Has Anything Taken the Place of VF?

[JermajestyDuggar]

It’s just so fundie to rewrite history 

[VVV]

On 11/20/2018 at 1:07 PM, hoipolloi said:

Jennie Chancey, after spending a few years among apparently non-fundie hipsters in South Africa, now says that her inspiration for having 12 kids was Cheaper By the Dozen:

Nary a mention there of passionate housewives, the horrors of feminism, quiverfull, or VF.

Why, even Matt -- the original homeschool know-it-all -- now indicates he's attending the LSE:

Jennie Chancey can't read for comprehension. The eldest Gilbreth child was born in 1905 with the others coming along every year or two after that. Only the youngest few could be said to have been brought up in the 1920s and 1930s. 

Edited November 22, 2018 by VVV
clarity

[Mrs. Bean]

Wow Jannie Chancey is straight up lying now! What about her collaboration with the crazy Lady Lydia Sherman and all those English gentry affectations? They did start the infamous Ladies Against Feminisms together and ran it together for some time. 

Also, I have the VF DVD Monstrous Regiment of Women where she is prominently featured and her QF believes were  definitely not influenced by the Cheaper by the Dozen. 

[hoipolloi]

9 hours ago, Mrs. Bean said:

her QF believes were  definitely not influenced by the Cheaper by the Dozen. 

Well, that was THEN and this is NOW.

 

[JermajestyDuggar]

That’s such bullshit. Lillian Gilbreth worked with her husband the whole time she had kids and then worked for many years after her husband’s early death. She was basically a pioneer of industrial and organizational psychology. Does she realize that Lillian was basically a feminist back then? Would she go to work full time if her husband died tomorrow? 

[Howl]

17 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

She was basically a pioneer of industrial and organizational psychology.

I realized this name sounded familiar!  Lilian Gilbreth was referenced in The Motion-Minded Kitchen (Sam Clark, 1985).  She pioneering studies in kitchen efficiency. Reading that book (now out of print) helped me build up two kitchens and I just lent it to a friend who will be remodeling her kitchen. 

I just googled Sam Clark and he has a more current book out through Taunton Press called Remodeling a KitchenA

A big shout out to @GenerationCedarchip for starting this thread; I'm enjoying it  immensely.  The sociological insights into coffee, Mormons, current fundy trends, homeschooling,  Episcopalian angst, current Chauncy, by various posters has been great. 

Edited November 23, 2018 by Howl

[elsiedindin]

I was homeschooled in a VF/ATI-adjacent community. When my mother began to homeschool me as a small child, homeschooling was considered such an odd choice that even the pediatrician tried to talk her out of it. We were HSLDA members, protested at the state capitol, all of it. By the time I "graduated" homeschool high school, homeschooling was more or less mainstream. 

For young men in the group, generally they would cultivate special interests as a sort of affectation. Depending on the particular youth, it could be coffee, weaponry, Calvinism or computer programming. Obviously tobacco and alcohol were out, so you had to do something. 

Young women were not expected to have particular interests. Being thin, pretty, good at handicrafts and delighted with all babies always seemed to be much more important than anything intellectual. My math instructor (at the co-op, since defunct, which was at the center of the community) told me that I wasn't smart enough to go to college. I was told at girl's bible studies that wanting to go to college or god forbid have a career were temptations of the devil, and it was taken for granted that mental illness was just another secular phrase for satanic possession.

I think the (unsurprising) negative personal and criminal outcomes resulting from my cohort had something to do with the co-op closing. The destruction of VF happened after I left home, but suffice it to say the foundations were well eroded by that stage. The failure of the Gothardesque family and education model was devastating to parents and many  of them seemed to have given up, sending younger siblings to private schools or even public schools in a few cases. 

It was fascinating to watch HSLDA  and similarly aligned organizations implode. Once homeschooling entered the mainstream, they didn't seem to have much use anymore. It turns out, once most people are at least generally okay with your movement (that homeschooling should be legal) it's really hard to rally anyone to your cause. Additionally, the whole project of Christian Dominion isn't something you can proclaim quite so loudly once your homeschooling co-op is full of "mainstream" types. Which if nothing else is a good thing for homeschooled kids whose families are still repressive and crazy, because at least now they have a better chance of seeing families who aren't like that. 

[refugee]

@elsiedindin sounds very familiar.

One thing you said puzzled me. You said the closing of the co-op closing led to criminal outcomes? Or the other way around?

Has HSLDA really imploded? We’ve been “out” for some years now, but I still remember how they put the fear of CPS into us.

Edited November 23, 2018 by refugee
Hit button too soon

[ladyjanegrey]

RE: the Gilbreths.  

Frank Gilbreth Sr. wasn't a Christian. He would drive his family to church on Sunday mornings and then wait in the car. When Lillian asked him to come join them (she didn't appreciate the stares from the other parishioners), he said something along the lines of, "When I stand before my Maker, I want him to know I got here because of my own merit, not because I had to rely Jesus." Frank Sr. also had disdain for the clergy. Evidently on when of his trips to Europe (he went by ship), there were clergy who would preach about being righteous but would pinch the waitresses'/maids' asses, and Frank was disgusted by that behavior. 

Also, the Gilbreth parents strongly pushed college on their children- all their children, including the girls. After Frank Sr. died, Anne (the oldest daughter) volunteered to forego college so she could work and contribute to the family income. Lillian declined the offer, saying it had been very important to Frank that all his children go to college. 

I learned this from Frank Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey's book, Cheaper by the Dozen. (And yes, Ernestine was a co-writer on the book- when I was a child, my family got a catalog from some homeschool company that was selling Cheaper by the Dozen and under author they only listed Frank Gilbreth Jr. and that irritated me.)

So if any fundie is out there and they're excited about any back-in-old-days family that had double-digit-number of kids, maybe do your research before you get excited about this family. 

[hoipolloi]

Thanks to those here who've set the record straight on who Frank & Lillian Gilbreth really were and how they chose to raise their kids. If you know anything at all about the Gilbreths, you know how passionate (get it, Jennie - "passionate"?) Frank and Lillian were about education, especially college, for ALL of their kids. This theme runs through both of the memoirs. IOW, you can't miss it if you actually read the books.

All that said, if Jennie Chancey is now using the Gilbreths as her role models in life, let's hope she'll also follow their lead and encourage all of HER kids to pursue higher education, if they wish to do so.

[elsiedindin]

44 minutes ago, refugee said:

@elsiedindin sounds very familiar.

One thing you said puzzled me. You said the closing of the co-op closing led to criminal outcomes? Or the other way around?

Has HSLDA really imploded? We’ve been “out” for some years now, but I still remember how they put the fear of CPS into us.

Sorry if it was unclear. Some of the kids in my year broke the law and ended up facing charges. Many of us had pretty poor outcomes, compared to what was promised by the VF types. That absolutely played a part in the co-op closing.

I should have said HSLDA still exists, but it's no longer so influential. Mike Farris is an incredibly self-serving man and mainly used HSLDA to build his career and launch PHC. Once he did that, he could not have cared less about HSLDA or its members. It's such a shambolic organization anyway, a convenient method of providing jobs for homeschooled grads of law school by correspondence. Now their tagline is "homeschooling -- it's legal today, tomorrow is up to you" which I think says a lot about how much has changed. Their website also hasn't had a substantial redesign in seven or eight years. They'll still try to put the fear of CPS into you, but their organization just doesn't matter anymore.

[GenerationCedarchip]

Interesting that Jennie Chancey is now citing Cheaper by the Dozen. I know a lot of folks from VF circles who have really reexamined their beliefs and changed a lot of things. I've wondered if the Chancey rebranding was part of this or if it was just an image thing. I know some folks in common with them offline but it's not something we'very discussed.   I'd wondered about their sudden flight from South Africa, too.

Where they've settled in Alabama is actually near some old friends of mine who have long been active in the homeschool community. From what I hear, they play up their interest in cosplay and all things retro/vintage but keep their past more firmly under wraps outside their inner circle.

I know several of the oldest children are at or near college/vocational-training age. I'd be interested to know what they're doing.

[hoipolloi]

33 minutes ago, GenerationCedarchip said:

I'd wondered about their sudden flight from South Africa, too.

Jennie's been pretty open about that. The relevant SA ministry essentially revoked or terminated the visa on which they'd been residing in SA for some years. Don't know the technicalities but don't think it was anything nefarious -- just a government agency exercising its right to make such determinations in accordance with a (possible) change in policy or law. Once this happens, SA doesn't give you much time to leave -- just weeks.

33 minutes ago, GenerationCedarchip said:

I've wondered if the Chancey rebranding was part of this or if it was just an image thing.

Perhaps it's had more to do with the Chanceys living among (apparently) non-fundie folks while in SA. Would be great for their kids if the Chanceys' eyes & minds have indeed opened, and if they've now abandoned all of the crap they, especially Jennie, pushed on other people while being toadies for VFI/VFM. FWIW, Jennie recently complained in a comment on a SA friend's IG feed that she (Jennie) was now living in "Walmart Land" in AL.

Nonetheless, it's worth noting that like many other former VFI/VFM groupies, they're all still buddies on social media.

[MamaJunebug]

Well, well, well!

I guess in light of Jennie's evolution into the mainstream, I’m not surprised that she sold a ticket on her latest cosplay Euro tour to a very openly  gay young tailor who only dresses in clothing styles from the late 1700s-early 1800s.  Makes a living sewing outfits for customers.  Pinsent Tailoring.

