Quiverfull

[nobspeople]

Old TV 'friend' Joshy Duggar has, once again, has found legal trouble over charges of receiving and possessing material depicting the sexual abuse of children (though he says he's innocent this time). For those that may not now, Joshy have been accused, and admitted to, molesting five young girls, including some of his sisters, when he was a minor teen in 2002 and 2003.

The whole Duggar clan (who consist of, I think, about 21 children(?)) have been accused of being a part of the Quiverfull movement (a theological position held by some conservative Christian couples who belong to Christian denominations that see children as blessings from God. It thus encourages procreation, abstaining from all forms of birth control (including natural family planning) and sterilization.). While the Duggars have denied any association with said movement, saying they are "... simply Bible-believing Christians who desire to follow God's Word and apply it to our lives." and saying they are 'devout independent Baptist' who "attend a "... "home church” to worship amongst a select group of others."

For reference, below are some of the concepts to which Quiverfull followers adhere:
1) They believe God won't give them more kids than they can handle
2) Some believe they are building an army for God - or an army of conservative Christians
3) Quiverfull movement is anti-feminist & encourages a patriarchal system, according to Religion News Service
4) Some of the most prominent advocate have been women
5) Movement has been linked to sexual abuse in the last

Much of the Quiverfull movement seems to be typical Christian concepts.
1) Many Christians make this claim and has been taught in ever single Christian church I've ever attended
2) I know only a few Christians who've made this claim (heavily implied) but seeing how many Christians sects pop out kids like rabbits seems to indicated this is, at least, an implied idea
3) Seeing how angry many Christians get when they hear of a female church leader, this makes sense
4) Every Christian outlet I've seen has a woman in a form of support behind 'their man', of course; and this would make sense considering #3 above (not many women would want to challenge the male dominated industry of Christianity, though we are seeing more as times change)
5) Catholic priest, for example.

Can't much of the Quiverfull movement be shown to be typical Christian thinking?
Is the Quiverfull group simply a way for typical Christians to feel 'special'?
Or is this movement created by the non-religious masses in an effort to segregate Christianity?

[Purple Knight]

Can't much of the Quiverfull movement be shown to be typical Christian thinking?

Now here's the thing about typical: The strategy is a successful one. Catholics have more babies, and next time a generation rolls around, you get more Catholics.

I think Quiverfull and Catholics are outliers, but it doesn't matter much when the outliers are making more babies. What they do will become typical, if it hasn't already. This isn't so much a dig at Christians as it is at the state of the world. It's hardly peoples' fault that they adopt the successful strategy.

It's disgusting that government doesn't do something when overpopulation is now so bad that they're already telling us we have to eat mushed cockroaches instead of meat, and some families struggle to afford even one child. If I'm for redistribution of anything, it's children. Some people having none so one person can have 20 is unacceptable.

When I think of the Duggars, I think of every person who desperately wanted a child and would have raised it as something other than a paedophile, but abstained to save the planet. These filth have undone their sacrifice because they just had to have more. I wish I could force the Duggars to look in the faces of 20 such women who are dying of breast cancer just so the Duggars can take more than their share of resources from the planet, instead of so the population can actually go down and reduce our impact.

[nobspeople]

[Replying to Purple Knight in post #2]

Catholics have more babies, and next time a generation rolls around, you get more Catholics.

Isn't being a Catholic a choice and not genetic?

Simply because Catholics reproduce a lot doesn't automatically mean those kids will become and stay Catholics. Thankfully.

I think Quiverfull and Catholics are outliers

Mormons do the same thing. JWs too (at least from my experience with them). Outliers? Maybe. But the bible does seem to indicate - at least to many - that not only are 'believers' to go and 'recruit', but also 'reproduce' their numbers. It's genius, really. When you (God) can't logically convince people, you breed into the group. Odds are, at least some of the breed will stay convinced of God - especially when they're ruled with fear and ignorance as happens in many Christian households.

This isn't so much a dig at Christians as it is at the state of the world.

I saw somewhere this week that the in the States, reproduction rates are lower than they've been in a long time. That may have more to do with expenses than anything else, though Kids ain't cheap!

Some people having none so one person can have 20 is unacceptable.

