Friday, March 27, 2009

"Fried Fridays: Cupid, Draw Back Your Bow..."



Ah, it's been a week of little in my creative writing department...while I love to write my tongue-in-cheek "Fried Fridays" article on some strange if not outright stupid news story, this week's entry is of a different flavor. To me it's perfectly 'fried', but there is a lot of information for you to root out if you wish.

So, if you're looking for a quick cutesie read, this one won't be it. Knowledge is power, and to fully immerse in a topic that is either new or even unsettling is to broaden your knowledge base so you can speak intelligently about it should you want or need to.

I was listening to NPR radio one morning this week and heard in depth about a 'movement' that I guess I'd heard before but forgotten about. QuiverFull. Basically it's an ideology within some of the more fundamentalist Christian churches that invoke Psalm 127 v.3-5 to have really large numbers of children.

With that said, if someone wants a large family and they can safely and adequately provide for them, who am I to speak against it? Now, "OCTOmom" is a whole 'nuther ball of wax that I definitely take issues with. The idea of pumping out large numbers of children is simply not one I identify with.

With that said, the reason I selected the following links is what struck me as 'fried' about QuiverFull's rhetoric: a rather militaristic view that they need to populate the world with conservative Christians so they won't be outnumbered by Muslims and other 'ungodly' groups. The children are their arrows for war. Their mission is to 'right' the 'wrongs' of this world by returning to what they interpret as the only 'correct' way to live a Godly life: men rule, women submit, and kids flow out like water. Even the 'rhythm method' is akin to the work of the devil, as they use scripture to fulfill their directive. Just my Cliff Notes version, fyi.

Not saying members aren't perfectly nice, kind people...everyone is entitled to their beliefs. I'm simply providing links so that if you want to hear and/or read about the original NPR piece, you can do so. If you want to go to QuiverFull's website and search through their archives and links to articles, you can. I wanted to learn more, not just come up with a quick opinion, which doesn't amount to a hill of beans, anyway. There's a lot to pore over in there.

NPR QuiverFull story page

QuiverFull home page

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