It’s interesting that just as I finished my second read of Kathryn Joyce’s remarkably insightful book, “Quiverfull,” an example of the Biblical patriarchy movement that I find repellant in its stark disregard for the Gospel of the New Testament, news of the resignation of one of Christiandom’s most powerful patriarchs rocked the Right Wing.
Doug Phillips, founder and president of Vision Forum Ministries and head of its commercial arm, Vision Forum, Inc., has stepped down from his ministerial, speaking, and leadership position after acknowledging a “lengthy and inappropriate” relationship with a woman. The father of eight young patriarchalists and wife of a staunch anti-feminist has promised that he will devote this time apart from ministry to reestablishing trust with his family and followers and demonstrating true Biblical repentance and restoration. As I have said elsewhere, I feel great sorrow for the Phillips family and I wish Doug Phillips the fullest measure of God’s restorative grace and healing. This is not a time to rejoice. While I believe that “Biblical Patriarchy” is a vicious oxymoron that promises a perverted Gospel of female subjugation and oppression, I can’t — and you can’t, either — rejoice in any person’s fall. I don’t.
But I do believe it’s important to continue examining this movement — not just Vision Forum, although its beliefs and practices, not to mention its heavily sex-segregated toys, are repugnant to me in their arrogant embrace of hierarchy and control — but other groups, individuals, and movements who call for the dominion of the world through “full quivers” of children in submission to patriarchs. The Quiverfull movement that Joyce so aptly describes is a horror, turning the Good News of the Gospel into a life of fetters and prison bars for the women redeemed by it. This is a pernicious cancer in the Church, and my prayer for Doug Phillips is that he would emerge not just as a repentant, restored sinner and brother, but a man who recognizes that the fruit of Biblical Patriarchy is so rotten that it deserves to be buried in a theological, exegetical, doctrinal Gehenna.
The Huffington Post has an interesting take on Phillips’ resignation. You can read it at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-ingersoll/doug-phillips-the-big-scandal_b_4195155.html