Some of Tulip Girl’s observations [in the comments on this TW thread] gleaned from living abroad as missionaries,
“One of the things the the Lord did in my life during our time in Ukraine was help point out in my own heart and life how many of my OWN ideas were not from the Bible, as I thought they were–but were instead reflections of the Generic North American Protestant (GNAP) subculture. GNAP is something Hubby has written about a lot in the past, and yet it took being submerged in another culture for me to see how much I mixed Biblical truths with subculture ideals.”
As one emerging from fundamentalism and trying to discover what is actually Biblical truth and what is (usually well-intentioned) faulty interpretation via a cultural lens, I resonate with this, and even more so after having been in the super-conservative-homeschool-large-family-etc camp for almost a decade. As if she was reading my mind’s response, only with much more insight and a FAR greater level of depth, Joanna from England writes [emphasis mine] a stunning observation below.
From the P.O.V of an outsider looking in (and I don’t want to offend anyone here), perhaps one of the biggest issues with what I see when I look at some Christian circles, and one of the biggest issues where culturally the GNAP mindset crosses the bible is the prevalent last-century-patriarchal-pseudo-agrarian visionary dream world that is presented as the only biblical way to live, as if God wants all true Christians to live on isolated farms in the country, keep to their own type and race of people, home school, home church, and wait for the Rapture or whatever.
This is a direct throwback, as I see it, to the reclusive mindset of the Pilgrim Fathers who took their ideas and families away from the sinfulness of England to live God’s word in a rural paradise, occasionally converting a few ‘heathen’ on the way, or often more conveniently forgetting that they too were God’s chosen people, treating them as worthless, and using quasi-Biblical assumptions about who the chosen people were to rob them of land health and livelihood. (Don’t worry, the English were guilty too! We did it all over the world.)
It is as if by recreating this agrarian lifestyle from a culturally desirable past, and making it appear one that is biblically mandated, modern Christians can partake of an almost pre-lapsarian purity, when in fact there is nothing sacred about any lifestyle, and this lifestyle in itself cannot justify or sanctify.
In reality, an agrarian lifestyle was back-breakingly hard; the life expectancy in rural communities was low, especially for women in childbirth, and with high rates of crippling accidents in young men and rheumatoid and arthritic problems once men hit 40. There was no real intrinsic virtue in that lifestyle – yes it was close to nature, but so is the tick that carries Lyme disease and the malaria-carrying mosquito.
Modesty was more often a function of covering up against the weather, sex was taken as a matter of fact, and far from this first kiss business, among true rural communities it was often considered a good thing for the bride to be pregnant on marriage as it proved her fertility.
Frugality and thrift, far from being a biblically mandated standard with which to beat neighbours over the head, were a simple matter of trying to ensure that you didn’t starve when the harvest failed. You procreated prolifically because you had no choice, because you needed labour for the land, and because the only insurance against a poverty stricken old age was having a few children left remaining after Death the Leveller had had his choice of your babes. Literacy was minimal, although there were usually some literate people in every community, and often many farmers and rural people memorised astonishingly long passages of Holy Scripture, and were truly devout and Christ-loving people.
This was no pre-lapsarian idyll at all; there was just as much backbiting, sin, and abuse as there is now, as humans haven’t changed that much, and we are still able to lead good lives only insofar as we are in grace. Ignorance, fear of the other, and prejudice were rife in rural cultures, and led to horrific events such as the witch trials in Salem. (They led to them in England too – you don’t have a monopoly – just to reassure that I’m being even handed.)
(It’s also interesting that one of the first thing ‘less developed cultures’ seem to do when they hit Westernisation, is to suffer an irreviersible drift – well, more flood, really, away from that supposedly idyllic agrarian lifestyle. This is becasue it’s harder work to work your **** off hoeing a field (My grandmother was a farmer’s wife, and I remember seeing her at 70 spudding up thistle roots in a field, wielding a slasher with the sweat dripping off her, and her chest wheezing – yes, I did help of course – and that was no plate of roses I can assure you. It was back and heart-breaking). Given the choice people choose an easier, less damaging lifestyle, that won’t leave you crippled, infested with parasites and blind from onchochariasis at 50.
Playing at an agrarian lifestyle is a luxury for upper middle class Christians with good financial back-up, plenty of insurance and a health service. The tragedy is that they sell it as the only biblically mandated way of living to gullible, innocent people, without that back-up, who will be broken and down and out in a generation.
In a way, your Christian patriarchs who hold up this culturally respectable lifestyle as close to God’s plan for man remind me of the French aristocrats who played at being sylvan shepherds and shepherdesses, silk and satin dressed, and spouting sentimental poetry, while all around them the starving mob cried for bread and festered in dirt and ignorance and poverty. The French aristocrats looked back fondly to an innocent Arcadian past to shield themselves from the disaster of their society; Vision Forum type Christians justify their isolationism and exclusionism by maintaining that the lifestyle they lead, which is based on the myth of an idyllic agrarian past where each man was an island – is biblically mandated as the only pure way to live; and one of the ways they do this by selectively choosing scriptures to support their cause.
They conveniently forget that the bible uses agrarian analogies because biblical Israel was an agrarian community. And like the French aristocrats, they frequently deride the sinfulness of the ‘masses’ and their irredeemable status (I was horrified by the comments about those poor people fleeing hurricane Katrina and what they were or weren’t wearing) as an excuse both to isolate themselves from contagion, and to avoid acknowledging any of their, and our collective responsibility for all the needy both in mind, body and spirit. And their mandate is culturally, not biblically directed
One thing they also seem to forget is that a major spread of Christianity was in the noisiest, least agrarian, smelliest, most unsavoury city in the world, a city where many people lived in insulae, blocks of flats with no plumbing or cooking facilities, and where those people who embraced Christianity and Jesus’ message of hope, faith and love were socially the lowest of the low. They were not the landowners, the ruling classes, the rich Duggars who made money from trading in real estate or finance. They were the dispossessed: the urban poor, the racially different, and the broken. I’d like to see what outreach to these people happens today – it’s biblically mandated, but doesn’t fit the cultural sub-set of agrarian self-sufficiency Pilgrim Father beliefs and ideals.
Unfortunately, the GNAP and Vision Forum (and I know these are not coterminous) mindset bears little resemblance to Christ’s and more to the Pilgrim Fathers’ -
and while the Pilgrim Father were doubtless devout, god-fearing and well meaning, they had fallen prey to that excusivity and fear of the other which is the price you pay for focusing too closely on your own personal salvation balance sheet, constantly totting up your assets and liabilites – Asset 1 – I bake my own bread: Liability 1 – I wore trousers on Tuesday – and not closely enough on what Christ told us to do and be. Yes, we believe and are justified by faith, but it doesn’t make us in any way superior to those who are not. Only Christ is above us all.And to return to the GNAP mindset, (which could be increasingly also GBP (Generic British Protestantism) one of its main issues is a presumption that by existing it is automatically axiomatically culturally superior – normative if you like – and other cultures haven’t quite got it – a modern version of the Pilgrim Fathers’ religious superiority. It is always instructive to consider the ways in which other cultures consider us inferior – Roma gypsies in England consider the Gorgio filthy, because they will wash clothes and themselves in the same receptacle; (ever washed out socks, or a pair of child’s knockers in a sink – I mean basin?) an almost Levitical sense of scrupulous cleanliness, and far nearer to Levitical mandates of cleanliness that anything we subscribe to today.
So culture crossing or conflicting with biblical mandates cuts both ways – we tend to pick and choose what suits us culturally and justify it by associating it with the bible. Where it doesn’t suit us culturally, we ignore it. (I don’t see Doug Phillips with a long beard, and that’s definitely a clear contravention of biblical mandate!)
Hat Tip to a True Womanhood blog post, Discerning Biblical Truth from GNAP Subculture.
Posted by Greg Anderson on April 13, 2008 at 11:08 am
Hiya Mollerz,
Great new post ya got here! American protestantism can vary from mild, to rigid and virulent fundamentalism; and from Joanna’s essay, it sounds like she’s referring to the latter form.
If and when you have time, check out Stephanie Coontz’s book: “The Way We Never Were”. It’s readable, and done by a Scholar who shows us that the mythic “good old day” were not so good after all. Just what you need, another book to read, Ha!
Posted by Atlantic on April 13, 2008 at 11:21 am
I knew if I kept lurking around here there’d be blogging eventually.
(Real Life is better, though!)
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I have to agree with some of Joanna’s post, but I still think that (just like with issues of authority) I’m reading accounts of groups taking a good thing, exaggerating it past all sense and virtue, which then leads to good people rejecting the whole thing, lock, stock and barrel. (I think it was Chesterton who observed that the errors of Protestantism are generally of this sort of exaggeration, but I don’t have time to look for the quote right now.)
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Of course, I’m coming at this from an entirely different direction than GNAP. My interest in self-sufficiency and The Good Life, as it were, pre-dated my return to Christianity and in fact influenced me towards Christianity. My major Christian influences regarding it have been the Catholic Distributivists such as G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc and Fr Vincent McNabb – the first two were English and the third lived most of his life in England, so this should not be entirely foreign to Joanna-in-England – and Catholic social teaching documents such as the 1891 papal encyclical href=”http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum_en.html”>Rerum Novarum, which was a foundational text for Distributivists.
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If this description is accurate, this is precisely what I mean by exaggeration.
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IIRC, the Pilgrims were Calvinists. Perhaps they simply didn’t believe the Native Americans were among the elect. That’s a Calvinism problem, not an agrarian problem.
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Er, the Pilgrims were English.
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I’m in total agreement right up to here…
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…and this is where I disagree. There are definitely lifestyles that are more ordered to Christ than others.
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Half-agreement. There is no lifestyle that is a guarantee, but a lifestyle ordered to Christ, in love and truth, is a huge help in sanctification.
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The same was true of poor and working people in general back then. There’s nothing overwhelmingly agrarian about it. Mines and factories weren’t much fun in the 19th century, either. Neither was being a labourer on someone else’s farm – and I should point out here that due to historical factors, the majority of recent pre-modern rural people in England were agricultural labourers, not farmers. We are essentially missing that whole class of landed peasantry which existed and (to a larger extent than in England) still exists in some European countries. Our rural poor, not to put too fine a point on it, were poorer.
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Also, as a general point, a lot of Joanna’s argument here seems to be responding to the idea that the ‘Christian agrarian’ vision is that (1) a particular historical time period / lifestyle was a Golden Age, and (2) the point of Christian agrarianism is therefore to get back to that Golden Age / Lifestyle in all respects. Therefore Joanna is citing negative aspects of that lifestyle/period in an attempt to debunk the whole concept. However, (2) is a red herring. I don’t know of any Christian groups trying to do historical recreation for its own sake. I can see some evidence of (1) (it reminds me of some Catholics who seem to think that the American 1950s were the high point of Catholic tradition), but that cannot and should not be equated with agrarianism.
