R&R Index
Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement
by Kathryn Joyce.
Boston: Beacon
Press, 2009 Pp. 258
Reviewed by Dr. Susan K. Hedahl
This author has done a superlative job in identifying an American religious movement and its multi-pronged ideologies. Home schooling, anti-abortion movements, female submission, political candidates of the far right are all part of the network of the Christian patriarchy movement.
The type of woman committed or coerced into this movement is described as: “the “biblical” woman [who] wears modest, feminine dress and avoids not only sex but also dating before marriage. She doesn’t speak in church or try to have authority over men. She doesn’t work outside the home…She checks in with her husband as she moves through her day to see if she is fulfilling his priorities for her….She raises families of eight, ten, and twelve children, and she teachers her daughters to do the same.” (p. ix)
Kathryn Joyce describes the elements which perpetuate this movement. They include some versions of home schooling with their particular curricula. There are also many radio and television programs which use older women to mentor younger ones, termed the “Titus 2” groups. The framework of these groups is biblical, based on interpretations of Eve in the book of Genesis. All women are “daughters of Eve’ and “if not more easily deceived, more intrinsically wicked and likely to rebel.” (p. 50). As a critical, sometime listener to Nancy Leigh DeMoss’s radio program “Revive Our Hearts,” DeMoss is an example of someone promoting her version of Titus 2 theology. It is both tragic and chilling to hear a Christian woman basically undercutting other women with this type of biblical study and advice.
One of the aspects of the Quiverfull movement is literalistic obedience to the ‘be fruitful and multiply’ command in the Old Testament. What is more innocuous is the political ideology behind this theology which “can reinforce the Quiverfull goal of a return to the traditional, patriarchal family as the basic economic unity of society.” (p. 171). One of the more surprising personalities in this book includes a reference to an Allan Carlson, “a former official of the Lutheran Council in the United States of America.” (p. 174). He joined with a Mormon colleague to author a work called The Natural Family: A Manifesto. Says Kathryn Joyce, the book echoes “the call to arms of the ecumenical Christian profamily movement that is attempting to politicize and spread the theology of patriarchy and Quiverfull conviction across denominations…” ( p. 174).
