Sex is not a Hermeneutic & A Prayer for Truth and Unity: (Reflecting on The Gospel Coalition This Week)

I thought I'd mention some positive follow-up after my bombastically titled blog post a few days ago that spoke to problematic statements in a blog post at The Gospel Coalition (TGC) website. 

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The Spermeneutics of Spread Your Legs Theology

11Mar23 EDIT:

At this late date, I'd rather that people read my personal reaction to the article which took me nearly a week to process.

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Well, the Gender Agenda folks just continue to get weirder.  We already know about Tim Keller's sex orgy with God, and yesterday, The Gospel Coalition published an excerpt from a new book by the Fellow at the Tim Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics.  Read more HERE.  I didn't even include the stuff in my meme about how a woman's readiness for sex is a show of “hospitality.”

Someone asked me why these people like the Theobros make everything so weird. Well, let's break it down. We've used good hermeneutics to study good theology. Now, you'll hear some spermeneutics to learn about Spread Your Legs Theology. (Shirley Taylor gets credit for naming this theology. It's like a sanitized version of the Kinder, Küche, and Kirche, but it's remade to be Biblical for Christians.)

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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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Shirley Taylor on Advent Hope: It's Groundhog Day All Over Again

Shirley Taylor on Advent Hope:  It's Groundhog Day All Over Again

Each year the liturgical calendar gets reset and we begin again with where it began. We know what is going to happen to Jesus at Easter, but each November we begin by retelling the story from the beginning, all over again.  We get a new chance like Phil the weatherman did in the movie Groundhog Day. We hope this year we get it right.

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The First Step Towards Understanding Jill and Jessa Duggar’s Fox Interview: Second Generation Adults in Cultic/High Demand Religion

Originally published 07Jun2015

A host of resources exist exploring the characteristics of the subculture of the Quiverfull Movement (which is often synonymous with Patriarchy within evangelical Christian homeschooling circles).  As the new generation that this movement produced finds their voice, there appears to be little information about the process of how this group in particular has affected the development of the now adult “arrows” of their parents’ quivers , especially for those who remain within their religious culture of origin.

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Michelle Duggar's Thousand Yard Stare of Dissociation?

Photo from 1994 with Dr Derechinsky

I remember showing someone a photo of my husband and me that was taken at the big Word of Faith church that I attended when I lived in the Bible Belt. It was the first Valentine's Day during our first year of marriage, and had a dinner at a nice restaurant. They hired Zig Ziggler to speak, and a professional photographer who attended the church took beautiful photos. I bought a bunch of wallet sized ones to send to relatives. A year or two later, I looked through my wallet for a certification card, and I pulled out the picture to show to a coworker. I would not realize what she meant for a number of years later, and I felt odd that she thought that I looked "scared."

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Why Anna Duggar Stays: The Bounded Choice of a Second Generation Adult in a Cultic Sect

This excellent, real-world description of the Bounded Choice of a Second Generation Adult (SGA) in a spiritually abusive or cultic church (what some call sects or cults) by LJ  (Melissa) Stewart on Tik-Tok may help me write my shortest definitions of these terms ever.  I find only one tiny flaw in her presentation.  (Read more about it HERE.)

She rightly states that Bill Gothard's Independent Baptist (IFB) derived-system teaches that Anna's sins are no worse than Josh's crimes.  

She neglects to note that the Duggars are also very personally connected to IFB family and marriage experts Ron Williams and SM Davis. Those men teach that Anna's marital sex with Josh and her submission to him as a wife held the power to cure and fix Josh, so any sexual sins or crimes he committed after their wedding night fall entirely on her shoulders. 

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One Tiny Thing that I Think Stewart Got Wrong: The Theology Says Anna Duggar's to Blame

In a previous post, I note that Lisa J.(Melissa) Stewart did an excellent job via TikTok of explaining the issues of Bounded Choice faced by Second Generation Adults in Cultic Religious Sects like the one followed by the Duggars.  The discussion has arisen because people outside of this fringe subculture do not understand why Anna Duggar does not just leave her husband Josh after so many successive problems with disturbing sexual exploits which have now culminated in his conviction this week for possession of child pornography.

As previously noted, she rightly states that Bill Gothard's Independent Baptist (IFB) derived-system teaches that Anna's sins are no worse than Josh's crimes, but she neglects to note that the Duggars are also very personally and directly connected to IFB family and marriage experts Ron Williams and SM Davis. Those men teach that Anna's marital sex with Josh and her submission to him as a wife held the power to cure and fix Josh, so any sexual sins or crimes he committed after their wedding night fall entirely on her shoulders.   Luckily, tabloids currently claim that Josh's parents are pledging their support to Anna, but I know that IFB pastors have blamed innocent wives for acts far worse than Josh's crimes and held the wife as the primary cause and fault for their husband's behaviors.

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Religious Sects Often Oppose Extended Family Adoptions to Save the Souls of Surviving Minors

David Henke identified that Spiritually Abusive Christian groups believe that their particular sect is far more special to God than all other Christians. They have a special corner on truth that makes them better or more holy than other people, and their group alone ensures the best future. Hand in hand with this, groups retain members with the flipside of their elite status by fostering the belief that life outside of their group is evil, and those who exit will be in danger of eternal damnation.