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Moreover, some elements that that may appear to fall into (1) above may be nothing of the sort. Since I believe that different culture and time periods do indeed have different strong and weak points when it comes to the virtues, I think it’s indeed arguable that one can develop reasonable criteria for a given virtue; then identify some (fuzzy) boundary range when that virtue jumped the shark, as it were, in a given culture (typically one’s own); then go back before that point for inspiration in that virtue, essentially asking the question, “How has our culture typically “done” this virtue? What is our way of incarnating this virtue?” The answer, unsurprisingly, will look like something from the past.
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Posted by Atlantic on April 13, 2008 at 11:22 am
I knew if I kept lurking around here there’d be blogging eventually.
(Real Life is better, though!)
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I have to agree with some of Joanna’s post, but I still think that (just like with issues of authority) I’m reading accounts of groups taking a good thing, exaggerating it past all sense and virtue, which then leads to good people rejecting the whole thing, lock, stock and barrel. (I think it was Chesterton who observed that the errors of Protestantism are generally of this sort of exaggeration, but I don’t have time to look for the quote right now.)
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Of course, I’m coming at this from an entirely different direction than GNAP. My interest in self-sufficiency and The Good Life, as it were, pre-dated my return to Christianity and in fact influenced me towards Christianity. My major Christian influences regarding it have been the Catholic Distributivists such as G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc and Fr Vincent McNabb – the first two were English and the third lived most of his life in England, so this should not be entirely foreign to Joanna-in-England – and Catholic social teaching documents such as the 1891 papal encyclical href=”http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum_en.html”>Rerum Novarum, which was a foundational text for Distributivists.
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If this description is accurate, this is precisely what I mean by exaggeration.
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IIRC, the Pilgrims were Calvinists. Perhaps they simply didn’t believe the Native Americans were among the elect. That’s a Calvinism problem, not an agrarian problem.
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Er, the Pilgrims were English.
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I’m in total agreement right up to here…
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…and this is where I disagree. There are definitely lifestyles that are more ordered to Christ than others.
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Half-agreement. There is no lifestyle that is a guarantee, but a lifestyle ordered to Christ, in love and truth, is a huge help in sanctification.
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The same was true of poor and working people in general back then. There’s nothing overwhelmingly agrarian about it. Mines and factories weren’t much fun in the 19th century, either. Neither was being a labourer on someone else’s farm – and I should point out here that due to historical factors, the majority of recent pre-modern rural people in England were agricultural labourers, not farmers. We are essentially missing that whole class of landed peasantry which existed and (to a larger extent than in England) still exists in some European countries. Our rural poor, not to put too fine a point on it, were poorer.
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Also, as a general point, a lot of Joanna’s argument here seems to be responding to the idea that the ‘Christian agrarian’ vision is that (1) a particular historical time period / lifestyle was a Golden Age, and (2) the point of Christian agrarianism is therefore to get back to that Golden Age / Lifestyle in all respects. Therefore Joanna is citing negative aspects of that lifestyle/period in an attempt to debunk the whole concept. However, (2) is a red herring. I don’t know of any Christian groups trying to do historical recreation for its own sake. I can see some evidence of (1) (it reminds me of some Catholics who seem to think that the American 1950s were the high point of Catholic tradition), but that cannot and should not be equated with agrarianism.
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Moreover, some elements that that may appear to fall into (1) above may be nothing of the sort. Since I believe that different culture and time periods do indeed have different strong and weak points when it comes to the virtues, I think it’s indeed arguable that one can develop reasonable criteria for a given virtue; then identify some (fuzzy) boundary range when that virtue jumped the shark, as it were, in a given culture (typically one’s own); then go back before that point for inspiration in that virtue, essentially asking the question, “How has our culture typically “done” this virtue? What is our way of incarnating this virtue?” The answer, unsurprisingly, will look like something from the past.
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Even in fine summers, in the Medieval Warm Period?
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I have no idea of what point Joanna is trying to make here. Sex is a matter of fact.
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Again, I have no idea what this “first kiss business” is about, but I’d like to know about any Christian community in pre-modern Europe where premarital sex was officially approved and encouraged. Frequently tolerated, yes, but that’s not the same thing.
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This is the first I’ve heard that people are beating others over the head with frugality and thrift. Could I get an example of this?
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I would personally affirm that thrift is a virtue, and for many – again, not just rural people! – it is a virtue of necessity, and extremely sensible in any case.
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I have to admit I am a little sensitive about this point, because right now I am living in a shared house, and my fellow tenants are by and large members of the underclass, shall we say. (I can’t properly call them working class, because mostly they don’t work.) They have a lot of problems. Some of their problems are huge and/or structural and/or very difficult to solve, but the one thing that drives me around the bend personally is the food waste – and most of them are broke most of the time, they can’t afford it, but they do it anyway. I don’t beat them over the head about it, although I have been known to say about a pound of cheese with an eensy spot of mould, “If you’re just going to throw that away, I’ll take it.” I just keep being incredibly frugal in our shared kitchen, and I think it is gradually having an effect. On some of them, anyway.
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A great simplification (and to the extent it was true, hardly limited to agrarian communities). People knew how babies were made, and it’s fairly easy to find examples of periods when late marriage was common, which limited overall fertility; there is also sufficient variation in patterns of childbearing to show that people could and would limit their families. In fact, such behaviour appears to correlate somewhat with limited availability of land and other resources; sometimes they didn’t need any more labour to work what they had available, and so were more worried about too many mouths, and too many heirs in the next generation.
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Complete agreement.
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Again, the people of Salem were English. (Well, not Tituba, but you know what I mean.) The body count there was about 20-something. The number executed for witchcraft by the English is about a thousand, and something in five figures Europe-wide. Not a monopoly, no.
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There is some truth to this. A similar point was made, without respect to religion, at the end of the 1970s back-to-the-land movement – I have a book at home, The Politics of Self-Sufficiency, much of which is about exactly this point. In the UK, actually, I would be very surprised if the majority were Christians; I think most of them here are environmentalist agnostics.
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However, it’s noteworthy that when you look at the sort of early texts that Distributivists consider classics – Chesterton, Cobbett’s Cottage Economy, Rerum Novarum and so forth – a great many of them are aimed directly at the working classes. Not the middle classes. They were trying to reach labourers and factory workers and miners who were under thumb of the hyper-capitalists of the time.
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And it’s not very well known, but they were having an effect. At least in England. For example, you can see the plotlands movement was growing by leaps and bounds (plotlands were unimproved small areas of usually marginal land, with a dwelling, usually very basic), particularly between the wars, at the same time as the height of the Distributivist popularity, and I believe that was the height of popularity of allotments as well (smaller parcels of land for food-growing, usually in cities, available for a small rent). Plotlands and allotments were largely the preserve of the working class. And do you know what virtually destroyed the plotlands? Middle class ideas of what “the countryside” should look like, particularly as expressed in the Town and Country Planning Act of 1948.
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This description is entirely foreign to Catholic Distributivism.
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Virtually everybody either (a) thinks their lifestyle is superior or (b) thinks their lifestyle is theirs in the conservative sense, or (c) both – whether they consciously articulate it or not. Otherwise they would live differently. Some of the people who think (a) may even be right.
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The mere fact that other cultures may consider ours inferior doesn’t prove that ours is inferior, nor does it prove that there is no such thing as inferior and superior cultures. Nor does it disprove that there are customs that we should practice simply because they are ours.
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Obviously, a Christian has clear justification for ignoring the ceremonial aspects of the Old Law, so that last sentence is just silly. Overall, I would affirm that it is perfectly reasonable to pick and choose what suits us culturally (“what suits us culturally”, though, is a huge qualification), as longs as it can be conformed to Christ. It doesn’t have to be directly justified by Scripture. That strikes me as an impoverished and inversely liberal way of viewing one’s lifestyle and culture.
Posted by reneegrace on April 13, 2008 at 11:24 am
oy… great quotes… GREAT quotes. Thanks Molly.
Posted by molleth on April 13, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Atlantic,
DON’T LEAVE. I love your thoughts (even when I differ). Some of what Joanna is referring to are things only the fully-inundated “Biblical” woman will know: such as the beating eachother up over frugality—-some blogs exist soley for this purpose, frugality being one of the marks of a truly “Biblical” home-keeper—or the tsk-tsking Hurricane Katrina survivors for their unfeminine dress, etc.
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YES, one of the leaders of Ladies Against Feminism, “Lady Lydia,” wrote a stunningly harsh blog post about how awful the big butts of fleeing ladies were, and how they should have been in flowery skirts and other more feminine attire. And, get this, the blog post was applauded wildly instead of soundly denounced. Urgh.
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The “first kiss” business is a very popular oooh-and-aaaah thing amongst Vision Forum folks, with Doug Phillips talking about it and promoting it in a very weird way—-preaching about how wonderful it is to get to see the very first kiss ever experienced by a couple on their wedding day, because they have been chaste and have not even held hands before that moment.
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Note: nothing wrong with being chaste, nothing wrong with being frugal, nothing technically wrong with hiding one’s big butt while fleeing a natural disaster (gag–I still can’t believe anyone had the gall to write something like that!). It’s the mindset of the whole thing: the way it’s all presented, each of those things being VITAL and IMPORTANT to the faith. Your very salvation is questioned if your big butt isn’t hidden under a flowery skirt, or you buy lattes at Starbucks instead of drinking coffee at home. In other words, the big picture of the Gospel is buried under a pile of legalistic minutae… For those of us who were in that world, Joanna’s comment was right on the money.
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Posted by barbara on April 13, 2008 at 2:52 pm
bravo Molly and Joanna! sometimes it takes an “outsider” as it were, to really see things as they are
thank for the great post!
Posted by Lydia on April 13, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Here’s a link to Lady Lydia’s post on Hurricane Katrina attire:
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http://homeliving.blogspot.com/2005/09/letters-letters.html
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No, I’m not self-advertising.
Posted by molleth on April 13, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Thanks, Lyd, of the not-*Lady*-Lyd variety. Man, reading that post again makes my blood pressure rise. Blugh. Is that really really REALLY what we think Jesus would think about upon seeing survivors fleeing a disaster that just ruined their home and their livelihood and possibly killed some of their family and friends????????
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I note that the comments are no longer there. That’s a pity, because if you think that Lady Lydia is the only one who thinks like that, you’re wrong. The comments are just as over the top. And we wonder why Barna discovered that our young people’s first thought (upon hearing the word Christian) is, “Arrogant,” and their second word is “Judgemental?”
Posted by Daisy on April 14, 2008 at 6:06 am
Some good thought provoking stuff here. I want to have a little think…
Posted by Psalmist on April 14, 2008 at 6:38 am
Great discussion. I have nothing to add at this time but am commenting anyway.
