Powerful Books and Marriage Minutes

When I started writing this blog, I hoped to change the problem of spiritual and related domestic abuse in certain Evangelical churches. I didn't think I'd manage to do much. Still, I felt responsible for doing what I could to voice my experiences and offer some good reasons and resources to help people reconsider allegedly Christian ideas that both actively and passively facilitated these abuses. 

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How “Marriage Minutes” Helped Me Let Go of the Hunger Artist

Allegedly a book review of Gerald Ford's Marriage Minutes

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it ended up becoming a celebration of my egalitarian marriage with my husband and about the unexpected the effect that the book has had on my life.

The first time that I ever heard anyone use the term “egalitarian” in a conversation was my husband, just after we'd first started to date. I seemed to prefer the patriarchal approach, even though I grew up in a church that ordained women. My church had more female elders than male ones, but as a daughter of sock hop era parents, I was quite comfortable with patriarchy. 

As a child, I also watched some of those women elders inappropriately reject and strongly criticize pastors in conversations to which I never should have been privy. When the spiritually abusive church that my husband and I would one day join preached that women were meant to be reigned in and ruled over, I was willing to play along. I thought of the errors in judgement made by two women – events that were filtered through my poor understanding as a child. Patriarchy provided a very simple answer to a terribly complex situation.

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Urgent Items to Note! A Weekend Film and an Important Cause

Item One for Saturday

Either tune in or set your video recorder for Saturday's airing (03Sep16) of Holy Hell on CNN which will be shown in prime time with an encore broadcast immediately to follow. I watched Will Allen's documentary on Thursday, and I related to much of it.

What really caught my attention was the shift from the original goal of seeking enlightenment through inner experience to the selfish needs and obsessions of the leader. I thought of how my own spiritually abusive church started projects, only to abandon them and how Quiverfull always comes up with some new hobby horse that people must ride to be accepted. And don't you dare think about the inconsistencies!

Item Two ASAP

For those of you in California or for those who know someone that they can bug to do it, please encourage Governer Jerry Brown of California to sign the Protecting Youth From Institutional Abuse Act. State legislature sent SB 524 to him and it's awaiting his attention.

And for everyone, please consider signing the petition urging Governor Brown to approve the bill which will create support for the nationwide effort to curtail the abuse that takes place unchecked in teen reform homes. The Los Angeles LGBT Center supports the measure, and it saddens me that the many huge churches in the LA area didn't take up this initiative. Probably, most know little to nothing about the Troubled Teen Home Industry. Everyone can benefit, regardless of these abuse homes where parents believe their children will be rehabilitated. Instead, they are tortured.

Read more about it at Vanguard Now.

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A Brief Visit to 'The War Room' (Shut up and get in the closet!)

Does anyone remember old Doug Phillips' San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival, back before the demise of Vision Forum? Well, Vision Forum may have dissolved but its acolytes didn't. It seems that they continue to produce sappy, schmaltzy films which seem wholesome and virtuous. Those of us who are familiar with the religion and the lifestyle quickly recognize that the films like Fireproof and Courageous aren't just sugar and schmaltz.

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Surviving Conferences and Surviving Church

I was thrilled to see many survivors from Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM) make it to the International Cultic Studies Association meeting in Washington, DC last month. I can barely believe that a whole months has elapsed. Of course, I planned to write several posts about it, but I've yet to produce a single one. I've done some networking and have so many people with whom to follow up regarding so many different issues and topics.

By now, I'd hoped to blog about a wonderful acquaintance I made at the meeting – a retired vicar named Stephen Parsons who hosts a blog called Surviving Church. He traveled all of the way across the pond to attend. Apart from seeing former SGM members attend, I think that meeting Stephen was the high point of the meeting for me. He presented a session about the research of Philip Zimbardo and how it applies to the phenomenon of spiritual abuse and of cults. He also expresses an interest in the concept that Zimbardo hints about – that perhaps the position of the modern minister creates a potential for narcissism.

