Talk to me about Vision Forum

[cobluegirl]

lies beget lies.....

[purple_kangaroo]

Originally Posted by Hermana Linda

Thank you, that is a good point. I got those names from my tags on my patriocentric category.

I saw that tag, read all the articles linked in that post, and the only connection I saw to why Bob Jones Jr. would even be tagged in that post is that the author of the post you linked to mentioned him in a list of "Christian fundamentalists." That is not at all the same thing as being connected with the patriarchy movement or Vision Forum. There are lots of fundamentalists, including Bob Jones Jr., who would vehemently disagree with many or most of Vision Forum's teachings.

I got that from the Wiki Article:
But I guess that Quiverfull does not equal Patriarchy.

Correct. Quiverfull does not equal Patriarchy any more than homeschooling, being a SAHM, or any of the other teachings that VF turns into moral absolutes and include in their teachings do in themselves equal Patriachy.

For example, Vision Forum teaches that everyone should homeschool, but there are many homeschoolers that do not follow VF philosophies or agree with their teachings. So it would probably be accurate to say that all VF followers are homeschoolers, but would be wildly inaccurate to say or assume that all homeschoolers are VF followers.

There are also many people who don't use birth control but do not at all fit in or agree with all of the other ideas and teachings many associate with the Quiverfull movement.

I think it's extremely important to make sure there is really good, solid evidence before putting names out there as being connected with VF.

[TestifyToLove]

The movement claims that girls are training for PhDs in Home Education, at home, at the knee of their mother who is the expert on running a home.

So yes, some of these girls spend time learning complicated things, starting cottage industries, and preparing for wifely submission and motherhood.

However, they are supposed to shape all of their training as serving their family, and specifically at the knees not of their mother, the one who is actually a homemaker, but their FATHER.

The movement VF and others like them have entered now is this concept that girls are to be helpmeets in training by answering TO THEIR FATHER in all that they do.

Jasmine Baucham is very heavily involved in academic pursuits. Her father holds a PhD and see education as important, but doesn't want her leaving the house to earn it. She might be earning an English degree online, or she's putting herself through the rigorous process that would typically earn someone a Bachelor's in English--framed and sculpted by her father.

Jasmine is VERY unusual that she is pursuing academic pursuits, and even she won't come out and confess whether her pursuits are formal or not.

The temptation of this concept is that those in power leading the movement are putting their daughters out there as strong, exemplary characters of young women who ARE continuing education and pursuits while waiting to find husbands. However, by their own admission, every daughter's development after she graduates from her homeschooling will depend entirely upon the whims of her own father--and they don't believe there is ANY wrong choice a father can make in deciding what HE feels is best for his daughter. She is to be at his side, physically, emotionally and spiritually because he is supposed to be training her on how to be a submissive wife. He trains her by having an inappropriate emotional enmeshment with her, but requiring the intimacy from her that she would then give to a husband after he trains her.

This is the nitty gritty no one wants to see. Even if her father doesn't sexually abuse her, he is going to spiritually abuse her. Every bit of the intimacy they are so freaked out about a young woman giving to a man not her husband, they demand she give to her FATHER...until the time he transfers that authority and intimacy to the man he approves of as her husband.

This stuff is so sick and peverse that the more you disect it to try to grasp what they are saying, the sicker to your stomach you feel and the more shocked that people aren't seeing this clearly. In WHAT alter-universe would you EVER want a young woman to surrender her spirit and initimacy to her father--to the point that young women getting married in this movement have talked about their struggle to submit to their husbands when his vision and desires differ from her father's...the ones she was trained for.

And, BJU doesn't fall under these new ideas. HOWEVER, they are Patriarchal without the SAHD movement, and because they have diverged from the current trends, they are a dying institution now. They are losing students, enrollment and funds. They just laid off massive amounts of staff and are talking about having to close their doors. In comparision. Liberty University saw this movement coming and converted nearly all their programs to online options, and consequently are now the LARGEST private university in this nation. If Dad approves of higher education, then a daughter may comfortably and safely pursue that education via Liberty from home. However, she only gets that opportunity in the first place if her father believes women should be educated. If he doesn't, then she will be barred from further education, regardless of her desires and dreams.

[ClassicMom]

Originally Posted by purple_kangaroo

I think if we are going to make a list it would be good to include facts and evidence of exactly how these people are connected with VF.

Agreed. ICR was on the list but I'm not sure they should be. (I was the one who mentioned them initially.)

Doug Phillips is listed as an adjunct professor of apologetics with them, but I've been getting their material for a long time and have not seen any evidence that they support Vision Forum or the oddities VF promotes. For example, ICR has women on their staff, listed under the "Scientists" category, so they clearly don't agree with the idea of girls and women never working outside the home or going to college.

I'd like to write ICR to remind them of the icky things Phillips promotes through VF, but I don't intend to cut ties with ICR b/c of it. I direct an online magazine for women, and fully understand that you simply can't agree 100% with everyone who writes/works for you. Still, IMO VF is simply beyond the pale and it'd be good to remind ICR of that.

[purple_kangaroo]

Originally Posted by TestifyToLove

And, BJU doesn't fall under these new ideas. HOWEVER, they are Patriarchal without the SAHD movement

How are you defining Patriarchal? BJU strongly encourages even single women to become missionaries, doctors, teachers, etc. etc. and be out in the world being independent and doing great things (just not being pastors). They have stories and testimonies in their chapels and classes about how young people defied their parents to follow what they believed God was leading them to do in serving the Lord. They teach that obeying God rather than man may sometimes even, in some circumstances, mean disobeying (although not dishonoring) parents. Even in cases where the parents are not directly ordering children to sin, but are just not supporting what the young person feels God is leading them to do.