In honor of Blogger Appreciation Day, I’m dropping in to comment at each blog on my Bloglines subscription list. I really do appreciate you and your writing, Molly. God bless you.
Posted by CalamityJean on April 14, 2008 at 7:44 am
I totall agree with Joanne and Molly.
I was just reading America’s Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines and thought to myself…Really? this colonial time period is the one that Vision Forum chooses to emulate??? From what I have studied, their recreations of this perfect time period is way off of the realities.
As always, I enjoy learnign from and with you ladies.
Blessings!
Posted by Daisy on April 14, 2008 at 8:36 am
I agree, all have sinned; from Adam to us today …otherwise we wouldn’t need Jesus, we’d just need to return to the morals of an idyllic period in history and become Upstanding-Members-of-the-Community
Posted by Daisy on April 14, 2008 at 8:43 am
…oh yes, Lady Lydia drives my father to distraction…and lol not because of her modest dress
He’s very interested in both Roman, Industrial and Victorian history. Her perversion of the truth of life for the Victorians makes him growl.
Posted by Andrea on April 14, 2008 at 10:09 am
Lady Lydia drives my father to distraction …. Her perversion of the truth of life for the Victorians makes him growl.
Haha, Daisy, I like your father already! If you ever want to make a little vein pop out in his neck, tell him that one blogger actually tried to insist that the Americans of the 19th century didn’t even have strict social class divisions (contrasting this claim with class divisions in Victorian England). I couldn’t even reply to that absurd generalization at the time, for fear of my exasperation absolutely boiling over
I do wish I could find a link to it now . . . though really, there’s enough rosy misconception floating around out there to keep a historian’s blood pressure bubbling in the danger zone for ages to come!
Atlantic, I can see where you would be a little lost with some of the content of Joanna’s comment since it was first made over at the True Womanhood blog. Some of the points that threw you have already come up in discussion at TW, making this post of Joanna’s very responsive in parts, and therefore occasionally little tricky to follow out of context. If you want to see even a bit of what’s led up to it, some of the comments and links in the GNAP post on True Womanhood might help fill in some of the gaps
Posted by stamati on April 14, 2008 at 10:26 pm
wow I just read that lady lydia post.
rediculous.
I’m posting my response over at my blog because I’m sure she’d never approve such a rancid comment.
Posted by Joanna-from-England on April 14, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Hi Molly, thanks for the kind words
PLEASE edit my post to read knickers for knockers – PLEASE – it is such an embarrassing mistake.
Hi Atlantic – have read your interesting and thought-provoking critique
and will reread and think; perhaps post again if Molly is OK with that. I hope you didn’t think I was being facile – I did write after serious consideration and after, as Andrea said, much discussion on the True Womanhood Blog. Perhaps it might have been better if I had set dates to some of my points, or expanded them, to anchor them historically, and set out my reasoning more clearly. (As far as sex before marriage goes, though, I do come from a rurual community, and I do have evidence for the pregnant before marriage is not always regarded as a crime business – evidence from previous generations)
One more point – Yes I do know that the Pilgrim Fathers came from England: I was trying to make it clear that I recognise that many Americans revere their founding fathers and was trying to say that I was not USA-bashing in any way. I was attempting to recognise a collective responsibility; and to point out that throughout England’s colonial history we as a nation have perpetrated grave injustices in the name of religion. I did not want any of you to feel that I was doing the ‘England is best’ routine. We can all be a little sensitive sometimes.
Molly, if it’s OK by you I would also like to respond to Atlantic here – I don’t have a blog – yet. Also, you and the people who post here might be interested in a book called ‘The Weaker Vessel’ by Antonia Frase. It’s a history of women in the 17th century; and having recently read it, many of the ideas and mindsets in it, particularly about roles and spheres of action, relate to the issues we have discussed on True Womanhood.
Thanks for the very interesting discussion, by the way. I’m really enjoying reading here and on TW.
Posted by Holly on April 15, 2008 at 5:15 am
Hey Molly.
I don’t get here much….you are such an interesting writer that is it always a jolt to read your thoughts. I comment even less…just don’t do controversy much these days. Too busy in that REAL LIFE you mentioned in the last post. I am still neck high in babies and toddlers and LOVING it and finding much contentment and fulfillment here. Life is GOOD!
Well, really, God is GOOD!
To my point:
I just finished reading a book by Barbara Kingsolver, called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Barbara does not make an effort to call herself a Christian. She is by education an Evolutionary Biologist, and by talent a wonderful writer.
She and her family chose to “eat local” for a year, and that is what they wrote about. They thrust aside the Urban life and returned to agrarian roots. No, there is not spiritual salvation in this – but it is a good and healthy thing for humans and cultures to do.
Barbara writes from a feminist viewpoint, as well. She found herself creating a home, and cooking, and feeding a husband….and loving it and finding societal value in it. She was shocked! But at the end of the year she found her family closer, and healthier, and happier.
I do kindly disagree with Joanna (but really, kindly…she sounds like such a smart and wonderful person.) when she says that one type of lifestyle is not better than another.
Being connected with our earth, having our hands in at least a little bit of soil, knowing where our food comes from, investing ourselves into the nurturance of our bodies and those we love (and probably several other people if we are agrarian)…these things are good for our earth, our families, our communities. It is not necessarily holy, but I do think it is more in line with how God intended (not commanded) us to live.
It is a healthier way to live. Compare the rates of disease for the Amish with disease rates of the non-Amish. (Compare their rates of stds and other societal ills, as well.) They don’t force their way of life on others…in fact, they wish we’d leave them alone. But their healthy lifestyle and the fruit it brings does not lie!
I also just read a book called “The Midwife Story” by Penny Armstrong. She practiced among the Amish, and pretty much laid to rest the concepts that an agrarian and 17th century type lifestyle is so backbreakingly hard and joyless and that people only have large families in order to work the farms. I realize that I am focusing on the Amish – but to me they represent the perfect study example of a throwback lifestyle. We can learn a lot by how they live.
They work hard, but they are healthy. They birth their children easily – and yes, that is a broad statement but it is one she asserts over and over. (And there are good reasons for that, which I won’t take the time to go into.) Out of 1000 births, she lost only one baby. Instead of only wanting workers, they want and adore their chidren. They desire large families, not because they bring salvation, nor bring holiness, nor make them better than others. They want them, because of relationship. They love them.
Most of the infant losses spoken about from the Victorian era were because of ignorance…not because they were agrarian. People didn’t understand bacteria, and it resulted in maternal and fetal death. That’s not an argument to keep people from wanting to live the agrarian life in our time!
Also, simply because there may be evidence from a small timeframe of supposed Christian history (and I don’t know that this evidence is factual, anyway,) that a pregnant bride was to be celebrated – that really doesn’t speak to the whole of Christianity nor should we just get over our puritan inhibitions and accept it as “okay.”
I do not agree with the thought that agrarian life style is espoused and embraced mostly by the moderately rich in America today. Most farmers and even “return to the earth” type people today are not rich. (Side note: The Duggars aren’t rich. They aren’t even agrarian, from what I know. Why the criticize the Duggars?) Most families who have chosen to return to an agrarian life-style have saved for decades to be able to buy a plot of land. They don’t usually carry debt. They aren’t usually on welfare. Often, they are good, hard-working, honest people who enrich their community.
Wow. So much more to say. Thanks for the chance to speak. Must run, it is time for breakfast!
Blessings to all -
Posted by Holly on April 15, 2008 at 5:18 am
Okay…one more thought.
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I wish I had remembered to space my paragraphs.
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I thought the article by Lady Lydia was appalling. Very sad. No compassion.
Posted by Holly on April 15, 2008 at 5:41 am
O.k. I have a bad reputation for this.
I keep thinking of things I should have said. So now, the kids are fed and dressed, the baby is bathed, and I came back to add:
Penny Armstrong was an atheist before she went to be a midwife among the Amish. She learned so much from their Agrarian, religious lifestyle, and truly felt that it was BETTER. She did not become Amish, but she recognized value in their choices. She and her husband settled down to live among them. I just thought that was interesting and pertinent to the conversation.
Really, I’m gone.
Carry on. 
Posted by Joanna-from-England on April 15, 2008 at 6:53 am
Hey, Holly, where did I say it wasn’t OK to disagree with me
I like to be disagreed with, especially kindly. Debate is great!
I really truly recognise value in an agrarian lifestyle, and freely admit that I too would love to return to my agrarian roots. I love gardening, have kept sheep and chickens, can milk a cow, cut up a pig, can shoot rabbits for food (never sport, and I miss quite often!), grow herbs and make herbal remedies and so on. Both my babies were born at home, breast fed for over two years, carried until my back packed in, and they slept in a family bed. So I am a fairly down to earth person myself.
I hesitate to make a value judgement, however, that it is a ‘better’ lifestyle insofar as that lifestyle cannot save or sanctify or justify. Are we not justified only by faith?
I feel that we could all be better people if we were a little nearer to our roots, as the Amish are, and I see, sadly in my own life, that the children I teach (I do work – please don’t shoot me! I’m happy to explain why if anyone wants to know) are so disconnected from getting their hands dirty that they see neither the glory of God’s creation or the arbitrary ‘cruelty’ of the prey-predator cycle in nature, or how only God can help us to understand our world.
I don’t deny that there is much joy in an agrarian lifestyle, and I think that the Amish way has much to recommend it. I too see great value in their choices. I painted a black picture of previous centuries’ rural degradation and poverty because it seemed necessary to counterbalance the too rose-coloured view that the lifestyle in itself, as promoted by some Christians, is the stairway to heaven. Does that mean that if you are debarred, by your physical frailty, your economic circumstances, or your personal inclination from that lifestyle, you can’t reach heaven? God does not say that!
Relevant documents from the period – I am actually thinking medieval rather than Victorian, so perhaps about three to five hundred years further back than you are referencing, Holly – show that generally children were loved, lost, and bitterly mourned no matter how many there had been. But for England, if you had no children to support you in old age, there was only the workhouse, which is why building a strong family unit made economic sense, as well as being a way of strengthening loving family bonds.
The Amish, with their excellent birth records, benefit from a surrounding society – to which I know they do not ‘belong’ but which nevertheless influences their surroundings in terms of disease – where medical advances and the development of antisepsis mean that much more is known about how to ensure the safety of mother and child, and in these circumstances, birth is not the same for them as it was for medieval women. They are healthier, better fed, and stronger, and have access to far better care. The documents in the book I mentioned (by Antonia Fraser) about babies being dismembered in utero to save the mother where there was a breech presentation or transverse lie make harrowing reading.
