So Much More, p. 15-22 – Part 3: Of Straw Men and Submission

IMPORTANT ADDENDUM (11/8/14): A&E fully explain their concept of submission and how it relates to gender in chapter 4. Please read this post for the entire picture.

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You may remember a few weeks ago that Michael Farris, chairman of Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), published a white paper entitled “A Line in the Sand,” in which he rejected and condemned so-called “Biblical patriarchy.” This caused a big dustup in the homeschool community, for a variety of reasons that I don’t have room to cover in this post (see here at Love Joy Feminism for a summary). Today, I want to explore only one of the concepts that was widely discussed in the fallout from Farris’ paper: the question of whether patriocentricity teaches that all women must submit to all men.

So Much More, p. 15-22 – Part 2: Goin’ to the Chapel

Gloria Steinem, founding editor of Ms. Magazine and one of the mothers of the feminist movement, stated, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.”

Even many women who have rejected more extreme feminism feel this way.
Even independent women who acknowledge men’s usefulness and who plan to
get married or be somehow involved with men “someday” are held captive to
the idea that men are optional and can be put off until later. Many women feel
they are too busy doing their important work to involve any male input and in-
volvement in their lives. To these women, men are just a distraction.

But God created men to be more than just optional lifestyle accessories. He cre-
ated women to be dependent on them, in a good way.

If you’re like me, you read the above and immediately asked, “Wait, are they saying all women are required to get married?”

So Much More, p. 15-22 – Part 1: Father God

So did you guess that the title of this post was an intentional play on words, before even reading the post? Yes? Good. Then you grasp one of the foundational concepts of stay-at-home daughterhood (SAHD): that the line between human fathers and the Divine is murky at best.

Don’t believe me? First, review some previous SAHD material here and here. Highlights of the show include Doug Phillips issuing an “altar call” for girls to turn their hearts to their fathers, and Anna Sofia Botkin claiming that girls can take their fathers’ names in vain. Second, stay tuned, because there’s a whole boatload of bizarre headed your way that might make you change your mind.

So Much More, p. 1-13 – Part 3: The Black-and-White Cookie

Remember this post, where I compared the views of the National Center for Family-Integrated Churches (NCFIC) to a black-and-white cookie? This is also, I think, one of the underlying problems behind So Much More (and really, all of patriocentricity) – black-and-white, all-or-nothing, extreme thinking. Here’s a perfect example (emphasis A&E’s):