In this book, writer and columnist Kathryn Joyce goes all out to reveal the dangerous, acidic patriarchy (better known as "patriocentricity" among those who are familiar with its poison) that has been leaking into Christianity for the past several years. This movement goes far beyond complimentarianism, the hierarchal and extra-Biblical (though comparatively mild) system that the likes of Wayne Grudem and John Piper exhort, and instead forbids women from voting, holding public office of any sort, working outside the home, attending college or public school, using abortion even to save their lives from doomed pregnancies, or using birth control. Instead, it upholds the womb as the single and most valuable part of a woman, a part that she is nevertheless forbidden to have any control or say over. There are many vile members and levels of this new wicked belief system, and author Joyce reveals nearly all of them in this shocking volume.
One of the most outlandish and domineering of these groups is that of the Vision Forum, a relatively new cult which embraces all of the afore-described "values" and pushes them, and the women who practice them, beyond the brink of sanity. Begun by Doug Phillips, a man who has proven more than once to have no Christian character, this movement has stretched beyond the borders of its own cult and now seeks to ensnare thousands across the country. Joyce spent years in the making of this book by traveling and visiting several different members of Vision Forum and its rotten branches, interviewing its victims, members and supporters, and offering fascinating descriptions of their beliefs as well as their behavorial traits; one of the treats of this book is Joyce's sharp eye for detail and description, taking you straight into this strange world and the minds of its inhabitants. It's quite an experience to hear/read the words from these strange people themselves, and how Joyce restrained herself from showing shock or revulsion is beyond me.
One of the most in-depth chapters is "Life in the Garden", in which Joyce shares the story of a couple she interviewed who were former members of Doug Phillips's own church. The story was mainly told by the wife of the couple, "Jen", who joined the church when the VF (Vision Forum) was still young and actually allowed its women to perform in the church like human beings. As she and her family's attendence progressed, the VF church tightened its reigns chokingly on the female members, until women were no longer allowed to literally speak at all in church, wear anything other than dresses, take communion for themselves, or sometimes even drive. I should mention, at this point, that Mrs. Epstein and her husband had many deep emotional problems before they joined the Phillips' church, problems which were exacerbated greatly by Doug Phillips interfering faultily in their marriage, but also made worse by Jen's fierce desire to get even with Phillips. Her story has, unfortunately, proven unstable, as well as her character during the process of searching for justice. A few things are certain: Doug Phillips further contributed to the problems in the Epstein marriage by premature judgement and public embarassment and condemnation. He and his church treated their children unfairly and unkindly for their parents' faults. Jen also greatly worsened her own problems by dedicating herself to revealing Phillips' spiritual wrongs, so aggressively that it became first in her life, pursuing him long after the matter should have been left behind, and taking her family through the mire with her, sometimes throwing away the chance to better matters. She and her husband were both dedicated to revealing what was done to them, with Jen giving scathing reports of her husband as well as Phillips. One thing the warring couple still agree on is that Phillips handled his marriage counseling terribly and encouraged his church to shun their children unfairly. Here is the story as told by Jen to Kathryn Joyce:
Jen often openly disagreed with the Phillips' church treatment of women, much to the chagrin of the "pastor", Doug Phillips himself, who shut down her complaints. Her own true crucifiction, however, didn't come about until after she let the group know about her marital problems. Jen's husband had a temper that was becoming increasingly violent towards her. When she sought the help of Beaull and then Doug Phillips, she was told merely to try harder (from Beaull) and was later openly mocked by Doug. When she approached Doug, he automatically demanded whether she was submissive, obedient, gentle and quiet in her marriage. When Jen confirmed this, Doug walked right up to her husband and asked HIM whether Jen was a nag, unsubmissive or disrespectful, right in front of her. Phillips then called a conference and cruelly interrogated Jen about an affair she'd had thirteen years ago, before she was ever a member of the church, calling her a whore and a Jezebel (Phillips later denied calling her a Jezebel). Jen and her husband were then forbidden to take communion for a long while, and Jen was forbidden to ever speak badly of her husband, question or criticize him. When the temper of Jen's husband worsened and he had a bout of road rage with the children in the car, Jen strickenly told the church what happened, and was chastised for again "speaking badly" of her husband. Doug Phillips then sentenced her to submission counseling lessons.