I do come from a rural background myself, and I have seen how very hard the lifestyle can be as well as how beautiful and deeply rewarding. I would prevent no-one from choosing it, and often wish my own choices had been different. (I was a girl mind you – grandad wouldn’t let me inherit the farm anyway, even tho’ no-one else wanted it)
Perhaps I should explain the background to my fairly tentative posts. After many struggles, I am trying to live a truly Christian life, and I have read as much as I can on the net about Christianity. (I think I’m probably explaining myself badly here). I stand convicted in my own eyes, and God’s, of not honouring my husband enough or doing the best for my children, or being any sort of Proverbs woman or Titus 2 or whatever woman. I was just me, and not very good at it. So my initial readings on biblical requirements for women were an earnest attempt to help me to be a better person. Frugal lifestyle blogs have helped me to be a better steward, and complementarian discussions and making home a haven have helped me, I hope, to be a better wife, and housewife (I’m naturally untidy)
As my reading, and searching continued, I started to see that some apples hide a worm, that some roses have blight at the centre, that some human-mediated systems have been elevated to the status of divinely inspired wisdom, and that it’s relatively easy to follow rules, because it gives us the security of feeling that we are measuring up to God’s standard.
It’s much easier to measure and check off lists than to live by faith and to say to God: I’ve tried to follow you today. I don’t know how well I’ve done. Only you can see my heart. Judge me, and be merciful, because I do love you even if I’m not very good at it. Help me to go on trying to be like you. Forgive me, that I’m not. Help me to go on without any assurance that I have succeeded, living with the understanding of my human frailty, mourning my faults because they offend you, and trusting in your plans for me, without asking for knowledge or certainty. Help me to forget myself in serving you through love for others, rather than to count up the ways in which I have served you today, and present you with my own tally of righteousness. Focus me away from myself, and my triumphs or failures to seeing and serving you in the people I meet. Give me humility, and teach me to be merciful.
I also passionately, passionately dislike being judgemental, or organisations that judge how Christlike a person is by how they live. Only God knows our hearts, and it’s a good thing he does, because only he truly knows how to temper justice with mercy. In my life I have seen so much merciless justice meted out to the unhappy, the ignorant, the needy and those who do not conform, that I tend to err on the side of tenderness. (Possibly wrongly, I don’t know.)
So I don’t speak with any authority – though I know I sometimes speak forcefully. (Habit of mind: my degree is in Latin and Greek, with emphasis on classical philosophy and dialectic. Great fun intellectually, but totally useless for salvation.) We’re all searching, aren’t we – searching for how to follow Christ.
Molly – sorry about long post again.
I think I’ll stop talking now – I don’t want to hog the conversation.
Posted by tonia on April 15, 2008 at 7:46 am
addressing Holly’s points:
Even the families that thought they understood what it would take to live like that were shocked at the hard work and wouldn’t have been able to survive a true frontier winter. But they learned a lot and took many good things away from their experiences.
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I read a great book along these lines called “Better Off” by Eric Bende. Bende and his wife went to live among strict Mennonites to explore their lifestyles. (Better Off refers to life without electricity, among other things.)
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He came to the conclusion that this agrarian lifestyle was only possible because of community. The Amish/Mennonites succeeded because they live within communities of people who are completely committed to the same ideals and willing to work alongside each other. Work becomes joyful because it is done alongside others, etc.
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Without community however, the lifestyle could indeed be drudgery and dangerous. One wonders about the pioneer families in this context…forging a life alone in a strange place must have been terribly difficult.
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If indeed community of that type is essential for a successful agrarian lifestyle I think it would be very hard for many modern families to accomplish it.
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(I do agree Holly, that there is much to be desired in a simpler, more organic lifestyle. And I loved the Kingsolver book.)
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I still remember that PBS series “Frontier House.” That was eye-opening!
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I think we can glean many good things from the past and from other lifestyles, but it is crazy the way some people repaint the past in idyllic colors and pretend it was the promised land. (For the dominant culture, mind you. I doubt few would want to go back and be an African sold to Victorian England or a Chinese in pioneer America.)
Posted by Dulce Domum on April 15, 2008 at 8:23 am
I have real sympathy with Holly’s points. I think it is far too easy to idealise or demonise the past, simply because we really know so very little about it. I think a natural lifestyle is a healthy lifestyle, I home bake, grow some of my own food, we are chemical free, cloth nappy/sanitary pad wearing etc, etc, etc! I’d love my own patch of land so I could raise my own livestock…(ahh, dream on) so I suppose I have agrarian ideals.
However, these ideals have absolutely nothing to do with my faith, this is simply the lifestyle I chosen to follow. The danger has always been when Christian people find a lifestyle which works well for them and then make the assumption that their lifestyle is a template for a holy life. A “one size fits all ” philosophy which gains popularity because it is a design for life, and one which is easier often much easier to follow than the Sermon on the Mount (the *real* design for life).
Posted by Holly on April 15, 2008 at 9:23 am
True, true, Tonia. Community is the key. I thought the same thing as I read.
Dulce, thank you! Would you say that your faith compels you to be a better steward? I do….so, in that way, I think that these ideals do have something do to with faith. But wow, yes, I agree with you, they can’t be a template for EVERYONE for a holy life.
Question: I’m not a Doug Phillips fan….but I didn’t realize he was agrarian. Is he?
Posted by Holly on April 15, 2008 at 9:24 am
ooo. I don’t like that picture of myself. MUST. CHANGE. THAT. (someday.) I don’t even look like that now!
Posted by Dulce Domum on April 15, 2008 at 10:05 am
Holly said:
“Would you say that your faith compels you to be a better steward?”
Oh, yes, absolutely! Our actions in the west have had terrible repercussions for people in developing countries, we need to consume responsibly so that we can love our brothers and sisters in lands we haven’t even visited. I’m pretty passionate about green living and fair trade…however, there are many ways in which we Christians can be good stewards without necessarily living a rural lifestyle. Many city dwellers have low carbon emissions because they have access to public transport and ethical shops and markets… this is a regular hobby horse of mine!lol!
Posted by Joanna-from-England on April 15, 2008 at 11:14 am
Hi Molly – did you get my last post. Don’t know if it’s in moderation or if my computer was playing up, since it gave me an error message
Posted by Annie on April 15, 2008 at 12:07 pm
I can’t access that article by “Lady” Lydia. Link not working. Anyone else having problems?
Posted by Daisy on April 15, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Andrea, Lol, the ol’ rose tinted spectacles are very useful indeed. Although my father’s historical knowledge is strongest on English social class I’m not sure of the extent of his knowledge about 19thC American social classes.
When those rose tinted spectacles are on everything in days of yore were like a Jane Austen adaption – all politeness, frilly dresses and tea parties…completely missing Austen’s gentle satirisation of the gentry’s restrained social politeness and posturing. Austen is of course Georgian…Victorian novels (that I have read) tend to be a little darker, take Jane Eyre for example. No tea-parties for her, just mad wives in the attic.
Dulce, I completely agree too. Faith does compel us to become better stewards, especially where our Westernised lifestyle affects others negatively.
The past is something that we shouldn’t idealise or spiritualise – if we believe in God then surely each man/woman should be grateful for the era they are born in, for that is the era in which God wills us to make a difference for Christ. If we are hankering after days gone past we are discontented…and discontent is not a fruit of the Spirit. We can learn from the past though, take the good – reject the bad; this is different to idealising
We don’t need to look at the Victorians, the Romans, the Georgians, the Puritans and model our life on them, we ought to model our life on the two greatest commandments: Love God, love your neighbour.
36″Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matt 22
Posted by Daisy on April 15, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Annie, I can’t access it either.
Posted by molleth on April 15, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Ah, if I had time for this! I gotta run but, real quick, Lady Lydia took her blog post down, I guess. And Joanna, I checked my Spam box for your comment and it wasn’t there, so I’m guessing it was eaten by the cyberspace mystery beastie.
More later, tonight when I have time….
Posted by Andrea on April 15, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Daisy, YES! Austen’s satirical side delights me, truly. I laughed my way through Northanger Abbey, and I am afraid I burst out laughing a few times in the middle of discussions on Pride and Prejudice– she was so gentle and yet so ruthless! Love and Freindship[sic] also slays me every time I read it . . . Austen was a deliciously talented writer, and I feel more than a twinge of sadness when I see films, blog posts or even scholarly reviews that reduce her work to frills, fashion and fine manners. She was so very much more than that!
Posted by Atlantic on April 15, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Don’t worry, Molly, I’m not going anywhere! The conversation here is too good.
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Maybe I just don’t understand GNAP very well, particularly the more fundamentalist versions. Also, I seem to coming at all of this from the opposite direction than many here: I am not now and have never been a fundamentalist, and also I’ve lived my entire life in seriously liberal cities or their suburbs. To me, it was a breath of fresh air that there were so many Christian agrarians around and available to read online. When I first discovered some of the blogs that are being discussed over at True Womanhood, like Carmon’s, my reaction was, “Wow, Protestant Distributivists!” I don’t actually know any Protestant agrarians / fundamentalists in Real Life, and I’ve certainly never minded being written out of their club. (Actually, Carmon and I exchanged a few emails a couple of years ago. She was quite nice. Maybe it’s most tempting to be harshest to those on the boundary of one’s beliefs – as a Catholic, perhaps I was so far out of her boundaries that it didn’t matter.)
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And, as a Catholic, I tend to think of agrarianism and similar lifestyle choices as – at most – analogous to religious orders or some lay organisations. One says, in effect, this particular way of life is good and ordered to Christ; let’s do it in a more organised fashion, with particular rules that define this way of life more precisely. But these lifestyles remain choices within the Church. You can’t write anyone in or out of the Church based on them.
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Also, I’ve been interested in certain “counterculture” sorts of things (most conservative, but not all) for long enough that I have many times run across the phenomenon that some people will react negatively to certain behaviours and claim that simply by displaying such behaviours, I must think everybody should do it and in fact be on the point of forcing everyone to do it if only I could. For example, I am a speaker of a minority European language, and I am not a native of the nation historically associated with that language (so clearly not a native speaker)…and you would not believe how some natives of that country who don’t speak that language react to that! I have also had similar reactions regarding smallholding, domestic arts, wearing skirts, not having a television, and certain traditional Catholic things. Regarding the Christian world in particular, it seems to me that “legalism” is sometimes just a word for “more rules and customs than me”.
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Maybe most of the Protestant agrarian movement is beating each other over the head demanding that everyone be agrarian (ditto the anti-feminists, etc) – I’ll take you word for the moment – but maybe you can understand why I didn’t come to this with that initial perception.
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Also, I have to confess a certain sympathy with them, not just with the idea that perhaps some ways of life are more ordered to God than others and agrarianism might be one of them. I think a lot of people feel a lack in their lives from feeling like their culture is not…thick enough, is the way I’d put it. Shallow cultural roots. They feel a desire for a more all-encompassing culture, and one more thoroughly shot through, indeed incarnating, their religious beliefs.
