What's this whole obsession with "home"?

[annalena]

Home school. Home church. SAHD. SAHM. WHY?

Is it because the world out there is so so evil?

[synchroswimr]

Yup.

If you can't live with the world, live out of it. There's a verse in the Bible that backs up this view.

[CanadianHippie]

Home school. Home church. SAHD. SAHM. WHY?

Is it because the world out there is so so evil?

Yeah pretty much. The only people who can handle the outside world in Fundie minds are the men.

[annalena]

I think it's also about control. Way easier to control all family members inside the house.

Also, who is not exposed to the outside world can not find anything out there more appealing, right?

[CanadianHippie]

And they can't learn that dad was wrong about anything.

[NurseNell]

Home school. Home church. SAHD. SAHM. WHY?

Is it because the world out there is so so evil?

Never mind, agree with all of above.

Has the topic of incest ever come up here? That would be a concern in my mind, what with the isolation and father is boss of all.

[fundiefan]

Home school. Home church. SAHD. SAHM. WHY?

Is it because the world out there is so so evil?

Evil would be their claim. Full of open minded people with different ideas who might speak in a way that makes sense and make you question all you've been force-fed is more like it, actually. They're terrified of coming up against someone or something that doesn't fit into what they choose to believe, and force their women to believe in order to survive.

Send a woman raised in patriarchy into the big bad world and she might see women working, and being happy about it. She might see marriages that are equal, and both partners want it that way and are happy about it. She might see kids educated in public schools who are not carrying an uzi under their raincoat ready to take everyone out. She might see college kids getting an education, yet still attending church with their family - meaning they have not been brainwashed out of their faith.

All of that is a threat. The disguise threats as evil to up the fear factor.

[CanadianHippie]

Never mind, agree with all of above.

Has the topic of incest ever come up here? That would be a concern in my mind, what with the isolation and father is boss of all.

I think it's been brought up a couple of times, I know it's been brought up at least once when the "modesty survey" came out and there were guys admitting to being turned on by sisters or mothers.

[emmiedahl]

It's about taking away female power by keeping teh bitches out of the marketplace. See: The Inside-Outside Dichotomy discussed by Martin and Voorhies.

[Extricated]

Annalena got it. It's more about control than anything else.

[kpmom]

Yeah, home is the patriarch's own little fiefdom, isn't it? What woman outside his home is going to listen to his crap?

Well except for nerd22, I guess.

[Brainsample]

This is a statement that does not directly consider anything John Calvin wrote. I am not terribly familiar with his writings (don't want to be), though I understand that this is where the terminology and ideas of the "spheres" that VF talks about originated. Supposedly, Calvin talked about "the sphere of home."

In the US, anyway, I think that a big part of it had to do with Christian Reconstruction and the formation of groups like the Moral Majority and the Council on National Policy (organized by Christian Reconstructionists). The institution of traditional marriage and the idealized version of the American Family was revived in the '50s, a carryover from and return to what was once known as "The Family Pew" in rural America.

(The term was coined by Peter Marshall following WWII, a Scottish Presby minister at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in DC. He called women and families the "keepers of the springs.") Great book about this which is free online now: religion-online.org/showbook.asp?title=434

If societies were changing and unstable (remember that we were in the middle of the very scary cold war at the time, too), and families were also beginning to change and destabilize (sexual revolution, rise in divorce, women in the workplace, etc.), then the solution to all of the world's problems should focus on the most basic building block in that system. Stabilize the family, and you stabilize the world.

There was a wealth of tradition from the "Cult of Domesticity" and the like from the Victorian Era. It was also doubly convenient that many influential dominionists were encouraged to look at the writings of the Confederate Presbyterians to build arguments for a more decentralized federal government. It was during that same time period that the Victorian Ideal set up a myth that family life and religious life were truly merged -- that virtue came from women and the home. They took this to such extremes that some men, out of their desire to keep their wives pure in their minds, went to prostitutes for sex and then sent their wives to the doctor for hysteria. The treatment for hysteria was either mesmerism or masturbating these women with devises or with jets of water. Inducing orgasm was seen as the primary treatment for hysteria. Some saw female circumcision as the solution. All this to make sure that women were chaste and pure so that the idealized home could be the keeper of virtue.