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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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Commonalities Between Shirley Taylor's New Book and the Bill Nye/Ken Ham Debate? A Review of “Women Equal – No Buts”

I've just read Shirley Taylor's newest book, Women Equal – No Buts: Powered By the Same Source. I spoke to Jocelyn Andersen a few days ago who said the book would be ready in about a week. I was thrilled to find it several days early! We talked about Shirley, and we spoke about how God has put fire in her belly for the cause of equality for women within the church. I'm humbled by her witness and her perseverance for this cause, and No Equal Buts is yet another passionate effort to advance true, functional equality for women within Christianity. Unlike Dethroning Male Headship (her previous book published by One Way Press), this new work demonstrates how some of the male headship doctrines “flesh out” in real life. (I don't use the term “flesh” as a pun, for that is exactly what much of complementarianism really is.)

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Kathryn Stegall's Book Addressing the Gender Debate

A few months ago, Kathryn E. Stegall shared her new book with me. I keep sitting down to write a review of her book, but I have such a plethora of thoughts, memories, and passionate emotions that I had trouble sorting through them to figure out how to start.

I will finally start here!

Her book presents the power of the Gospel more than anything else, simply by focusing on Scripture, and the doctrines shine through in the process. Though the declared subject of the book concerns this modern gender debate that has come to the forefront in the Evangelical world, I think that it's really more of a book about soteriology: what salvation is, how it is obtained, and what it does for those who put their faith in Jesus. I imagine that as a Christian writer, one couldn't ask for more. Through a focus on Scripture, the book dispels competing and idolatrous doctrines that rob God of His glory, power, authority, and ongoing works that belong to Him alone.

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Good Books and Resources that Explore Forgiveness

This list is by no means exhaustive but includes some of the best titles that I've encountered on the subject of forgiveness. Most of the books listed here address matters from a Christian perspective with primary authors on the subject listed first (but not in any particular order). Take note of the book lists that already appear here at UnderMuchGrace.com, listed near the bottom of the page, as well as titles concerning manipulative relationships. Enjoy!

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Loved Ones Who Repeatedly Hurt Us: Landorf Heatherly's “Irregular People”

Joyce Landorf Heatherley wrote a wonderful book about those loved ones that seem to have a way with wounding us, over and over again. The previous post describes how she came up with the title of the book: “Irregular People.”  

They don't necessarily have to be family, but they usually are – those people we can't easily avoid and are in our lives whether we want them to be or not. (They probably wouldn't be if we had that choice.) They can't be reasoned with, they disappoint over and over again, and when you really need them, they are usually not supportive. They break our hearts through rejection and poor consideration. 

Things get even more complicated for us if these irregular people happen to be our parents who offer us some support. This reminds me of the relationship that a battered wife has with her husband who supports her and is often quite demonstrative with gifts and loving gestures, making the physical violence harder to put into perspective. The good is supposed to compensate for the very bad. (Susan Forward calls this the “FOG” in Emotional Blackmail, an acronym that stands for “Fear, Obligation, and Guilt.”) Much anguish and confusion results within these relationships with "irregulars."

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When Your Family and Loved Ones Offend You

Both offending and forgiving our loved ones poses one of the most difficult challenges in the Christian life. We never intend to hurt those whom we love, and because we love them, sorting out offenses amidst that love becomes quite complicated. As the old saying goes, however, the “road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Hurting those we love can be our worst nightmare, especially if we did all that we could to work the opposite.  Voicing those offenses to resolve them and move into forgiveness and greater love and intimacy can even offend the person who caused the first offense.

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New News: From Paradise Recovered's Joyfully Sublime to IHOP's Sadly Tragic

The Joy

If you haven't taken up this invitation offered here a few weeks ago to watch the film, Paradise Recovered, today is a good time to catch up. It is available via streaming with Amazon, Netflix, Blockbuster, iTunes and a couple of other providers, or you can simply buy the video about the journey of a young woman who risks leaving her cultic Christian group. On the Paradise Recovered blog right now, they're taking a month to note the people who inspire them with daily hat tips of recognition. I didn't think that I could be more proud to see No Longer Quivering, Quivering Daughters, and Free Jinger listed there this past week, as I have proudly participated with all of them. Most people do not realize how formidable it can be to risk everything to leave the Quiverfull and Patriarchy movements, the very thing that prompted me to start this blogging business in the first place. Not only is it beyond difficult for most people to walk away, it takes a tremendous amount of valor to speak openly about the movement's special variety of suffering and injustice. People who leave suffer great loss, and those who come forward to speak generally suffer even more. I couldn't be more proud of these valiant ones.

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See “Salvation Road” (a stage play in NYC and Louisville) and “Paradise Recovered” (a motion picture), Both About High Demand Fundamentalism

  You're Invited!

