NOTE: This excerpt is from an interview by Sarah Jones which first appeared at PoliticusUSA. 

My thanks to PoliticusUSA for the opportunity to raise awareness concerning the growing threat of the Quiverfull movement to women's equality in the American political arena.

Born to Breed: The Quiverfull Movement and its impact on patriarchal policies and right wing politics; an interview I conducted with Vyckie Garrison, a courageous woman who left the biblical patriarchal Quiverfull movement.

Sarah Jones: Can you define “Quiverfull movement” and what you’ve identified as the patriarchal beliefs behind it? 

Vyckie Garrison: I like to define Quiverfull as a very powerful head trip. It’s an all-encompassing vision of a big, happy family which infects the mind and affects every aspect of a Believer’s life. The term “Quiverfull” comes from a reference in Psalm 127 which likens children to “arrows” in the hands of a mighty man, “blessed is the man who has his quiver full of them.”

Quiverfull Believers eschew all forms of birth control in favor of “trusting the Lord” with their family planning. The Quiverfull ideal embraces a “biblical” model (read, fundamentalist) of the traditional family which insists that the husband is the head of the household and the wife is the submissive “helpmeet.”

Sarah Jones: How do those beliefs manifest for wives and female children? Can you give us some examples of expectations of wives and daughters that might surprise our readers? 

Vyckie Garrison: In practice, the Quiverfull ideals often result in larger-than-average families (think, Jim Bob & Michelle Duggar of TLCs “19 & Counting” fame) in which the woman stays at home having babies, homeschooling, homesteading, dressing “modestly,” and most importantly, serving and submitting to her “lord,” i.e., her patriarchal husband.

The Quiverfull lifestyle is extremely demanding and the only way a woman can hope to succeed is to rely heavily on her older daughters. It is expected that a Quiverfull daughter will be fully capable of running the household, including all meal-preparation, laundry duties, child care and homeschooling of younger siblings by the age of twelve. Many girls are doing all this by the time they’re eight or ten because their mothers are so consumed with birthing more and more “arrows” to fill the quivers of their husbands.

A Quiverfull daughter is taught from a young age that her purpose in life is to serve the man whom God has placed in authority over her. She serves her father while she lives at home (she does this primarily by assisting her mother in domestic duties and child care). She absolutely must remain a virgin and is taught to expect to meet and marry her future husband through a father-led match-making process called “courtship.” Her education is geared toward developing domestic skills ~ college is generally considered unnecessary and even dangerous for her spiritual well-being.

Sarah Jones: What justification was given for the rule of the patriarch and how does that fit in with mainline Christianity versus fundamentalist, extremist versions of Christianity?

Vyckie Garrison: It is my contention that the Quiverfull movement is regular Christianity lived out to its logical conclusions. When Christians teach “the husband is the head of his wife” (Eph. 5:23), Quiverfull Believers put that into practice ~ and nearly every time, the husband becomes a despot in his own home.

While the majority of Christians will have their excuses for why their wife has to work outside the home, or why they personally cannot have more than two children, or why it won’t work for them to homeschool. If you ask the average Evangelical what a truly godly, “biblical” family looks like, they will begin to list Quiverfull ideals:

• Husband as head of the household and final authority (Eph. 5:23)
• Wives submit to their husbands (Colossians 3:18)
• Obedient children (Eph. 6:1)
• Trust the Lord with family planning (i.e., no birth control ~ Psalm 127)
• Stay-at-home-mothers (Titus 2:3)
• Homeschool the children (Matthew 12:17 ~ “render unto God that which is God’s” ~ since children bear the image of God, parents ought not render them unto Caesar, i.e., government schools. See also, Deut. 6:7)
• Modest dress (1 Peter 3:3)
• Debt-free living (Romans 13:8)
• Political domination (Psalm 127 and The Dominion Mandate in Genesis 1:28)

In my experience, the “average Christian” believes most all of the principles of patriarchy taught in the Quiverfull movement, fortunately for Christian women, few actually put it into practice the way Quiverfull Believers do.

Sarah Jones: How did these beliefs impact your political positions while you were still in the movement, and were you encouraged to get your political worldviews from a particular source?

Vyckie Garrison: As a Quiverfull Believer, I considered myself “radically pro-life,” which I described this way:

“Why do Christians seek to limit the size of their families through the use of chemical birth control? The truth be told, our reasoning generally parallels that of the abortion culture – additional children will cause inconvenience, financial hardships, lifestyle constraints – all this coupled with the desire to separate sex from procreation. How can the Church expect to speak with any moral authority on the evils of abortion when we ourselves are guilty of the very anti-life values fueled by the family planning mentality?” [Excerpt from a column I wrote for the “pro-life, pro-family” newspaper which I published from 1993-2008.]

The most prominent “pro-life” groups such as National Right to Life, Concerned Women for America, etc., were much too wishy-washy for me. I was exposed to the most extreme aspects of Dominionism. I felt that James Dobson, Tony Perkins, even Don Wildmon were lightweights; I much preferred the uncompromising Randall Terry, and Paul dePairie was better yet. When Flip Benham of Operation Save America came to Nebraska, I baked chicken-pot pies for him and we packed all our friends and associates into our livingroom to hear Flip speak about what it really means to storm the gates of Hell (Planned Parenthood) and take back America for God.

A woman’s “choice” was anathema to me because I believed that I was not my own; I had been bought with a price (the blood of Christ ~ 1 Cor. 6:20) and therefore, I sought to “honor God with my body” which essentially meant dutifully birthing seven “foot soldiers for Jesus,” nearly losing my life on more than one occasion.

Sarah Jones: Do Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann (both of whom share a belief in the bible replacing the constitution; i.e., a theocratic takeover of the American government) represent the beliefs you were taught and if so, how? If not, why?

Vyckie Garrison: When I was a fully-convinced Quiverfull believer, I did question how Sarah Palin could justify her political activities so long as she had children still living at home. I also thought it ironic that, according to the ideals she espouses, women should not hold authority over men, or even be allowed to vote for that matter.

Still, I supported Palin because she understands and promotes conservative Christian “family values.” I was especially impressed by her convictions with regard to “taking back America for God” — in my Quiverfull-colored opinion, Sarah Palin “got it.” Meaning, of course, that she has a decent understanding of Dominionist principles and she has a plan to lead America toward a “truly Biblical” (read, theocratic) society.

I left the Quiverfull movement before Michelle Bachman came into much prominence on the political scene, but … ditto for her.

Sarah Jones: How do you see this far right religious movement impacting far right politics today?

Continue reading the interview ....