I confess I am slightly obsessed with the Quiverfull movement lately. I checked out Kathryn Joyce’s Quiverfull from the library, and it is really good. I also live in the same general area as the Duggars, so I have watched a few episodes of their show (it’s interesting to watch a familiar street on television).

I get mixed feelings watching it. For the most part, it’s like the general feeling of watching a train about to wreck, but you can’t look away. I realize how close I was to embracing this movement. I hadn’t really heard of it until recently, but I have danced dangerously close to the line. I recognize half the names in Joyce’s book, and have read and heard several of these leaders speak. My parents love Bill Gothard and Ken Ham, and my Baptist college loved Piper.

I was the most conservative when I was 18, right before leaving for college. I read Lady in Waiting and I Kissed Dating Goodbye multiple times. I soaked in every Beth Moore Bible study, and had long discussions concerning conservative theology with my mother. I even briefly considered forsaking college. I can remember asking my mom why we didn’t grow out our hair or wear skirts all the time after hearing a speaker plead to our femininity on a conservative Christian radio station. She told me she simply never felt convicted. I didn’t understand, though, because we followed all the other verses. I tried to grow out my hair on my own (a huge mess) and wear skirts (that lasted no time at all since I attended a public school). In the end, I just figured, maybe someday. If I had caught the eye of a Quiverfull boy during that time period, that is probably what I would be today.

My downfall was public school and that I went to college so far away from home: three hours. Don’t get me wrong, my parents tried to pull me out of my private Christian school and homeschool me in the seventh grade. It lasted three weeks. I did not have the temperament for homeschooling and my working mother did not have the time or energy to make me. The next year, they pulled out both of my brothers instead, and I started public school. Then I went to a conservative college, but the college’s brand of Christianity was actually too liberal for the taste of many in the state. Most pastors I talked to and worked with preferred students from the other Baptist school in the state. I’d had no idea there could have been that much of a difference, and I had actually thought that the other one was more liberal.  So no Quiverfull boys there. There were courtship fans, but courtship often does not work away from home. I really liked one boy, but his dating requirements were so bizarre that I knew I would be waiting forever just to find out if he liked me. Then I met my (now ex) husband. We tried the courtship thing. It lasted long enough for him to ask my father if he could see me. Then we realized that courtship really wasn’t superior to dating. If a courtship relationship didn’t work out, you still had to break up! How is that different from dating ? A broken heart is a broken heart, and a broken heart that truly believed that a relationship was heading for marriage could be even worse. Courtship can also be more confusing to navigate. While you are in the friendship stage, it is very hard to tell whether a guy likes you or not. If you have two guys that seem to like you, do you pick the first one who asks, or do you hold out for the second one because you like him just a teensy bit better even though he may only be interested in friendship? As a woman, you’re not allowed to ask. I chose guy number one. I occasionally wonder what my life would be like if I had chosen guy #2: better? Worse? Would I still be single? I still don’t know if he actually liked me! I most certainly felt more confused and vulnerable trying to make courtship fit than I do now, so there goes most of its premise. (Of course, I haven’t ever really had the opportunity to casually date, so that may be a difference.)

Then there is the whole kissing thing with courtship. I do know at least one couple who waited to kiss before marriage, and they seem pretty happy. But abstinence doesn’t work for everyone. Anyone who’s been reading my blog for any length of time knows what a train wreck abstinence was for me. We did kiss, so maybe that is how we went wrong. (That was a joke.) While I have not been with Steve for 45 years, I can definitely tell you that our relationship at 18 months is FAR better than my last one at the same point in time. Your relationship is about the other person or it’s not. Saving the physical part for marriage is in no way some magical cure that will make everything good. While the books don’t say that directly (and would definitely all say you still need to work on your relationship), they do pass it off as superior: those who wait have better marriages. But it’s not necessarily true.

Is my life perfect?  Far from it! There are many parts of my life that I still struggle with. I battle depression a lot. But the vast majority of what is a mess in my life is my attempts at trying to pick up the pieces and clean up the disaster that Biblical principles left behind. Hence why I feel incredibly sorry for anybody who feels trapped in a life that isn’t exactly what the books promised it would be. It’s hard to leave it: you’re supposed to sacrifice, die to yourself to achieve God’s plan. Unfortunately, what nobody tells you is that if you die to yourself, you just die. If you ever wonder why people stay in it even if they are miserable, that’s why: once you’re in, it’s very hard to get out.

Tags: Christianity, courtship, Quiverfull, religion

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 at 6:29 am and is filed under My Story, fundamentalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.