Hazardous Journeys. Leading Christian Patriarchy organization Vision Forum is worried that boys today are not manly enough. It’s solution? Many trips into the wilderness to build courage, risk-taking, leadership, and manhood. In this post I discuss Vision Forum’s Hazardous Journeys Society, post some videos from Vision Forum regarding this project, discuss the historical precedent for this sort of thing, and point out that it’s, you know, just for boys.
To Vision Forum, the post important thing about a child is its gender. This has changed in mainstream American society. Sure, it’s far from perfect – as the mother of a daughter growing up in a princess pink girl culture, I know this better than some – but we no longer blink at the artistic boy or the athletic girl. Skills, talents, and interests matter. But not for Vision Forum. No. For Vision Forum, your gender matters first, and any skills, talents, or interests that don’t fit your gender, well, you can just forget about those.
“My name is Veronica. I’m currently 35 years old. I was raised by my parents as an Evangelical Christian, and took part in church life all my youth. Today I define myself as a Secular Humanist, which I have for the past 4-5 years. Before that I considered myself an agnostic. My transition from Christian to agnostic took place between 10 and 5 years ago. It was somewhat gradual. I have not identified as religious for the past 7 years at least.”
“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.”
“I don’t remember when my parents first came in contact with Bill Gothard, Michael/Debi Pearl and company. I think they were introduced to it when we started to go to a small housechurch that was pretty strong in their opinions. I do remember going to several Pearl child training seminars with my parents and my siblings, and I remember my mom being pretty attached to Created to be His Help Meet, No Greater Joy magazines, and some magazine the Pearls did too, I think, and my dad getting Quit You Like Men magazines.”
“I was raised an Evangelical Baptist in the “Bible Belt.” The church we attended was affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas. It was a mega-Church and the culture can be described as Evangelical. In high school and college I went through a questioning and discovery period, eventually becoming Conservative Catholic towards the end of my senior year of college. As a young adult my questioning continued, and although I still consider myself Catholic, faith I no longer hold orthodox beliefs or participate in the Church sacraments.”
When evangelical or fundamentalist women like Debi Pearl write marriage advice manuals for good Christian women, they have a problem. They’re female. How do they solve this problem? Actually, they’ve developed a fairly simple solution.
“I am Angie, a 24-year-old recent college graduate who is married. When I was around 5 years old my mom and dad became involved in the Church of God denomination; they became more and more involved as I grew up and my father served as youth pastor to our church during my teen years. My parents were “Pentecostal holiness,” which is part of the fundamentalist movement with a focus on “old-fashioned values” and gender standards from an older time. I grew away from my parents’ beliefs in college and am now an atheist.
The Friendly Atheist recently posted an the results of a survey on women in the church, and was shocked to find that some churches don’t allow women to teach men. Frankly, I was surprised that the number was so low – only 3%. Because, well, growing up that was just how things were. I remember that [...]
“My parents sort of came to Quiverfull beliefs on their own. When I was about 7 or so they became involved in a cult called “cleansing stream” which “taught” them how to read the bible and things just kinda spiraled from there. While they eventually left the cult and abandoned some of the crazy teachings, they never truly exited. They were typical in that they had oodles of spawn, were very strict and into gender roles. Atypically, my mom was instigating it and my dad is/was sort of her puppet (seemingly – it’s hard to tell).”
There are plenty of amazing Christian feminists fighting for female equality within the church, but honestly, I’m glad I’m an atheist, because I think I’m just too angry to do that.
I’ve written a lot about Vision Forum, and about their fetishization of the Titanic, and this week I came upon something of a bombshell. You see, that whole “women and children first” thing is a myth – a fabrication – originally created in order to combat the fight for women’s suffrage. When Vision Forum touts the [...]
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