Customer Reviews

Passionate Housewives Desperate for God

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First, let me say I think you should read this book. Buy it, borrow it, or get it from the library if you don't want to pay for it, but it's certainly worth the read. Second, let me say that while I am a stay-at-home mom, I have worked outside the home before kids, and I have 2 not 12 (nor do I think the Lord has 12 in our future). I told my husband while reading the book, "I agree with so much of what they say, just not with some of what I know they mean by what they say." While I have strong disagreements with some of the Vision Forum worldview, and would advise all who read this book not to take it - or any other books from VF or anywhere else - without much discernment, I think that this book encourages a fresh look at what homemaking can hold and shines a light at subtle ways that even biblical-worldview-believers neglect to value things that God values. In my reading, I was challenged many times to go before the Lord about selfishness and pride in my own life. The authors put Scripture throughout all the book, so the Lord was able to draw my attention to His Word and breathe fresh life into some verses through the context of the book. I was instructed, reminded, and challenged to make sure my opinions and convictions were not just ideas I had come up with myself.

The sin of alcoholism in my fathers life led to my mother leaving him when I was less than 6 months old. She walked several miles with 3 children under 3 to the nearest phone booth and called my grandfather to come and pick her up. Hours later in a fury, my father followed us to my grandparents house and proceeded to shoot my grandfather five times. Thankfully he survived and we had already been swept away to a far off town where we couldn't be hurt. My father went to jail for attempted murder and my mother divorced him. By the time I was two, my mother had found the perfect man and remarried. He later adopted me when I was in first grade and is the only father I have ever know and loved! He too had been divorced and had three children from his previous marriage. My dad was an honest man who lived up to his responsibilities and a great deal of his paycheck went to pay child support. You can't exactly get child support from a man in prison though and so my mom had to get a job to help pay the bills. My mother worked full time. My father worked full time and a part time job in the evenings cleaning banks, to which he took us with to help out.

I tell you all of this history because it is important for me to tell you I did not have a stay at home mom who taught me all the ins and outs of cooking and cleaning and sewing and taking care of my family. It doesn't mean she didn't love us but she was on such a tight schedule of sneaking in a few hours of sleep between 2 am and 7 am and getting the rest of her daily chores done before having to be at work by 1 p.m. that she didn't have time to teach us. She just had to get it done! My father taught us kids the basics of cleaning and some cooking. I knew how to cook when I got married because I had worked in a restaurant for two years but I was not used to the role of Ms Happy Homemaker. Top that off with marrying into a family where everyone seemed to be in competition to be the best, or enjoyed showing off all their many artistic talents, to which you had nothing to "trump" them with, and it led to feeling pretty downtrodden and worthless. Many times I couldn't even figure out why my husband had liked me, let alone fallen in love with me when there were obviously so many better examples of a perfect housewife and mother all around us. I thought, "How in the world did he end up with me?"

Passionate Housewives Desperate for God is one of the few books I have ever read that helped me lay aside my doubts of self worth as a mother, as a teacher, as a wife. I don't have to be perfect. God doesn't ask that of me. He only asks that I give Him my best and to let Him work that into His best! This books tells me I don't have to give up outward beauty and become a matronly homemaker in order to be beautiful for God but that I can be both beautiful on the inside and the outside. This book tells me I do not have to go about my daily chores as a Stepford wife, living life in a robotic vacuum, but that I can abide safely in the knowledge that I am prized for my individuality, for my insight, for my love and passion for serving God. I do not need to worry that the newly married wife with every perfect hair in place, or the mother of many with her children sitting properly with hands neatly clasped in their lap in church are worth any more to God than what I am worth. God shares His love equally! This book helped me to understand that what is good and helpful for my husband isn't what is good and helpful for another's husband. I need to focus on my husband. I need to focus on my children. I need to focus on my household. Everything else is just a picture show and, while they might give me great ideas, it doesn't necessarily mean all those great ideas work for me.

Jennie Chancey and Stacy McDonald will keep you interested in reading to the end with the way they tackle all the lies and deceits spread by feminine warriors of the world. Many times in my reading I wondered had they been a fly on my wall living my life along with me. No, they didn't have to be. The lies of perfection have been spread so far and wide within our society that every mom on every corner is shouting "SEND ME SOME ADVICE I CAN USE!!" Jennie and Stacy did just that!!

Since I have been a conservative Christian for 44 years and a housewife and homemaker for 33 years, have homeschooled a large family, and have grown children walking with the Lord, one might think that this book resonated with me and that I loved it. After all, I have spent most of my life living the life this book describes and would encourage other wives and mothers to do likewise. Serving a husband and family is an incredible and high calling.

But I was greatly disappointed in Passionate Housewives.

I believe the Word of God to be sure and true and applicable to all people in all times and in all places. In this book, Jennie Chancy and Stacy McDonald attempt to Americanize and Westernize Scripture, imposing their own worldview onto passages like Titus 2, instructing all women that it is a Biblical mandate, foreordained before creation, to live just like them.

One interesting theme the runs throughout the book, and that shouldn't be taken lightly, is that anyone who is a Bible believing Christian, but who differs from them on any point concerning the roles of women, is a "white washed feminist" and is headed down a path to worst destruction than secular feminism has produced. This is poppycock.

