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Josh Harris rethinks his approach to courtship


Gertie

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Very true. I was being taught a lot of the ideas in that book even before the book came out. And frankly, some of what was being taught in youth group in the late 90s/early 2000s went way beyond what Josh Harris said in his book.

I think this is a key point. I never read his book because I didn't have to- youth group, church...they taught very strict variations of those ideals anyway. And when I got to Christian college, they were again reinforced. I never did the courting thing, really, and I definitely dated, but always in the back of my mind wondering if the person would be The One and quickly cutting it off if it was apparent we weren't a good match.

Harris definitely fucked up for myriad reasons, but he wasn't the only one spewing this shit. The message will go on for a long long time in this culture, unfortunately. It'll be up to those of us who knew/know it to be wrong to stop it in what we teach our kids.

I also think Marjorie Jackson could stand to take a good long look in the mirror and think about whether she wants to be saying the same thing in 20 years, before she publishes her book on love and dating. She obviously knows about as much about it as Josh Harris did.

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8 hours ago, Palimpsest said:

So 20 odd years later Josh Harris reconsiders. Or says he is reconsidering. It may have to do with the scandal at Covenant Life Church (CLC) and he is desperately trying to distance himself from that.  And he really should want to repudiate that.

At the moment he seems to be trying to excuse his life work without apologizing for it and to paint himself as a victim to boot.

I'm not buying it.  

If Josh Harris wants to reinvent himself then I want to see proof in the pudding.  A decent apology would be a start.  He is no longer 21 and he needs to take responsibility for what he has preached for 20 years -and earned a whole lot of cash for preaching and writing about over 20 years.

He is not a kid any more.

Exactly -- so well & eloquently said.

Josh Harris certainly wasn't the only one preaching this shit but he was one of the most prominent and probably made more money out of it than the others. He's an asshole.

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6 hours ago, Palimpsest said:

Yes, it was part of a movement.  I'm not keen on excusing him because he's built his success on this stuff - and so did his younger twin brothers with their Rebelution crap.   http://therebelution.com/about/alex-brett-harris/

Josh was chronologically 21 when IKDG was published.  Probably pushed by the paternal unit and possibly young for his age.  He was the poster boy for the movement and  took the fame and ran with it.  Rejoiced in it.  He also wrote Boy Meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship , Not Even a Hint: Guarding Your Heart Against Lust and Sex Is Not the Problem (Lust Is): Sexual Purity in a Lust-Saturated World.   He wasn't 21 when he published those.

So 20 odd years later Josh Harris reconsiders. Or says he is reconsidering. It may have to do with the scandal at Covenant Life Church (CLC) and he is desperately trying to distance himself from that.  And he really should want to repudiate that.

At the moment he seems to be trying to excuse his life work without apologizing for it and to paint himself as a victim to boot.

I'm not buying it.  

If Josh Harris wants to reinvent himself then I want to see proof in the pudding.  A decent apology would be a start.  He is no longer 21 and he needs to take responsibility for what he has preached for 20 years -and earned a whole lot of cash for preaching and writing about over 20 years.

He is not a kid any more.

I spent more than a decade in his father's church, so I'm aware of his other books, though admittedly IKDG is the only one I've read. 

I don't think Josh Harris is reconsidering his stance on courting. I think that's a misrepresentation by some media, and people at FJ running away with themselves. Maybe for the first time he's ready to consider there were people who were harmed by the teaching, but I haven't seen or heard anything that makes me think he's rejecting his previous ideas, or recanting or apologizing.

But even if he did, it wouldn't matter,or at least it wouldn't change anything in that particular culture. Josh may have been a prominent early voice, but there have been many more. Most of the people who currently have children coming into the dating age are not being influenced by Josh s 20yr old book. They are hearing about courtship, purity, modesty, etc from all the big name homeschool guys making the circuits now. If Josh did recant and apologize, he would be accused of walking away from the faith, and his opinion would be toss aside. 

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I think I have heard and read plenty of ideas ideas about what not to do regarding relationships, but I find myself ill-equipped to actually actively start doing anything.  Probably because I've gradually become more of a loner over the last several years.  Relationships seem complicated and it seems too late to try to learn to navigate them.  I didn't really get to learn much from my first relationship beyond how living in different states isn't a great idea and exchanging lots of emails and text messages doesn't help you really know a person.  And getting to really know someone takes a lot of work, and letting someone know you is difficult.  And it's easy to hold onto a shallow infatuation far too long if you're not actually around a person much.  And just having a similar family background and a couple of similar interests isn't enough.  And strong feelings of infatuation don't actually mean anything significant.  And remembering happy memories isn't necessarily happy.  And 21-year-olds are clueless about life, love, and what they want.

