Quivering Families

The Quiverfull Movement and Evangelical Theology of the Family

Emily Hunter McGowin

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781506427607
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506446608
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

American evangelicals are known for focusing on the family, but the Quiverfull movement intensifies that focus in a significant way. Often called "Quiverfull" due to an emphasis on filling their "quivers" with as many children as possible (Psalm 127:5), such families are distinguishable by their practices of male-only leadership, homeschooling, and prolific childbirth. Their primary aim is "multigenerational faithfulness" - ensuring their descendants maintain Christian faith for many generations. Many believe this focus will lead to the Christianization of America in the centuries to come.

Quivering Families is a first of its kind project that employs history, ethnography, and theology to explore the Quiverfull movement in America. The book considers a study of the movement's origins, its major leaders and institutions, and the daily lives of its families. Quivering Families argues that despite the apparent strangeness of their practice, Quiverfull is a thoroughly evangelical and American phenomenon. Far from offering a countercultural vision of the family, Quiverfull represents an intensification of longstanding tendencies. The movement reveals the weakness of evangelical theology of the family and underlines the need for more critical and creative approaches.

1

Conceiving Quiverfull: The Movement in Historical and Cultural Perspective

I met homeschooling mother of six, Deborah Olson, at a Family-Driven Faith Conference featuring Pastor Voddie Baucham, which was hosted by a Baptist church in Cincinnati.^[1] She was eager to meet someone who lived near them since they had traveled quite a distance. After a long conversation in the parking lot, I told Deborah about my research on Quiverfull families and asked whether she would be interested in participating. She agreed and gave me her contact information. Over the next two years, I conducted many interviews with Deborah, both in person and by phone.

Deborah and Dan Olson live in the suburbs of a mid-sized city in the Midwest.^[2] Their area is predominantly white (90 percent) with a median per family income of around $47,000. The Olsons are white and both college educated. Dan works for city government and Deborah is a full-time stay-at-home, homeschooling mother of six children, ranging in age from two to eleven years. Though she planned to have a career in teaching, after Deborah gave birth to their first child she never went back to the classroom. She began homeschooling when her kids were old enough to start formal schooling. They have never attended a brick and mortar school. Both Deborah and Dan grew up in conservative Christian homes. They met in church, went to college together, and wed following graduation. Deborah had always wanted a large family, but it was only after they had difficulty conceiving their first child that they decided to forgo birth control entirely. Now they want as many children as God gives them, even though Deborah has had what she calls “difficult pregnancies.”

If it were possible to speak of a typical Quiverfull family, Deborah and Dan would be good candidates for the designation. The necessary sociological research has yet to be done to tell us the number of Quiverfull families in America, let alone the specific details of their households. But, broadly speaking, Quiverfull families are white, lower or middle class, sustained financially by the male breadwinning husband, and a homemaking mother who has had some college education. Quiverfull families seem evenly distributed among suburban and rural areas, though most idealize the rural life.^[3] The families I interviewed for this book were from the Midwest and Southwest, but internet searches for Quiverfull blogs yield results all over the United States, including Alaska. There is no way to know the average number of children for Quiverfull families, but the families I interviewed had between six and eleven children. All of the mothers said that they remain “open to more.”

Deborah was skeptical that her way of life would be the subject of research. She said:

I have to admit, it seems bizarre to me the notion that what I am doing with my life is a “movement.” Literally, it makes me giggle and feel sad at the same time. Clearly our convictions for living our lives the way we do is because we believe it was God’s intention from the very beginning and that hopefully it mimics in ways what early Christians would have been doing, minus a lot of current-day culture that is impossible to rid from our lives. For that, we depend on God’s grace, and a lot of it!^[4]

Deborah’s incredulity raises a number of questions. Is Quiverfull really a movement after all?^[5] What makes a family “Quiverfull” anyway? Can you be Quiverfull without accepting the label? And for what reasons do these families practice the Quiverfull way of life? Deborah claims they do so simply because they are convinced it was “God’s intention from the very beginning” and because “it mimics in ways what early Christians would have been doing.” But, isn’t there more to it than that?

