Quiverfull
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z # Home |
Table of Contents
The “quiverfull” movement is a small but growing conservative Protestant group that eschews all forms of birth control and believes that family planning is exclusively God’s domain.
The name of the movement is a reference to Psalm 127:
{1} Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain.
{2} In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat– for he grants sleep to those he loves.
{3} Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him.
{4} Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth.
{5} Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate.
- Source: Psalm 127
The movement is, in part, a backlash against feminism:
When the Gospel Community Church in Coxsackie, New York, breaks midservice to excuse children for Sunday school, nearly half of the 225-strong congregation patters toward the back of the worship hall: the five youngest children of Pastor Stan Slager's eight, assistant pastor Bartly Heneghan's eleven and the Dufkin family's thirteen, among many others. "The Missionettes," a team of young girls who perform ribbon dances during the praise music, put down their "glory hoops" to join their classmates; the pews empty out. It's the un-ignorable difference between the families at Gospel Community and those in the rest of the town that's led some to wonder if the church isn't a cult that forces its disciples to keep pushing out children.
But after the kids leave, Pastor Stan doesn't exhort his congregation to bear children. His approach is more subtle, reminding them to present their bodies as living sacrifices to the Lord, and preaching to them about Acts 5:20
: Go tell "all the words of this life." Or, in Pastor Stan's guiding translation, to lead lives that make outsiders think, "Christianity is real," lives that "demand an explanation."
Lives such as these: Janet Wolfson is a 44-year-old mother of eight in Canton, Georgia. Tracie Moore, a 39-year-old midwife who lives in southern Kentucky, is mother to fourteen. Wendy Dufkin in Coxsackie has her thirteen. And while Jamie Stoltzfus, a 27-year-old Illinois mom, has only four children so far, she plans on bearing enough to populate "two teams." All four mothers are devoted to a way of life New York Times columnist David Brooks has praised as a new spiritual movement taking hold among exurban and Sunbelt families. Brooks called these parents "natalists" and described their progeny as a new wave of "Red-Diaper Babies" — as in "red state."
But Wolfson, Moore and thousands of mothers like them call themselves and their belief system "Quiverfull." They borrow their name from Psalm 127
Quiverfull parents try to have upwards of six children. They home-school their families, attend fundamentalist churches and follow biblical guidelines of male headship — "Father knows best" — and female submissiveness. They refuse any attempt to regulate pregnancy. Quiverfull began with the publication of Rick and Jan Hess's 1989 book, A Full Quiver: Family Planning and the Lordship of Christ
Though there are no exact figures for the size of the movement, the number of families that identify as Quiverfull is likely in the thousands to low tens of thousands. Its word-of-mouth growth can be traced back to conservative Protestant critiques of contraception — adherents consider all birth control, even natural family planning (the rhythm method), to be the province of prostitutes — and the growing belief among evangelicals that the decision of mainstream Protestant churches in the 1950s to approve contraception for married couples led directly to the sexual revolution and then Roe v. Wade.
"Our bodies are meant to be a living sacrifice," write the Hesses. Or, as Mary Pride, in another of the movement's founding texts, The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality, puts it, "My body is not my own." This rebuttal of the feminist health text Our Bodies, Ourselves is deliberate. Quiverfull women are more than mothers. They're domestic warriors in the battle against what they see as forty years of destruction wrought by women's liberation: contraception, women's careers, abortion, divorce, homosexuality and child abuse, in that order.
Pride argues that feminism is a religion in its own right, one that is inherently incompatible with Christianity.
[...more...]
- Source: Kathryn Joyce, 'Arrows for the War', The Nation, posted November 9, 2006 (November 27, 2006 issue)
Quiverfull - Growing in Size and Influence
Share this
To share this page simply copy and paste one of the below URL's:
Comment
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Comments are moderated. We favor well-reasoned, constructive comments.
5 Responses to “Quiverfull”
Leave a Reply
Subscribe to Apologetics Index updates via RSS news feed or email• Subscribe to this feed (RSS)
• Subscribe by email
Link to this page
• Permalink to Quiverfull
Information:
• This page was first posted: Nov. 14, 2006
• This page was last updated: Nov. 14, 2006
• How to use this site • Copyright and Linking Policy • Disclaimer
About Apologetics Index
The Apologetics Index (apologeticsindex.org) 'family of web sites' provides 25,000+ pages of research resources on religious cults, sects, new religious movements, alternative religions, apologetics-, anticult-, and countercult organizations, doctrines, religious practices and world views. These resources reflect a variety of theological and/or sociological perspectives. [More Info]
November 15th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
My husband and I got married when I was 18 and he was 20. When I was about 19 and pregnant, I was presented with this mindset/teaching.
Mostly, I felt I was guilted into it because, how dare I prevent the hand of the Lord from moving.
(I have a rebuttal for that one, because I was a double birth control baby– looks like God can work past the B/C if He wants to!)
I am 27 now and we had 4 kids in 4 3/4 years (the first 2 are less than a year apart.) I was also going to home-school them — another thing I felt a lot of pressure *rather than conviction* to do.
I went absolutely *ABSOLUTELY* crazy trying to do all these things that would 'please God'. I was in constant fear that I was going to get pregnant again, I seriously knew I could NOT handle another baby after #4.
This year, my husband and I came to the conclusion that God gave us a free will and that since this is not something our salvation hinges on, we decided to stop having children for the time being. I dont think it was in His will to make me totally insane trying to raise these kids. Also, I was VERY overweight while bearing these children back to back. My body never had a chance to recover. NOW, I am working to take the weight off and heal my body.
I absolutely love my children, please dont get me wrong.
Neither my husband or I grew up around children so we had NO idea how to handle 1, let alone 4, so it was a huge stressor to just try and figure some of the very basic things out, while having one after another after another. This past year, we found out our 3rd is autistic– that was one of the determining factors about putting more procreation on hold. Not because we want to prevent further autism from showing up in the family (not at all!), but because we didnt think it was fair to him to have a lot of extra siblings to take care of on top of trying to constantly work with him. We really want to help him get the best he can out of life and these years are critical to his development.
We dont feel as though we are disobeying the Lord, although, sadly, most in this sect would think so. I also dont know one family, that practices this, that is NOT on some sort of government assistance– be it medical or otherwise. When we were doing this, my husband worked a retail job and I didnt work and we collected foodstamps because feeding 6 people 3 squares, plus snacks is VERY expensive. Plus one of the kiddos had a very expensive special diet for a while. NO WAY could we have paid for that out of pocket.
We may have more children in the future, but right now, it wouldnt be a good idea. The things we would need in order to accomodate one more person in this family are way beyond the means that we have. We would need a new van– we currently have a 7 seater, BUT, carseats require lap and shoulder belts, which our van doesnt have on the 7th seat. We would need a bigger house because the one we have now is not big enough to contain us NOW!
We realized that we needed to seriously be responsible for raising these kids, not just pop them out and expect the taxpayers to handle all the hard parts.
Often, we are refuted for having 'no faith' that God will provide for us. If He sends us the kids, He will send us the grace to raise them. The guilt involved in this movement can be direct and can be subtle and some of these people can get downright mean about it.
Ultimately, its nobody's decision OR business but mine and my husband's. And again, we feel no conviction from the Lord that we should be doing anything other than what we are doing now. Before, it was a fear of what other people might think. Not a fear of the Lord.
Amanda
April 1st, 2007 at 5:10 am
Thank you so much for sharing your story, Amanda. It's so good to hear from someone who has been through it.
I have a friend who is just starting out in this movement and is getting my husband into it as well. We don't believe in artificial contraception, but we use natural family planning, we have for a long time, and have found it to be a good fit for our family so far. But now he is talking like he believes in the quiverfull concept and it's causing a lot of conflict between us.
We have 2 children already and I find that hard enough! I feel that I would be a much worse mother with more, especially since I'm dealing with clinical depression and have been told I should stay on medication for the rest of my life. My husband also has health problems, and if I were to lose him and be left with a large number of children, I don't know how we would get by!
I find it difficult to believe that any woman would be willing to have 14 or 15 children without being coerced into it. I may be wrong, but that is just my opinion. Because for me, pregnancy, labor, and the post-partum period are absolutely miserable, and I think I would almost rather die than to spend the next 20 or so years like that, only to have children that I can't adequately supervise or provide for. I would like to have a somewhat large family eventually (maybe 5 or 6) as long as they are reasonably spaced out to give me some time to recover!
I see no problem with people adhering to this philosophy if that is what they think is right. God gives us all free will. But I don't think it's right to say that people who use birth control are going against God, if they are just making a decision to do what's right for thier family. It also concerns me that I think a lot of women may feel as you did, that it was not a choice but rather that they were coerced into believing that way against thier better judgement. That just seems like an injustice to me.
May 26th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Hi,
Children are such a blessing. We tried to get my wife broke after our first, but because we were so young doctors wouldn't break her. Thank God. WE were cursed with birth control pills for eight years then really got saved in 1975 and through away the birth control pills, TV, and wife's pants. Eight more children later, we don't regret giving God CONTROL of the womb.
SEX IS MORE FUN WHEN YOU ARE MAKING BABIES. SURE, of course you have to want them, or at least be willing to take them. Problem is most Americans are too selfish and too busy chasting dollars to be good parents. WE have home schooled all nine, when it was NOT so legal.
Only the oldest two are married and we have ten grandchildren already (all born at home, just like our last seven.) God is a healer also.
Children end the generation gap and social security problems, but America has aborted theirs. So we now need imigration instead of enjoying grand children. Abortionists hate your children just as much as those that practice birth control.
FULL QUIVER is only FOR REAL CHRISTIANS.
God bless,
Grandpa Harvey
PS Once you are in your 50's and then you WISH you had more children. It's too late folks. Just DO IT and enjoy IT while you're doing it.:-) Tell them grandpa told you.:-) Try it you will like it much better.
September 21st, 2007 at 11:45 pm
selfish? isnt it selfish to have that many children and not be able to support them? give them braces nice clothes and good education? by the way, you spelled "through" wrong its "threw" out and personally i dont know how you can even really relate to your children or really know them as individuals when you have so many with that many kids you end up labeling them "the comedian" "the shy one" "the leader" people arent just one thing they are full of many different emotions not so one dimmensional and so you consider being a good parent home schooling your kids? its much more than that buddy and "happy is the man whose quiver is full of them" so is that why you want all those kids so YOU can be happy … now who is selfish?
December 20th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
I've been watching the Duggars since they first appeared on TLC and am fascinated with the order, organization and respect shown in tthis terrific family. What we never see, however, it Jim Bob going off to work. What I'd like to know is what does Jim Bob do for a living and where does all the money come from to feed this $1,000 per week food bill on top of everything else. Are we,the taxpayers paying for what they describe as "The Lord providing"? having stated this, I am a Cchristian who believes in the Word being the truth and respect their right to live as they believe.