Why was the UN Disabilities Treaty defeated this week? Part of it had to do with fear mongering about the UN and one world government, yes, but there’s more too it. Homeschoolers like Rick Santorum opposed ratification because, quite simply, they do not believe children have rights, and that includes disabled children. Leaders like Santorum believe that parents’ rights over their children should be supreme.
An ex-Muslim convert just wrote on her blog about what her group taught about teenagers, and lo and behold, it’s exactly the same as what the Quiverfull/evangelical/homeschooling community I grew up in taught. As in, word for word. My jaw is still on the ground. And we truly thought we were so very different.
It was breakfast, and Sally had shredded her biscuit and was asking for another. I was annoyed. She was insistent. As my frustration bubbled, my commitment to positive parenting was put to the test.
I’ve been attending the local Unitarian Universalist church since the end of the summer. Here are a few things I love about it.
Today is Halloween. Sally is giddy with excitement. I’m taking her trick-or-treating this evening, and she’s been asking every day for a month now if it is “Halloween Day.” Bobby will be going too, his first Halloween. But today, I can’t help but remember experiencing Halloween as a child raised on the border between evangelicalism and fundamentalism. I was taught that Halloween was Satan’s high holy day, complete with sacrifices by covens of witches and increased demonic activity. Halloween scared me to death.
From his comment about “binders full of women” to turning a question about equality in employment into a discussion of cooking supper, Mitt Romney made it clear once again in last night’s debate that he is simply out of touch on women’s issues. In this post I will pull out three Romney quotes and discuss what they reveal about Romney’s views on motherhood, working parents, and poor women. I invite my readers to contribute additional quotations as well!
I grew up at the heart of the anti-abortion movement. As a child, I held the signs, marched the marches, and attended the fundraisers. On days like today – the first Sunday in October – I look into the faces of people standing where I stood so many times. It’s at times like these that I’m reminded of how much my life has changed, how much I have changed.
I knew three different girls named Mercy as a child, though Bible names were more common in my community. For every Faith or Patience or Grace, there were half a dozen Elijahs and Hannahs and Rebeccas. But there were no Tiffanys or Stephanies or Ryans. Names are very important in families in the orbit of the Quiverfull and Christian Patriarchy movements.
“I remember being a kindergarten-aged girl and sobbing in the kitchen, overwhelmed with the horror that somewhere out there, babies were being murdered. Both my parents and some of my older siblings were arrested for these activities with Operation Rescue. For me, those gruesome photos weren’t just a part of the protests. I encountered them in the multitude of pro-life books and literature we had at our house as well. We had videos of Holocaust footage combined with slideshows of abortion pictures.”
“My name is Jenn. My parents converted from Baptist to Evangelical not long after I was born. I was very dedicated to my faith and intended to become a missionary when I grew up. While in college I met a man who was not Christian and eventually we got engaged. From there I questioned my beliefs and followed the path that I find many Evangelicals do when they leave the faith, from Fundamentalist to not believing the Bible is inerrant to believing in God, but not necessarily salvation to spirituality to agnosticism to atheism.”
One thing about being evangelical was that you didn’t believe in any of those sacred objects or rituals that Catholics did. Evangelicalism was all about faith. Sort of. See, just because we didn’t believe in actual sacred objects or rituals didn’t mean we didn’t actually have objects or rituals. Have you ever been in a Christian bookstore? Have you ever worn a WWJD bracelet? Have you ever listened to Christian contemporary music? Have you ever played the Bible edition of Apples to Apples? Evangelicalism is a culture, not just a set of beliefs.
Yesterday I was watching Rachel Maddow with Sally. Rachel had Elizabeth Warren on, and I turned to Sally and said “That’s Elizabeth Warren. We like her.” And then I froze. I know that I like Elizabeth Warren, but that doesn’t mean that Sally does or has to. What was I saying? When I was a kid, my parents always said it like that. It was never about “this is the candidate mommy and daddy support”; instead it was always “this is the candidate we support.” As in, the whole family.
Follow Patheos on
Copyright 2008-2013, Patheos. All rights reserved. Terms of Service | Patheos Privacy Policy | Site developed by Avalon Consulting, LLC
Follow Patheos
Atheist: