Alyssa & John 2: Getting By on Their Looks and Fashion Sense

[HerNameIsBuffy]

2 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

Judging from the arguments on John Shrader's page with other IFB not all fundies are ant-Halloween. He has started saying he doesn't want people to argue with him when he posts anti-Halloween stuff because he got tired of his fellow fundies not agreeing with him. 

Alyssa married into a IBLP family who dresses and acts more mainstream. Still fundie but not frumper fundie. She fully embraced the way they dress along with their truly awful fundamental Christian beliefs. 

And my fundy lite family member wore pants, wa a working mom, sent kids to school ...but no Halloween, secular music, or Disney/Harry Potter et al due to evil magic.

Fundies are a combo platter with limitless varieties of which to choose. 

[Pecansforeveryone]

Thank you for the call to nuance, @TatiFish9. I actually was trying to acknowledge the nuance in my post. While it hasn't happened yet, I'm always a little nervous someone will suggest my mom isn't really fundie because she was going fine with me attending public schools and strongly encouraged me to join the Navy. Ann Coulter is a law school graduate, unmarried and childless, not at all submissive. I would still classify her as fundie because she preaches religious violence. 

[formergothardite]

My parents celebrated Halloween, we wore regular clothing and wanted us to go to college and yet we were still very fundie. 

While Alyssa is no longer a frumper fundie, she is still a Taliban Dan fundie who is supporting the idea of oppressing those not like her. 

[singsingsing]

I think there there is a very large and blurry area between fundie, fundie-lite, and conservative Christian, and many of the people we discuss here fall within that blurry area. I think that sometimes the 'are they or aren't they actually fundies' argument obscures the real issue. It doesn't matter all that much whether they're fundies, fundie-lite, or conservative Christians, so long as they're still trying to impose their religion and arbitrary rules onto the rest of society.

If someone dresses like everyone else, drinks alcohol, dances, sends their kids to public school, celebrates Halloween and keeps up with pop culture, but their adherence to a religious texts leads them to do things that are harmful to the rest of society (denying climate change, trying to take away LGBTQ rights, removing access to necessary medical care, trying to turn the U.S. into a theocracy, actively spreading lies and propaganda, etc.) then it doesn't matter, they're just as much of an issue as their skirts-only, non-drinking, homeschooling compatriots. 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

5 minutes ago, singsingsing said:

I think there there is a very large and blurry area between fundie, fundie-lite, and conservative Christian, and many of the people we discuss here fall within that blurry area. I think that sometimes the 'are they or aren't they actually fundies' argument obscures the real issue. It doesn't matter all that much whether they're fundies, fundie-lite, or conservative Christians, so long as they're still trying to impose their religion and arbitrary rules onto the rest of society.

If someone dresses like everyone else, drinks alcohol, dances, sends their kids to public school, celebrates Halloween and keeps up with pop culture, but their adherence to a religious texts leads them to do things that are harmful to the rest of society (denying climate change, trying to take away LGBTQ rights, removing access to necessary medical care, trying to turn the U.S. into a theocracy, actively spreading lies and propaganda, etc.) then it doesn't matter, they're just as much of an issue as their skirts-only, non-drinking, homeschooling compatriots. 

I need an applause response thingie.

[TatiFish9]

11 hours ago, Melissa1977 said:

The homeschooling issue will probably her first battle, because it would mean to fight with John's family and I doubt she's strong enough to go for it.

 

I agree with all you said espeically this part. Man she wants that main stream life so badly it is starting to show. She home schoold her oldest( can't remember the child's name at this moment). But she wants to floss those 1st day pics like kids going out of the home for school. 

I think the reasons you put are spot on. And unlike, say Jinger - who I suspect was mixed up in newness and influence, I think Alyssa wants a more mainstream life more for practical reasons and her personal religious beliefs. And I think she doesnt believe half what her parents believes, but she is conservative (like many non practicing Christians around the world) so her politics will mostly stay in tact. I gotta check her page again for more examples once she rebuilds it.

