No Longer Quivering
by Suzanne Titkemeyer
Starting a new review series of Debi Pearl’s newest toxic book on marriage, The Hidden Help Meet: Stand By Your Man. Reading the title of the book two things strike you. First, Debi must think she is e.e. cummings because the entire title on the cover is in un-capitalized print. Secondly, it reminds me of this classic scene from the movie “The Blues Brothers.”
Seriously, I cannot stop giggling at this book. Debi copied/transcribed the audio from a Denny Kenaston sermon titled “The Hidden Woman”. Apparently the entire book is a cobbled together mess of Debi’s thoughts, such that they are, and the words of this dead man with the rubber stamped approval of his widow. There is no introduction beyond Debi rambling on about how Denny taught on being the little woman behind the big man. Great, another book on silencing the voice of women and limiting their roles. First religious book I’ve seen with no introduction section.
When I’m quoting Debi’s words the text, just like in the book, will be girly and italicized. Denny’s words from the sermon are in a manly testosterone-laden New Times Roman text. Chapter one is titled ‘Battle For the Kingdom’
The powerful woman mentioned in Proverbs 31 demonstrates the home-front strategies. There is no doubt about it: a godly woman’s effect on the outcome of the war against the family is staggering. Satan knows this, and he also knows a woman’s weakness.
Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t the Proverbs 31 wife that Denny is holding up as an example a woman that owned a business and had beau coup servants? She sure does not sound at all like a ‘hidden woman.’
Weakness? I really don’t ‘get’ that after a morning of packing and loading up heavy pieces of old furniture for the dump. Weakness is not always part of being a woman. I’ve been spackling holes in the plaster and moving the washer and dryer in preparation to paint. I feel pretty certain that would horrify Debi and the weak women brigade.
Women need direct command clarified; they stumble if it doesn’t seen fair or appears unjust.
But Debi does not seem to remember that she’s oft stated that you are never to question your man, you are to do what he requests cheerfully, readily and without question. Another example of the theological game of Twister she indulges in, unable to be consistent from idea to idea.
She continues on this is vein of women having their ‘ears tickled’ by preachers and not wanting to submit, support their husbands and other patriarchal shaming and blaming nonsense before ending up here:
When the biblical role of man and woman is brought up in court during a divorce, it becomes a laughing matter. Evil wins.
Oh hell no! That SHOULD be laughed out of the courtroom and has no part of a divorce proceedings! But I just hear some poor sad sack whining Good Patriarch, like Biblical Gender Roles Larry Solomon, saying something like that. I can just picture Larry whining to the judge that the first Mrs. Solomon refuses to have sex with him upon demand and insisted on working outside of the home, disrespecting his antiquated ideas and the judge open-mouthed staring at Larry thinking ‘Who is this idiot?’
Debi goes on to claim because the Bible says that God made Eve out of Adam’s rib that she’s to be beside him as his help meet. There’s just one problem. The scripture she uses to justify this idea says nothing of the sort. It talks of making a ‘helper’ for Adam, not a slave, or a rah-rah cheerleader.
The book then moves into another toxic direction in the next paragraph, with the same twisted Tilt-O-Whirl leaps of illogic practiced by Debi Pearl acolyte and fawning sycophant in chief Lori Alexander in her book ‘The Power of the Transformed Wife’. Debi goes to a woman covering her head because she is the glory of man, not God.
Way to replace God with the husband. Like that does not open up a woman to abuse from a petty tin-plated dictator of a wanna-be God.
But I do know that one of the reasons God established the role of a wife under the man’s leadership is ‘because of the angels’.
The author also admits she does not what that actually means. She blames it on the angels in Genesis that were boinking human women and creating a race of giants, one of the weirdest bits in the Bible. Because warring angels.
Debi leaps again, this time to working women and divorce:
Divorce is at an all time high, which results in children growing up sitting in a house alone, watching trash on TV while eating trash because Mama is not there to oversee her charges.
Conveniently she neglects to mention that the only very high divorce rates in the U.S. are in the Christian sector. They’ve actually been steady or gone down in every other sector of the population.
If divorce means getting and your children out of a toxic and abusive situation its not a bad idea. Plus, it sometimes builds a resourcefulness in family members when they have to take up some of the slack while their mother is out working to support them. Most divorced families I’ve seen have chores for the kids, and they learn personal responsibility and the need for everyone in the family, let me repeat that, EVERYONE, to pull some of the work load.
The result of a woman being out from under her husband’s headship is children who are insecure, emotionally tense, full of anger, unproductive, and unable to have wholesome relationships.
Statistics from real sources or this is all just pure speculation bent to support assertions spun out of thin air and lies. Debi’s beating her favorite straw woman and sacrificial goat at the same time. There is nothing in long term studies by major universities or social work studies to support any of this!
Do you know who’s immature, twisted, unable to think for themselves, with untreated ADD? coughcoughThePearlsKidscoughcough;
And we end the chapter with this:
If ever there was a time when a man needed a dear wife to stand beside him and say, “I’m here. I’m with you. I’m behind you. I’ll help you.” that time is now.
Good marriages occur when both partners work in tandem supporting each other in many ways. Not when one is required to be a simpering sap whispering support but doing very little to walk that out. I’ve always said that my own marriage is more like partners climbing a high peak together. Sometimes one or the other will slip, miss the piton, requiring the other partner to grab their safety line and pull them up to the next level to keep them from falling off the mountain. You need so much different equipment to successfully ‘make it’ that it’s good to split the load between the two climbers.
We’re done. This is a very thin book with the text in an insanely large font meant to pad out her parsing of a dead man’s one sermon. When I pulled this book out of the mailbox my son flipped through it and said, ‘Mom, you’ll be able to read this crap in under an hour.’ He wasn’t far off on the timing. Why is it that the Pearls keep releasing different books that are merely rewrites of early tomes? Are they that greedy or desperate for dough?
Next chapter is titled ‘God’s Purpose For Women’ and I suspect it’s going to be a whole lot of ‘shut up, smile and push out babies you selfish woman!’
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Suzanne Titkemeyer is the admin at No Longer Quivering. She’s been out of the Quiverfull Evangelical world for nine years now and lives in the beautiful Piedmont section of Virginia for now with her retired husband and assorted creatures. She blogs at Every Breaking Wave and True Love Doesn’t Rape
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