Personally, I think 20-30 years of no reproduction worldwide would be beneficial. Humanity is like a virus; overtaking and destroying its host.

I wish I could force the Duggars to look in the faces of 20 such women who are dying of breast cancer just so the Duggars can take more than their share of resources from the planet, instead of so the population can actually go down and reduce our impact.

The whole family is useless IMO. But there are many like them. They're just one of the lucky ones (unlucky for everyone else) that got a stupid TV show about them not being able to keep their pants on.

[Purple Knight]

Simply because Catholics reproduce a lot doesn't automatically mean those kids will become and stay Catholics. Thankfully.

No, but people are predisposed to stay in their birth religion.

It's genius, really. When you (God) can't logically convince people, you breed into the group. Odds are, at least some of the breed will stay convinced of God - especially when they're ruled with fear and ignorance as happens in many Christian households.

The sad part is the Christian households who don't use fear and ignorance. They'll lose more of their children to atheism or other religions and next generation, you'll see less of them. People can't be blamed for adopting the strategy that works.

Personally, I think 20-30 years of no reproduction worldwide would be beneficial. Humanity is like a virus; overtaking and destroying its host.

Amen to that. But it doesn't mean that people should refrain from reproducing voluntarily. If the conscientious people don't reproduce, allowing the next generation to be made up of more people who simply don't care because their parents didn't and they were never taught to, this will mean a greater explosion in population. And I don't even think refraining from reproducing saves the planet even a little, because some reproductive opportunist like a Duggar will just fill that niche with an extra baby. You don't save the Earth a baby when you decide not to have one; it still gets born, it's just not yours.

[RightReason]

I don’t know a whole lot about the Quiverfull Movement, other than years ago someone accused me of being a part of it (and at the time, I had never even heard of it). I have absolutely no problem with being open to life and accepting whatever children come your way. As well as not actively doing anything to prevent said children. Seems respectful and beautiful and beneficial.

Quiverfull movement (a theological position held by some conservative Christian couples who belong to Christian denominations that see children as blessings from God.

That does not sound like a bad thing. I wish more people saw children as the blessing they are. When we view children as liabilities or mistakes or expensive or burdens that carries over into how we value human life in general. We begin to see the human person only of worth for what they do or their accomplishments. We start to emphasize things like quality of life over the inherent dignity of the human person. That Down Syndrome child is inferior to a ‘normal’ child. He couldn’t possibly have as a good of a life, so we should spare him and spare ourselves in having to deal with such a burden. Grandpa can’t do much anymore, perhaps we shall put him out to Pasture.

If the Quiverfull movement sees children as blessings, I can’t argue with that or understand how anyone could. And if one is a Christian, children are always seen as blessings in Scripture.

For reference, below are some of the concepts to which Quiverfull followers adhere:
1) They believe God won't give them more kids than they can handle

That’s simply a basic principle of trust which should be held by all Christians. Most practicing Christians trust that God always has their back. We trust He will inevitably provide for us. This doesn’t exactly strike me as an inappropriate statement from a believer.

2) Some believe they are building an army for God - or an army of conservative Christians

Being Catholic, I am familiar with this accusation. The anti-Catholic sentiment is often, Catholics only have lots of kids because they are out to get all the Catholics they can! That isn’t quite a fair statement. It’s more that we see the primary purpose of God’s design of His gift of sex to us as procreative. We see children as good for the parents as well as good for the world. We see children as a natural result of two people who love each other. Catholics aren’t looking to take over the world, we just happen to think the world of human beings and desire to honor God’s plan/design.

3) Quiverfull movement is anti-feminist & encourages a patriarchal system, according to Religion News Service

I would need to know what your definition of feminism is. If by feminism you mean women are awesome and should receive things like equal pay for equal work and being pro-women, then I would agree feminism is good and anyone who opposes it would be off base. However, I am not a fan of what some might consider radical feminism as I actually see much of what they espouse is actually anti woman.

4) Some of the most prominent advocate have been women

What does that matter? And again, I don’t know much about the Quiverfull movement, but not sure about your point here.

