Ophelia of Butterflies and Wheels has been writing some excellent posts lately about the abuse and oppression of women in Christian communities. One of them led me to an outstanding blog titled Love, Joy, Feminism. Its author, Libby Anne, grew up in an incredibly strict and fundamentalist Christian home that practiced a way of life she calls “Christian Patriarchy” (some might also refer to it as the Quiverfull movement). She and all her (twelve!) siblings were homeschooled, indoctrinated with religion from their earliest years, taught that women’s role in life is to obey men and that women must give up their dreams and ambitions to better subordinate themselves to their future husbands.
Despite the endless chores and incessant hard work, despite the perpetual religious indoctrination, despite the beatings doled out as discipline, Libby Anne’s childhood wasn’t miserable. On the contrary, she remembers it as a blissfully happy time. She genuinely wanted to be a good, submissive daughter, and took pleasure in fulfilling her parents’ expectations. She was excited about the idea of her father selecting a husband for her, which she viewed as a romantic fantasy, and she couldn’t wait to become a housewife and devote the rest of her life to serving her husband and having as many children as possible for Jesus’ right-wing cause. One could, of course, argue that this was the happiness of enforced ignorance; she was happy in this way of life because she had nothing to compare it to, because she literally wasn’t aware that there were any other ways to live.
How did she escape this? Despite all they believed about Christian patriarchy, her parents also valued education, and they allowed her to go to college. While she was there, she met people who didn’t follow the script, people who led happy, fulfilled lives despite not hewing to the strict rules she grew up with, which she’d always been taught was impossible. She also found herself defending her religious beliefs for the first time, and she kept encountering arguments she’d never heard before, arguments that could punch holes in the beliefs she’d grown up learning as absolute truth. Eventually, the worldview she’d been taught crumbled, and despite intense emotional pressure and guilt-tripping by her parents, she found the courage and the honesty to walk away. (See also her longer account of her deconversion.)
One thing I noticed while reading these posts is the startling number of similarities there are between the Christian patriarchy and the Islamic one: women kept isolated at home, forbidden to work, get an education or travel without male approval. (Libby Anne’s parents were unusual in letting her go to college; here’s another post by an escapee who didn’t, and now laments her inability to support herself.) They’re taught that their only role in life is to serve and obey men, treated as property to be passed off from father, to husband, and sometimes to son – this happens in fundamentalist Christian communities as well as Islamic ones.
Another observation, readily apparent, is how absolutely consumed by fear these people’s lives are. Parents who follow the teachings of Christian patriarchy are, necessarily, terrified of letting their children come into contact with any idea that doesn’t conform with what they’ve been taught – which is why they go to such extreme lengths to isolate themselves. Despite biblical verses like the Great Commission, we’re increasingly seeing believers like Libby Anne’s parents conceding the battleground of ideas, propagating their beliefs only by reproducing and not even attempting to convince outsiders. As society becomes more secular and atheism becomes more influential, we’re going to see more of this sort of thing: fundamentalists retreating into these isolated, closed-off bubbles and locking the door behind them.
This is just what Daniel Dennett is talking about when he writes in Breaking the Spell that any faith which has to “hoodwink โ or blindfold โ [its] children to ensure that they confirm their faith when they are adults, [that] faith ought to go extinct.” But that’s easier said than done, and it creates a dilemma for us. How can we effectively evangelize for atheism and teach ideals of human freedom and liberty to those inside these communities? How can we reach people when their entire upbringing is organized to deny them contact with the outside world? I don’t have a good answer for this, but I’m open to suggestions.