I was just agape to see him credit s_and_s_patterns 

He’s fabulous, and I say that in all sincerity. Whether or not he’s aware of her troglodytic attitudes on many things, who knows.  Maybe she doesn't have a problem with gays.  Certainly she’s around more than a few in costuming circles.

 

 She may be moving toward college for her children, male & female, but she’s still a side-winding phony IMHO. And a buck’s a buck.  Sell those tour spaces! 

[FundieGhostWriter]

I'd love it if those in the know, parents still busy at their own dining room tables, would kick around the original question posed by @GenerationCedarchip. In November 2019, does anything occupy the place of VF?

I don't mean 'what's the latest silly and snarkable fad?' VF, as a 'game-changer' in homeschool, was about cosplay. Dress-ups (and the mindset that went with them) and Uber-Hyper-Calvinism* were the defining characteristics. I thought of UHC as part of the packaging - not what actually drew folks in - while Quiverfull and FIC were just signs o' the times. What do former VF customers think? Was the excitement mostly about Doug's 'charisma'? Were other Homeschool Convention presenters on the whole so pedestrian that Doug's schtick stood out? (brain bleach please...) Surely everything else VF represented was available from other sources?

*There needs to be a special term for it. Doug told me: 'I'm not a Christian, I'm a Calvinist. My JC lived in Geneva.' At the time I thought it weird, but equated it with the line you'll get from Baptists and Pentecostals: 'I'm not religious, I'm a Christian' (guaranteed sign, by the way, that someone is very religious. Try answering with: 'me too, I love Jesus, but I'm not much into church' - bring an umbrella!). Do others remember Doug using that line, or was it something he kept for outsiders? Surely he wasn't baring his inmost heart to my unsuspecting ears?! Was it maybe even his way of seeming 'cooler' to non-fundies? 'I know I bang on about some pretty lame stuff - but seriously - I'm not a religious nut. I just think Calvinism is good for society. Jesus? Nah.' I never thought of that last meaning at the time, and I was not close enough to him to hazard a guess at his 'heart'. (I tried to avoid him - from the first moment I met him my radar was pinging. I always felt he was bad news.)

[DomWackTroll]

12 hours ago, FundieGhostWriter said:

'I'm not a Christian, I'm a Calvinist. My JC lived in Geneva.'

Boring old Nazareth Jesus just wasn't exciting and "challenging" enough for Great Minds like Doug Phillips and Geoffrey Botkin. 

[Hane]

Calvin can rot in hell. He had Unitarian theologian and physician Michael Servetus burned at the stake for “heresy.”

[Columbia]

On 11/9/2019 at 10:11 PM, FundieGhostWriter said:

In November 2019, does anything occupy the place of VF?

If I had to pick, I’d say Doug Wilson up in Moscow, Idaho and all his cronies. He’s very similar to Philips (reformed, misogynistic, arrogant, more than a little disappointed that there is no more chattel slavery, mishandles sexual abuse) but without the charisma. And he has an empire much more vast than Vision Forum could ever dream of. 

[Cleopatra7]

On 11/10/2019 at 12:11 AM, FundieGhostWriter said:

*There needs to be a special term for it. Doug told me: 'I'm not a Christian, I'm a Calvinist. My JC lived in Geneva.' 

I find that statement pretty shocking, since wasn’t one of the big objections Protestant reformers had with the Catholic Church was they thought it put loyalty to a human institution over Jesus? I know Calvin was one of the Magisterial Protestants and had no problem using the state to fulfill his view of Christianity, but I feel he’d be offended if someone equates a regular human (even himself) with Jesus. 

[FundieGhostWriter]

On 11/12/2019 at 12:01 AM, Columbia said:

If I had to pick, I’d say Doug Wilson up in Moscow, Idaho

I'll second your hunch that the big Doug show could be the nearest thing to the spirit of VF currently roasting the sheeple. Wilson does tick many of the boxes, but the two Dougs are quite different fish. Wilson's empire (especially the far-flung schools) is impressive, and the man has a gravitas to which little Douglas didn't even aspire (though after reading @Maxwell's quotes from Liberty's new 'book', if we assume that Phillips family ideology hasn't changed much, I can now see JT's European education making him a more complete leadership package for a new 'Vision' - just as Wilson is pursuing his father's dream of the conquest of Moscow). Wilson has a narrow but sturdy foundation; in fact he may have been more effective if he had not been obsessed with conquering U of I (though of course Moscow is a grand place for any tyrant's throne!).

Edited November 16, 2019 by FundieGhostWriter
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[FundieGhostWriter]

On 11/11/2019 at 4:09 AM, DomWackTroll said:

Nazareth Jesus just wasn't exciting and "challenging" enough for Great Minds like Doug Phillips and Geoffrey Botkin.