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Hence, firstly, the emphasis on past ways of life. They are trying to revitalise their current way of life by looking at their cultural roots and taking inspiration from that. There’s nothing wrong with that. I also note that people like Lady Lydia appear to emphatically deny that they are trying to idealise or recreate the past. For example,
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And secondly, I think something about their religious presuppositions is skewing this. I’m still trying to figure this out, but I get the feeling that this is related to what I called inverse liberalism in a previous post. In liberalism, there’s supposed to be only the minimal amount of rules necessary to get along in peace (analogy: the set of doctrines that are common to Protestantism), there is also an underlying concept that these rules should really be identical to that which can be determined rationally (analogy: can be proved from Scripture alone) and any other traditional rules or customs are oppressive (legalistic). So it’s very difficult to defend adherence to any particular way of life without insisting that it is identical with the one rational (Scriptural) set of rules, but the minimal (pan-Protestant) set of rules is too thin to satisfy a lot of people’s conviction for a culturally “thick” Christian lifestyle. So one bunch ends up saying “You’re not really Christians if you don’t live like this!” and the other bunch is saying “You’re not really Christians if you think we have to live like that!”
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Joanna, I may be a little oversensitive about the English/American thing – I’ve been fielding snarky comments about the States from snark experts for years, so I’m probably over-reacting. My apologies. I look forward to your response to my first comment.
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Interestingly, that “first kiss” thing sounds exactly like Orthodox Jewish shomer negiah. This isn’t the first time that I’ve run across an example of people who soundly rejecting the Catholic “traditions of men” and fill the void in their culture with the Old Law.
Posted by Daisy on April 15, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Doesn’t this prove though, that they do idealise the past? Mrs Chancey negates her own argument by that simple comment.
She then continues later:
…but again negates that with a later comment:
What is ‘feminine and womanly’? It seems in the literature of LAF the women are to be immaculately attired (non-shorts wearing, un-scruffy, dress-wearing) and angelic of nature.
I find it confusing, it may be just me, it’s late here and I’m tired.
Posted by Daisy on April 15, 2008 at 2:23 pm
NB: My thought was, how does she know that Victorian gentlemen were deferential and civil?
Posted by molleth on April 15, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Mrs. Chancey and Lady Lydia highly recommend the book, “Fascinating Womanhood.” It has a whole chapter (or two or three) on what is feminine and womanly. Think frills, delicate, dainty, lacey, child-like, etc, and you pretty much have it down.
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Okay, back to Real Life…
Posted by Psalmist on April 15, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Fascinating Womanhood????
Oh, my! Is this title rearing its pretty little head again??
It’s a classic promotion of the helpless immature female manipulator as the “role” women are supposed to play.
Ugh!
Posted by molleth on April 15, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Agreed.
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Holly,
I really agreed with some of your thoughts. Where I get frustrated with the “Biblical Family” movement is that they say their way is Biblical. I don’t disagree that eating whole foods is better than eating pop tarts and Wonderbread. Or being close to the land, living life simply, can be a much healthier lifestyle than the fast-paced frenzy of the upward-mobile city dweller. Where I differ is when people start slapping labels of Biblical vs. Non-Biblical. Or start judging the intentions of hearts on such foolish outward things.
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I’m being more obedient to God because I grind my own grain? No. I’m just being smart. *grins* Being obedient to God has a lot more to do with the fruit of the Spirit than it does what I eat. I can worship God with what I eat, but the wise person will remember that food choices is one of the lesser items on the great totem pole of what really matters in this life.
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Which is better: wasting my energy on judging someone’s heart based on what kind of bread they eat, or using my energy (that I get from the good bread I buy~! ha!) by helping to get bread to those who have NOTHING to eat at all?
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Anyways, I think you know what I’m saying. I fully agree that there are certain lifestyles that tend to be healthier and happier than others. The argument I have is when folks slap “Biblical” over what the Bible doesn’t command. Like saying that homeschooling is God’s way—when, in reality, it’s one choice among many valid options, options that each family needs to prayerfully consider for their unique family and their unique circumstances/location/culture. Same goes for the agrarian movement. Getting back to the farm does not a Christ-lover make.
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Nice to see you, btw, Mrs. Holly, btw!
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Atlantic,
I love this quote of yours:
And, as a Catholic, I tend to think of agrarianism and similar lifestyle choices as – at most – analogous to religious orders or some lay organisations. One says, in effect, this particular way of life is good and ordered to Christ; let’s do it in a more organised fashion, with particular rules that define this way of life more precisely. But these lifestyles remain choices within the Church. You can’t write anyone in or out of the Church based on them.
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Exactly. Yet in large part, these people are. If you don’t do it [or think it] our way, you are
a. not obeying God
b. do not love God
c. are rebelling against God
d. twist the Scriptures
e. all of the above.
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E is the right answer. *groaning sigh* And THAT is what I find highly distasteful. It’s NOT the call back to a simple life, it’s not the reminders that children do best with loving parents, etc. It’s the arrogant teachings that say, “Our way is God’s way,” and if you don’t agree, you must be stopped/smushed/mocked.
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Lots of good discussion here, and not anymore time on my part of the world to get into it. Wah! Thanks all. Good stuff. Oh, Joanna, I forgot: have at it. This blog is waaaay free for discussion, so write a book in this comments box if you want.
Posted by Joanna-from-England on April 15, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Hi Atlantic
Thinking about your post . . .
Setting aside the English-American thing, and taking as read that I’m trying sensitively not to bash American culture/mores/history and you’re sensitively understanding that we’re not into an ‘I’m better than you’ contest, let’s examine our similarities and differences.
To begin with, as Molly said, my post was a response to an ongoing discussion on True Womanhood, about the emotional abuses that are becoming apparent in some sections of Christian believers in the USA. (And probably here also, except I haven’t seen blog or Internet evidence of such views being common.) Please note that I have carefully not used the words ‘fundamental’ or ‘sect’ because I desire not to generalise.
My understanding (which may be only partial) of these emotional abuses comes from, firstly, my reading of blog content, sermons, and other lifestyle-directed literature produced by some of these believers, secondly, my research into the scriptural basis of their beliefs, and thirdly, my assessment of any disparity evident between the two.
All of this reading came about because, in my continual struggle to follow Christ, He brought me to a place where I stood convicted in my own eyes, and before Him, of certain grave errors in my relationships with my husband and my children: that I placed them behind my career, that I was not a good steward of my household, and that I did not honour my kind and loving husband as he deserves to be honoured. So far, so simple.
Once convicted it was obviously necessary to amend – so I began, in a small way, to read blogs and articles that I felt would help me to be the person that Christ wanted to be. (Of course I went to the Bible too– I was just looking for practical help, and a little encouragement in how to sort things out, and I have to say that there was plenty of practical advice, which has made a big difference. My own mother was a career woman, with an unhappy Catholic marriage, so I had very little training and I have bumbled along, for, I am ashamed to admit, twenty years of marriage without trying to get my house in order, or obey my husband. God has been very good to me, because despite my defects, we have a truly happy marriage, and two loving, kind and obedient daughters.
The reading led me into many different places where religion was ‘sold’, but not all of them seemed to me to conform to God’s word, and reading them, I came to realise that many good, and honest, and honourable people had been cruelly misled – cheated into believing that by following a set of rules they could attain salvation. I saw a version of biblical patriarchy mandated that I could not believe was sola scriptura, and I also saw evidence of lifestyle choices (such as I described in my post) being sold as a way to salvation.
In short, I saw what I believed to be an abuse of God’s word, a perversion of scripture, and a selective rendition of historical fact used to sell a largely culturally determined set of rules and a related lifestyle.
My post in TW was simply a reflection of what I saw and read, and links I made with my own knowledge of history, particularly some fairly extensive reading I have been doing into women’s history, and societal roles through the centuries. I don’t consider that I speak with authority, and my post was not meant to be the definitive statement on the position – it was, however, deeply felt, and where I speak about rural lifestyles, really quite well researched.
One issue with the piece seems to be, with both you and Holly, who has also commented, is that you may think I am talking about ‘Victorian times’. In actual fact, when I refer to women’s lifestyle and rural hardship and deprivation, I am thinking of mediaeval times onward, so starting perhaps about three to four hundred years earlier than Victoria.
Cobbett – I have a very well-read copy of Cottage Economy, by the way – was writing at a time when Tudor and Stuart enclosure had robbed land from peasants and further reduced their ability to attain a healthy standard of living. By Victorian times, rural poverty was acute: Mrs Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel North and South is generally considered by historians to paint an entirely accurate portrait of the differences and similarities between rural and urban poverty, and Flora Thompson’s portrait of pre-1914 rural Oxfordshire also relates a rural lifestyle cramped physically, emotionally and spiritually by a weekly wage of 10 shillings, and the loss of even the small medieval freedoms of common land and common right.
Of course this specific information pertains to England: my point in my post was simply that it is entirely possible to romanticise a rural lifestyle to sell a dream, and that my understanding from readings of e.g. Michael Pearl’s literature is that this is done not just to sell a dream, but to sell salvation.
As far as sex, modesty, and childbirth is concerned, some of the information I have about, for example, childbirth and its dangers is shockingly graphic, with records of midwives having to dismember babies in utero when they could not deliver a woman with an awkward breech, or transverse lie. My comments on attitudes to sex and pregnancy, again come from readings in history, and, more recently, and during my childhood from older members of my father’s extremely down to earth, rural, agrarian family. Again, these comments were simply designed to stress my opinion that romanticising a lifestyle in order to sell it is a vile cheat, and an even viler cheat if you’re trying to sell it as a stairway to heaven. Only faith justifies and sanctifies. Lifestyle can be conformed, yes, but where does Christ say it’ll gain you the kingdom?
I think we will have to disagree about inferior and superior lifestyles. I’m not prepared to judge. My point was that we all tend to justify our choices according to our emotional and cultural preferences, and since ‘the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked’, we should perhaps not focus so much on how superior or inferior our lifestyles, opinions and attitudes are, but instead on how they follow the ‘Love God, love your neighbour’ rule.
My post was also written because I passionately, passionately dislike judgemental attitudes, and I have seen so much evidence of them among these Christians. I feel so desperately sorry for all of those who are trapped in situations, as our kind hostess here felt trapped, where their lives have become a constant unsatisfying round of trying to live up to ‘Christian’ expectations in the hope that they will be saved. Even I, as a poor Christian, can hope for God’s mercy. Some of what I have read offers only merciless justice.
I hope this does explain some of the reasoning behind my post. I’m happy to engage in debate, if it doesn’t bore the socks off everyone, but I’m not as well read as you seem to be in theology. I’ll do a bit of research on the distributivist stuff – I’m ignorant there I’m afraid. I like Chesterton and Belloc – I grew up on their poetry, living in a Catholic household.
