Quiverfull - Growing in Size and Influence

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Quiverfull - Growing in Size and Influence
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Growing Movement

Back in 1995, when the quiverfull.com Web site was founded, it had only 12 subscribers; today, the site, which is administered by the Bortels, has more than 2,600. Many followers have abandoned mainstream churches in favor of smaller nondenominational congregations of like-minded families.
A cottage industry has sprung up in support of them. There are books like “A Full Quiver,” by Rick and Jan Hess; Web sites like blessedarrows.com [Correction: BlessedArrows.org - AI] , which raises funds for couples to have reverse vasectomies or reverse tubal ligations; and scholarly treatises like “The Natural Family: A Manifesto,” put out by the Rockford, Ill.,-based Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society and the Sutherland Institute, a Mormon think tank. “We’re still on the fringes,” says Jan Hess. “But it is much more embraced than it was before.”
Quiverfull beliefs are absolutist. Purists don’t permit even natural family planning methods, such as tracking fertility cycles (the only form of birth control condoned by the Roman Catholic Church). Also taboo: any form of artificial fertility treatment. “The point is to have a welcoming heart,” says Mary Pride, a mother of nine whose 1985 book, “The Way Home,” celebrated a return to traditional gender roles. It has sold about 80,000 copies and has inspired many quiverfull families.
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Beyond such purists, the anti-birth control message appears to be gaining ground among some evangelicals.
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There’s a curious twist to all this. “What quiverfull looks like is a group of Protestants who are more Catholic than the Catholics,” says John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Protestants have tended to embrace the contraceptive revolution that began in the 1960s. But recently, some conservative evangelical leaders—alarmed by what they deem a “contraceptive mentality” that has separated the act of sex from procreation—have begun to question mainstream Protestant stances. One possible explanation for the shift in thinking: the alignment between evangelicals and Catholics on some social issues, says Brad Wilcox, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia. “The increasing cooperation of Catholic and evangelical leaders on abortion and same sex marriage has allowed some cross-pollination where evangelical leaders are starting to become familiar with Catholic thinking on the family.”
- Source: Eileen Finann, How Full Is Your Quiver? In a new movement, Christians 'open their wombs to God.' Newsweek, Nov. 13, 2006

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