I had noticed a lot more large families at the churches I attend and visit. Whereas one day four kids was a lot, nowadays at many churches you see families of 7 or 10. I thought it was interesting, but apparently it is a movement. Who knew?
The movement, called Quiverfull, is based on Psalm 127, which says, "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them."...The Swansons subscribe to the Quiverfull movement.Honestly, I find the idea a bit strange, although I know this kind of thing was the norm only a few generations ago. My grandfather came from a huge family... but only a small number made it to adulthood. Is this a reaction to the overpopulation mania of the 70s, or a real Biblical idea?
"When we first got married, we actually didn't want children," Kelly's husband, Jeff Swanson, says.
But then the Swansons began to notice that the Bible was very high on big families. And Kelly says that she and Jeff decided that God knew how many children they could handle.
"We just started thinking, 'God is sovereign over life and death. God opens and closes the womb,' " Kelly says. "That's what his word says, so why we're trying to fiddle around and controlling ourselves, we need to stop doing that."
7 comments:
I think it's biblical the way predestination is biblical. They're both extrapolations of a particular set of verses, whether or not you accept the premises of those extrapolations determines the biblical-ness of the concept - and thus how you read the bible.
I think that God does know how many children we can handle, but I think that there's a lot of personal responsibility that needs to be exercised as well. God doesn't step in the way of biology very much. If this were the case God would only give kids to people who were mature enough to handle it and we all know that's no true. I think we have enough kids in the foster system to disprove this theory.
It is a response to reading the Bible in a particular tradition. And I agree with Sean, it is how much you accept the extrapolation of the verses.
I grew up where this idea was definitely pushed heavily. My experience was that many of the people pushing the idea were well to do, and could afford more children without a problem. Many of those who followed them were not as well to do, and the strain on the finances was quite heavy.
I respect people who live this way, but my husband was led to limit our family. (I wanted more.) He listened to God's leading and, since he died young, it was definitely the right decision.
Still, he quoted this verse often to show how happy he was with the children we did have.
I've heard of the quiverful movement before (the Dugger family is a gross commercialization of it). Personally, I'm not a fan of it (though I admit a lot of that has to do with the Dugger family.) I think big families are fine; I think small families are fine. The problem I have is two fold. First, it just doesn't make sense to me that you should keep having kids if you won't be able to financially care for them. Second, I agree about the personal responsibility. God knows whether I can handle being sick or not, but he gave us the knowledge of medicine to help me get better.
I can see a pattern in the Bible that tents were a big part of life. Moses lived in tents. Paul was a tent maker for a time. God even dwelt in a tent! Despite the impracticality of living in a cold climate and difficulty that goes along from having cloth walls, I think that my family will move from our house into a tent. "The BowHunters began to notice that the Bible was very high on tents." I will start a movement called the NoWallsNoBrains movement.
BH that is so funny...and...awesome. You crack me up!
I took about two days to write a blog post about this after I heard it last week. I even spent time wading through the comments on the NPR site. BowHunter gets it in a seven sentence comment.
One thing that stuck out for me in the landscape of hysterical comments at the NPR site about how the quiverfull movement is going to ruin the country and the world was that still small voice in one comment that said, ever seen a non-white quiverfull family? I haven't and there are a lot of big families in my circle of friends (not necessarily quiverfull).
The quiverfull movement is more a conflagration of various strains of American culture than it is adherence to biblical principle.
Post a Comment