Things came to a head once again when Jen dared send an email to Phillips, challenging the message in one of his sermons. He threw a fit and scolded her yet again, claiming that she should never criticize her pastor..though according to Phillips, the email would have been fine coming from her husband. Phillips threatened Jen that she would pay for her actions, and not long afterward, after a brief forewarning, he read a long charge against Jen and her husband to the entire church (this charge included their marital problems and, once again, Jen's old affair). Doug Phillips ended his punishment drive by excommunicating their family, telling them to fear for their souls, and ordering every member of the church to treat them like heathens (the account of the church's shunning was backed up by one of the Epstein's daughters, who mourned the loss of her former friends). After that, Jen, her husband and their children were treated like lepers: the VF church members refused to make eye contact, snubbed them, or scampered across the street like rats anytime they approached (one of the breeding Stepfords even refused a baby shower gift from Jen). This story was, perhaps, the first real public sign of the unforgiving attitudes of the Phillips' fellow wolves.
Jen's incident is sadly not an isolated one with the VF and their fellow piranah brethren, as Joyce later reveals in the book. Another woman and wife, Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff, well-known among the homeschooling movement for her former magazine "Gentle Spirit", was utterly butchered when her marriage ended. While she and her husband were in the process of divorce proceedings, she met her future next husband, Rick. When her current husband, an abusive man, discovered she had an attachment, he spread the word among her homeschooling colleagues, even asking them to spy on her. They happily complied, and the anti-woman movement slowly began to close in on Cheryl with newly sharpened teeth. Pretty soon she began receiving harassing interrogations as to her private life from her fellow homeschooling authors. Her soon-to-be-ex husband and pastor had even informed Michael Boutot, the organizer of the conference Cheryl had just attended, that she was guilty of unChristian behavior. Boutot proceeded to descend on her as well, demanding that she fulfill a list of ultimatums and make her "immoral" behavior known to her church and all the members of the homeschooling movement. When Cheryl refused to cave to their bullying, their intent on national slaughter became even more heated. Her pastor announced to the congregation that she was being turned over to Satan and planned to send this notice nationwide. Sue Welch, a former fellow homeschooling colleague of Cheryl's and particularly vicious harpy, eagerly offered to stamp the letters, planned to tell other homeschooling advertisers to cease business with Cheryl, and then proceeded to send the juicy news to the queen of the patriarchal homeschooling movement, Mary Pride. Pride seized the opportunity to add the news of Cheryl's public shame to her own magazine, "HELP for Growing Families". She then set up two AOL discussion folders for the sole purpose of attacking Cheryl and asked her assistant, David Ayers, to create a plan to win all of Cheryl's former readers over to her own magazine instead. Gosh, what a Christian group. The way they eagerly feed on their fallen sisters' blood puts their so-called feminist enemies and critics to shame.
Even aside from these ultra-extremists, Joyce reveals in the book that some otherwise "normal" patriarchs have shamefully downgraded women and, perhaps unwillingly, set them up for abuse. Whether they do this through downright stupid and thoughtless remarks, automatic distrust of women, or Scriptural twistings, it all leads to the spiritual and possibly physical harm and disrespect of God's daughters. Here are some of the most offensive remarks by strongly professed complimentarians, a couple of whom are otherwise well-known and respected among the Christian community:
Nancy Campbell, one of the queen enthusiasts of the breeding frenzy doctrine, tells men and women that the Bible says to be fruitful and multiply and not to wait for financial stability or security. "(God) did not say, "I want you both to work until you have enough money to purchase your own home and accumulate the material possessions you need, then I want you to be fruitful," Campbell magnanimously explains. "No, His first command was "Be fruitful and multiply." You heard that, ladies and gents: God doesn't care about your financial security, living circumstances, or state of being. When you get married, you'd better get those reproductive organs moving! That's what you're here for. And no condoms for you! Elsewhere, Campbell openly criticizes families who have only a couple of children, no doubt as being unGodly. "I've heard couples brag to me that they have two grandchildren," she laments. "When did two children ever change the world?" Indeed, whoever heard of God only using a few measly people to change history?