Okay I guess I learned a lot.  Maybe I'm just too lazy and rusty to try again.  Maybe I'm still not sure what I want out of life.  Maybe I'm too comfortable living with family.  It's just kinda easy here.  But the lack of pressure and purpose to really excell has left me kinda drifting at life. I've never been good at forming and comitting to long term plans.  Or any long term committment.  It's a good thing my cancer treatment was only two months :P

Oops now I'm rambling about my life again.  Actually I should probably do that more often.  I guess part of my problem is lack of really close friends I can confide in.  So I just rant aimlessly here instead.

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@CyborgKin Ah, we've all done it at times! And it's ok to still be figuring stuff out - Lord knows I am.

 

That also illustrates the worrying things about books like his. They are targeted at inexperienced young people who need proper guidance or examples to follow,

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6 hours ago, FundieFarmer said:

I also think Marjorie Jackson could stand to take a good long look in the mirror and think about whether she wants to be saying the same thing in 20 years, before she publishes her book on love and dating. She obviously knows about as much about it as Josh Harris did.

Hm but this might be her best and only chance to be a know-it-all. Once life happens she might wise up and then it would be too late  :)

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25 minutes ago, seraaa said:

@CyborgKin Ah, we've all done it at times! And it's ok to still be figuring stuff out - Lord knows I am.

 

That also illustrates the worrying things about books like his. They are targeted at inexperienced young people who need proper guidance or examples to follow,

Precisely.  I took enough from the book to figure all that dating/courtship stuff was either a bad idea or complicated or too much work.  At least I managed to avoid taking on a judgemental attitude to 'impure' people.  That would be frightful.  Not that not being intolerant in that way makes me special, just hopefully less intolerable.

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4 hours ago, Anonymousguest said:

I don't think Josh Harris is reconsidering his stance on courting. I think that's a misrepresentation by some media, and people at FJ running away with themselves. Maybe for the first time he's ready to consider there were people who were harmed by the teaching, but I haven't seen or heard anything that makes me think he's rejecting his previous ideas, or recanting or apologizing.

Really? I don't see that the media and some people on FJ are "running away with themselves." 

On his latest media tour Mr. "I've lived a sort of backwards life" claims to be re-evaluating and reconsidering his views on courtship.  From the horse's mouth - he says the problem is that IKDG was "used as a rule book"  but that was "not my intention."  He thinks part of the problem with his book is that it "harmed people" and that "there are clear things in statements in Scripture about our sexuality being expressed within the covenant of marriage. But that doesn't mean that dating is somehow wrong or a certain way of dating is the only way to do things."  All those are direct quotes are from his NPR interview.  http://www.npr.org/2016/07/10/485432485/former-evangelical-pastor-rethinks-his-approach-to-courtship

He is also asking for people to contact him with their stories about how IKDG affected them.   Why is that?  Is this manipulation so he can twist their stories and tell them that they were hurt because they misused his clever book (Michael Pearl's defense of TTUAC)? Or is he genuinely  reconsidering?

Of course, he is still proudly Conservative/Evangelical Christian.  There is no change in that.  This is a link to his farewell to CLC as he heads off to Regent Theological Seminary to get himself a theological education at last.  It is enough to make a cat sick.   http://www.covlife.org/blog/joshua_harris_sunday_remarks

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Most of the people who currently have children coming into the dating age are not being influenced by Josh s 20yr old book.  

Agreed.  Which makes me wonder again about his motives with his big media splash at the moment.  If sales are down, perhaps all this is about making a few revisions and republishing the book with great fanfare claiming he was right all along.  

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If Josh did recant and apologize, he would be accused of walking away from the faith, and his opinion would be toss aside. 

And this would be a problem?  If Josh genuinely believes his book was wrong then he should do the honorable thing and recant and apologize.  He shouldn't care about people accusing him of walking away from the faith.  He should be secure enough in his own faith to have the guts to admit his mistakes.  Otherwise he is the worst sort of hypocrite.  He can't have it both ways.

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 From the horse's mouth - he says the problem is that IKDG was "used as a rule book"  but that was "not my intention."

This is where he loses some credibility in my charts... Why the devil did he write a rule book if he didn't intend it to be used as one.

I think it comes down to whether Josh Harris thinks he was wrong about what he wrote or if he thinks other people are wrong in how they're reading it.

"I'm sorry I was wrong", is an apology, "I'm sorry you were wrong" are weasel words.

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18 hours ago, Palimpsest said:

Yes, it was part of a movement.  I'm not keen on excusing him because he's built his success on this stuff - and so did his younger twin brothers with their Rebelution crap.   http://therebelution.com/about/alex-brett-harris/

Josh was chronologically 21 when IKDG was published.  Probably pushed by the paternal unit and possibly young for his age.  He was the poster boy for the movement and  took the fame and ran with it.  Rejoiced in it.  He also wrote Boy Meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship , Not Even a Hint: Guarding Your Heart Against Lust and Sex Is Not the Problem (Lust Is): Sexual Purity in a Lust-Saturated World.   He wasn't 21 when he published those.

