If you are interested, there is a lively discussion going on at the True Womanhood blog regarding the new video being released by Anna Sophia and Elizabeth Botkin, authors of So Much More.
The topic of discussion is Return of the Daughters. I suggest you watch the video embedded here below before you go to the TW blog so you can watch it without being influenced by the post and comments first. (For what it’s worth, my comment is number 16.)
From Amazon:
Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin are taking the message of visionary daughterhood to a new level and into a new medium. This controversial documentary will take viewers into the homes of several young women who have dared to defy today’s anti-family culture in pursuit of a biblical approach to daughterhood, using their in-between years to pioneer a new culture of strength and dignity, and to rebuild Western Civilization, starting with the culture of the home.
Here is the trailer.
Thank you for linking to this interesting entry and the “True Womanhood” blog. The entire blog looks like a delightful read.
I recently purchased “So Much More” and have felt very uncomfortable about what I read ever since. I cannot really place a finger on what part of the book made me feel odd, but I have come away with some very strange feelings about everything I read.
Wow, thanks for pointing that out. I’ve been following that “movement” with interest and concern. I left a comment essentially “dittoing” yours, Sallie.
Mrs. Brigham,
I read this book and was disturbed too. It took me awhile to really figure out why it was disturbing to me. I felt like I should be agreeing w/ it..
I finally realized what it was (for me). They were taking the wife scriptures and applying them to the father/ daughter role. It’s a wrong use of Scripture and not the role our daughters are to play. God may have a man for them to be a helpmeet to…but it shouldn’t be their Dad. That is the wifely role.
Blessings,
Renee
Hi Sallie-
I love your blog and check it almost everyday. I have been wanting to respond to your post about the new advertising you are doing on your blog. I am just now getting to, and I’m sure you know how that goes!
I was a little dissapointed also that you decided to post advertisements. I do realize that it is your blog and you are the one who takes the time to submit posts, so in all reality you should be able to do whatever you want with your blog. I just always skip over the posts that are about advertisements and return the next day hoping to see that you’ve posted something “real” and not a commercial.
Thanks for all you do, I enjoy reading your blog!
Well…I certainly don’t know enough about this entire “movement” to really try and have an intellegent discussion with anyone, but here are my thoughts regardless… 😉 None of what I have to say is meant with malice or ill will at all.
I have to agree with Renee and her thoughts. I am most disturbed to see a relationship that is portrayed in the bible as between a husband and wife as one that is also desirable between a father and a daughter. It isn’t up to the daughter to be her father’s ‘helpmeet’, and it isn’t up to just Dad to ‘protect her purity,” and yada yada yada. I take real issue with sheltering our girls so closely, but giving no regard or equal effort (that I have yet to see) for the boys. To me, this type of a relationship seems almost incestual. Very strange indeed. I know my husband and I dated the old fashioned way…he pursued me, I let him, then I ran off (or tried to get away!), he pursued and wooed me, and the rest is history (or marriage. 🙂 ). None of this parental involvement/thinly veiled arranged marriage for me… and I’d never do that to my children either. But, I also take issue with this set of ideals for the same reason that I see so many large families passing off the responsibility of raising the youngest ones to the oldest children BECAUSE they are still at home. People talk about lack of parenting in non-Christian circles, but I’m seeing it just as much in the ‘quiverful’ circles.
My husband and I will encourage college…we’re both heavily college educated for it, and none the worse for wear (I even pledged a sorority…before I was saved. Try explaining to your sisters why you will no longer party with them like you did. It was a difficult witnessing situation, but it started a bible study in our chapter. YAY!). I won’t FORCE our kids to stay home, but if they want to, great! Less money for Mom and Dad to spend, more time to be a family and encourage positive Christian values/living.
I think that if a woman chooses to stay home with her family, and her husband supports this choice, then it is the right choice for THEIR family. While I’d LOVE to be able to stay home once my little one is born, the REALITY is that I HAVE to go back to work at 6 weeks. I also feel that if a woman chooses to work, her husband has to be okay with it as well…to a certain degree. If he is forcing her to stay home, it is nothing short of abuse. I just fail to see how my working outside of the home, going to college/being educated, etc, make me less of a biblical Christian than the Botkin girls.