Martha Peace offers both bad logic and castigation of her sisters in Christ when she makes a list of different ways women are selfish (she doesn't even do this consciously; I just suddenly noticed the very high number of times she used the word "selfish" to describe women). According to Peace, it is selfish for women to enjoy any late-night time. "Women are not 'night owls'," Peace says. "They are selfish." It is also selfish, Peace claims, for women to expect a career, equality, or romance in marriage. This last alarming, legalistic, and otherwise bogus claim is repeated by some of the patriarchal-courtship followers. One man claims that a woman's father, and not love, should determine his daughter's husband. "If you were to sum up courtship in one sentence," he says, "you could say that it gets the father in the picture and Cupid out." I was, to put it mildly, horrified and disgusted by this description. Not only does it encourage the most sinful controlling spirit in a father, but it could completely, by principle, deprive a woman of even love in her marriage! Marriage is about love, not procreation and not some sort of Christian bargaining chip. These people have no spontaneity, no imagination, and apparently no heart; to deprive a woman of love and her own natural passion for a man (which is also thwarted by these psychos in the deprivation of any kind of romantic novels for their daughters, in order to keep them spiritually anesthized), is a terrible emotional crime that the Bible never exhorts, even in the OT. And yet, women like the foolish Botkins (the home princesses that the VF upholds as models of daughterhood) actually fight for this lifestyle; their meek baby teeth and paper spine only come out in aggression when they protect their father and the emotionally incestous relationship they hold with him.
Likewise, even though women of Peace's ilk don't fight for the father/daughter sickness that the Botkins do, they too show aggression mainly when they are not fighting for Christ, but head-butting other women into the herd behind the men. Women like Peace and Jennie Chancey urge "gentle and quiet" spirits, except for when they themselves scold women about not having them. As author Joyce points out in this book, the amusing irony is how viciously these women fight for their own subordination. Nancy Leigh Demoss, usually a tough-spoken woman of Christ, similarly urges women to take a backseat. "This is a revolution that will take place on our knees," she writes. Perhaps this image was meant to make me think of women kneeling for Christ; instead, knowing as I do how these women preach about "servicing" men, the mental picture I got was that of Monica Lewinsky.
Back to the topic of errant physical abuse, though, the more chilling part of this book was when author Joyce revealed the careless and cruel remarks of men, Christian teaching men, who either indicate or outrightly claim that wives bring physical abuse on themselves. John MacAurthur allows that wives may leave abusive husbands temporarily, "while the heat is on", but should return later to make amends, being careful not to provoke abuse since wives, he claims, often cause their own injuries in their desires to rule over men. On a similar note, Bruce Ware, an abominable man, claims that women are frequently abused because of their own rebellious refusal to submit to their husbands (it should be noted here that Ware is known for his extra-Biblical claims, including the claim that Christ should not be prayed to [being inferior to God the Father] and that women are only the "indirect image of God.") The worst comment of all in this vein comes from James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family. Dobson makes the abhorrent claim that some wives seek abuse for the "moral advantage" that a black eye gives them as a "martyr" in the relationship. If this is the true motive of women in abusive relationships, when they deliberately dare to look at their husbands the wrong way or neglect to make their coffee, just imagine how self-righteous are the wives who get their jaws wired shut! And the rebellious women who didn't survive abuse? No doubt God gave them a huge lecture at the pearly gates for so relentlessly bugging their husbands.
