William Lindsey 
I just finished reading Cait West's new book Rift: A Memoir of Breaking Away from Christian Patriarchy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2024). As the title indicates, she tells a story of growing up in a family in which her parents — with the father calling the shots — bought into the Christian patriarchy movement. And it's her story of recognizing the damage her upbringing did to her and breaking away from the world her parents constructed for her.
I'm sharing some passages from the book that struck me as insightful:
“I am calling this a movement because Christian patriarchy is an ideology that cuts across many Protestant denominations. Some might call it a cult, a high-control group ruled by hierarchy and oppression” (p. 4).
“Cover up. This was one of the first rules I learned” (p. 9).
#Christian #patriarchy #MaleEntitlement #MaleDomination #FemaleSubordination #gender #complementarianism
/2
“My father would make me try on clothes for him to approve, and he would often scan my body, look over my shoulder down at my top, check my him and neckline to ensure I was covered, my curves unseen, my skin hidden” (p. 66).
“When Matthew’s letters came in the mail, my father would open them and read them first, to make sure there was nothing inappropriate or overly emotional in them” (p. 84).
#Christian #patriarchy #MaleEntitlement #MaleDomination #FemaleSubordination #complementarianism
/3
“We visited Baptist churches, Assemblies of God, nondenominational services, and Calvary Chapel. If a woman was preaching, my father would walk us out” (p. 85).
“Dad said the scriptures were inerrant – perfect. God gave men special knowledge. I was a girl, so my job was to listen to their wisdom in interpreting it.
I had been taught this so often that it became my only way of seeing myself: as a woman I would always be a helper to a man” (p. 88).
“My father became the center of my life – everything I did had to meet his approval. I moved freely only within the boundaries he’d created” (p. 98).
“I didn't know how contraceptives really worked, much less sex, but I had been taught birth control was an arrogant way to manipulate God's design. I had heard that to think you could stop God from giving you a baby was ridiculous. Even if you took the pill, you'd get pregnant if God wanted you to” (p. 107).
“I'd had my own laptop for a couple of years by then, and I could access the internet. Before, I wouldn't have dared to look up my questions online. I only used the computer to write stories for myself, to post articles about home schooling and teaching piano on a freelance writers’ website, and to write a blog under a pseudonym about my life in Hawai’i.
But one night I opened up Google and started searching. (continued in /7)
Slowly words surfaced, coalescing into a description of my reality: control, authoritarianism, manipulation, coercion, abuse (p. 122).
“I didn't know what to do when I found out that spiritual abuse was using God and the Bible to control someone, that my father had shamed me into submission by telling me I was sinful if I made decisions for myself” (p. 123).
#Christian #patriarchy #MaleEntitlement #MaleDomination #FemaleSubordination #complementarianism #gender
/7
“On Facebook and blogs, I found stories of homeschoolers who had survived abuse. Reading their stories was like reading my own” (p. 123).
“I had been told so many times that I needed to submit to my father no matter what, that I mistook his abuse and control over my life for love” (p. 124).
#Christian #patriarchy #MaleEntitlement #MaleDomination #FemaleSubordination #complementarianism #gender
/8
“According to Dad, I was a rebellious, sinful, disobedient feminist – the worst insult he could imagine. I've grown up hearing things like feminists want to be free from the family, feminists destroy families.
I worried that it might be true, that I was killing my family” (p. 132).
#Christian #patriarchy #MaleEntitlement #MaleDomination #FemaleSubordination #complementarianism #gender
/9
“The truth is patriarchy forces conformity. It relies on hierarchy and oppression to survive. The men at the top benefit, and everyone else is left trying to get close to power. The enablers are often girls and women who unknowingly believe their safety relies on obeying the rules that a society made by men has created for them, rules of behavior and clothing, of outward appearances. We teach each other how to behave” (p. 171).
#Christian #patriarchy #MaleDomination #FemaleSubordination
/10
“He was a reader of our diaries, a listener to our phone calls. He controlled every aspect of our lives. He found a home in the Christian patriarchy movement because that justified this control. Perhaps authoritarianism was the outcome of his own anxiety or insecurity. Maybe he would have joined any group if it meant he could be in charge” (p. 176).
#Christian #patriarchy #MaleEntitlement #MaleDomination #FemaleSubordination #complementarianism #gender
/11
“I was raised on a fundamentalism that kept me thinking in binaries. We were ‘us,’ and the world was ‘them.’ You were either evil or good; There was no fence-sitting” (p. 194).
#Christian #patriarchy #MaleEntitlement #MaleDomination #FemaleSubordination #complementarianism #gender
/12
“For a long time after leaving the Christian patriarchy movement, I still went to church, wanting to hold on to a divinity that loves me, while throwing away all that has harmed me. But the very experience of being inside a church building, interacting with people who seem to have no problems with church and no questions about God, became too much for me” (p. 197).
