The fundamental problem is that Michael wants a shortcut. Something easier than the shoe leather approach missionaries have conventionally taken. Michael is impatient. He wants a magic formula. Is that really any surprise? That’s the same thing his child training book offers: a magic formula. Read more

Well if Levi thinks he’s found his Amazon woman, he’s got another thing coming, because Bobbie Jo isn’t about to marry someone who isn’t a Christian, and Levi isn’t about to convert. So they can each put their eyes back in their pockets and knock this off already. Read more

I’ve noticed this phenomenon, actually. Some fundamentalist Christian women are tight-lipped about sex and refuse to even mention it, but others are downright bawdy. Provided all of their jibbing points toward marriage—or sex within marriage—it’s all in good fun, and it’s godly and virtuous to boot. Read more

You know what this feels like? It feels like a cult leader rewriting history. Dusty and Yancey both just yelled at Malachi, questioning his claims and his authority, and in response, Malachi is reasserting his claim to control over this group by telling them things that Magdalene told him, and no one else. Read more

For all its faults—and let’s face it, it mostly has faults—this book does spend a lot of time on men crying. Men are allowed to be emotionally vulnerable. And that’s interesting. I wonder whether Michael Pearl would have written it this way, or whether this is a Debi thing. It certainly seems at odds with Michael’s knife-throwing manly man manliness, but then, who knows! Maybe this is a Pearl thing. Read more