You must remember that the authors are both hardcore Dominionists who believe in only one role for all women within the Kingdom of God, that is, to be wives and homemakers. They consider anyone outside that paradigm, single women, barren women, those women who have given their lives to missionary work, those who have already raised children, etc. to be outside the "prescriptive will of God," indeed, they are said to be "blaspheming God's name" (sinning) if they are not at home.

As with every book published by Vision Forum, there is a one-size-fits-all approach that teaches that family life centers around the father of the home, rather than Jesus Christ, making for a patriocentric lifestyle that is merely idolatry rather than genuine Biblical Christianity.

I would encourage any husband who sees his wife with this book in her hand, to take it immediately to his pastor and elders and ask for their opinion on the Biblical soundness of the teachings it contains. Ask your leaders about Dominion Theology and the National Center for Family Integrated Churches. Become a Berean, doing all that you can to understand the context in which this book was written and then decide how "Biblical" it is. To blindly accept this book as truth for all women without doing your homework will be to your own folly and that of your family.

"Passionate Housewives Desperate for God," is the most encouraging, uplifting, challenging, and convicting book on the subject of womenhood that I've ever had the priviledge of reading. Scripturally based, not high, lofty and unattainable, Jennie and Stacy have, in their different chapters, used their understanding, and experiences in their own seasons of life to encourage us all, as Christian wives and mothers to set our purpose to be the women that the Lord has called us to be, not by the culture of our time. Being the mother of 7, grandmother of 4, wife of 34 years, homeschooling for 24 years and first generation Christian I applaud them for showing from Scripture what a high calling it is and know it will be a refreshing blessing to all who read it.

I am currently reading this book and find the authors to be honest women and I believe they are trying to obey the Lord, and there are helpful tidbits throughout.

The shortcoming of this book is the focus on the theoretical, on "doctrine" you could say. I wish the two women would simply give helpful hints and tips for running a home and raising children or even short stories about their families- sharing their lives instead of their ideas. I don't need a doctrinal treatise on homemaking as a young mother who often feels overwhelmed with my two year old and clueless about what to do with my son; being a wife I find easy, but being a mother and homemaker is quite difficult because I feel like I have no idea what I am doing and often feel very discouraged and guilty about my mothering ability. Some of the chapters like "Weary Woman" were quite discouraging to me as well and I wished I had never gotten married if I would not even be able to find time to have a simple 30 minute bible study or if it would be wrong for me to have one moms day out a week. ( What could be wrong with that?)

Maybe older women are just supposed to help younger women with the practical aspects of motherhood and homemaking and teach them what they know from years of experience. It will help the younger women manage a home well and not make the same stupid mistakes they did, so they will not carry around a load of guilt because they feel they aren't measuring up as wives and mothers ( What I have often done the last few years.)

Passionate Housewives is a book that will pick you up and make you feel very proud to be a woman. It rekindled a desire in me to serve my husband and children, and to take the best care of my home. I feel very strongly about taking care of my family, and this book gave me quite a boost!

I did disagree with some of their writing on young ladies going to college. I don't think that it is a bad idea to stay at home and help with your family. But I don't think that women going off to school is a horrible thing either. They made it sound like every "christian" college is going to encourage their students to become feminists. They have obviously not done their research very well in that area. I attended a bible college that encourage women to be wives and mother and to serve God with all of their hearts. Some classes I took were "Marriage and Motherhood", and "Christian Womanhood". These were very good classes teaching to be biblical women, never feminist. I also met my husband there whom I have been married to for over seven years and have two children with.

Most everything else in the book was just fine. I would highly recommend it to any woman, whether they stay at home or not. It is very informative in the area of feminism and what it has done to society.

This book has been a huge encouragement and blessing to me. It has a silly title in my opinion, but the content is pure gold. The authors write in an easy to follow way that just blessed me and encouraged me as a stay at home mom of 4 kids.

My life is looked down on many (I'm an oddity...living in a large city, downtown with 4 kids whom I home educate). This book was such a blessing to read. My heart felt thanks to the authors :)

I found this book to be surprisingly well-written, though not persuasively written. There were a lot of nice, pracitical bits of encouragement in here for stay-at-home mothers and wives (such as not beating yourself up if your "quiet time" is hardly quiet and involves feeding the baby, as well). However, the theology comes from a very literal standpoint on Scripture (which I do not hold with), is decidedly anti-feminist, and will certainly not be everyone's cup of tea. If you are a mother of young children and are either interested in this movement within the Church or feel up to separating the wheat from the chaff, give it a go. Personally, I feel that this approach to being a wife and mother is a narrow one and certainly not mandated by God, but I respect that there are women out there who feel differently, and this is a great resource for those women. A word to the wise, the authors do display some radical leaps in logic (for example, that in order to be a sacrificial wife and mother you must never do anything for yourself and that doing so is linked either to sin or an under-developed Christian character; that all mothers who work sacrifice their children to the will of "the state," which they portray as being nearly Communistic; and so forth), so proceed with caution.

"Passionate Housewives" is an uplifting book full of witty anecdotes, timeless truths, and applicable advice. Though the reader might not agree with everything Mrs. Chancey and Mrs. McDonald believe as far as certain lifestyle choices and church structure, she (or he) will be hard-pressed to find doctrinal fallacies or religious heresies. Anyone who is seriously searching for a refreshing take on being a better mother, wife, and daughter of God will find innumerable nuggets of wisdom in its pages. Highly recommended.

You do not have to agree with everything the Authors believe to gain much encouragement from this book. It very much revived my heart to keep working towards an end goal I already have in mind.