[SassyPants]

Basically, I don’t think Alyssa is that deep of a thinker. She wanted out of her large, messy, soul sucking, skirt wearing rural life in TN. She found a life more to her liking in FL. I think that’s about as far ar her thinking goes. I wonder if she realizes that having kid after kid is going to create a large, messy home life in FL? With each child there will less and less time and money for John and Alyssa. She doesn’t seem to have the personality that would love life on the reality TV circuit, where the easy money flows. If she doesn’t slow the roll of the fertility train, and in the absence of a huge lotto win, she is going to end up hating her life. 

[formergothardite]

1 minute ago, SassyPants said:

She wanted out of her large, messy, soul sucking, skirt wearing rural life in TN. She found a life more to her liking in FL. I think that’s about as far ar her thinking goes.

ITA. She always seemed especially miserable in that lifestyle. Here she was stuck wearing frumpers, in a loud house, working all the time raising her siblings and she could see that not even fellow ATI had to endure that. She created a life where she gets to dress how she likes and not spend all day slaving in the kitchen cooking for a mega-family. I don't think she has actually thought much deeper than "moved to being one of the cool ATI families and not the frumper ones.". 

[mollysmom]

On 1/28/2019 at 11:56 AM, formergothardite said:

My parents celebrated Halloween, we wore regular clothing and wanted us to go to college and yet we were still very fundie. 

While Alyssa is no longer a frumper fundie, she is still a Taliban Dan fundie who is supporting the idea of oppressing those not like her. 

Just to show everyone how different fundies believe. We didn't celebrate halloween (devils holiday and all ), girls were not allowed to wear pants, dresses had to be below our knees, no alcohol, no TV, no music with a "beat", absolutely no touching the opposite gender (or even being alone in the same room as them) no talking on the phone with them unless my mom was listening in, church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, door to door visitation every Saturday, homeschool, woman absolutely do not work outside the home. 

All that to say, many of us were raised fundie, but not all fundies believe the same. (Because they are man made rules IMO) I'm always interested reading posts by other former fundies because I'm always surprised just how different we all were raised. 

On 1/28/2019 at 12:32 PM, singsingsing said:

I think that sometimes the 'are they or aren't they actually fundies' argument obscures the real issue. It doesn't matter all that much whether they're fundies, fundie-lite, or conservative Christians, so long as they're still trying to impose their religion and arbitrary rules onto the rest of society.

 

This! Yes! Yes! Yes!

[formergothardite]

1 hour ago, mollysmom said:

in, church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, door to door visitation every Saturday,

So much church! Sunday School, Sunday morning service, Sunday night service, we did visitation on Tuesday nights and then Wednesday night prayer meeting. And of course any special event we were there!

And now my parents attend a church with a rock band where they only have one church service a week. Perhaps they got tired of all the church too. 

[mollysmom]

25 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

So much church! Sunday School, Sunday morning service, Sunday night service, we did visitation on Tuesday nights and then Wednesday night prayer meeting. And of course any special event we were there!

And now my parents attend a church with a rock band where they only have one church service a week. Perhaps they got tired of all the church too. 

Yes! They bragged that our life revolved around church 

One service a week sounds much more reasonable! 

[SassyPants]

I was raised by Catholic parents and we never, ever missed mass. Sickness, nope. Vacations, nope. Camping, nope. Random skipping, OMG, never. It was over kill.

[nolongerIFBx]

15 hours ago, formergothardite said:

So much church! Sunday School, Sunday morning service, Sunday night service, we did visitation on Tuesday nights and then Wednesday night prayer meeting. And of course any special event we were there!

And now my parents attend a church with a rock band where they only have one church service a week. Perhaps they got tired of all the church too. 

Soulwinning Thursday nights or Saturday morning. If you were really spiritual you went soulwinning on Thursday, bus calling Saturday, and worked the bus route on Sunday. We were too broke to be that spiritual. Gas costs $$.

[formergothardite]

15 hours ago, SassyPants said:

Vacations, nope. Camping, nope. Random skipping, OMG, never. It was over kill.

I hated having to visit a strange church while on vacation. If church was closed because of snow or something my parents would still hold church at home. There was no break from church. I always knew when I grew up that I was going to be one of those church members who wasn't there whenever the doors were open. I was always jealous of the Easter/Christmas members. 

[nokidsmom]

2 hours ago, formergothardite said:

I hated having to visit a strange church while on vacation.