The following chapter provides a detailed account of Quiverfull as a phenomenon in contemporary American evangelicalism using the tools of history and cultural studies. I start by offering an explanation of some key terms. Then, I provide a condensed narrative of evangelical history in the United States with a focus on three themes: gender roles (principally within the institution of marriage), the family, and education. This account will begin in the Victorian period and end in the early 1990s. Then, I examine Quiverfull as a cultural phenomenon through the lenses of discourse and subculture, sketching broadly some key aspects of the movement.^[6]

Key Terms

Before beginning, I want to be clear about some terms that come up in this chapter and the chapters to follow. As explained in the introduction, I use the term Quiverfull to refer to families who participate in three interconnected practices: homeschooling, gender hierarchy, and pronatalism. Participants in this three-part discourse also participate in a subculture of evangelicalism, which we will discuss in more detail below. Thus, individuals and families can be Quiverfull; and these individuals and families, by participating in certain institutions, are also participants in Quiverfull subculture. Moreover, I use the term Quiverfull for teachers, leaders, authors, bloggers, and families regardless of whether they use it to describe themselves.^[7]

Kathryn Joyce’s book Quiverfull employs the term movement in reference to Quiverfull. I don’t know if she was the first to do so, but her book and the articles that followed spread the phrase Quiverfull movement into the American mainstream. Quiverfull movement has become a normal way of speaking of the evangelical families who choose to eschew family planning, homeschool their children, and practice male headship.^[8] Despite its popularity, however, those who study social movements today would not recognize Quiverfull as a true movement, regardless of their theoretical approach.^[9] Compared to classic social movements like the American Civil Rights Movement, Quiverfull is not a movement in the strict sense of the term. Instead, it is better to see it as part of a discernible subculture of American evangelicalism. Still, Quiverfull movement has become a common way of referring to Quiverfull families in the media. More importantly, the term movement articulates the way many Quiverfull proponents view their own cultural action. Even if sociologists are disinclined to call the work of Quiverfull families a movement, there is no doubt that many such families are seeking social and cultural change.^[10] So, even though Quiverfull families do not constitute a movement in sociological terms, I use the term movement because it names the evangelical zeal for cultural transformation that is vital to Quiverfull subculture.

Telling the story of evangelicals in America is complicated by the challenge of defining evangelical and evangelicalism.^[11] Most draw on David Bebbington’s longstanding approach, which locates the roots of evangelicalism in the pietist revivalist movements of Britain and North America. Bebbington holds out four key traits of evangelicals, often called a quadrilateral: (1) conversionism, or belief in conversion and changed lives; (2) biblicism, or belief in the truthfulness and trustworthiness of the Bible; (3) activism through evangelism and mission (proselytizing and service to those in need); and (4) crucicentrism, or the belief that Christ’s death is central to the salvation of humankind. The difficulty with Bebbington’s four characteristics is that they are primarily focused on beliefs and very broadly conceived. The quadrilateral identifies a vast swath of people and institutions, which may share some beliefs but otherwise have little else in common.^[12]

In Apostles of Reason, Molly Worthen suggests the evangelical story is primarily about the crisis of authority, which has been shaped by three unresolved problems: (1) how to reconcile faith and reason; (2) how to know Jesus; and (3) how to act publicly on faith in a post-Christendom society. I would add to her list of unresolved tensions the matter raised by Margaret Bendroth in Fundamentalism and Gender: the impulse toward egalitarianism versus the impulse to gender hierarchy.^[13] Worthen’s focus on the questions or tensions with which evangelicals are engaged provides a more three-dimensional approach. What matters is not that all evangelicals believe the same things but that they are engaged with the same questions.^[14] Thus evangelicalism functions as a culture produced through the interactions of churches, societies, networks, publishing houses, music producers, books and periodicals, blogs and websites, practices and rituals, and more. Not all participants in evangelical culture agree on the question of gender, authority, or how to faithfully know and follow Christ, but all of them will be engaged with the dialogue.^[15]

The relationship between evangelicals and American culture is complicated. Sociologists of religion have shown that evangelicals are thoroughly embedded in American culture even as they are in constant negotiation with it. Christian Smith’s “subcultural identity” theory of religious strength identifies evangelicalism as a subculture at once “embattled and thriving.” That is to say, evangelicalism has thrived in the United States because it “possesses and employs the cultural tools needed to create both clear distinction from and significant eng...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Conceiving Quiverfull: The Movement in Historical and Cultural Perspective
• Stories from the Full Quiver
• Motherhood in the Full Quiver
• Children and Childhood in the Full Quiver
• The Family in the Full Quiver
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index