5) Movement has been linked to sexual abuse in the last

Well, that’s horrific. But is it true that the Quiverfull movement has higher incidences of sexual abuse than the general population? Because the public school system has also been linked to sexual abuse, as well as the Little League group, the Boys Scouts, etc. And statistically speaking the greatest percentage of sexual abuse occurs from other family members, regardless of whatever other groups/organizations you may be a member of.

Much of the Quiverfull movement seems to be typical Christian concepts.
1) Many Christians make this claim and has been taught in ever single Christian church I've ever attended

Again, what has been taught? That children are a blessing? Yes, you are probably right, but that is a positive thing. Or do you mean Christians are taught to have as many kids as they can for God? Because that is typically not the teaching of most Christian groups I know. Neither God or the Church look at it as a numbers thing. I know my Church does not ever say it is important to have lots of kids, but it does say if you do have a child, that child is beautiful and unique and has intrinsic value.

5) Catholic priest, for example.

Catholic priest for example what?

Can't much of the Quiverfull movement be shown to be typical Christian thinking?

You have an awful lot going on in this thread. Not sure which things you think are typical Christian thinking.

Is the Quiverfull group simply a way for typical Christians to feel 'special'?

Any teaching of Christ can be twisted and misapplied. Unfortunately, we see that sometimes. So, I think you’re right that if someone in this Quiverfull group sees God as wanting them to have baby after baby and seeing having lots of babies as the point, then I would agree with you that that is disordered. They might not be seeing the specialness of each child. And maybe they could fall into doing it because they want to feel special or break some record or get their own tv show, but I have a feeling that is typically NOT the motivation of why many Christians have large families.

is this movement created by the non-religious masses in an effort to segregate Christianity?

Well, I think the purpose of your thread might be to mock this group or at least present them in an unfavorable way. And again, maybe it is an odd group, but I think some of the things you posted about it as proof that it is odd, were not odd to me at all. I’m thinking maybe you don’t fully understand the beautiful Christian teachings regarding sex, family, and children and because of that you can’t understand why there are couples that end up having very large families. I think the biggest problem is Christians vs non believers usually just have very different worldviews.

[RightReason]

This isn't so much a dig at Christians as it is at the state of the world. It's hardly peoples' fault that they adopt the successful strategy.

Again, I think you are seeing strategy where there is no strategy. I would think most human beings just want to maximize their greatest human fulfillment. When that is the goal, it only makes sense that two people that loved each other would desire to have large families. Children are our greatest treasures.

It's disgusting that government doesn't do something when overpopulation is now so bad that they're already telling us we have to eat mushed cockroaches instead of meat, and some families struggle to afford even one child. If I'm for redistribution of anything, it's children. Some people having none so one person can have 20 is unacceptable.

Your comments aren’t really based on science/facts.

***********

the United Nations explains humanity now produces far more than enough food to feed everyone on the planet. Furthermore, the proportion of the world that doesn’t have enough to eat has dropped by half in just the last two decades. Indeed, today, hunger isn’t a function of production, but distribution.

Back in 2012, the Journal of Sustainable Agriculture explained “we already grow enough food for 10 billion people.” This is a 25 percent bounty over our current global population. Given world population is projected to top out at just 9.73 billion people by the end of this century according to a groundbreaking Gates Foundation-funded study published in The Lancet last summer, this is a surplus we will never need.

What about our supposedly “overworked soil”? Human ingenuity is allowing us to produce more food than we need on increasingly less land.

the proportion of land used for all agriculture (crops and grazing) per person across the globe has plummeted dramatically over the last 100 years. In sum, we are growing more with less — a phenomenon true across all continents.


“we are running out of fresh water.” False. Our World in Data scholars show the number of people around the world with improved access to clean drinking water actually increased 68 percent from 1990 to 2015, even as the global population expanded. More than 290,000 people have gained access to improved drinking water every single day across the globe over the last 25 years — a figure that is still increasing.


Remarkably, the environment is kinder to humans in the developing world as
well. In non-industrial societies, where cooking over wood or coal-burning fires is often a regular part of daily life, air pollution deaths are more than 100 times higher than their developed, industrial counterparts.

As the world develops, such cooking declines and more people survive and live longer as growth and technology are helping people breathe easier. Additionally, ozone pollution and smog have declined rapidly throughout the world, even in high-income, heavy manufacturing Asian Pacific regions.