As the recent documentary about Gwen Shamblin's Remnant Fellowship church points out so well, commitment to the group overshadows and overrides any commitment that their non-member family members have with their group. If families urge their loved ones to leave, in order to maintain good standing with the group, they are expected by the church (and bullied by them) to shun these critical family members.

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Contemplating Josh Duggar's Guilty Verdict

I cried for the better part of an hour today after someone phoned and told me about the guilty verdict in the Josh Duggar case. (He will be sentenced in four weeks.) Since that friend and I talked it through, it's been a slow, irregular leaking of tears ever since. I'm ready to put my head on my pillow to get much-needed rest.

Some of my tears were a release, knowing that for those who have suffered harm because of this religious system or even just abuse and loss that is similar to each of the players in the events concerning the Duggars, it is a vindication for them. We all need that, I think. Justice is healing for us all.

But it struck me that, to put it concisely when horrible things happen and when people do horrible things, the consequences are lousy and sad if not horrible all around. The collateral damage has been so high for so long. The ramifications of this range from sad for some to tragic for others. So I feel quite melancholy this evening but satisfied at the same time.

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Strange Bedfellows in the Duggar Family's Spread-Your-Legs Theology

This post started out as a new introduction that was meant to be an addendum intro to a post I wrote ages ago about Gothard's novel teaching of "taking up offenses."  I didn't get there yet.

Currently, it is December 8^th, 2021, and a verdict in the Josh Duggar Trial for is expected tomorrow. When I started this blog in 2007, I knew only of Bill Gothard and Doug Phillips, evangelists for the Quiverfull Movement. I thought of Phillips as the next generation of Bill Gothard followers who took things to the next logical extreme concerning gender. I'd never heard his views until I joined a spiritually abusive church in the early '90s that embraced Gothard and the Shepherding Movement, and my church kept their views on gender largely concealed from me until my third year of membership. I exited four years after joining, was exit counseled, and I eventually became an outspoken critic of them all.

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Will Anna Duggar be offered as the next live sacrifice to save the Duggar Family Brand? Scapegoating, Spread Your Legs Theology, and the Modern Molech

Originally Published 22Aug2015

(Please take note of embedded links 

                 for background information.)

I’ve tried for more than 48 hours to write this, but having watched this scenario play out with other followers of Bill Gothard, it brings up so many disturbing emotions for me, I found myself too caught up in them.  As the media begins to report, Anna Duggar will share in the blame for her husband’s sins and divorce will be strongly discouraged if not demonized.  I’ve watched it happen with other people who follow this belief system, over and over again. 

I don’t know how the family will make her the scapegoat for his behavior prior to their courtship, but they will scapegoat her for his infidelity.  The wife’s exemplary performance allegedly and magically prevents a husband from indulging in sin.  We see elements of this same mindset in the blaming behavior of Tullian Tchividjian.  Such magical thinking rests at the core of all of the beliefs within the Duggars’ cultic excuse for sanitized and superior Christianity.

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Jim Bob Duggar Pees On Our Shoes and Tells Us It's Raining: What most people outside of Gothard's system will misunderstand about the Duggar's testimony concerning the Josh Duggar Child Porn Trial

TRIGGER WARNING concerning sex abuse.

I write this blog post in the wee hours of the morning before the second week of Josh Duggar's Child Pornography Trial ensues.

I am not that shocked by new knowledge about the rabbit hole of Josh Duggar's long history of deplorable behavior. I am sickened by the specifics. Most notably, I find myself struggling with a new feeling of anger at Jim Bob and Michelle, the parents of the Bill Gothard-following mega-family. Most of us knew that we'd never get the whole story, but it's a whole other experience to hear the details in court after listening to so many of their lies. And they think that we're all just a bunch of chumps.

As their spiritual leader Gothard taught them, the Duggars believed their own press that they were all higher versions of regular Christians -- just a bit more special than everyone else. They were also the royal elite within their own Quiverfull group, and once their TV show took off, they walked on a higher level than the other regular folks around them. They believed that God would grant them prosperity if they followed the formulas that Gothard parsed out for them. The Kingdom of God is like a Coke machine: When you put in the right amount, you get what you ordered. "Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all."

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The Language of Cults. Duggars and Quiverfull: How to Communicate with People Outside of the Subculture

First published on 6Sep15

How do we define a cult in respect to the Duggars and Quiverfull?

I wrote all kinds of material that never made it into Hillary McFarland's Quivering Daughters book, but I was grateful to many people who peer reviewed my contributions to it.  Along with concerns about technical accuracy, I also wanted to see how people without intimate knowledge of religion or homeschooling would respond to the material.

I began to more deeply appreciate two primary lessons regarding the discussion of the issues involved with the Patriarchy/Quiverfull Movement.



Lesson One

Though I knew this in theory, the experience of reading the feedback impressed upon me so strongly that people outside of a closed subculture with specialized language need information and terminology that they can process.  People in the secular culture understand patriarchy already, so that gives people a frame of reference.