OMG, my folks had us do that....once.   We were camping too and my Dad decided we were going to the local church come Sunday, so we had to pack Sunday clothes along with the bathing suits, shorts, t-shirts, etc.   So on Sunday, we march out of our tent in Sunday clothes to the rather confused / amused looks from people in the nearby campsites.  I don't remember much of this church but it was the first and last time we ever went to church on vacation.   I am guessing that even my churchified parents found it too awkward.

 

[Johannah]

To think of all the things that could be accomplished if that time and energy were invested into endeavors other than soul-winning...

[theotherelise]

It's weird reflecting on this because I think I grew up partially fundie.

My parents didn't listen to secular music from 1980 until the late 90s. We were homeschooled for a couple years and used Abeka. (My mom told me once she got invited to learn about some of the Gothard curriculum but didn't end up going, so we really dodged a bullet!) We did have some homeschool friends, but they always seemed way more out there than we were.

After that, I went to private Christian school through 8th grade. At school, I was taught that HIV and other STDs were smaller than the spores in condoms and hormonal birth control could cause abortions. They were super into praying for Israel, too. The school had gone independent from the church we went to, so it went in a way more conservative and charismatic direction than the church, which got less so.

It was always super sad when we got our scholastic order forms at school and then had to take out permanent markers and black out all the Harry Potter and Goosebumps books. I know some of the parents got really loudly angry about Pokemon at one point too.

The school was big into supporting crisis pregnancy centers. We did get encouraged to kiss dating goodbye, but that was definitely too far and no one attempted it. My 8th grade science class spent about half the year split into two debate groups: pro-evolution and pro-creationism. Guess who won??? They were young earth creationists too. 

My parents ran the "Hallelujah Night" at the skating rink as a halloween alternative and growing up my mom used to white out "lucky" or "good luck" whenever it occurred in our children's books and replace it with "blessed." We absolutely didn't do Santa or the Easter Bunny.

Anyway, my older siblings and I went to public high school and we always played sports outside the christian circles and my mom never censored what I got from the library, so we absolutely didn't carry on that way. My parents were also really good about encouraging our knowledge of current events and I remember starting to challenge my parents about their views on homosexuality and especially gay marriage ahead of the 2004 presidential election when I was in 8th grade. It took me a lot longer to call myself pro-choice. But I'm a fairly die-hard liberal.

My parents didn't ever have a night and day transformation and they voted for Evan McMullin in 2016, but it's really strange thinking about how conservative and rigid they were. Still not sure if they believe in evolution.

So IDK, were we fundie?

[formergothardite]

13 minutes ago, theotherelise said:

So IDK, were we fundie?

It sounds like you were a form of fundie.

My parents didn't have any trouble with things like the word lucky. I do remember we went through an Disney is Evil stage, but I can't remember what triggered it. My mom would black out any mention of evolution in books we owned and replace it with the "correct" biblical time. My mom never bothered really paying attention to what we checked out of the library. It is odd because they were so particular about television and movies but what we read wasn't a big deal. We also never went to the movie theater. I still get excited when we go see a movie. 

[catlady]

On 1/29/2019 at 7:28 PM, SassyPants said:

I was raised by Catholic parents and we never, ever missed mass. Sickness, nope. Vacations, nope. Camping, nope. Random skipping, OMG, never. It was over kill.

this was my mom growing up, and she never liked it.  Church every Sunday without fail, every holy day, Ash Wednesday before school, not allowed to miss anything.  my mom dreaded when Christmas was on a Saturday or Monday, because then she had to go to church 2 days in a row.  after she got married, she and my dad would go most Sundays and skip the holy days (my dad's parents tended to do that, too).  my sister and i have never been to church on Christmas or Ash Wednesday, and only a few times on Easter (we were also somewhat lax during Lent--as kids we were expected to give up only candy, but that wasn't hard because we didn't keep it in the house regularly anyway).  as we got into our teens, we were allowed to skip Sunday service if we felt like it.  by the middle of high school, we seldom went, and then we got jobs that required hours on Sunday mornings, so that ruled out services anyway.   but even after all that, my parents and sister still regard themselves as Catholic and are still of faith; i was the lone atheist in the bunch until my younger nephew reached his mid-teens and decided he didn't believe.

[Lizzybet]

On 1/29/2019 at 7:28 PM, SassyPants said:

I was raised by Catholic parents and we never, ever missed mass. Sickness, nope. Vacations, nope. Camping, nope. Random skipping, OMG, never. It was over kill.