To a Play...

SALVATION ROAD, a new play by D.W. Gregory about the cult experience, will be produced at the New York University Steinhardt School of Educational Theatre Oct. 26 to Nov. 4. Tickets are $15 and can be obtained online HERE. BroadwayWorld.com's info page states that the play is appropriate for middle school aged children on up.

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A Thorough Review of Courageous: A String of Moralistic Vignettes or a Documentary of Priestcraft?

 (Though I have written the review itself, the content represents the perspective and strong opinions that I share with my husband who screened the film with me at the request of the Freedom for Christian Women Coalition and helped to craft this response.)

At the outset, let me say that from personal experience, I have the utmost respect for Sheriffs in particular. I also never fully appreciated the dangerous nature of their job when patrolling highways until I discussed the topic with a couple of medical examiners about a decade ago. I had never before considered what it must be like to perform autopsy after autopsy on law enforcement officers who are killed when they approach a vehicle at the roadside. I want to make clear that my review of this film should not be considered a poor reflection on the courage of men who undertake such dangerous work, performing it with both valor and compassion. Aspects of this movie did give me cause to consider my appreciation for the true kindness of law enforcement officers.

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Journey Out of Shame: A List of Resources

Original post 19Jun08;  Update Jan2012

Almost four years has elapsed since I first developed this list of helpful books and information for coping with shame -- specifically the type of toxic shame in adulthood that results from deficits in emotional development.  If you found the discussion of the characteristics of a child and how immature parenting affects adults, you will benefit greatly from these resources.  Explore the whole series about the childhood roots of victimization HERE.

I've broken down the titles into Christian resources and secular ones.

CHRISTIAN RESOURCES

Concerning Emotional Developmental Deficits and Recovery

From Shame to Glory  by Kathryn Chamberlin, LCSW-C

Buy the Book on Amazon

Audio and Video Presentations

Kathryn attends the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland, a church that is a member of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church denomination, following the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Heidelberg Catechism.

As you are free to note on her webpage, she holds a nursing degree from University of Virginia, a Master's Degree in Social Work from The Catholic University and certification in Biblical Counseling. She practices Christian counseling with the Bethesda Counseling Group, offering services to those in the Baltimore-DC Metro area.

Kathryn's presentation, “From Shame to Glory” is perhaps the best place to start a journey out of shame and into the liberty that is afforded to all believers in Christ Jesus. She has several other audio resources available, and I would also recommend considering these additional presentations as well:

• Shame versus Worth
• The Approval Addict
• The Performance Trap
• Hurt Trail to Idolatry
• The Door Metaphor

Books for Christians in Recovery  (In descending order of importance)

• Love is a Choice.  Hemfelt, Minirth and Meier's book examines the problem of persistent shame in the Christian's life. Christ saves us from the shame of sin and restores us, but for those of us who have been raised in families that were lacking the support we desperately needed, we tend to get stuck in patterns of shame that can prevent us from fully embracing the fullness of our forgiveness and liberty in Christ. Their ten step program teaches about how we can get caught up in repetitive patterns of shame and how we can be liberated from shame.  ** They also offer a companion workbook (which I have not read).

• Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves.  The book that I believe helped me the most during my own recovery has been David Stoop's book, Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:  Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families.  The aforementioned book (from the same publisher) presents an overview and an introduction to the topic of the less than ideal emotional development of a child, but Stoop's book takes healing to the next level and explains more specific information about how to heal.   I found myself in its pages in a deeper way, amazed at how accurately it described the patterns that I'd lived.

• Boundaries.  As mentioned in recent posat and featured in this blog post concerning a child's characteristic of vulnerability, Townsend and Cloud's book explores the issues concerning boundaries from a Christian perspective.  In addition to their landmark book, you can also find a host of resources and video clips on important topics at Cloud-Townsend Resources online.  The authors also adapted their message about boundaries and authored subsequent books which focused on particular types of relationships, and they are worth considering as well, though I am partial to the first book because it reviews boundaries quite extensively.

