A disturbing trend is catching on among Christian fundamentalists across the nation. Couples are abandoning birth control and encouraging women to view their “wombs as weapons” in America’s culture wars. Dubbed the “quiverful” movement, these families come from different denominational backgrounds but are united in the hope that by out breeding the competition they might stem the tide of secularism. Vyckie Garrison once made her living promoting this extreme patriarchal view of the family. But as the arrows in her quiver multiplied the quiverful lifestyle began to take its toll on her mental and physical health. Today she runs No Longer Quivering, a blog devoted to exposing the hidden struggles of quiverful families and to support those trying to escape. Also on this episode: the crisis in Syria has prophecy buffs combing the scriptures, an advice show for Catholic fathers explains why girls shouldn’t be allowed to attend college, and a mustache to die for infuriates the Taliban.
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The ‘Vermin’ intend to over-run America………..
Ugh. The pregnancy puns in that lecture.
I kid. I kid. (See, I can do it too.)
Possibly the most disturbing podcast I’ve heard in a while. Thanks for getting this information out there.
A good retort to a fundie who makes the “quiverful” argument: “How very Roman Catholic of you.”
Also, a good retort to the “not a true christian argument”. Vyckie Garrison. Unless 7 kids and dangerous attempts to have more for god isn’t good enough.
I wonder if things could backfire. It seems like many children who are brought up in a strict background, end up rebelling and moving in an opposite direction. Is there any data to support this idea?
Vyckie says she was always second-guessing her impulses/motivations, never being certain whether it was God or the Devil moving her [like there’s no other possible reason right?].
Anyhoo I can sympathise with her about that because I used to get so frustrated that being a believer in God seemed to create more questions, exponentially more, than answer them.
My friend who is a pastor recently had such a crisis when his church announced that it was taking any interested congregational members on a free camping trip. He had an overwhelming response from people he says never seen the inside of a church before. He doesnt have enough seats on the church bus to take everyone, but who does he decide to stay and who to go? He said he was going to take only the loyal church goers for their regular attendance.
I could help be my mischievious self and so suggested that he pray for a way to take them all because it may not be that these “new” members of his church are just trying to get a free camping trip out of the church as he thinks BUT they may infact be moved by the “holy spirit” to attend the camp trip and be saved.
The look on his face when the scope of it all sunk in was priceless.
Fine, the quiverfuls can try to drown the US in useless fundie brats…but let’s cut off their child benefits. See how fast they run back to birth control when their idiotic plans aren’t state-funded any more.
Why do crazy religious people think that a vagina is a clown car? They won’t go back in. How are they reborn?
Note that the movement is actually called “Quiverfull,” as in “A quiver full of arrows.” It’s based on a typically-misinterpreted old testament verse.
They scare the daylights out of me, less because they’ll actually outbreed people with sense – there just aren’t that many of them, and their kids tend to be less than 100% adherent after escaping their natal homes – than because they often also espouse a violent theology. Google “faith and firearms” and you’ll see some links.
Another issue: they tend to have lots of kids before they’re remotely prepared, either emotionally or materially. They tend to take the “god will provide” line and expect the local community – which may or may not share their beliefs – to support them. We’ve got a local who does this – she’s on the community egroup constantly asking for free things “because we’ve been blessed with so many children.” It’s a uniquely entitled worldview, and one which is very much at odds with the GOP-laden politics of the group that decry the (brown and non-religious) poor as takers or shiftless and lazy.
The adherents are almost never college-educated – they tend to have low levels of educational attainment. My wife is a librarian, and she recounts how painful it is to see a poorly-educated parent trying to homeschool their children. They come to the library to do ‘research,’ but they aren’t researching, they’re engaging in confirmation-bias behaviors. Parents with n kids (where n is a large number) will come in and announce they’re doing research, and ask for proof that evolution is false or .
That this is occurring really suggests that we have a crisis in society that involves a failure to accept reality because it’s terrible – and in much of the US, reality is terrible, with either no jobs or badly-paying, insecure jobs, no healthcare to speak of (until today!!), pollution, crime, etc. This is nothing more than escapism, but it leads to terribly scarred lives.
http://voices.yahoo.com/quiver-full-movement-youre-doing-4179783.html
The patriarchs weren’t begetting all their arrows from just one factory. King David, for example, didn’t beget more than one son per factory. He had Amnon the son of Ahinoam, Daniel the son of Abigail of Carmel, Absalom the son of Maacah, Adonijah the son of Haggith, Shephatiah the son of Abital; and Ithream son of Eglah. Six arrows, six arrow factories.
Guys, I really enjoyed these last couple of episodes with Vyckie, and would have loved to share them with my fundie cousin save one problem – an easy ad hominem. I don’t say this because I think it is the case, but I do know the way my cousin thinks, and she has objected in this sort of way in the past. Other times, it has been easier to get after her for doing this since other materials I shared have the deconvert’s thought process in arriving at their decision. However, all of Vyckie’s testimony was void of the actual, intellectual process that led her there.
I’m not saying she didn’t arrive at her decision through her own reason, since she sounds smart and is articulate, but it’s just that her story is one that lends itself to a “sob” aesthetic or excuse. My cousin would probably immediately tell me that she deconverted because she simply didn’t like the lifestyle and felt trapped, and indeed, at the beginning of her testimony in RD118, she does seem to have issues from the get-go with her special, for lack of better PC terms, husband.
You probably won’t have her back, but perhaps next case you will ask the interviewee to also share the reasoned process that brought them to their decision – I know it’s alluded to in her referencing her uncle, but it’s never articulated as “this is the argument that really made me think,” or “I read this passage and realized,” or “the problem of evil…blah blah,” etc.
Anyway, just some thoughts on what was otherwise an interesting guest, but it’s just too easy for an unbelieving listener to dismiss her decision as an escape from troubles since she offers no real brainmeats. It was a very expository, but not much else.
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I knew it! I knew Idiocracy was really a documentary filmed with the aid of Obama’s time machine.
dude, THERE is the problem, it has nothing to do with the way the interview was conducted at all.
your fundie cousin is a member of a dangerous cult, and literally has been brainwashed. she will not be convinced by a reasoned approach, but only convinced to change by forcing her to see that her peers have been deliberately lying to her for years.
many people are unable to leave cults… they have to be deprogrammed through intervention.
if you aren’t prepared for that level of commitment to helping your cousin, you should just leave it alone entirely.
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