I also have to agree with Sallie’s posts at TW: why are these lovely, well spoken teenagers giving ADULTS advice? And why are the adults gobbling it up like, well…Scripture??
Just my thoughts for the night… 🙂
Interesting discussion; thanks for the link, Sallie! Like you mentioned, my main concern is the harm that can be done by this kind of teaching.
I’ve seen too many families wrecked by legalistic tendencies… and too few helped. Granted, there may be people who come out on the other side happier, healthier, and holier in the end… but just a few abusive fathers will make this “model†home look like a hurricane came through.
Some women may choose for themselves to stay home, etc. I know one who did that is content and pleased with life. But I also know skads of college-educated women who are delightfully serving their families at home. So even if that is your sole aim in life (stay-home wife/mother), there is clearly not one solitary path to that end. And it seems a bit silly as others have said, for Christian women to be sitting around gobbling up the “teachings†of a couple of young girls who are trying to get where we’re at, but are saying that you can’t get where we’re at in the way we did. We know it to be false.
Heresy may be strong language- we can all go off course fairly easily when we get excited about a particular doctrine or teaching. Someone once told me, “stay on the road- the ditch is wide on both sides.†We can stray too far into judging by legalistic standards, and then we can stray too far by judging by lenient standards. Some of us tend towards one and some tend towards the other– but the point is- we all, even the Botkin sisters, I’d wager, need help staying on the road.
One young lady in the documentary said “I know that my lifestyle is counter cultural.†Only in the past one-hundred years has this lifestyle become counter cultural. My own family lived out this Biblical model for centuries up until about 60 years ago. What do we have to show for it now? College educated divorcees with broken homes and/or children with broken homes. Our culture has taken a bad turn. I think if most were to reclaim and practice this Biblical model, our culture would improve. I don’t think the Botkin sisters are promoting that a daughter behave like a wife. For centuries children have worked to keep the family going, especially on a farm. All shared the same vision. It’s not “incestual†to support one’s father in his modern-day vision. Come on! Also, I don’t think parent’s are shirking their duty when they expect older siblings to help with the younger. How else is one to master the basics of childrearing? I know from experience that doing this on the job is not pleasant!
I for one regret every moment I spent in a college classroom. I studied history (graduated with a BA) and realize now that I could have studied history at home while learning how to care for a home and family. This knowledge, that is so vital to my life now, was acquired and is still being acquired on the job. Not an easy task. College is not necessary. Oh, but one needs college in case something happens!!! Not if one’s father, brothers, uncles, and male cousins know that one of their primary responsibilities is protecting the women of their fold, not just expecting them to make their own way!
Oh, but a homeschool mom needs college to teach her children! Teaching children is not such a difficult task that it requires a college education. I for one know the type of students who go into education. Many are exceptional, but just as many aren’t. Many are just Praxis crammers who then go on to sub-standard diploma mills to get their masters because they have to. College nowadays is a money-making scheme, and one that usually places a serious burden of debt upon the student or parents. Also, not everyone should go to college, but many who don’t do, and because enrollment numbers need to be kept high, the classes are dumbed down.
A serious classical education can be had a home. This is how it was done in the past, and there is nothing keeping this from happening today. It boggles my mind that so many homeschooled children of the past and even public schooled children of the past were much more articulate and educated than many people today — even many with college educations. I do admit, though, that in today’s society, most males, unless they engage in a family business or agrarian endeavors, have to go to college because of the high esteem this culture has placed on a college education which makes it almost impossible to land a good-paying job without at least a BS, especially now that women are competing for jobs.
The Biblical model may not be the only model, but it is the best. If it were the only option for women I think our culture would be the better for it. One does NOT have to go to college “realize†the gifts God has given. Just pick up a classic and learn! Start a blog and write! Seek a knowledgeable person in a field you are interested in a offer to be an apprentice! Save yourself the time, trouble, and money of a devalued college education. Life is the real school — especially for women.
I didn’t post this over at TW but I’ll just be short and succinct as I can here.
The beauty of the Body of Christ is how DIFFERENT we all are. Sure, we have to have some core beliefs to consider ourselves the true Body of Christ and must be unified in the core issues. However, how each of us walks that out in our own very lives can, will, and should look differently amongst us.
