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Secular books approved for fundies


OnceUponATime

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39 minutes ago, nickelodeon said:

In my observation fundie parents give the OK to most of the classic 19/20th century "girl books": all of Alcott's novels (Eight Cousins!), Streatfield, Wilder, and when the girls are a little older, ALL THE AUSTEN. They didn't worry about characters acting "independent" or being schoolteachers, either because they weren't really paying that much attention, or they assumed "my girls will know better than to emulate a character in a silly book."

I know the Duggars read Little House. Lady Lydia stans for Gaskell and Harriet Beecher Stowe (who is not an "early feminist" because she cleaned her house or whatever.) Alternately, the Botkins pooh-poohed Jane Austen in one of their imbecilic books, which Lady Bibliophile was deeply chuffed about. Chuffed! Gotta add a quote from her here:

Spritiualism? In MY children's literature? NEVER!

 

Thanks for the Lady Bibliophile link.  I was rather amused by her comments and her quotes of the Botkins books.   It is good to know that Fundie kids are allowed to read many of the classics, it means some of the brighter and less indoctrinated ones may grow through these books. (Alcott was not 100% a transcendentalist--she was raised in the ideology, but questioned it.  But she was very much opposed to corporal punishment and almost all her novels had a little dig against it.  And Austen's novels oppose the idea of arranged marriages. Little things can affect readers in small ways.)

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  • 1 month later...

Watered down versions of Holocaust stories might be okay, right? Like Diary of Anne Frank or even Night? Very watered down of course. 

I agree with a lot of these, but isn't anything that doesn't center God, like front and center, automatically a no-no?

Charlie Brown comics? Because of Winn-Dixie? American Girl books? Not the ones where girls show too much spirit or influence the public sphere or anything hedonistic like that, of course. 

Basically, just some novels aimed at children... Although if you're only open to rated-G types of films, I guess it would be consistent.

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1 hour ago, NakedKnees said:

Watered down versions of Holocaust stories might be okay, right? Like Diary of Anne Frank or even Night? Very watered down of course. 

I agree with a lot of these, but isn't anything that doesn't center God, like front and center, automatically a no-no?

snipped

I suppose if some Holocaust stories were acceptable, Corrie ten Boom's The Hiding Place would top the list, since the ten Boom sisters hid people from the Nazis because of their Christian faith. Plus, I think I remember her including a story from before the occupation when she obeyed her father and ended a budding relationship with a young man her father deemed unsuitable. That would be popular with patriarchal fathers. 

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The Diary of Anne Frank would have to be watered down b/c of references to masturbation and how she may be attracted to someone of the same gender, right?

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Watered down versions of Holocaust stories might be okay, right? Like Diary of Anne Frank or even Night? Very watered down of course. 

I agree with a lot of these, but isn't anything that doesn't center God, like front and center, automatically a no-no?

Charlie Brown comics? Because of Winn-Dixie? American Girl books? Not the ones where girls show too much spirit or influence the public sphere or anything hedonistic like that, of course. 

Basically, just some novels aimed at children... Although if you're only open to rated-G types of films, I guess it would be consistent.

Because of Winn Dixie might be okay, since her dad was a preacher. The only iffy part is how much the book talks about Opal being left by her mother, maybe that would give fundies some critical thinking about their own mothers.

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I remember in one of the early Duggar specials (the one where they took a road trip) Jill made a reference to Peter Pan. So I'm guessing they either saw or read it.

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13 hours ago, TuringMachine said:

I remember in one of the early Duggar specials (the one where they took a road trip) Jill made a reference to Peter Pan. So I'm guessing they either saw or read it.

That's really interesting- I would guess that book was too heavy on the themes of crushes, magic, and resistance/rebellion for the Duggars. Maybe they told the story to keep it as Gothard-friendly as possible? 

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  • 10 months later...
On 11-3-2016 at 5:03 AM, nickelodeon said:

In my observation fundie parents give the OK to most of the classic 19/20th century "girl books": all of Alcott's novels (Eight Cousins!), Streatfield, Wilder, and when the girls are a little older, ALL THE AUSTEN. 

I was thinking about Jane Austen as well. I've read Emma and Mansfield Park, and neither contain unholy pre-marital physical contact, and although the girls could be seen as 'a little' rebellious, the rebellion is all well within the confines of what fundies would consider to be still acceptable. I think this would go for a lot of books like these, written around that time, mainly because the social norms and values they represent are (roughly) similar to those of most fundies.
I have a lot more trouble trying to come up with secular contemporary novels that would be fundy-friendly.

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  • 7 months later...

I would nominate the Lake Eden murder mystery series. Problems: Hannah runs her own business, but it is cooking related so might be OK. She also solves murders, usually by getting attacked by the murderer when she gets too close to the solution. For most of the series she is tossing up between two men, Mike (a cop) and Norman (a dentist), but more recently married Ross (a TV producer). Until she got married the relationships were pretty chaste - definitely no sex, but possibly some hand holding and kissing? Hannah is seriously one of the most sexually repressed women I have come across in a 'modern' fiction setting - she blushes thinking about what she did on her honeymoon with her husband. There is a lot of close to if not outright slut shaming in the books, especially of women who have the temerity to be interested in Mike or Norman, but even things like Hannah being glad her sister changed to a more modest top to go out so her sister's boyfriend wouldn't be upset that she was showing too much cleavage (ffs). The books also have recipes, so that might help make them acceptable? ("No, just reading my cookbook here...")

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The Birds' Christmas Carol. Although I guess that's not secular at all - it's rather like Elsie Dinsmore. But then I thought What Katy Did was pretty religious too.

What about the other classics - A Little Princess (princess can be likened to "daughter of the king" etc.), Heidi (gets her grandfather to go to church for the first time in years iirc), probably not The Secret Garden as it mentions magic and Mary plays with boys.

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  • 6 months later...

It's okay to reply to old threads, right? I love reading! Alll the books! 

I was raised fundie. I know from experience that all the fundies are different in what they allow. My mother curated carefully, especially in the early years. As I got into my teen years, if I didn't think a book would pass muster, I'd just keep it out of sight. We weren't allowed to watch tv at all, so books were our entertainment.

Some of you are pretty spot on. My mother used book lists from Sonlight Curriculum and Hand That Rocks the Cradle (Bluedorn family). Books we were allowed to read:

  • Elsie Dinsmore 
  • Little House books
  • The Chronicles of Narnia (I could go on and on about how I hate The Last Battle)
  • Boxcar Children
  • Nancy Drew
  • Hardy Boys
  • Anything by Dickens
  • Anything by Louisa May Alcott

Books that I remember being struck from our reading list, for various reasons:

  • The Witch of Blackbird Pond (ooo, witches!)
  • The Indian in the Cupboard (magic)
  • The Good Earth 
  • The Yearling (not sure why!)
  • Anything with too much "language," i.e. "Hell" or "Damn" or "Lord." Anything with "fuck" was so far out there it wasn't even considered.
  • Girl of the Limberlost
  • Babysitter's Club

We used a lot of older books, 19th and earlier 20th centuries, and skipped massive amounts of women's history and history of other races besides Caucasian. My mother loved to read, herself, and we had access to a lot of books, but they were mostly presented from a white American Christian perspective.

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