Precisely because humans continue to increasingly adapt to the earth through human creativity and ingenuity, the earth is becoming a much safer place. So no, more people are clearly not making the earth a more inhospitable place. In 2018, Paul Romer won the Nobel Prize in Economics for demonstrating this very fact.


most children end up contributing more to society than is spent on them. To a critical fault, Thomas Malthus and his later acolytes only saw humans as consuming stomachs and ignored their productive hands and minds.


A generation that doesn’t reproduce itself risks overburdening a dwindling workforce with the requirements of the elderly. Fewer children means fewer buyers for the houses and stocks that the elderly invested in to build a retirement nest egg, a smaller tax base to pay for their pensions and outsize hospital bills, and fewer people around to undertake their care.


“parenting is not a hobby — it’s an indispensable part of a properly functioning economy, and our present system works only if people continue to do it.”
a growing divide among on left on the importance of having children. One side of the argument certainly has the support of careful and compelling scientific data. The other just has hysteria.


https://thefederalist.com/2021/05/03/so ... good-idea/

When I think of the Duggars, I think of every person who desperately wanted a child and would have raised it as something other than a paedophile, but abstained to save the planet.

I’m not defending the Duggars. I do not know their full story, but I’m petty sure the majority of their children turned out to be respectable human beings.

These filth have undone their sacrifice because they just had to have more. I wish I could force the Duggars to look in the faces of 20 such women who are dying of breast cancer just so the Duggars can take more than their share of resources from the planet, instead of so the population can actually go down and reduce our impact.

I honestly don’t understand your comparison here. How are the Duggars to blame for people dying of breast cancer?

[brunumb]

Sex and children are not "blessings from God". They are part of the natural reproductive cycle that involves the majority of animals and plants that evolved on this planet.

[RightReason]

Sex and children are not "blessings from God". They are part of the natural reproductive cycle that involves the majority of animals and plants that evolved on this planet.

Tomato/tomata. They are that too. So, one could say they are part of the natural order/design. You don’t have to give God the credit of you don’t want to, but sex begets children. Thanks for acknowledging that. Lots of people pretend that’s not what we all observe as the purpose/function of sex. So, kudos! And social research can show how children are good for parents and society. So, while you might not be willing to call that a “blessing from God”, it’s still a fact based on scientific research that children are good. Human beings have long recognized this. They bring joy and are our future. They have been shown to be able to help out on the family farm as well as be the next discoverer of penicillin.

[Purple Knight]

Again, I think you are seeing strategy where there is no strategy. I would think most human beings just want to maximize their greatest human fulfillment. When that is the goal, it only makes sense that two people that loved each other would desire to have large families. Children are our greatest treasures.

That doesn't mean there is no strategy. People may simply not know they are employing it.

Your comments aren’t really based on science/facts.

Here's an example of the ecological disaster of eating meat.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... t-on-earth

We're now scrambling to reduce our individual impact because there are so many individuals.

I honestly don’t understand your comparison here. How are the Duggars to blame for people dying of breast cancer?

Read the link. Not having children increases the risk of breast cancer. Despite that, it's something people have been told to do ever since we figured out that the human population now doubles every 60 or so years.



So for every Duggar having 20, somebody has to abstain altogether. If the average was 2 children otherwise, 18 somebodies would have to abstain (9 couples).

Almost everyone wants a family. Some people are doing their duty to the planet and not having one, even though they may die of breast cancer from it. Without Duggars, 10 childless women could have had one baby apiece, reducing their chances of breast cancer, and there would still be 10 less people on the planet.

[JehovahsWitness]

Can't much of the Quiverfull movement be shown to be typical Christian thinking?

Regarding having children: I do believe Christians in general do have more children on average than non believers. As one of Jehovahs Witnesses I believe children are a blessing from God. That said, Jehovah's Witnesses do not seek to increase our membership primarily through childbirth but rather by evangelization (preaching).

We take the bible view of having children and are taught to respect the personal decision certain among us take to limit the size of their families, not marry and/or to not have children on order to dedicate themselves fully to the Lord.

The bible contains no explicit prohibition of artificiel methods of birth control.

JW


Should children be raised by both their biological parents?
viewtopic.php?p=1016001#p1016001