So 20 odd years later Josh Harris reconsiders. Or says he is reconsidering. It may have to do with the scandal at Covenant Life Church (CLC) and he is desperately trying to distance himself from that.  And he really should want to repudiate that.

At the moment he seems to be trying to excuse his life work without apologizing for it and to paint himself as a victim to boot.

I'm not buying it.  

If Josh Harris wants to reinvent himself then I want to see proof in the pudding.  A decent apology would be a start.  He is no longer 21 and he needs to take responsibility for what he has preached for 20 years -and earned a whole lot of cash for preaching and writing about over 20 years.

He is not a kid any more.

Yes, yes and yes. He wasn't the originator of the concept (he was a fucking 21-year-old kid, for chrissakes) but he made a fuckload of money off of it. Now he's like "see, I'm actually a reasonable guy..." Seems an awful lot like those guys that come back into your life and say "I've changed, for real this time!"

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On 25/08/2016 at 11:01 AM, nausicaa said:

Not that you asked for suggestions, but are there any other nearby churches with more young adults? Or a multichurch 20s and 30s group or Christian MeetUp group? (You're in Australia right? Not sure how big MeetUp is there.)

In a weird coincidence my mother just discovered MeetUp and asked me to join to share an event with a multichurch group.  So that's something.

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6 minutes ago, CyborgKin said:

In a weird coincidence my mother just discovered MeetUp and asked me to join to share an event with a multichurch group.  So that's something.

MeetUp is hit or miss. Some groups are great and some never really take off. But I do think it's great for meeting new people and as a shy person, it gave me a lot of practice talking to new people and people I would have never met otherwise. 

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I never (!!!almost never srsly!!!) start topics in my long (looooong) tenure here. Josh was my gateway fundie and it has been fascinating to watch his trajectory unfold, while simultaneously never feeling the slightest bit tempted to cross over to the kissed-dating-goodbye dark side.

I'm a nothing (raised Catholic but it never took). I just watched a couple of the videos, and I will chime back in once I've watched a few more. His kids are all minors, and my favorite post so far is one of his teen-aged daughter slapping him in the car. Yes, that one was awesome.

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I wish to heck I could find it, but in an online comments thread, a young woman told Josh how sad high school was for her because, owing to IKDG, she wasn't allowed to go to her prom (and I think other usual social activities). He actually apologized to her and it didn't sound fake. I was floored.

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23 hours ago, erunerune said:

His kids are all minors, and my favorite post so far is one of his teen-aged daughter slapping him in the car.

Say what??!!!???

Do you have a link?

3 hours ago, Hane said:

He actually apologized to her and it didn't sound fake. I was floored.

That is interesting.  I may be cynical as hell but a decent apology goes a long way.

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I got a copy to snark it...but after trying to slog through the book for two weeks, I can't even. 

The one thing that stood out to me was this: "Many non-Christians view sex as a bodily function on the level of scratching another person's back.  They engage in sex whenever and with whomever they want."

Really?  Really?  Scratching someone's back?

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1 hour ago, desertvixen said:

I got a copy to snark it...but after trying to slog through the book for two weeks, I can't even. 

The one thing that stood out to me was this: "Many non-Christians view sex as a bodily function on the level of scratching another person's back.  They engage in sex whenever and with whomever they want."

Really?  Really?  Scratching someone's back?

As I said, Josh Harris is an asshole. He's doing a PR remake of his image. That's all.

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Well, considering that some people think that there are those that believe having an abortion is like getting a tooth pulled, his doesn't surprise me...

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I can understand that Harris does not want to be defined for the rest of his life by a book he wrote when he was 21. Not just his view points, but also the way they were communicated may no longer be part of who he is now. Writing a best seller at that age must be like a curse, as your whole identity is cought up in it. It could hinder your further growth as a person.

In one of the interviews he mentioned that he struggled to take a critical look at his biggest accomplishment. Cause if that was crap, what is left of you?

So I say give him a year or so and see if he can move beyond his own shadow. It must be as hard for him as a J-slave distancing herself from 'growing up Duggar'. But if he does it, many may follow him. The guy does have influence.

 

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Elizabeth Esther blogged about Harris' seemingly genuine apology which happened on Twitter. Of she may have just written about it in her blog's FB page. 

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I don't know where these women fall on the fundamentalist scale, but they mount a defence of I kissed dating goodbye in this youtube video. (Why 'I kissed dating goodbye' didn't ruin our lives)

They run a blog/organisation called Girl Defined Ministries which advocates "god's design for womanhood" and "embracing gender differences"

They take the view that people misapplying or rigidly following the "rules" laid out in the book is what lead to all the grief. While true on a very simplistic level, that really doesn't touch upon the pressures exerted by the surrounding purity culture or deal with any of the criticisms applicable to the culture in general.

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33 minutes ago, seraaa said:

They take the view that people misapplying or rigidly following the "rules" laid out in the book is what lead to all the grief.

Ah, the classic fundie reason for why their shite ruins people's lives: "You're doing it wrong."

 

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