Think I’ll have to go to bed now – it’s 3.30 am here, but I took the opportunity of a wakeful hour to try to produce a considered response. Please ascribe any fault to my biorhythmic low!
Posted by Joanna-from-England on April 15, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Hi, Holly
Thanks for the (metaphorical) flowers. Wrote a response to your great post and the cyberbeastie chewed it up. (Snarl) Have written a response to Atlantic, in my 3am wakeful hour, but am now dropping off to sleep, and will speak to you later, as am finding it increasingly difficult to type straight . . . yawn. And have to be up in three hours to do the horses.
Posted by Holly on April 16, 2008 at 4:33 am
Joanna -
You are welcome for the flowers.
I hope that you got some rest!
Please, don’t feel that you must labor over a huge response for my benefit. I understand what you are saying. (Although I’m sure everyone would love to hear what you have to say! Obviously, you are well-studied.)
My point, really, was just that it is not only patriarchal or conservative Christians who say that an agrarian lifestyle is superior. That call seems to come from every walk of life. It seems like all of us in this conversation so far agree that salvation comes from Christ alone.
Thank you! (Must run…must plant my garden today! Really!)
Posted by Some Interesting Discussions « Lazy Daisy Days on April 16, 2008 at 8:25 am
[...] GNAP (Generic North American Protestantism) Dreams Busted: The “Biblical Family” Yearning for th… [...]
Posted by molleth on April 16, 2008 at 4:50 pm
[This is Molly. Hey, Joanna,
I like to be disagreed with, especially kindly. Debate is great!
I found your missing comment (I'd swear it wasn't in the Spam box at all when I checked yesterday!) and it's now posted. Just in case someone doesn't want to wade back through and find it now that it "exists" in it's rightful spot somewhere up there, here it is, cut and pasted below]:
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Joanna Said:
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Hey, Holly, where did I say it wasn’t OK to disagree with me
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I really truly recognise value in an agrarian lifestyle, and freely admit that I too would love to return to my agrarian roots. I love gardening, have kept sheep and chickens, can milk a cow, cut up a pig, can shoot rabbits for food (never sport, and I miss quite often!), grow herbs and make herbal remedies and so on. Both my babies were born at home, breast fed for over two years, carried until my back packed in, and they slept in a family bed. So I am a fairly down to earth person myself.
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I hesitate to make a value judgement, however, that it is a ‘better’ lifestyle insofar as that lifestyle cannot save or sanctify or justify. Are we not justified only by faith?
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I feel that we could all be better people if we were a little nearer to our roots, as the Amish are, and I see, sadly in my own life, that the children I teach (I do work – please don’t shoot me! I’m happy to explain why if anyone wants to know) are so disconnected from getting their hands dirty that they see neither the glory of God’s creation or the arbitrary ‘cruelty’ of the prey-predator cycle in nature, or how only God can help us to understand our world.
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I don’t deny that there is much joy in an agrarian lifestyle, and I think that the Amish way has much to recommend it. I too see great value in their choices. I painted a black picture of previous centuries’ rural degradation and poverty because it seemed necessary to counterbalance the too rose-coloured view that the lifestyle in itself, as promoted by some Christians, is the stairway to heaven. Does that mean that if you are debarred, by your physical frailty, your economic circumstances, or your personal inclination from that lifestyle, you can’t reach heaven? God does not say that!
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Relevant documents from the period – I am actually thinking medieval rather than Victorian, so perhaps about three to five hundred years further back than you are referencing, Holly – show that generally children were loved, lost, and bitterly mourned no matter how many there had been. But for England, if you had no children to support you in old age, there was only the workhouse, which is why building a strong family unit made economic sense, as well as being a way of strengthening loving family bonds.
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The Amish, with their excellent birth records, benefit from a surrounding society – to which I know they do not ‘belong’ but which nevertheless influences their surroundings in terms of disease – where medical advances and the development of antisepsis mean that much more is known about how to ensure the safety of mother and child, and in these circumstances, birth is not the same for them as it was for medieval women. They are healthier, better fed, and stronger, and have access to far better care. The documents in the book I mentioned (by Antonia Fraser) about babies being dismembered in utero to save the mother where there was a breech presentation or transverse lie make harrowing reading.
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I do come from a rural background myself, and I have seen how very hard the lifestyle can be as well as how beautiful and deeply rewarding. I would prevent no-one from choosing it, and often wish my own choices had been different. (I was a girl mind you – grandad wouldn’t let me inherit the farm anyway, even tho’ no-one else wanted it)
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Perhaps I should explain the background to my fairly tentative posts. After many struggles, I am trying to live a truly Christian life, and I have read as much as I can on the net about Christianity. (I think I’m probably explaining myself badly here). I stand convicted in my own eyes, and God’s, of not honouring my husband enough or doing the best for my children, or being any sort of Proverbs woman or Titus 2 or whatever woman. I was just me, and not very good at it. So my initial readings on biblical requirements for women were an earnest attempt to help me to be a better person. Frugal lifestyle blogs have helped me to be a better steward, and complementarian discussions and making home a haven have helped me, I hope, to be a better wife, and housewife (I’m naturally untidy)
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As my reading, and searching continued, I started to see that some apples hide a worm, that some roses have blight at the centre, that some human-mediated systems have been elevated to the status of divinely inspired wisdom, and that it’s relatively easy to follow rules, because it gives us the security of feeling that we are measuring up to God’s standard.
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It’s much easier to measure and check off lists than to live by faith and to say to God: I’ve tried to follow you today. I don’t know how well I’ve done. Only you can see my heart. Judge me, and be merciful, because I do love you even if I’m not very good at it. Help me to go on trying to be like you. Forgive me, that I’m not. Help me to go on without any assurance that I have succeeded, living with the understanding of my human frailty, mourning my faults because they offend you, and trusting in your plans for me, without asking for knowledge or certainty. Help me to forget myself in serving you through love for others, rather than to count up the ways in which I have served you today, and present you with my own tally of righteousness. Focus me away from myself, and my triumphs or failures to seeing and serving you in the people I meet. Give me humility, and teach me to be merciful.
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I also passionately, passionately dislike being judgemental, or organisations that judge how Christlike a person is by how they live. Only God knows our hearts, and it’s a good thing he does, because only he truly knows how to temper justice with mercy. In my life I have seen so much merciless justice meted out to the unhappy, the ignorant, the needy and those who do not conform, that I tend to err on the side of tenderness. (Possibly wrongly, I don’t know.)
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So I don’t speak with any authority – though I know I sometimes speak forcefully. (Habit of mind: my degree is in Latin and Greek, with emphasis on classical philosophy and dialectic. Great fun intellectually, but totally useless for salvation.) We’re all searching, aren’t we – searching for how to follow Christ.
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Molly – sorry about long post again.
I think I’ll stop talking now – I don’t want to hog the conversation.
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[It's Molly here...Wow. Joanna, that was good stuff. I am right on the same page, only wishing I'd noticed the worm in the apple before I'd chewed it and recommended it to others].
Posted by Valerie on April 16, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Joanna, I love Elzabeth Gaskell and Flora Thompson. I also find exploring the darker side of rural life very interesting.
) I am realising more and more that there is no one way. The only one way is Jesus. We can not find salvation in lifestyle, as Joanna said. There are ideals….but in my experience Jesus has been far more concerned with growing my character and allowing me to go through suffering than to live an ideal. My husband and I would love to buy a house with a bit of land. I just can’t see it happening. God keeps calling us to other and different things, and it is not that the land ideal is not good, it just isn’t what He has for us right now!
It’s like God is saying, stop with the opinions already! Die to self! Lay it down! Love Me!
I wonder how things will look in twenty years time, here?
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I agree, that to live a life close to the earth, growing one’s own food etc etc is very good. It is, perhaps, the ideal in some senses. But where does doing what God says come into that?
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Over and over, I have stumbled onto a ‘good thing’, then have bashed my friends over the head with it and said that everyone should be doing it. As I get older (but not necessarily wiser
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We christians are great at judging by appearances. Some people would look at our life and question why we have no children, why I work, etc etc, just because of how it looks. They have no idea about the ins and outs, and yet I can honestly say we are exactly in the position God has planted us.
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That, I believe, is the key. Finding His will, and doing it, whether or not it conforms to the supposed ideal.
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One thing that bugs me is that everything I’ve been passionate about has come back to bite me somewhere uncomfortable.
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I find it fascinating to enter into this discussion from an Australian perspective. Our christian culture is so different, and yet I am seeing movements growing, such as the home-schooling movement, which is beginning to be linked with living off the land and growing your own veggies.
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ANother thing I have to say is that I love hearing about how other people live, and allowing different schools of thought to challenge my own modus operundi. I had honestly, for example, never given birth control much thought, and reading about awesome people who lived so differently to what is decidedly the norm here, has been challengin and refreshing. There is always room for improvement in my life!
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Valerie
Posted by Holly on April 17, 2008 at 4:46 am
Ah, that is good that you found Joanna’s letter, Molly. Sometimes, when that happens to me, I just don’t think that I can write it all down again!
Joanna, am I to understand that you are saying that you were painting a particularly bleak picture of the time period, for the purpose of rounding out the conversation, because you felt that people just weren’t seeing both sides?
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I have not ventured into reading the comments at TW. Just can’t do it!
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I appreciate your comments. I guess that just a few things remain that I would like your thoughts on.
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1) Do you really perceive that agrarianism in the US is predominantly for the mildly wealthy? I have lived in rural settings my entire life, and have only known a few wealthy agrarians.
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2) I do not understand the lumping of Doug Phillips into the agrarian column. I believe he and his company adheres to the virtue of simpler times…but not necessarily agrarian. Maybe we’re mixing two topics here…
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3) The same thing with the Duggars. I don’t really see how anyone could watch the Duggar videos and say that they are legalistic or “holier than thou.” They do not dress in period costumes, they eat Hamburger Helper, and they radiate JOY not judgementalism. They do not try to say that everyone must live like they do – they simply enjoy THEIR lives with many children. Consequently, many of us who DO have large families (I have 8 children, myself)admire them. I’d love to learn home organization from Mrs. Duggar. Really, I just want her to run MY household. That would be easier!
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4)I have been a homeschooler for “forever.” I’ve been a country girl, for “forever.” I’ve never heard anyone (except Barbara Kingsolver…the evolutionary Biologist) say that the agrarian lifestyle is our salvation. (She says that it is our salvation as a species, not as a Christian.) I can see that it is implied, but most true agrarians are not this way. They want to help people do what they can to live a healthier life. Don’t most people who came to their beliefs carefully and ardently think that their lifestyle is superior? I think that’s a human thing….