• The Lies We Believe and the companion workbook which adds significantly to the material in the book.  The author, Dr. Chris Thurman, explores the false ideas that we hold about the world -- ideas which only serve to set us up for heartache.  I think of this book as a more structured way of looking at spiritual warfare and bringing every thought captive to the truth, but it is focused on the issues of shame and negative emotion.  Through this book, I learned that what healing professions call "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy" or working through negative emotion by exploring unrealistic expectations and false ideas about life was essentially the same thing that the Bible teaches by renewing the mind and bringing thoughts captive to Christ by using the Bible as a standard.  David Stoop also has a similar book dealing with the topic called You Are What You Think, presenting the same approach to right and healthy thinking -- renewing the mind with healthy thoughts and ideas.

• Lewis Smedes' many books on the topic of forgiveness.  I cannot recommend the writings of Smedes more highly enough on one's journey to better understand forgiveness in a healthy way and from a very Christian perspective.  He has a host of titles, and I've found them all equally helpful, even though all of the aforementioned authors and books listed here touch on the subject.

• This is Your Brain on Joy.  If you've followed this series and found a great deal of benefit through the focus on brain as an organ of the body that deserves special care and consideration, I highly recommend reading Earl Henslin's Christian book which presents not only a plan to help balance mood and restore brain health, but also focuses on spiritual growth.  His balanced, Christian approach makes the topic very understandable and practical, taking into consideration the concerns that many Christians have, promoting good stewardship of both mind and body.

• Quivering Daughters (for women).  Though Hillary McFarland's book focuses on the plight of young women who grew up in the radical end of the homeschooling movement, I believe that any young woman who grew up under shame-based and enmeshed parenting as an Evangelical Christian will benefit tremendously from this book.  I am an example of those who can identify with the patterns of enmeshment, though my parents were neither radical conservatives nor was I homeschooled.  The patterns of enmeshment do convey, and I believe that any woman from a background of religious condemnation and shame can glean a great deal from the book.

• Make Anger Your Ally.  Neil Clark Warren's book (published by Focus on the Family) explains anger from a Christian perspective, focusing on the benefits of anger as a protective mechanism and how to deal with the triggers of anger in a healthy way that we might all observe the Apostle Paul's admonishment to "be angry and sin not."  There is also a title on anger in the Minirth Meier/New Life series of books, though I have not read it.  Some might find this helpful, as understanding anger presents a significant challenge for many who were raised in evangelicalism that perceived wrongly that anger itself is sinful.

• The Enmeshed for Jesus blog!  Read many excerpts from these titles on this site's sister blog, which deals directly with the topic of shame-based parenting and enmeshment as it relates to the patriarchy movement.

• Other Christian titles on the subject of emotional developmental deficits. Hurt People Hurt People (Wilson); Families Where Grace is in Place (VanVonderan);  Hiding from Love (Townsend);  The Healing Path and and companion workbook (Allender).

Online Recovery Resources (some of which are free!):

• Check the National National Association for Christian Recovery website site for searchable archives, their blog, and list of constantly growing resources
• NACR online video workshops
• Free library of articles from back issues of STEPS magazine
• NACR audio workshops (for a nominal fee)
• Meier Clinics' list of online articles discussing a variety of topics
• The (aforementioned) Cloud Townsend Resources site with topical videos

Devotionals:

• Rooted in God's Love (NACR, available as a book and as a free daily email)
• Meditations for Christians who Try To Be Perfect  (hosted on NACR by Joan Webb (available as a book)
• Northstar Devotional Blog (online resource)
• 12 Step Life Recovery Devotional (Arteburn and Stoop)

Online Forums:

• Christian Recovery International Forums  (Both NACR forum and a spiritual abuse forum)

SECULAR 
RESOURCES

 Depending on how the first two resources minister to you, and depending on the nature of the areas that God begins to heal in your life, I would recommend choosing between a Christian and a secular resource.

Overview,  Introduction, and Healing

If you find yourself very compelled by this series and are at ease exploring secular writings, I would consider reading some secular material concerning shame and recovery. Though any book on the subject of shame or codependency as it was once popularly called would be appropriate, I find that these titles have been very good. These have all been time honored and standards in the area of overcoming shame.

• Codependent No More, Beyond Codependency and Codependent's Guide to the Twelve Steps (Melody Beattie)
  
• Facing Codependence and the companion workbook Breaking Free (Pia Melody)
• Compelled to Control (Miller)

Enmeshment
 

If while reading this series of posts, you identified with the subject and experience of enmeshment and the information on the Overcoming Botkin Syndrome blog, there are titles that specifically deal with that subject.