I think of the Pharisees and how they wanted to push the circumcision issue. Back then, all had to “look the same” to fit the model and be accounted as true and holy.
When we force extra-biblical mandates like the whole patriarchy thing we are doing just what the Pharisees did, in my opinion. It looks different but it is indeed a divisive measure within the Body.
It saddens me we can’t focus more on our commonalities than to always be discussing our differences.
FWIW, I am college educated and while I didn’t have the greatest collegiate experience, I’m still grateful for the opportunity to grow my faith and learn to be more independent as an individual. I’m all for Biblical femininity, where we as girls and women fulfill our roles as a woman in Christ. But adding in extra requirements that are NOT scriptural is dangerous. As “beautiful” as the whole woman veiled by her father sounds, it is also extra-biblical and not a scriptural mandate.
Thank you for bringing this discussion to attention.
I agree with Jess so much on this point. I feel myself a “young Christian”~ I may not be physically ‘young’ (at 25), but it is only within the last year and a half that I have come to a true relationship with Christ, after being “saved” from the age of five and raised in the church. I felt deeply convicted that I needed to know God’s Word…to read it for myself, and seek understanding…something I had never done until this last year. I am not quite through my first time through the Bible from cover to cover.
For that very reason, I am very careful as to the spiritual matters I discuss on my blog. I will freely testify to God’s provision and movement in my life, but I will rarely, if ever, comment on a theological sticking point because I fear my own misunderstanding of the Scriptures. Perhaps in time I will, but I would be loath to post something that would lead my readers away from the Truth of God’s Word. (Please don’t think this is a judgement or anything against bloggers who do…I greatly enjoy and am encouraged by many of you wonderful women like Sallie and Jess who challenge me constantly to think and evaluate the Scripture.) It’s just where I am at personally.
Which is why the film troubles me. I am not sure where the Botkin sisters are getting their authority. I am not even sure (as many have pointed out) that they are holding to their own evaluations of what is “authority” (being under the local Church, for example). Things aren’t lining up. I am woefully ill equipped to examine it all. But you bet after reading all of this I will be reading the Word and praying for discernment in all of this. Because something is off, and I can’t quite articulate what it is.
Sallie, thanks so much for the link. I started out reading it with my husband, but we ended up stopping after every comment debating it, and so we decided in the interest of time to just read it on our own. It’s now 1:30am and I blame you for when I’m so tired at work tomorrow. 😉 But thank you for posting the link. I think what Spunky said about girls reading the book and getting frustrated when their fathers don’t subscribe to the same thing hit me close to home. I read a lot of blogs here that say wives shouldn’t work – even before kids. I really, really, really want to quit my job and be a SAHW, but my husband wants me to continue with the good job I have for now so we can pay off our loans faster. I’ve struggled a lot with accepting that, and reading blogs doesn’t necessarily help.
Paul (my hubby) is frustrated that these women put so much emphasis on daughters and fathers, and they forget what we’re really supposed to be doing: representing Christ. As Paul said, “Fathers in themselves should only be a shadow of the relationship between God and ourselves but not the sustenance. If this movement strives to put the father as a new kind of priest or turn out focus off of Christ then I would have to strongly disagree.”
Wow- I read almost all of the comments over at the other site. I kept thinking “is this book for real?” It just seems so legalistic, and as someone pointed out, if “daughters staying home” is a Biblical precept, why isn’t it one that must be carried out by Christians worldwide?
That is the beauty of the Gospel- it applies to every human on earth. This stuff, while not bad by itself, shouldn’t be anything more than a personal preference.
I also had to wonder about what all this “Vision Forum” stuff is all about. I live in the southeast, go to a large Christian church here, and have never heard of these VF people, who seem very extreme and odd. Is VF more of a midwestern group? They also remind me a bit of the International Church of Christ.
Thank you for all the great comments. I’m not going to try to respond to each one and I hope everyone understands. I did want to answer Louise’s question. VF is based in San Antonio, Texas. They have followers all over the USA and probably in different parts of the world. But as a lifelong midwestern gal I’m happy to say that we don’t lay claim to VF. That’s for the folk in Texas. 🙂