleship Movement. Bill Gothard and Sovereign Grace Ministries are groups that advocate homeschooling as a religious right, groups that also classify as part of the Shepherding Discipleship ideology. According to the model framed by David Henke, these groups exemplify spiritual abuse because they manifest these hallmark signs: they are authoritarian, perfectionistic, image-conscious, they squelch criticism of their system, they are elitist, and they are unbalanced in that they focus on peripheral doctrine rather than essential doctrines of the faith, veering off-center from orthodox Christian teachings.

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A Botkin Update: Who is Geoff Botkin and What is the New Zealand Exit Strategy? (I think it is a reading from Jim McCotter's old script.)

A few months ago, I posted a substantial portion of Geoff Botkin’s history with the cultic evangelical group, the Great Commission Ministries (GCM). Since that time, I’ve been contacted by several people who have reported information about Botkin’s past, his present activities, as well as his declared plans for the future.

THE PAST: Recruitment of the Botkins into the GCM Cult

It seems that Geoff and his brother, Gregory (now a family practice physician who now works in an Emergency Department), grew up in Tulsa, OK and were recruited into Jim McCotter’s Great Commission cult while attending Oklahoma University during the 1970s. McCotter spent time on the campus of OU during his “Blitz,” his evangelical recruitment campaign. The sources that contacted me and had knowledge of the family stated that they had absolutely no knowledge about the family professing Marxism, and neither Gregory nor Geoffrey were known to these sources to be Marxists. What is interesting to note is that there was a cult member in Norman, OK who interacted with Geoff who members report had a history of some involvement with Marxism and whose family immigrated to the US from the USSR. (This man whose name has been removed from this post reports that left the Great Commision cult decades ago.) It appears that, based upon the testimony of those who contacted me, unless the Botkin Family of Tulsa went to great lengths to keep their Marxism under wraps, Geoff Botkin may have absorbed aspects of the testimony of this man in order to embellish his own

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A Momentary Break from my Mini-Sabatical...

15Apr09 ADDENDUM:

(aka "Why you should not write hasty posts that you haven't proof read, especially while you have a fever of 102 F and your sinuses feel like they are going to rupture out through your eyeballs!")

Thanks to an astute reader who contacted me via email, in an expression of my disgust for racism and kinism, I originally used the term "miscegenation" in this blog post as the opposite of what it really means. Miscegenation is "race mixing" which I think is a wonderful thing. In so doing in my febrile and hasty error, I originally stated that Vision Forum and those so named are "anti-miscegenation" when they, like me, are indeed pro-miscegenation. I believe I have appropriately corrected this error so that the post correctly reflects the positon of Vision Forum and uses the term accurately! My humble apologies for the confusion/misrepresentation, and I humbly ask forgiveness. (There is only one race in Christ! To Him be all the glory, and I am grateful to allow that glory shine through my obvious weakness here! Ah, well. It keeps me humble. And frankly, I'm disgusted that there is even a 50 cent word needed to describe interracial marriage.)


I don't have much time to spend here at the moment, but I am getting a great deal of email concerning some posts on Vision Forum's blog, asking if I know who Doug Phillips is talking about on the topic of miscegenation. I suppose because I am such a strong critic of Phillips and that I speak out against the following of Confederate Ideology as its own religion that I must be the person they are discussing? I have no idea what goes on in the heads of the patriocentrists, and unlike me, they do not name names. So who knows?

But because I have been answering so many emails, I would like to just be able to simply link to a blog post addressing this.

My problems with Doug Phillips' stance on Confederate Ideology have been well-documented on this blog, and I have specifically addressed my questions about how far Doug, Brad and Howard Phillips take their beliefs because they make no qualifying statements about where their their Confederate Ideology appreciation begins and where it ends specifically. (Note that I have never heard anything racist or remotely so from Howard Phillips who has welcomed Alan Keyes and told a small group of us at a CP meeting that he would offer the VP slot to Keyes if he had not been a new world order supporter. Howard also openly encourages women to get involved in the party and to run for office on the CP ticket.)

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The Manifesto for Christian Education?: Just More Patriarchal, PT Barnum Spin

Taking a brief interlude away from examining different ways the cults misuse the Bible, I would like to present an update on the awaited Men's Homeschooling Leadership Summit that was held by men and for men (and boys, of course), sponsored by the Christian Home Educators of Colorado (CHEC). One of the grand achievements of this summit, I understood per the advertisement and information on the internet, was the writing of a grand patriocentric Manifesto for Christian Education.

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A Summary of Blog Posts About Kinist Racism in Patriocentricity and Vision Forum

Taunya Henderson continues her series on "The Marketing of the Titus 2 Woman," taking on the topic of racism and kinism.

I've already written a great deal on this topic, and I recently included the subject in a list of questions that I sent to Dr. Voddie Baucham after he agreed to answer my questions, all questions that remain unanswered.

For the benefit of the readers here, I will post a summary of my posts on kinism to make it easier to review them, a most unpleasant and depressing topic. I find kinism to be merely a convenient excuse for hatred and elitism, both of which are inconsistent with Christianity under the New and Better Covenant.