• The Emotional Incest Syndrome:  What To Do When A Parent's Love Rules Your Life (Patricia Love)
• Facing Love Addiction:  Giving Yourself the Power to Change the Way You Love (Melody)
• Toxic Parents (Forward)
• Silently Seduced. . .Understanding Covert Incest (Adams)
• When He's Married to Mom:  How to Help Mother-Enmeshed Men... (Adams)

Etc.

There are also a host of titles that concern intimacy and specifically delve into issues of parenting.  I cannot begin to list them all, and my personal journey is unique, but I found these secular titles particularly helpful to me in my own journey of recovery.  **Highly recommended**

• **Trapped in the Mirror:  Adult Children of Narcissists and their Struggle for Self (Golomb)
• **Who's Pulling Your Strings (Braiker)
• The Drama of the Gifted Child:  The Search for the True Self (Miller)
• The Gifted Adult (Jacobsen)

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The Aim of Every Artist: Meg Moseley's novel, "When Sparrows Fall"

"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life."      William Faulkner

Every new generation experiences life uniquely, rising to meet new challenges in a new ways. Though the basic responses are not generally unique, each generation strives to make their efforts uniquely their own. In an attempt to solve the host of problems created by government schooling and while achieving many good ends at the same time, the '70s and '80s birthed the homeschooling movement. It is an excellent option, though public schooling was once what many believed to be an excellent option which solved a different set of problems for them in their day. How each generation or group of people solves their problems creates their history, yet because we are imperfect human beings, new problems always arise with those new solutions. We demonstrate our true character as we acknowledge, take responsibility for, and confront what we've created. To avoid our responsibility, sometimes we even go back to resurrect or reinvent some old solution that worked for a previous generation, losing sight of our own specific purposes.

Meg Moseley, an experienced homeschooler, sought what Faulkner says every artist aims to do: to capture a moment in time, not only to preserve it for years to come, but she also introduces the daily life of a homeschooler to those who live differently. As Faulkner suggests, a stranger can look at “When Sparrows Fall” and gain a realistic and entertaining glimpse into the life of the protagonist, but I believe that homeschoolers will also benefit in a host of ways.

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Meg Moseley Points the Way through Hardships in Homeschooling into Pathways to Peace

About 20 hours ago, I laid in the dark, wondering what goodness could come out of my immediate state.  In the expanded passage that Reinhold Niebuhr penned from whence the “Prayer of Serenity” originates, he petitions God to help him “find hardships as a pathway to peace.”  I’m stuck in bed for the next day, though I want to be up, feeling better, and attending to all sorts of important and sundry things.  I found it much easier to connect with hardship than with peace.  Uncomfortable as well, I can’t even find my attention span in order to figure out where that pathway might be!

In the mail today, I received a proof copy of Meg Moseley’s new book, “When Sparrows Fall.”  It’s due for release on May 3, 2011 from WaterBrook Multnomah.  This novel tackles the spiritual abuse experience through the eyes of a widowed homeschooling mom of six on her way to reclaiming “freedom, safety, and love ~ for herself and for her children.”   The cause of my temporary sedentary status comes as a blessing in disguise just a few hours after my sad lament, and my pathway suddenly seems far more clear.  I have a chance to read the book!  It is my hope and prayer that this book will prove to be a great instrument of help and healing on the pathway to peace for the many others who will read it in days to come.  Though I appreciate all of the important work that has emerged on this subject, I’m especially excited that another resource from a devoted Christian with some twenty years of personal experience in homeschooling will soon be available.

I’m curious and perhaps excited to see what will happen with my new relationship with “When Sparrows Fall” between now and an appointment I have tomorrow afternoon. ( I suspect that I will magically find my lost attentiveness hidden within it tonight.)  While reading only the first ten pages, I stopped to read three short quotes to my husband. (Naturally, he followed with sarcastic eye rolls and sardonic comments such as, “Well, I’m glad we’ve never heard anything like that before!”)  By page ten, I think I’d had about 25 flashbacks to things that were said to me in my own spiritually abusive past, and I’ve found two phrases that I’ve used as either titles or subtitles in my own blog posts.  [I’ve learned that common phrasing is quite a common thing.  Stated another way, the late Dr. Paul Martin said that though the sheep’s clothing that wolves wear changes, the way that they attack their prey and the wounds that they leave do not vary.  The works of the flesh always look like the works of the flesh, especially the tactics that are dependent on language.]