BJU is Southern, fundamentalist, and authoritarian in many ways, but I went to school there and I just do not see how they fit the Patriarchal label, since they do not teach that the father is the ultimate authority overriding all pastoral authority or God's direct leading, or that the family unit and parental authority overrides all other considerations, especially once young people reach adulthood. They do teach children to honor their parents, but not to the exclusion/overriding of their following their own convictions and hearing from God for themselves, especially as adults.

[TestifyToLove]

They teach women submit to men by definition that is patriarchal. Yes, they teach men submit to higher authority, in creepy, out of control ways, but they teach women are a step below men and must submit.

You can be Patriarchal and still allow women out into the world. You can be Patriarchal and allow women to pursue education. Ask yourself what they would support if a woman was in conflict with the will of her HUSBAND. Patriarchal is about a woman's place in a hiearchy underneath her husband, and BJU most certainly subscribes to that idea.

[BarefootBetsy]

I've put info about then ties everyone that I have info on has to VF and removed those whom I'm not certain have ties.

Dr. John Morris, president of the ICR, has made at least one movie working with Doug Phillips and several other men who are high up in the VF hierarchy such as Peter Bradrick (the latter whom I have now added to my original post with an explanation of his connection).

[purple_kangaroo]

I was also just about the only person I knew of there who had ever heard of courtship, much less practiced it. BJU strongly promoted dating.

[TestifyToLove]

Perhaps you might understand if I called is Dominionism versus Patriarchy irt BJU. They absolutely teach wives submit to husbands. They also teach an unhealthy underlying submission to authority, regardless of gender. However, authority is found in MEN at BJU. Women walk away from their parents at adulthood but remain under the authority of a husband, or if there is no husband than the leadership.

Because VF and their ilk have taken Patriarchal concepts even further than BJU doesn't make them not Patriarchal, it makes them (incredibly) less controlling on that aspect, thus why Dominionism might be a better term for you to grasp what I'm talking about.

Honestly, until the rise of this SAHD stuff, all Patriarchal groups acknowledged that parental authority ended at adulthood and spousal authority didn't begin until marriage. The question of what happened to a single, adult woman is what led to the rise of SAHD ideologies. Once those arrose, it was easy to take them further and extend the authority of a father over adult daughters, to married adult daughters, to state that he must transfer his authority to a husband...yet in some ways she still falls under his authority...and for that matter adult sons do as well.

This new stance of Patriarchy and SAHD has been an evolution. Before it began, they were in agreement with BJU and others such as Micheal Pearl who have not follow down the path of this current evolution.

[purple_kangaroo]

I would say BJU does believe that women should not be in spiritual leadership over men. I would, if pressed to put a term to it, probably call their theology in reference to men and women complementarian from what I know of it. To me that is not the same thing as the Patriarchy movement.

I do not see complementarian theology as equivalent with the Patriarchy moment, although they do share some ideas. If you lump all complementarians in with VF, that's going to be a very, very large pool.

[TestifyToLove]

BJU's defintion of dating would fall far more into the category of courtship in the rest of the world though.

I would not define what BJU calls dating as real dating, not in a million years. I would call it control of the couple, and extending authority of the leadership in leu of the absent parental authority.

[BarefootBetsy]

My criteria for being involved with VF are basically supporting them through either writing (books or blogs) or funding, working for/with them, or promoting the very same extra-Biblical beliefs VF holds in other ways.

There are a LOT of people involved in promoting this stuff right now. It's very disturbing really. I've never sat down and actually looked at how many different people are involved in this stuff

I'm not even including more reputable teachers like John Piper who are starting to lean in a more Dominionist/patriarchal direction in recent years, but who haven't actually (to my knowledge) endorsed Vision Forum or worked extensively with them.

ETA - and I wouldn't lump complementarians in general in with VF or "Biblical Patriarchy"/Patriocentricity either.

[TestifyToLove]

I would lump Complementarians with Patriarchy. I wouldn't classify BJU as complementarian either, especially not looking at them historically. I would no sooner consider their stance Complementarian as I would consider them a beacon of racial equality, tbh. In both cases, the words they use and the policies and actions they implement don't line up to reality simply because they want it to.

[purple_kangaroo]

BJU did not in the least promote the ideas I associate with the courtship movement. The school did have extreme controls over the *physical* aspects of purity, but nothing even close to the teachings of courtship when it came to emotional purity.

(removing my personal experiences, since I can't back those up with public statements from the school)

[Hermana Linda]

Originally Posted by purple_kangaroo

I saw that tag, read all the articles linked in that post, and the only connection I saw to why Bob Jones Jr. would even be tagged in that post is that the author of the post you linked to mentioned him in a list of "Christian fundamentalists." That is not at all the same thing as being connected with the patriarchy movement or Vision Forum. There are lots of fundamentalists, including Bob Jones Jr., who would vehemently disagree with many or most of Vision Forum's teachings.



Correct. Quiverfull does not equal Patriarchy any more than homeschooling, being a SAHM, or any of the other teachings that VF turns into moral absolutes and include in their teachings do in themselves equal Patriachy.

For example, Vision Forum teaches that everyone should homeschool, but there are many homeschoolers that do not follow VF philosophies or agree with their teachings. So it would probably be accurate to say that all VF followers are homeschoolers, but would be wildly inaccurate to say or assume that all homeschoolers are VF followers.

There are also many people who don't use birth control but do not at all fit in or agree with all of the other ideas and teachings many associate with the Quiverfull movement.

I think it's extremely important to make sure there is really good, solid evidence before putting names out there as being connected with VF.

I totally agree. I hope you didn't think that I was arguing that those people should be included in the list. I had said in the first place that I was not sure and when challenged I was excusing myself by explaining where I found them.