A Welcome for New Readers

Monday’s post on losing faith in the pro-life movement went viral, so I’d like to give a little bit of orientation for new readers. First of all, if you’re new here, welcome! If you read my post and are at all confused about where I now stand on the abortion issue, take a look at my page on women’s reproductive rights. Next, I would encourage you to read my “about” page.

As a brief introduction, I was raised in a large homeschooling family influenced by the Christian Patriarchy and Quiverfull movements. I grew up an evangelical Christian, though with some fundamentalist aspects. I found my beliefs challenged in college and am today an atheist and a feminist. I am in my mid-twenties, married to a wonderful man named Sean, and busily raising young children, Sally and Bobby. I am also in graduate school getting my Ph.D. in a humanities field.

I began blogging a year and a half ago as a way to think through the changes in my life. I blog about growing up evangelical and then losing my faith, about the effects of being raised in the “purity culture” complete with courtship and purity rings, about reinventing how I raise my children after being raised on highly authoritarian discipline methods, about finding myself as a person and an individual after growing up believing that my sole role in life was to be a wife and mother, and about rethinking the Christian Right politics of my youth. Sometimes I also blog about my thoughts on homeschooling. If you want to know more, I encourage you to explore the tabs below my banner; you will find a wealth of information and links to both key posts and additional resources.

I have also put together a number of ongoing projects. My Raised Quiverfull project featured the stories of thirteen young adults who were raised in families influenced by the Quiverfull movement, and my ongoing Raised Evangelical project involves the stories of adults who were raised in evangelical families and churches. My purity rings series brings together young women reflecting on their experience as the wearers of purity rings, and my homeschool reflections series will begin in January. I am also currently in the middle of a page-by-page review of Debi Pearl’s Created To Be His Help Meet, a patriarchal, fundamentalist marriage advice manual for women. I put up a new installment weekly on Fridays. I intend to review other books in this way in the future. Finally, I have an ongoing project in which I put up an argument against abortion and ask for discussion on the topic, and then attach what I consider to be the best comments to the end of the post. This project is still in its early stages.

If you’re just here because you liked my article on the pro-life movement, I’d invite you to stick around because I have several followup posts already planned and in the works, including posts tentatively called “Pro-Life, Anti-Abortion, or Anti-Choice? Sorting through the Labels,” “What Being Pro-Life Would Look Like,” and “Science, Young Earth Creationism, and the Pro-Life Movement.”

If you like what you’ve seen and you’re planning on sticking around, feel free to take a look at my commenting policy. You are very much invited to engage, and I think you will find my blog’s commenter community to be welcoming, intelligent, and always thought-provoking. Finally, a look at my site’s right sidebar will give you links for subscribing to my RSS feed, subscribing to my blog via email, and following me on twitter.

And once again, welcome!

Libby Anne