Still, I’m amazed at how much spiritually abusive vernacular Meg has artfully encapsulated within her book’s first few pages.  I find most books in the Christian fiction genre “force” too much of the jargon into the narrative, even when I am intimately familiar with the subject matter, situations, and language.  (That is to say, I don’t believe that the lacking spontaneity comes from lack of experience on my part but from a writer that lacks the necessary skill of translating their ideas into something very readable.)  I found the first few pages of “When Sparrows Fall” to be refreshingly different, as though the words were pulled directly from countless conversations that I’ve had or witnessed or suffered myself.  Understanding that Meg and I share some similar experiences with similar groups and individuals, that may account for the intense sense of familiarity her writing evokes for me.  I’m curious to discover whether people from other types of spiritually abusive backgrounds find it as equally perspicacious, especially as the plot unfolds.

Since my attention span does seem to be hidden where I left them on page 15 of Meg’s book, I’m going to get back to reading, holding down the bed so that the cat who patiently waits can use me as her bed for the evening.  


More to come about this exciting first of it’s kind -- a novel about the experience of spiritual abuse which has been woven into too many sectors of Christian homeschooling.

Visit Meg at www.megmoseley.com and on Meg Moseley’s Blog.   Or better yet, unless you’ve got a frequent flyer card with Family Christian Bookstores, Mardel, or Books-A-Million and want to wait to purchase your copy there, go pre-order the book from Amazon.com.  You can look her up on Facebook, too!

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A Review of Andersen's "Woman this is War" Part III of III (Concerning Abuse and Insidious Totalitarianism)

Why I Never Bought the Whole of Complementarianism: 

A Review of "Woman This is War:  

Gender, Slavery, and the Evangelical Caste System"

The Kingdom of God Suffers Violence,

and the Violent have Taken Some by Force.

  

Jocelyn Andersen Takes Back Major Ground in her New Book

Read Part I of the Review HERE. 

Read Part II of the Review HERE.

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A Review of Andersen's "Woman this is War" Part II of III (Concerning Doctrine and Gender Bias)

Why I Never Bought the Whole of Complementarianism: 

A Review of "Woman This is War:  

Gender, Slavery, and the Evangelical Caste System"

The Kingdom of God Suffers Violence,

and the Violent have Taken Some by Force.

  

Jocelyn Andersen Takes Back Major Ground in her New Book

Read Part I of the Review HERE.

The book also explores the doctrinal problems within Complementarianism in a thought-provoking way, putting far more eloquent words to my greatest criticism of complementarian explanations of Scripture.  I've long wondered whether these scholars ever really understood Jewish culture or Greek culture and how the original language was used in context, particularly concerning the doctrines regarding gender!  I studied Greek with a pastor who converted from Judaism, teaching Greek from the perspective of how the Jews used the Greek language which greatly enriched my understanding of Scripture.  Andersen describes compementarianism's narrow perspective as Gender-Biased-English-Translation-Theology.   This chapter establishes a strong basis for other doctrinal arguments she makes while addressing complementarian teaching.  I'm inclined to state that this is perhaps the most valuable thesis stated in the book, but that does not do justice to the rest of the content of the book.

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The Selfish Sin of Shyness: A Deterrent to Multigenerational Faithfulness

Because of the Gothard influence of ecclesiocentricity within Vision Forum’s theology and practice (more in practice in participating churches than in documented theory), multigenerational faithfulness also revolves around submission to elders among adults of all ages, but it is also extended to children under their idolatry of family. Vision Forum essentially just takes Bill Gothard’s teachings to greater extremes, but very little of it offers something new. The only new aspects of these “new ideas” are the loaded language phrases and “wonder word” concepts that the masters of spin wrap around the same old concepts of the Shepherding/Discipleship Movement in order to sell it via a new packaging. The manipulators merely took multigenerational faithfulness and wrapped it around the old submission doctrine product like a clever new design on colorful paper packaging that boasts “new and improved” or “50% more.” The practice of old-fashioned submission doctrine is alive and well, even within the emergent church movement, evidenced in the error of “sinning through questioning.” This unquestioned submission to authority dulls critical thinking and is an highly desirable trait in followers of authoritarian and spiritually abusive groups (at least, according to the leaders of those groups).

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