Thinking instead of following blindly

My mother is an intelligent woman. She is a thinker, a learner, a fantastic teacher and public speaker, and a pastor's wife. My sister is very much the same. I grew up around people who thought deeply, pressed situations against the straight-edge of scripture and reasoned through the results of that comparison. I was taught to take everything to the absolute standard of scripture and to reject anything that did not conform, no matter who was promoting the concept in question.

Sitting under the ministry of my father's pastorate for the first 20+ years of my life, I often heard him encourage the congregation to carefully weigh his words against scripture to and reject anything he said that did not conform to scripture. He encouraged the people of the church to confront him immediately should they ever find him straying from scripture.

This upbringing made me think that this was simply the way of the world. The concepts of thought control and subjugation were never even part of my world, other than in studying history and seeing the terrible inhumanity of man.

For this reason, I was amazed about the time I got married to begin to meet folks who willingly placed themselves under the boot of authoritarian religious dictators. I understood that such people existed, but I had trouble even conceiving of the fact that some folks would willingly place themselves under such an abusive system.

The worst extreme of this phenomenon that I have seen amongst Evangelicals and Catholics is to be found in the Patriarchy movement. This movement places in men a centrality that I believe should be given to Christ alone. There are theological issues surrounding this group that are troublesome also.

But I do not have the time to delve into these issues or even into the Patriarchy movement in the way that others are attempting. So I will point you to a few friends I have met along the way.

I discovered the Patriarchy movement through a female friend who was willingly putting herself under the abusive teachings of these people. Because the movement struck me as cultish in nature and abusive in practice, I began to research it out of concern for my friend. This research introduced me to a handful of intelligent thinking women—much like my wife—who are sold out to God, very serious about their religion, and who are trying to follow scripture. These very characteristics cause them to question much of what is happening in the Patriarchy movement.

I created the graphics in this post for some of these new-found sisters in Christ for use on their blogs. If you are interested in hearing more about the Patriarchy movement and its dangers, check out these blogs:

• Under Much Grace
• True Womanhood
• White Washed Feminist
• Taliban Rising