On a last note, one of the things you need to watch out for with folk like the VF, besides disrespect for women, is their current hobby of revising history. And this doesn't just happen with women; when the patrios aren't claiming that feminists were the ones assaulting police officers and making bogus arrests, or claiming that female slaves actually stayed in their cabins peacefully cooking meals for their husbands all day like good little Christian girls (this last claim came from "Lady Lydia", one of the doily duchesses from the Ladies against Feminism site), they're trying to deny any and all claims that white men were ever bad. Recently, Americans cooled their celebration of Jamestown Day, after being reminded by Native Americans how exactly Jamestown was won. When Doug Phillips and his cronies heard this, they threw a collective fit, saying white Americans should take every pride and pleasure in their winning of Jamestown. He proceeded to throw a huge celebration of the white man's victory, dragging his whole cultic kit and kaboodle down to Jamestown, complete in puritanic outfits, to commemorate the "Christian" occasion. Author Joyce actually attended this event and spoke to him personally. While explaining his intentions to her, Phillips said, "If you go on the national commemoration website, you'll see that not the natives but the settlers were cannibals; that they were terrorists against the environment; that there was a holocaust; that the settlers were guilty of lynchings; that a genocide took place." In short, he concluded, you needed more than the oral tradition to defend something like that. I was blown away by this comment, the most honesty I'd ever witnessed from Mr. Phillips. But one thing nagged me: who'd WANT to defend something like that? Why are we pretending the white settlers were something they weren't? In explaining his defense of the celebration of Jamestown Day, Phillips said of the occasion, "Who wants to go to a birthday party where you're mad at the parents and lament the birth?" I can answer that quite easily: try comparing it to the birthday party of a child conceived in a rape. Do you love the child? Are you happy the child's alive? Yes and yes, but do you pretend or deny the circumstances of the child's conception and ignore the nature of one of his parents? No you don't. Celebrating the child's presence and celebrating the reason for that presence are not the same. Jamestown was won in a bloody mass rape, rape of the earth and rape-like theft from those who truly owned and loved it. We should be thanking God for His mercy on our country, not for His imaginary blessing on how all of it was gained.
Reading this book was an enlightening experience, to say the least. For the past years, Kathryn Joyce has tirelessly and faithfully visited the members of patriarchy and collected the facts straight from them, and the result is this sterling and often captivating book. As angry as parts of it made me, I could hardly put it down; Joyce's graceful writing and incredible patience with her subject revealed all the complex facts of this movement with wonderful description and painstaking accuracy. Throughout the whole book, moreover, she never really pulls a punch; I at first feared this would be an irritant to me, longing as I was to read a cutting rebuttal to the patrios' words, but Joyce does little more than state the facts and relate her own experiences. As one critic pointed out, the VF and like-minded people she cited won't be able to say much against her; they certainly can't accuse her of being mean, and she represents them better than most of their own followers do! I have nothing but praise for Kathryn Joyce and hope to see more of her well-researched and addictive writing in the future. In the meantime, I pray that all who come across her vital book heed the warning they find and beware the danger that this deadly movement presents.
Update: Oh my, this book has officially delivered its message. Not only are VF supporters throwing bad votes at my review (and other positive ones) as fast as their little fingers can punch, but the VF has issued their official and predicted mud sling at Joyce, and it's really quite hilarious. Here's an excerpt:
"In the world of Kathryn Joyce, scientists and professional demographers who warn about the serious consequence of an imminent birth dearth are really bigots with an agenda to perpetuate white Christian babies; prolific Christian homeschool mothers and their daughters are mindless doormats to domineering patriarchs; and Christian ministries like Vision Forum with a pro-family theology are dangerous subversives"
Why is this hilarious? Because I said before that Joyce never slings a real verbal punch by namecalling, true mocking, etc. That means that the VF's whine about her using the labels "brainwashing" and "doormats" is completely false; she never uses such labels. Instead, all she does is lay out the facts about the patriocentric lifestyle, many times by quoting the people who practice it, who were only too happy to share it with her. Whether or not these lifestyles sound like brainwashing and its girls sound like doormats is left up to the reader, and apparently, the VF thinks they do!! They could not possibly have done themselves in more perfectly in this matter. Say what you wish of this book, naysayers, but the simple fact remains that the nasty, truth-telling feminist in this case is not namecalling, while the small "Christian" man, on the other hand, is jumping up and down screaming obscenities.
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Did we read the same book
This book is out dated. A hodge podge of blogs articles and sermons with her own options. Nothing new or a way to combat the quiverfull group unless her visiting a new you based church who has not updated their website in 4 yrs or have pastor bios listed. Super disappointed. Poorly written and pieced together.
Top reviews from other countries
Selene
read the book it is a great primary first hand account of one woman and one ...
Reviewed in Canada on May 20, 2017
Bristol Book Blogger 📚📖📓
A great introduction
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 14, 2018