And 'love God and other people' doesn't offer much scope for marketing. Fundie leaders seem thankful to Jesus mostly because 'His yoke is so easy and His burden so light' - that it leaves them a lot of space to invent their own rules.

Back to Moscow - although Christopher Hitchens gifted big Doug a mainstream platform a decade or so ago, I wouldn't overestimate Wilson's reach. Even in Reformed-world his reputation for schism/unorthodoxy/heresy limits him. And that's even before pointing out that he's not much 'fun'. So, in saying that big Doug could be the nearest thing to VF right now, what we're really saying is that six years on, the ghost of VF still lies quiet. Long may it remain so.

On 11/24/2018 at 6:31 AM, elsiedindin said:

For young men in the group, generally they would cultivate special interests as a sort of affectation. Depending on the particular youth, it could be coffee, weaponry, Calvinism or computer programming.

This is what DP built on as he drew outsiders (as we recently heard from @dripcurl) to the fundie web. Cosplay, UHC, Lost Cause, prancing with toy swordsfencing, 'Jewish roots', pricey fundie tourist trips, Allosaurs, movies, bloviation festivals on how to be a manly man/submissive and fecund wife/unthinkingly obedient daughter, endless cassette and then CD sets of same, reprints of books better left to gather dust, film festivals, cellos!, 'celebrity' talking-head virgins, intern training, royal weddings, pat-my-own-back award nights, blind cult-hero-worship of figures from Reformed history, a supposedly 'charismatic' figurehead and his huge family to serve as an ideal - VF really was a whole-of-life-homeschool-cult-fad for more than a decade. Even DP's bedroom window escapades might have become part of the cult-folklore if Doug had played his cards better. If he had (as he promised Lourdes) managed to get Beall 'out of the way' (and waited to be Romeo until a few weeks after), clambering in a maiden's window would just have proved how utterly manly he is. As it was, many Vfers were prepared to overlook their prince's 'peccadillos', even when the other shoe dropped. If true believers like Bradrick! hadn't stood up, DP and VF could possibly even have ridden out the storm of inappropriate affection.

Those DP 'borrowed' from or 'utilized' (Little Bear, Scott B, Botkin...) had an opportunity to reassert themselves in the wake of 2013 - but none of those guys is cooking with gas. Sure, some hs suppliers are fundie, arrogant, over-priced and cultishly exclusive - but I think FJ would be on thread 20 of 'what is homeschool guru cult master X doing now', rather than thread 11 of wondering where little Douglas is hiding, if VF had a successor. But I have not taken part in hs conventions for some time, so if someone does start a new VF style fundie fire - I want to know promptly!

Until then - I'll live in hope that folks are a little wiser than once they were. (Bah - the reign of President Trump says otherwise, and that right wing American Christians are still mostly other-than-wise.)

[luv2laugh]

Honestly, I almost feel that the new movement in fundamentalism is aligning with Trump. 

[dripcurl]

On 11/16/2019 at 11:16 PM, luv2laugh said:

Honestly, I almost feel that the new movement in fundamentalism is aligning with Trump. 

I was at the height of my VF koolaid drinking phase about 7 years ago,  I went to the conferences, read all the material, the whole shebang. Part of me could guarantee you if a candidate like Trump or Trump himself popped up at that very moment, they would have all DESPISED him. They were very clear about the type of theocratic ruler they wanted, and they wanted someone to present as more of a pastor. However, the other part of me now sees that they all are basically Trump, just in their own weird ways. Even though he is not fundie per say, he is a patriarchal dictator more or less at the end of the day that is what these guys want, not necessarily a theocracy. Slapping the Jesus label on everything just makes them feel better about their shitty selves and knows that doing so can possibly appeal to other parts of Christianity that they want to control. If they can take ownership of a wide base of the country’s biggest religion, then they can slowly start to control more people throughout the country. 

[Laura2730]

Has anyone seen this photo from the Serven blog before? It features Rebecca, Sarah and Hannah Zes, Kelly (Bradrick, now Ziegler) and Blair (now Tsantles) Brown, Lourdes Torres, and Anna-Sophia and Elizabeth Botkin + the Serven girls

Spoiler

 

Edited December 17, 2019 by Laura2730

[Giraffe]

1 hour ago, Laura2730 said:

Has anyone seen this photo from the Serven blog before? It features Rebecca, Sarah and Hannah Zes, Kelly (Bradrick, now Ziegler) and Blair (now Tsantles) Brown, Lourdes Torres, and Anna-Sophia and Elizabeth Botkin + the Serven girls

  Hide contents

 

Kelly Ziegler? Damn. Any idea if she has more kids with the new, creepy husband?