Introduction to Kinism

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A Summary of the Posts About Multigenerational Faithfulness

When I decided that to examine the loaded language term of “multigenerational faithfulness,” describing how Vision Forum and her affiliates refer to the term, I anticipated covering the concepts in just a few blog posts. Really... The ambiguous and nebulous term itself actually lacks substance in and of itself, so I did not anticipate that the term was indeed as loaded as it proved to be when I looked at exactly what they taught. I realized that the term was misleading, but I did not fully realize just how they used it to encapsulate so much of their core doctrine. Upon reviewing the downloadable sermons and written material available, I was quite surprised to realize just how much the term “multigenerational faithfulness” represents for Vision Forum and their affiliate teachers and supporters.

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Concerns About the Family Integrated Church Movement from the FBFI

From the
Fundamental Baptist Fellowship International
Deomination's website:

Resolution 06-03: Concerning the Integrated Church Movement

While recognizing that the family is under attack in our nation and in many churches today, and recognizing that choice to have (or not have) age-graded ministries is the prerogative of individual local churches as God directs them, the FBFI denounces the doctrinally errant and schismatic teaching characteristic of the Integrated Church movement for the following reasons:

• It encourages schisms in local church bodies by encouraging its adherents to change the theology and philosophy of the churches of which they are members.

• It does violence to local church authority, calling on local church members to leave their churches when the church does not bow the philosophical demands of the movement.

• It espouses an ecclesiology based upon the family that is not based upon the New Testament but rather is an adaptation of Old Testament patriarchy.

• It falsely lays the claim that the destruction of the family in the US is the solely the fault of age-graded ministries in local churches. We contend that this is a simplistic and therefore false accusation.

• It espouses a postmillennial theology that is contradictory to a dispensational understanding of Scripture.

• It is oddly inclusive, basing fellowship on a particular philosophy of ministry rather than the great fundamentals of the faith.


This movement is most prominently represented by Doug Phillips (Vision Forum) and R.C. Sproul Jr., among others.

See related article

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Voddie Baucham on Getting One's Ticket Punched, Round Two?

A few weeks ago, I mentioned a program called "College Plus!" that is endorsed, most notably, by Doug Phillips. From reviewing their website, I believe that one can easily ascertain that this program offers non-academic coaching to those who enroll in their program. They also offer a core curriculum in Christian Worldview, and I the books of at least one of the authors they use for this program line my own bookshelves. I supported Gary DeMar's ministry for many years until my husband and I withdrew support because Doug Phillips and Vision Forum products became ever more prominent in American Vision's publications. Though I do not agree with the recent direction that American Vision chose, I still find most of what Gary DeMar has authored to be very fine material.

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Who is Geoffrey Botkin? A Vision Forum Recruit from the Cult of the Great Commission

Revised 02Feb13

Revised Introduction, 14Feb2019

A few days ago, I received a registered, restricted access letter from the daughters of Geoffrey Botkin (GB).  They allege that I have profited somehow by hijacking their family name, and while I never dreamed that I was so powerful, they claim that I all but destroyed their family’s ability to support themselves.

Of notable mention in the letter was a reference to this “Who Is GB?” post..  If you find broken links in this and other material, please note that I’ve put my entire blog into draft to provide myself time to prayerfully consider the family’s claims about specific matters that they found painfully difficult.  I was willing to pend everything here for careful review in a spirit of cooperation and empathy, and I do because I don’t believe that these daughters have any true agency under the system that the family advocates.  I attest to the veracity of the core information.

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Getting Your Ticket Stamped

From "Cooking Sacred Cows with Voddie Baucham":

Who certifies Christian colleges and universities? Who accredits them?

You know, who put that system together that says you leave your home for years, and you know, you sit there under the tutelage of those individuals you get your ticket punched and now you’re – whatever?

So that was the next part of the journey that ultimately lead us to just a commitment to Jasmine’s education. Ah, again, not schooling, but her education just being something that we oversaw and superintended all the way through.

A lot of people mistake it to mean “We’re against education for women.” Nothing could be further from the truth. She’s more educated now than I was when I graduated from college, easily (laughs). You know, she now serves as my research assistant, and she is gaining a tremendous education through that process.

And we’re preparing her for something bigger than getting her ticket punched at the university. She has grasped this multigenerational vision and wants to be a faithful daughter to her father, and a faithful wife and mother to her husband and to her children, and to her children’s children. That’s what we’re preparing for.

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The Layers of Extra-biblical Belief Underneath Multigenerational Faithfulness and the 200 Year Plan

Part of an ongoing discussion on multigenerational faithfulness...



The “200 Year Plan” promoted by Vision Forum derives from some goal setting that Geoff Botkin did with his children to help them have a “vision” and plan for their lives and his long tenure with one of the most well documented Shepherding Discipleship Bible-based cults, the Great Commission Ministries group.

This process of goal setting and planning is not new, as many people and many disciplines practice a very goal oriented and objective planning process, complete with measurable goals. (Most don't extend the planning to 200 years, however.) I cannot speak highly enough about this, having been trained in objective planning like this in my own profession as a nurse. For a hospitalized surgical patient, for example, my long-term goal for them will be to ambulate unassisted for 100 feet without assistance upon discharge, but while in my care, I must set specific, measurable goals for each day. For post-op day one, my goal may be to get out of bed six hours after returning from the OR. On post-op day three, my goal will be “Patient will ambulate three times around the clinical area four times per day.” I can’t wait until 10PM to encourage that patient to make all twelve 12 laps by midnight! You eat an elephant by disciplining yourself to eat one bite at a time, and I know well the many benefits and wisdom of this type of planning process.

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