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Perhaps because the agrarian lifestyle DOES take commitment and yes, hard effort, people defend it more. And since it does have its benefits, it is easy to want to help others reap the same benefits.
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Regardless – I hope that all is well with you! I’ll check back in later this evening!
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Thanks for the conversation, Molly. Hope you are doing well, too.
Posted by Joanna-from-England on April 17, 2008 at 7:48 am
Gruss Gott, everyone – that’s how they say hello in Bavaria in South Germany: it means God’s Greeting
Just a quick post to say I’ll be answering your questions later – am currently up to my ears in getting elder dd ready to do her three day Duke of Edinburgh Silver expedition. (She’ll be off tomorrow a.m to the Brecon Beacons in Wales for three days walking and two days wild camping with a group of other girls: no toilets, no running water, other than out of the sky because the weather forecast here is for RAIN bigtime, no mobile phones, no internet, no nothing except her and her team and God’s green and currently rather chilly earth . . .) She loves the challenge and the freedom (And so do I for her, despite my maternal nerves.)
Looking forward to speaking to you later – hope everyone has had at some time today when they’ve felt God’s grace and joy. I found a cool website today called Universalis which lets you download the Divine Office (OK it’s the Catholic devotions, but the Psalms are still the Psalms!) for each day and keep them on your screen. I’ve kept popping in all day to read an extra verse or two, and it’s really cheered me on through the (horrible) spring cleaning and the (freezing) wind and the worry about both the (pregnant and overdue) guinea pig and the (20 year old and sickly) cat and the search for missing items of camping kit . . .
It’s been amazing being able to follow the services through out the day. I’m going to read Vespers now – the evening service.
Posted by Atlantic on April 18, 2008 at 10:18 am
Oh, wonderful.
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After a day or two of craziness with no time to blog, I take a deep breath and head over here to read and respond to the latest comments on GNAP, idealising the past etc…
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And what do I find but an OVERWHELMING temptation to start expounding on the Divine Office?
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Hmph.
Posted by Lorri on April 18, 2008 at 12:00 pm
((((Sigh))))……..I’m absolutely enjoying the discussion here that has been able to find the merit in simpler, healthier, agrarian lifestyles and separate that from the “thou shalt only” dictates of some of the folks being discussed. Too often it seems to quickly fall into name calling on both sides. I’ve added several titles to my reading wishlists as well! Thank you for hosting this informed discussion
Posted by Atlantic on April 18, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Posted by Atlantic on April 18, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I am really terribly at blockquotes.
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let’s try that again:
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No. Idealising the past is a matter of an overall evaluation of a time period as far better than it actually was in virtually every aspect. Here, she is merely claiming that one single aspect had a certain quality, and that this quality is admirable and worthy of being desired.
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She then continues later:
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Again, maybe I’ve been exposed too much to champagne socialists who aren’t prepared to judge any culture on earth…except for conservative Christian ones. That, and coming from a fairly liberal milieu, I’m more personally familiar with the harms done by laxity and relativism than with those of judgementalism and excessive rigidity. Satan makes sins in pairs for a reason. 
)), so I’ll have to break off there for now.
It’s not a negation. She gives specific examples of what she is rejecting, the woman who is so “angelic” or immaculately garbed that she is useless at anything practical, including running a household. (I do think it’s possible that one’s “distance” from a particular lifestyle tends to obscure the distinctions that are obvious from a closer perspective.)
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However, I do happen to agree she’s a bit delusional with regards to the Victorian era. If you want to convince me that she’s idealizing the era, the best way to do it would be to point out that in the paragraph that I quoted, the only disadvantages that she names are all technological. She doesn’t name any problematic Victorian values at all.
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Nevertheless, there are people with far better knowledge and credentials that she has who also promote many Victorian values (without condoning everything in Victorian society), such as Gertrude Himmelfarb, so although I am not an expert on the Victorian era, I have no problem keeping an open mind about the claim that on some points, Victorian society may have had had better values than mainstream American or British society today.
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Looking over the conversation, I think Holly is right that has been a certain confusion about what is specifically being discussed – is it agrarianism specifically, or is the past, (and which past?) or is it agrarianism conflated with a particular past? And the question of whether technological differences matter – I was thinking that if we were merely discussing agrarianism or values that one might think better exemplified by a particular historical period, then technological differences hardly matter….but then I realized that if there are people who are advocating a certain low-tech agrarian lifestyle as the only moral way to live, then that implies that they implying that their goal is indeed a fully low-tech society and the technological issues are therefore relevant in that case. However, that wasn’t the sort of case I was thinking of when I made my initial comments.
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I tend to be skeptical of when people say that they don’t think any cultures are superior or inferior, especially given that such a claim implies that they indeed have a moral problem with cultures that claim to be superior to others.
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Anyway, it’s getting very late here at the office (and yes, I am sitting here in a tailored, pinstriped navy suit (okay, it’s a skirted suit, but I still don’t think this is Lady Lydia’s ideal
Posted by Dulce Domum on April 19, 2008 at 12:47 am
Atlantic said:
“I tend to be skeptical of when people say that they don’t think any cultures are superior or inferior, especially given that such a claim implies that they indeed have a moral problem with cultures that claim to be superior to others.
Again, maybe I’ve been exposed too much to champagne socialists who aren’t prepared to judge any culture on earth…except for conservative Christian ones. That, and coming from a fairly liberal milieu, I’m more personally familiar with the harms done by laxity and relativism than with those of judgementalism and excessive rigidity. Satan makes sins in pairs for a reason. 
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Oh, Atlantic, I couldn’t agree more!!!
Posted by lazydaisydays on April 19, 2008 at 11:20 am
Hi Atlantic,
I’ll reply to your points, but I think as you have hinted it’s gone a bit off topic, so I’ll leave Lady Lyd and the gang alone after this comment!
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Lol I’m not sure how to organise all the quotes within a quote here
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Mrs Chancey quote:While we might wish for the civility and deferential behavior of the Victorian gentleman…
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My quote:Doesn’t this prove though, that they do idealise the past? Mrs Chancey negates her own argument by that simple comment.
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Atlantic said: No. Idealising the past is a matter of an overall evaluation of a time period as far better than it actually was in virtually every aspect. Here, she is merely claiming that one single aspect had a certain quality, and that this quality is admirable and worthy of being desired.
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Yup, I reckon you got me there, perhaps I should have been more specific. I believe that, for all they (LAF as this is the site Mrs Chancey is defending) may say, they do idealise many aspects of the Victorian era…particularly the manners, the clothing, the family structure, social structure, etc. Recently I’ve noticed that Mrs Chancey in particular, is a little more sensitive to this and makes great pains to point out the failings (as she views them) of the Victorian era, along with the good points (again, as she and others view them) in her articles.
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Mrs Chancey quote: The idea of woman as angelic being or immaculately garbed suburban matron may seem flattering at first, but it does not square with Judeo-Christian Truth.
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My comment: …but again negates that with a later comment:
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Mrs Chancey quote: But while we seek to be more feminine and womanly,…
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Atlantic quote: It’s not a negation. She gives specific examples of what she is rejecting, the woman who is so “angelic” or immaculately garbed that she is useless at anything practical, including running a household. (I do think it’s possible that one’s “distance” from a particular lifestyle tends to obscure the distinctions that are obvious from a closer perspective.)
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However, I do happen to agree she’s a bit delusional with regards to the Victorian era. If you want to convince me that she’s idealizing the era, the best way to do it would be to point out that in the paragraph that I quoted, the only disadvantages that she names are all technological. She doesn’t name any problematic Victorian values at all.
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But I think she does cancel out her own argument, which a cursory perusal of the site proves – I could bore you with quote and links where the clothing and being ‘lady-like’ in Victorian manner, wearing of pretty dresses, etc all of which I would argue are completely inappropriate and cumbersome for a hardworking mother and homemaker. Who could work hard in hot weather wearing many petticoats, boned undergarments, etc. A friend of mine commented that one of the major causes of women’s deaths in the home was their long dresses catching fire in the kitchen by the fire.
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Much of the literature, although not all, is neo-Victorian in tone and sympathy.
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I guess there’s nothing wrong with having a little fun, and living a little like a BBC adaptation of some Victorian novel. I just would have respected Mrs Chancey more if she’d held her hands up and said “yes I love the Victorian manners (and whatever else she likes) I wish that we could return to the sensibilities of that era in these harsh days. And why not?”. Rather than embarrased apologetics.
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I’ve been reading LAF for a while and there is much that lauds many aspects of this era, I just don’t know why they are embarrassed about it, either they ought to stand up and say ‘yes we love it’ or stop going on about how great it was and then denying that they do.
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For example, Lady Lydia writes in a review of the adaptation of North and South:
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Viewed with Victorian sensibilities, it shows how seriously people regarded a kind look, a soft smile, or a sensitive handshake. Oh, that we would return to such sensibilities in life and in romance! Then we may rid our culture of the rampant insincerity that has mislead young women and men.
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To me what Lady Lydia writes here is nonsense and an idealisation. And yet Mrs Chancey claims they are not a neo-Victorian site: Wikipedia describes neo-Victorian as: “…an aesthetic movement which amalgamates Victorian and Edwardian aesthetic sensibilities with modern principles and technologies. A large number of magazines and websites are devoted to Neo-Victorian ideas in dress, family life, interior decoration, morals, and other topics.” Which, to my mind, is what LAF does, hugely.
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It’s rather like someone dressed as a Cling-on vehemently denying that they are a trekkie
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Daisy
Posted by lazydaisydays on April 19, 2008 at 11:27 am
I should have said: Who could work easilyhard in hot weather wearing many petticoats, boned undergarments, etc.
In my opinion it was a mixture of fashion and excessive morality that encumbered these poor women in wholly uncomfortable and inappropriate attire for work of any kind. My wedding dress was boned, had many petticoats and was darned uncomfortable and hot…at least I married in the Autumn. *smie*
Posted by Dulce Domum on April 19, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Daisy said:
“To me what Lady Lydia writes here is nonsense and an idealisation. And yet Mrs Chancey claims they are not a neo-Victorian site: Wikipedia describes neo-Victorian as: “…an aesthetic movement which amalgamates Victorian and Edwardian aesthetic sensibilities with modern principles and technologies. A large number of magazines and websites are devoted to Neo-Victorian ideas in dress, family life, interior decoration, morals, and other topics.” Which, to my mind, is what LAF does, hugely.”
Yes, the sites you mention are absolutely neo-Victorian, and do tend to gloss over the immorality and dreadful inequality of this era. I’ve also noticed that the Victorian/Christian sites use a lot of Victorian moral literature to back up their ideas…and VF even re-prints Victorian moral literature. Which of course, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however all of this stuff must be viewed with circumspection, which I feel many of their followers do not (or are not encouraged to) do.