The term 'quiverfull' presents enough of a novel hook which helps people remember it.  A 'quiver' conjures images of Robin Hood and his mastery with bow and arrow, and the association between his image and that of a family creates enough of a memorable hook for those who've never heard of the Bible verse from which the term was borrowed.  Both terms "sell" the information and create a reason for people to listen and/or care.

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Lighting Candles for True Believers

Credit

Subtitle:  I'm not converting to Mormonism.  I'm arguing that we should  love and respect those who are in sects and groups when they need help and kindness.

Imagine that you are a young, married woman with a budding family, and you're a Second Generation Adult who grew up in Quiverfull. Your husband gets arrested and convicted of a crime that sickens people. Both inside and outside of your religious sect, and you become a reminder of all of your husband's deeds -- and you haven't even had time to consider whether you believe if he's guilty of anything. He's your husband who has been good to you. Imagine that you have a different story to tell, because from your perspective, your husband never did one thing to hurt you or your children. Your church folk abandon you and your children, and you'd never imagine that this would happen. Never in your wildest dreams could you have dreamt this.

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Glimpses of Beauty

I have shared little contact with my parents for twenty years, and I've had no contact with them at all for the past eight. We agreed to part because I did not become who they hoped I would be, and my life that my husband built together differs from theirs. They believe that I have the power to change who I am, though I don't know that my life is wrong or evil. Another part boils down to my rejection of televangelists along with some of what they teach. My parents also question whether I'm fit for heaven, but I suspect that they allowed fear to borrow their voice to speak its torments. I know that we love one another deeply, and that makes the situation that much more sad

.From time to time, unexpected ideas catch my attention and set me thinking about my parents. I'm not sure what reminded me about an engineer that my surveyor father worked with before I was born, but I'd always heard about how remarkable my parents thought he was. It seemed that there was nothing that this mythical man could not do, and he devoted much of his free time to creating works of art. 

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Excellent Review of the Principles of Social Influence

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A Study of Galatians for Those Who Have Exited Cults

 

One of the wisest men I know finally finished his book on Galatians.  I've read sections of the Bible Study a few years ago, and it was brilliant.  I just downloaded the very affordably priced Kindle copy from Amazon.com, and I look forward to delving into it.

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Seneca Falls II and the Demand for an Apology: Looking Back Ten Years

I look with a great deal of suspicion on such declarations now, but I've been called a pioneer many times in my life. When I first heard it 40 years ago, I had no understanding, though it would grow. Looking back on the hard stand that I took with the Freedom for Christian Women Coalition that was established ten years ago today, I understand the concept far better. 

Pioneers go into new territories with some wisdom, lots of preparation, and a great deal of faith to tread where no one from their tribe has ventured before. Splashes of appreciation come now and then, but in between, a pioneer pays a price that even they don't yet fully grasp as they do what many don't understand. Many people end up heaping criticism upon resistance, adding to it myths and lies and misconceptions and all sorts of levies out of their own fear. 

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Gothard's Game of Grace: An Exemplar of Externally-Pursued Sanctification

The discussion of the external works as a saving power presents an excellent opportunity to review Bill Gothard's redefinition of grace, as he ends up remerging justification and sanctification to turn the Christian life into salvation by works. 

We've already established that justification as an external and alien declaration defines Protestant belief, and sanctification that follows in a Believer comes about by God's work in them from the inside out. 

Luther resisted the idea of participation in sanctification altogether, and Calvin defined it as cultivating obedience. Both men stated emphatically that all holiness arises from union with Christ which begins in the inner spiritual life of a Believer which eventually results in good works. "Not of works lest any man should boast.”

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Bill Gothard's Novel Redefinition of Grace

View the original video in its entirety HERE.

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Luther and Calvin on the Three Uses of the Law

Luther and Calvin differed on little, but as previously stated, Luther's different experiences and circumstances gave him a different perspective. To avoid a return to the ideas of Rome's synergistic works and faith, he focused on the daily reckoning of the Law and Gospel. Finding union with Christ came through a full comprehension of justification, and he saw that union as the source of obedience and good works.

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Hirelings and Their Deceptive Theology of Glory

Another way to understand Luther's view of the Law comes by considering what it is not. 

He sees the Law as nothing but the source of condemnation and death for the Christian, and it is not something that humans can harness for their use. Luther shares with Calvin the view of the total depravity of human beings who are unable to sanctify themselves (Gen 6:5, Jer 17:9, Rom 3:10). 

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The Cause of Luther's Sober View of the Law

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Sanctification: from Luther's Cross to Calvin's Union

Luther's Theology of the Cross and Calvin's Union with Christ motifs are different exegetical or theological tools to use as a key to studying the Bible. For both Luther and Calvin, the Epistle to the Romans serves as the basis for understanding what salvation entails. Both men's concepts depend upon an intimate experience of reconciliation. They also emphasize the critical understanding of justification, sanctification's absolute dependence on it, and the Holy Spirit's sovereign work in our inner being to transform us in holiness as we grow in Christ.

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