(Continued from Sins of the ‘patriarchs,’ part 1.)

Are many common views of “Biblical patriarchy” actually not so Biblical?

This topic could take a while to discuss, so if you have a question, comment or rebuttal, please do engage in the comments below. And especially compare whatever you read here not just with any particular Christian teaching or Anecdote, but with rightly read Scripture.

Meet the patriarchalists

Have you ever seen them? They may be at your church or homeschool group, or passing in the store, or (very likely) loading up into a church-bus-sized van to go to the Creation Museum. They are often very well-behaved, with quiet children within a wide spread of ages and heights, often with denim skirts (the girls, that is) or jumpers or both, and they have a lot of children.

Inevitably they’re homeschoolers. Perhaps their most famous representatives are the Duggars, stars of a Learning Channel series who last month were on People magazine’s cover and everything. And as Tim Hawkins reminds us, homeschool families are meek. Unique. Geek.

I myself grew up the oldest of six homeschooled children. Like many I’m sure, I’m excited to see large Christian families able to get on TV and everything to (I hope) show God’s glory that way.

Yet the increased media attention on many homeschoolers could raise interest in a darker side of homeschooling. I do not say this to be dramatic, but merely out of concern that some homeschoolers could draw attention not to God’s glory and the Gospel, but to their own special lifestyles and extra-Biblical, or even anti-Biblical, beliefs. Many such families read articles about, receive catalogs from, and go to conferences featuring, organizations that teach what they call “Biblical patriarchy,” promoted as God’s best (or only) path for a family.

Some of it seems innocuous enough, such as encouraging boys to imitate American heroes or girls to dress like frontier women.¹ When Don Veinot of Midwest Christian Outreach² began researching “Biblical patriarchy” ideas, he described his first impression of one homepage.

At first glance, Vision Forum’s web site looks more like a web site about American patriotism than anything about Christianity. As I read through the opening page, I came across this statement: “Vision Forum Calls for American Christians to Remember the Mighty Deeds of God at the Quadricentennial of Our Founding as Nation.” Well, I am an American patriot, and I do believe God has done some great works in this nation. However, is there a theme here? Is Christianity supposed to be evaluated mostly through the grid of patriotic Americanism? Certainly, this is not stated and may not be intended, but isn’t that how it comes across?

Overemphasizing “Americanized” Christianity can interfere with the Gospel, yet it’s not necessarily heresy. In my view it’s among the least of many problems with patriarchalist beliefs.

Questioning human authorities

For patriarchalists, God can far too easily become little more than one’s Authority, with intermediary human “authorities” in between Him and us.³ Thus, families behave the same ways, especially in relationships between husbands and wives, and fathers and daughters.

In too many patriarchy-based families and churches, fathers veritably own their daughters. This is not a reactionary exaggeration describing adherents to organizations like Vision Forum. One can read their websites and see young women’s cheerful proclamations about having her heart and life “belong” to her father until a potential husband arrives — that is, for a courtship arranged and supervised by the family patriarch.

Many such beliefs are based on a low view of God, an exalted view of man and man’s righteousness, and worse, unnatural reading and wrong eisegesis of Scripture. Patriarchalists often equate practices that are described in the Bible, such as arranged marriage, and act as though these are prescribed, having just as much effect as direct commandments from God.

It’s bad enough that children, especially daughters, and whole families are undergoing a loss of freedom in Christ because of this false teaching. Far worse is that this teaching takes glory from God Himself. And what about the Grace that Jesus suffered and died to give His people for His own glory and their eternal good? It is merely is thrown into the grinding machine of Moralism.

False ‘authority’ dichotomies

Though this perhaps sometimes happens by accident, such moralistic, if/then mindsets affect how one views everything in the family: from raising children to finding the best forms of church, to media discernment, discipline, dealing with teenage changes and emotions, education choices, careers and balancing job and family, and dating and courtship.

Again, patriarchalists do not present these teachings as optional. Patriarchy websites and resources in effect treat particular lifestyle choices as just as essential as the Gospel. If such writers do remind people that some Christians believe differently and we love them too, I haven’t seen it. Therefore my point is not simply that Vision Forum and other patriarchalists’ beliefs are without Biblical basis, but that they do not teach or act as if they know these are issues upon which sincere Christians can disagree and still be in the true and orthodox faith.

This mindset especially affects daughters in a family. Patriarchalists explain it this way: if you’re a daughter and you leave home, going outside of your human father’s authority to make a life of your own — at best this is not God’s will for you. And at worst, you are or will soon become a feminist-leaning rebel destined for a wrongly lived life, maybe with illicit sex and everything.

Such a view is popularized by the homeschooling duo known as “the Botkin sisters.” As teenagers they wrote a book in which they claimed that a Christian daughter must serve as her human father’s “helpmeet” until such time as she gets married.

Another patriarchy advocate writes:

I encourage you — give your heart fully to the Lord Jesus Christ and to your father (or if you are married, to your husband) and be under his authority. Find your mission in being his helpmeet. Your job is to honor and serve him as your leader, your protector, your head. The Word of God tells us as women to delight in being keepers at home and to love children. We are to make our father’s (or husband’s) home and work as productive as possible.⁴

How is this any different from Roman Catholics’ over-veneration of accepted saints? Protestant patriarchalists would be all over that, even while themselves elevating human fathers into roles of spiritual authority (and even mediators for their families) alongside Jesus Christ Himself!

Elsewhere I’ve provided specific examples of this. And in summary: to support this belief of fathers’ authority roles, patriarchy proponents often cite Old Testament narrative that describe this, not prescribe this. They then read such violations of sound hermeneutics into New-Testament passages, such as Ephesians 5, about true husband/wife roles and “children obey your parents,” as if all these ideas about fathers and daughters are simply the same.

In my view, this is already pretty bad. Perhaps I could stop the column here and simply note that the idea of giving this much glory to any human being is not only leaving a door open for abuse (a lesser charge), but worse, stealing glory and authority that belongs to the Lord alone.

However, instead of only lambasting how woeful it all is, as some websites do, or go into rants about personal woes with patriarchalists, I’d like to explore more about how this works out in practice, and compare patriarchy teachings with Scripture to see whether these ideas are found there. If not, let’s at least disregard these beliefs as only optional for Christians. And at most (I’m afraid it has gotten to this point), we must throw them out as perversions of Scripture.

(Tomorrow: to support particular “courtship” models, patriarchalists insist on false dichotomies and more unnatural readings of Scripture passages, turning descriptions into prescriptions.)