Posted by Joanna-from-England on April 22, 2008 at 12:30 am
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I’d finally managed to reply to Holly and Atlantic, I had a post ready and I pressed one wrong button and it disappeared.
Sob. Perhaps I’m not meant to say anything ever again. Or perhaps from now on I’ll write in Word and copy and paste.
OK here we go again:
Posted by Joanna-from-England on April 22, 2008 at 1:31 am
Hi Atlantic,
Is there a problem with the Divine Office? I was just enjoying something that I can keep on my computer to go and refresh me with reading Psalms and Bible Readings during the day.
Lifestyles: No, I won’t say that any one lifestyle is morally superior. I come from the rigidly judgemental end of the spectrum, rather than the lax and relativist, and my background includes abuse (not going as far as penetrative sex, but certainly unwanted intimate contact) from a supposedly godly priest.
Abuse that my parents did not want to know anything about. So I’m extremely sceptical about morally superior lifestyles.
God tells me ‘Judge not lest ye be judged’ He consorted with prostitutes, tax, collectors and sinners, and he came to call sinners to repentance. He did not look down his nose at them or cut them off from his society and example, and he did not condemn them. He called them, and he helped them to see that they were not in the Way that led to eternal life.
So no, I won’t judge any lifestyle as morally superior or inferior. How do I know who, on the end day, God will call? I don’t, and neither does anyone else on this earth. Do I know to whom he will say ‘Depart from me, ye wicked . . ‘No, I don’t. If someone is a thief, a liar, a crook ; if they practise a lifestyle of which should be seen to disapprove, if they’re gay or a prostitute, or a layabout, who am I to judge and condemn?
How am I any different in God’s sight? Does he not say ‘All our righteousness is as filthy rags’?
Hi Holly,
Thank you for being patient. I had a difficult weekend, and have also just returned to work on a staggered return after being off for three months with a stomach ulcer, so I’ve had to adjust this week.
You asked; 1) Do you really perceive that agrarianism in the US is predominantly for the mildly wealthy? I have lived in rural settings my entire life, and have only known a few wealthy agrarians.
No, I don’t. In England, wealthy agrarians are often a) confined to the South East of the country where farms are larger and usually producing crops, or b) major landowners with independent incomes often from land rentals (the Prince of Wales e.g), c) businessmen who run their large farms at arms length and cannot be said to truly be agrarians, or d) any combination of the above. Pig farmers across our country, cattle farmers in the South West, and sheep farmers in marginal areas such as Wales, Cumbria and Scotland are often dirt poor. Also, the suicide rate among farmers here is one of the highest across all sectors of employment in the country, and many men in their twenties or even thirties who want to continue farming their family farm cannot find partners who are willing to be ‘a farmer’s wife’.
My point was that agrarian lifestyles demand specialised knowledge which cannot necessarily be learned by an innocent hopeful with a ‘how-to’ book and a sublime faith. Some knowledge, some experience, and some financial backing to tide you over the inevitable downs are, to my mind, a pre-requisite for making a success of the lifestyle, and not, instead, finding yourself broken physically, emotionally and financially for want of some basic precautions.
If agrarian lifestyles in the sense of ‘get or build a house in the country, raise a few chickens, or cattle, keep everything on the family farm, have a family church, keep out wicked society and wait for the Rapture’ are being promoted as one of the things that Jesus requires for salvation – and my reading has led me to believe that this is happening – then I think it is profoundly sad. Simply living this lifestyle will not of itself save any more than wearing a headscarf will: the difference is that a headscarf can be removed without serious damage to a family. Wholesale commitment to this patriarchal ideal cannot be removed so easily.
You also mentioned: 2) I do not understand the lumping of Doug Phillips into the agrarian column. I believe he and his company adheres to the virtue of simpler times…but not necessarily agrarian. Maybe we’re mixing two topics here…
Maybe. I was using Doug Phillips and VF as an example of unrealistic romanticising the past; see Dulce’s comment also. The two are not necessarily synonymous. My comment at the end about the beard was a mild, and obviously unsuccessful, joke.
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And you said: 3) The same thing with the Duggars. . .
I understood that Mr Duggar was a trader in real estate. (So they have the financial back-up I talked about) Over here, that would equate to serious money. If I’m wrong, I apologise: If I’m right, I shall try to find the details to back up my point – remiss of me not to have done it earlier, I suppose.
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And you also questioned: 4)I have been a homeschooler for “forever.” I’ve been a country girl, for “forever.” I’ve never heard anyone (except Barbara Kingsolver…the evolutionary Biologist) say that the agrarian lifestyle is our salvation. (She says that it is our salvation as a species, not as a Christian.)
Actually I agree with Kingsolver, and feel that unless we do get back to our roots there is little hope for us, as a species or as Christians. My comments referred to the impression I have received from reading Michael Pearl, and yes, Doug Phillips (Look on his website at the answer he gave to a woman who complained that their Boy’s Catalogue contained real animal pelts for sale: he maintained that every red-blooded American boy should yearn to be a hunter and trapper in order to provide for his family, and so he defended stocking the pelts) and other similar websites, that the best way to be saved is to withdraw from the world’s contagion, and live a simple back to nature life.
It may well be that this is A way to a lifestyle more in keeping with the patriarchs’ and also a lifestyle that enables one to live more leisurely, in time with the seasons and nature’s rhythms, and to spend all day filled with the knowledge of the wonderful world we live in, linking toil and prayer in an unceasing act of praise, as the early monastic communities attempted to do.
I’m simply saying it is not THE way – not the only way – nor should it ever be promoted as such to the desperately seeking, the humble and searching, and those yearning for a closeness to God that only God can provide.
I hope that this explains what I wrote – I’m not speaking with authority, only as someone who is trying to understand what is happening in the Christian community.
Posted by Atlantic on April 22, 2008 at 10:34 am
Joanna – there’s nothing wrong with the Divine Office – I just find it a real temptation to start going on and on about it!
No time right this second to reply to the rest – maybe later tonight.
Posted by Atlantic on April 25, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Hi again – sorry I haven’t commented back before this, but (as I’m sure is true for a lot of us), time has been short lately. Let’s see if I have blockquote tags right this time:
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Daisy, maybe we’ll have to agree to disagree here. I admit I’ve never been a in-depth reader of the LAF site, but I’ve just looked at it with a view to this issue. What I see is admiration for the femininity of Victorian dress, and advocacy of increasing the femininity and modesty (as they see it) of women’s dress today, but not advocacy of actually wearing Victorian clothing. For example, in the main sidebar, the most relevant link appears to be Femininity and Modesty. Some of the outside links are broken, and some are clearly admiring images of Victorian or similar clothing, but in terms of practical recommendations, the third link on that page is to a set of modest pattern and clothing links. Several comes with personal recommendations…and of the three I clicked on and explored, all are full of perfectly reasonable, practical, non-fussy clothing. One is to a site aimed at Orthodox Jewish women, who tend to have large families and so also need practical clothing that meets Orthodox modesty standards.
Googling reveals only three uses of “petticoat” on the site: one says it is important to wear a petticoat or a slip under a dress, which is hardly controversial; the second says “Add a petticoat, slip, bloomers or leggings to create more comfort,” which implies that the petticoat is optional and comfort is a one of the goals; the third advises very practically “don’t forget a lovely slip or petticoat!” next to a link to buy a pretty but rather transparent white summer dress.
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That last page, incidentially, includes admiration for pictures of fancy feminine dress, but then specifically says, “Now let us translate some of this beauty into modern dress!” That’s not a recommendation for actual Victorian wear.
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There are no hits for “boned”, but “stays” results in one hit: “Modernists mock the old Victorian stays and corsets, while wearing spandex and jeans that are just as form-fitting and even tighter than the undergarments of the past. One reason women feel uncomfortable in dresses is that they are used to wearing these tight clothes and feel rather unprotected and cold when they wear a dress. Their tight jeans make their figures feel pulled together, well-shaped, and firm. If you have difficulty feeling trim and neat in a dress, invest in foundations that will make you feel well-dressed and comfortable.”
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The author is not mandating stays, but (a) pointing out a logical inconsistency, and (b) recommending that some women might want tighter garments for the specific purpose of feeling comfortable.
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Not an issue for most of us these days.
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I just don’t see this. They are admiring of the Victorian era, even somewhat idealistic and even a little delusional at times. You cite the wiki article on neo-Victorianism, and the “In dress and behaviour section says,
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That’s not a description of Christian femininity and modesty enthusiasts. That’s a post-modern subculture – related to things like steampunk, goths, the Society for Creative Anachronism and those weird Japanese fads. So I think LAF are quite right to disavow the “neo-Victorian” label.
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Joanna, the teaching ”judge not” is considerably more nuanced than you suggest. The linked article, in particular, goes over how we may indeed be called to judge in some situations, as St Paul discusses.
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There’s also a huge difference between judging lifestyles and judging people. The failure of people to live up to their publically-professed lifestyle is proof of sin and/or hypocrisy, but not of the virtue of the lifestyle itself. I grew up in a mainstream left-liberal environment and spent over ten years in considerably more left-countercultural circles, and I can tell plenty of stories about their sins and hypocrisies (by their own standards, not Christian or conservative ones). In some ways, though, I’m even more appalled by what happens when certain values are lived out without hypocrisy: to take a mainstream example, my FIL to this day is proud of the fact that he left my MIL and his children (ages 3 and 1) for no particular reason – no other woman, no huge problems or incompatibility, he just felt restricted being a suburban family man with responsibilities. So off he went to Find Himself (this was the late Sixties), my MIL became a bitter radical feminist, and the fallout for the children was huge, and the impact is still felt in their (and my, and others’) lives today.
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No one except for God can actually judge the state of one’s soul. If one is living in an objectively sinful lifestyle, then we cannot know the level of personal culpability that one actually has – I think it was CS Lewis who pointed out that for a man brought up in a casually cruel environment, merely refraining from an act of cruelty in front of his friends (when such restraint might expose him to their mockery), might be doing more than you or I would if we gave up our lives for a friend.
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But this doesn’t negate the fact that different lifestyles – even non-sinful ones – may be more or less objectively better or worse. The religious life (by which I mean being a monk or a nun) is superior to the state of life I have been called to. It doesn’t mean that everyone is supposed to do that; most aren’t called to it – if someone tried to be a monk or a nun simply because they were grasping at “superiority”, they would be making a prideful and spiritually dangerous mistake. Nor does it mean that monks and nuns are personally spiritually superior to the rest of us, or that they are immune from sin and hypocrisy.
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All our righteousness is as filthy rags, but that doesn’t let us off doing our best. And doing our best involves having some concept of “best”.
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Here, I agree with you completely.
Posted by Bryan Riley on April 26, 2008 at 7:08 am
This is one of the best aspects of following the call to go internationally – seeing where cultural and biblical collide, collapse, and intersect.