I tell my kids that my eyes could’ve been bleeding, but we had to go to Mass. If they’d continued to bleed, we’d hit the ER, afterward.

[QuiverDance]

20 hours ago, Lizzybet said:

I tell my kids that my eyes could’ve been bleeding, but we had to go to Mass. If they’d continued to bleed, we’d hit the ER, afterward.

I was raised the same.  Mass. Every. Sunday. No. Matter. What.  Every Holy Day as well.  And I also went to Catholic school where we attended weekly mass as a student body on Fridays. I can recite Mass by heart and I haven't been in years.  Of course, they've changed it.  That "and with your spirit" business is like nails on a chalkboard to me.  

 

 

[samurai_sarah]

4 minutes ago, QuiverDance said:

I was raised the same.  Mass. Every. Sunday. No. Matter. What.  Every Holy Day as well.  And I also went to Catholic school where we attended weekly mass as a student body on Fridays. I can recite Mass by heart and I haven't been in years.  Of course, they've changed it.  That "and with your spirit" business is like nails on a chalkboard to me.  

 

 

And on rare occasions twice on a Sunday/holy day! And it stays with you. I hadn't been in years, when a friend got married in a Catholic church and had the full mass. I surprised myself by still knowing all the "church gymnastics" by heart...

[mstee]

My mom grew up in south Florida before air conditioning was popular. She always told me stories of people fainting during mass due to the heat. Fun times ? . I was dragged to mass growing up (always fought it or when I was really little I would fall asleep) until my mom finally gave up on arguing with me during my teen years. I never had a moment of hearing a sermon and thinking “wow, that resonates” and never felt like the Catholic Church was my church. I know all the rituals, but don’t call myself a catholic. I remember visiting family in Wisconsin at a small church as a teen. I put my hands out for communion and the priest shouted “children will open their mouths for communion here!”  I was so mortified! 

As far as Alyssa goes, she seems like the type who isn’t a deep thinker and never has personally felt oppressed by her father in law’s religious or legal views and probably doesn’t put much thought besides “this is fun” into campaigning for him. I could be wrong, but that’s the impression I get. She has her handsome husband, nice house, cute kids, and cute clothes. She probably feels grateful. 

[formergothardite]

38 minutes ago, mstee said:

never has personally felt oppressed by her father in law’s religious or legal views

ITA. I don't think she is one who would take the time to educate herself and show compassion even if she was confronted by those who are oppressed by the views she supports. Deep thinking really doesn't seem her thing or trying to see things from another person's viewpoint. 

 

[VelociRapture]

It’s interesting to read about everyone’s experiences. My mom is Catholic and she made us go through CCD - which I hated - but the only times we went to Mass were for special occasions, like First Communion or Confirmation. I think my mom hated being dragged to Mass as a kid and decided it wasn’t something she wanted to make us do, which was kind of awesome. My husband was also raised Catholic and I think his family was more observant when he was young. His parents got turned off by their Church's constant demands for more money when they were barely keeping a roof over their heads though (New York was expensive back in the 80s and 90s too) and when they moved out here the local Catholic Churches didn’t send anyone over to welcome them like other Churches did. As a result his parents haven’t been observant for probably close to twenty years and they don’t really know what they believe anymore. 

My husband and I don’t really identify as Catholic anymore, so we opted against being married in the Church and we decided not to baptize our daughter. I thought we’d get a lot of crap for that, but the only person even slightly surprised was my mom and she hasn’t mentioned it since we told her. If our daughter eventually shows curiosity then I’d be happy to take her to whatever religious service she’d like, but husband and I want it to be something she chooses for herself rather than something she feels forced into. None of our siblings are religious either. The only one who goes to any Church occasionally is my older sister, but that’s because it was important to her husband that their kids were baptized in his faith (Episcopalian.) 

(I didn’t mention my dad above. He was baptized Catholic like his mom wanted, but confirmed as a Methodist because he was mostly raised by his dad and paternal grandparents after his parents divorced. He doesn’t seem religious at all though - he cracked up during my cousin’s son’s baptism a few years ago because I jokingly whispered, “Snack time!” to him when it was time for communion. Mom didn’t find it funny. ?)