In many respects that is true because religious practice does take place in the home, and we spend a great deal of our time there, but patriarchy venerates the home and makes it an idol.

So instead of just articulating the principles of Christianity in their contemporary world directly, many looked back to these previous times wherein the health and well being of the family as the basic social unit was built up to be ideal and was said to be at its pinnacle. In a way, it is a way of taking an easy route, because you just have to follow the road map from another era. Authors like Mark Knoll (Scandal of the Evangelical Mind) believe that part of the problem is also a function of the fact that many Americans never differentiated religion from patriotism, preceding our independence. The US was seen by many as "The New Israel" and still is.

So the obsession with the home becomes a means to an end, and it is borrowed from fantasy when people believed that the good old days were much better than today.

[bananacat]

Sometimes it seems like "home" is just a nicer word for "prison". It's emphasized so much to prevent the women from ever having a chance to escape.

[annalena]

Never mind, agree with all of above.

Has the topic of incest ever come up here? That would be a concern in my mind, what with the isolation and father is boss of all.

I think it has. I have my thoughts on that, having been abused by my own father, who was not even fundy. But he always wanted me to stay home as much as possible, especially when it came to going out.

[library_youth]

If you can't live with the world, live out of it. There's a verse in the Bible that backs up this view.

That's the same verse that the Amish use to describe themselves, isn't it? Living in the world, but not of it?

[GenerationCedarchip]

Home school. Home church. SAHD. SAHM. WHY?

Is it because the world out there is so so evil?

Growing up, a lot of the messages we heard had to deal with improving our walks with God and staying away from the corrupting influences of "evil mainstream culture." The rationale for men being out in the world wasn't so much the idea that they could handle it and women can't. It was more a concession so that families wouldn't starve. If the man couldn't run his own business or wasn't called to ministry, then he'd have to suck it up and deal with the world for the good of his family.

[xReems]

It's a fundy way to seclude people from the outside world and put themselves in a bubble.

Homechurch: Way of following what you think the Bible says rather than those ebil secular churches who might teach you "secular" things or convey messages that you might not believe in.

Homeschool, SAHM, SAHD, etc, is there way of making sure that children and women do not get influenced by the outside world due to "peer pressure." By sending young women and children to secular schools, they're going to get sinful influences, thus making them not good Christians, and God will frown upon them for living a normal life and find their way in this world.

[Avalondaughter]

I think it's been brought up a couple of times, I know it's been brought up at least once when the "modesty survey" came out and there were guys admitting to being turned on by sisters or mothers.

I think that when you raise children in isolation, the potential for this kind of this skyrockets. There was a show on 20/20 a few years ago exposing the widespread sexual abuse among the Amish. I wouldn't be suprised if many other fundies who raise their children in isolation do the same thing. If children are learning complete submission to their fathers and other male figures in their lives, they might not question Daddy's sexual requests. They're not being raised in a world that tells them this is wrong. Even if they know it's wrong in their brains, they are constantly being told it is normal. They are also told that the outside world is evil and no one will help them, or the "help" will be as evil as the act itself (make you turn against God and family if you seek counseling or justice).

[hyperactress23]

That's the same verse that the Amish use to describe themselves, isn't it? Living in the world, but not of it?

What I don't understand about this mindset is that you cannot live "in the world but not of it" if you are not living IN the world.

[NurseNell]

I think it has. I have my thoughts on that, having been abused by my own father, who was not even fundy. But he always wanted me to stay home as much as possible, especially when it came to going out.

I'm sorry you had to go through that Annalena, it makes me sick when I hear about these situations.

[Daenerys]

I think it's been brought up a couple of times, I know it's been brought up at least once when the "modesty survey" came out and there were guys admitting to being turned on by sisters or mothers.

Sexual repression has got to be the key problem there. I wonder how many of those feelings would be solved with a few copies of Hustler...