"For Our Daughters"
Because it is time to make sure the next generation is free......
In the eighth chapter of The Making of Biblical Womanhood, I offer a glimpse of my “Me Too” story. This is what I wrote:
“I haven’t told you my darkest story. I haven’t told you how I was once invited to a series of evening seminars led by a popular conservative speaker named Bill Gothard; I went. I didn’t know that Gothard’s Institute in Basic Life Principles had already been plagued by scandal and accusations of abuse. I didn’t consider that Gothard’s teachings—that God’s perfect design was best expressed “in the authoritarian rule of men”—could become dangerous. I didn’t consider how the young man who had invited me might internalize Gothard’s teachings about how a wife owed total submission to her husband or how he might apply them to our dating relationship. According to Gothard, we weren’t dating. We were courting, which meant marriage was our future. I didn’t consider that as he listened to Gothard’s teachings about God’s ordained ‘chain of command,’ this young man might become an abuser.”
For those of you have read the book, you know I continue sharing about this experience; how it almost buried my young self; and how God saved me in the nick of time. I am a survivor of Christian patriarchy. But I am a lucky survivor. I got out early enough that I never experienced marriage to an abuser; I never experienced sexual trauma from a pastor; I never experienced a pastor silencing my story of abuse.
For too many women in too many conservative churches, their stories are different. They weren’t as lucky as me.
Their stories are also not anomalous. They are not “just” unlucky women who happened to find themselves in the path of a sexual predator. Their stories of abuse connect to a larger pattern within the subculture of conservative Christianity that envisions a “Christian” nation characterized by the authoritarian rule of men and the subjugation of women. The same churches that silenced these women and protected (even valorized) their abusers also support a man for president of the United States who brags about sexually assaulting women.
Is there a connection? I think so, but I’ll let you listen to the evidence and decide for yourself.
Tomorrow marks the day that some of these women will share their stories in a powerful documentary film created pro bono and released for free streaming on YouTube. I encourage you to not only watch it, but to share it, to discuss it, and to consider the impact of a theology that teaches women are less than men not only in the church but in the U.S. writ large.
For those who have eyes to see and ears to hear: For Our Daughters streams tomorrow.
I’m looking forward to watching it today. I, too, attended a Gothard seminar, but it was in the 70s when he was just going to churches and hadn’t become a ‘thing’ yet. I thought it was silly—this young, single guy telling people how to raise their children. I couldn’t imagine what it would become.
Thanks for the tip. I had not heard of this film yet. 💜