#Christian #patriarchy #MaleEntitlement #MaleDomination #FemaleSubordination #complementarianism #gender
/13
“When I tell my story, some Christians will say, ‘That wasn't really Christian. Your church wasn't really Christian.’ It's easier to call my story an anomaly than to face the reality that Christians have caused both great good and great harm. But that only perpetuates the problem, and the harm. (continued in /15)
#Christian #patriarchy #MaleEntitlement #MaleDomination #FemaleSubordination #complementarianism #gender
/14
Instead I wish they would say, ‘That was wrong.’ I wish they could acknowledge how they are tied to a broader group of people, that they would seek accountability and justice instead of washing their hands clean of the so-called bad apples” (p. 200).
“I am not the prodigal, and I am never returning to my father” (p. 202).
#Christian #patriarchy #MaleEntitlement #MaleDomination #FemaleSubordination #complementarianism #gender
/15
“Patriarchy thrives anywhere men are praised for their will to dominate – and Christian patriarchy blesses this pursuit of earthly power by imagining it's a heavenly duty. Like abuse, Christian patriarchy, at its core, is about power and control – at any cost” (p. 212).
#Christian #patriarchy #MaleEntitlement #MaleDomination #FemaleSubordination #complementarianism #gender
/16
“Everything from birth control to condoms to IVF would have been immoral in the world I grew up in. They all resemble an attempt to play God, to take control over our bodies, our fertility, the number of our children. … A woman who tried to control her own body was a woman who hated families, hated herself, hated God” (pp. 215-6).
#Christian #patriarchy #MaleEntitlement #MaleDomination #FemaleSubordination #complementarianism #gender
/17
Matěj Cepl 🇪🇺 🇨🇿 🇺🇦How much of that is #Christian #patriarchy and how much is that her father was an arsehole?
@mcepl I do her the honor of listening to what she says when she says that her father's behavior was rooted in, stemmed from, and was reinforced by Christian patriarchy. This is, after all, hardly the single instance in which we've seen the ideology of Christian patriarchy issue in horrific abuse of children and women.
I fully listen to her story and 100% accept that it happened how she says it happened. But I don’t automatically accept an explanation of a tremendously wounded person. That way lies silliness.
All of us rationalize our wounds in some way, and most of the time it has nothing to do with an objective understanding of the process.
@mcepl Did someone use the word "automatic"? And isn't it interesting that one male after another responds to first-hand testimony of women about their abuse at the hands of patriarchy by saying in one way or another that we should be cautious before we believe that testimony? What's that response about, I wonder?
Marcus Marcius Marcellus@wdlindsy "patriarchy is an ideology that cuts across many Protestant denominations"
Well, true, but this is a bit like saying "Use of a spherical object of play -- a 'ball', if you will -- is a practice that cuts across many variants of football".
@marcas Except football doesn't control the world in the direct, apodictic, and dominative way religion frequently does.
@wdlindsy I see that you do not live in Europe or Latin America.
@marcas I suspect Europe and Latin America couldn't hold a candle to North America, especially the American South, when it comes to worshiping at the church of football.
@wdlindsy Ah, see, here we have two peoples divided by a common language...
@marcas And one of us is responding to a writer's painful story of abuse in a Christian patriarchal household and the damage that did to her by changing the subject to football.
@wdlindsy You really must learn to read more closely. The football thing was not changing the point.
The football thing expressed my limited sympathy for those who say "This *specific brand* of religion, that differs from my own and that I personally dislike, is a Bad Thing".
As I said: that's certainly true, as far as it goes; but it is also so narrowly focused as to be of little use in understanding the phenomenon.
And if it's not clear: it isn't West's story I'm responding to.
@marcas I'm interested in sharing West's story and listening seriously to what she has to say.
@wdlindsy Fair enough, and that’s important.
I’m interested in identifying the common thread that leads so many forms of religion, outwardly very different to each other, to the same dire social effects as invariably as a dog returneth to his vomit.
I’m also interested in understanding why both the very worst and the very best humans can espouse religion (often, the same one). I think it’s easier to understand this if one leaves deities out of the analysis altogether.
@marcas These are certainly important questions that deserve careful consideration. My reaction has been to what seemed to me a diversion from Cait West's analysis, to which I want to give careful attention and a receptive ear.
@wdlindsy However, my point was less about sport than about excessively narrow focus.
Patriarchy is absolutely a feature in many forms of Protestant Christianity. And also in non-Protestant forms of Christianity, and in non-Christian Abrahamic religions, and in non-Abrahamic religions.
@marcas I don't believe Cait West or any informed person says that patriarchy is confined either to Christianity of to Protestant Christianity. She's writing about her own personal experience growing up in a Christian Patriarchal Protestant household.
Simon Flett