University of California Santa Cruz Quiverfull Reality
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ QUIVERFULL REALITY AND RHETORIC: READING PRACTICES IN THE BIBLICAL PATRIARCHY MOVEMENT A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in LITERATURE by Bethany E. Sweeney December 2017 The Dissertation of Bethany E. Sweeney is approved: ____________________________________ Professor Wlad Godzich, chair ____________________________________ Professor H. Marshall Leicester, Jr. ____________________________________ Professor Neda Atanasoski _____________________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by Bethany E. Sweeney 2017 Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………iv Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….v Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1: Quiverfull Modesty: Being and Appearing in the World………………………………….15 Chapter 2: Quiverfull Authority: The Divine Chain of Jurisdictions……………..…………..……….39 Chapter 3: Quiverfull Ontology: Reading the Self as an Agent of Dominion………………..….139 Chapter 4: Quiverfull History: Establishing the Unbroken Path of Righteousness Through Reading…………………………………………………………………………………………..198 Chapter 5: Quiverfull Community: Inviting the Many, Including the Few………………………..228 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...269 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………275 iii Abstract Quiverfull Reality and Rhetoric: Reading Practices in the Biblical Patriarchy Movement Bethany E. Sweeney This dissertation analyzes the Christian Quiverfull movement, focusing on its underlying ideology, how that ideology is created and disseminated, and its similarity with certain aspects of broader U.S. culture. In doing so, it examines the written and visual texts produced and distributed by the movement. Though the dissertation covers a wide range of materials, including sermons, books, blog posts, films, and educational materials, its most significant focus is on the reality TV shows on which Quiverfull adherents appear, as those provide the most conspicuous example of Quiverfull belief and practice. To respond effectively to the Quiverfull use of this and other platforms, the dissertation combines techniques based in both literature and ethnography. This allows it to establish the broad boundaries of Quiverfull community as demonstrated by its textual production, to engage directly with the self-representation that the Quiverfull community practices, to situate that community within its larger cultural context, and to document and evaluate the textual practices that the Quiverfull movement uses to engage public audiences and attract them to its ideology. By using such methods, the dissertation documents not only the parameters of the worldview to which the Quiverfull movement adheres but also the methods by which they devise those parameters. It argues that the Quiverfull movement employs a model of reading that involves first establishing fundamental principles and then instructing its adherents to learn its worldview by teaching them to approach Scripture and other key texts as though engaging in a scavenger hunt. Using this model, readers discover the clues that lead to the iv construction of essential truths, verifying them and coming to embrace them through a process of identifying and understanding all items given on the scavenger hunt list, with the process ultimately leading to full membership in the community. Finally, the dissertation discusses how echoes of the Quiverfull method of approaching texts can be seen in broader U.S. culture, suggesting that the Quiverfull movement is not nearly as aberrant to dominant culture as it is often treated in public discourse. v Acknowledgments This dissertation could not have been completed without the support of the Literature Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, which provided me with funds for research, or Des Moines Area Community College, which granted me generous professional leave for dissertation writing and editing. I am especially grateful to my dissertation committee, Wlad Godzich (chair), Marsh Leicester, and Neda Atanasoski. Their deep engagement with my ideas and their encouraging and challenging feedback helped to shape this project and see it to completion. I am particularly grateful to Wlad Godzich, whose general support and advice has been invaluable and whose guidance in developing my knowledge of religious studies has been critical to my work, and to Marsh Leicester, whose teaching and writing methodologies have had a profound impact on my own. In addition, I offer thanks to the many UCSC faculty members whose teaching has impacted me as a scholar: Carla Freccero, Jody Greene, Sharon Kinoshita, Dan Selden, David Marriott, Lyn Westerkamp, and Nathaniel Deutsch. The support of the UCSC Literature Department staff is also greatly appreciated. I also want to acknowledge the important role my fellow UCSC Literature graduate students have played in shaping my work as a scholar. It was immeasurably helpful to have the support of my cohort and of students further along in the process. I want to offer special thanks to Sophia Magnone, Samantha Skinazi, Joanna Meadvin, Melissa Yinger, Tim Willcutts, Trevor Schack, and Shawna Vesco for their friendship and conversation over the years. vi This dissertation likely would never have been written without Toni Wall Jaudon, whose undergraduate-level writing class on reality TV at Cornell University called my attention to a genre, and a way of thinking about it, that I might otherwise have ignored. Many thanks are owed to Lindsay Simpson, Jen Schulte, John Pea, Kim Fara, Nadine Jessen, Teresa Friesen, Lisa Dreesman, Rebecca Brown, and Krystal Cox, my colleagues at Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) who have supported me by listening to me discuss my research, encouraging me to stay on task, and substituting for my classes when I was on professional leave. I am also grateful to my provost, Joel Lundstrom, for providing me with critical support and encouragement throughout my dissertation writing process. Thanks, too, to all of my students. My UCSC students, and especially my DMACC students, routinely challenging my thinking and kept me inspired to push myself as both a scholar and a teacher. In particular, Alexius Ridenour and Laura Cunningham, both students who became close friends, supported me throughout the process, listening to me explain my work and understanding when I needed a break from talking about it. My mother, Gail Sweeney, my father, Mike Sweeney, and my sister, Leah Sweeney have all played an instrumental role in my development as a scholar. They were with me all the way, encouraging me to pursue my doctorate, fostering my love of reading and learning, challenging me to be a better thinker and a better person, and offering me emotional support when I needed it most. I love and thank all three of you. Finally, I wouldn’t be who or where I am today without my partners, Crys Lehman and Matt Kinker. For your support, your love, your encouragement, and your willingness to live and breathe this dissertation, I am deeply and forever grateful. vii Introduction Section 1: Quiverfull: An Overview The impetus for this dissertation came about initially as a result of personal reflection. I don’t remember the specific context in which I first encountered the TLC reality TV show 19 Kids and Counting, but I do remember being struck by how many elements of the lives of the family it showcased, the Duggar family, reminded me of elements from my own upbringing. The Duggars were strict Christian conservatives who taught their homeschooled children rigid gender roles, a strong belief in Creationism, and the idea that mainstream society was in the midst of a process of decline; the school I attended as a child was affiliated with a church that wouldn’t allow women to direct the Sunday School program because that would put them in authority over men, taught that evolution was a scientific conspiracy to discredit Creationism and Christianity in general, and believed that the end of the world was imminent. Watching the daily lives of the Duggar family reminded me of the daily lives of my friends and peers at my conservative grammar school. Watching the Duggars also made me realize how significantly my life—in terms of personal beliefs, but also in terms of social circles of engagement—had diverged from the culture in which I had grown up. When I told current friends and colleagues about my upbringing, they were almost always surprised to learn that such ideology was so openly taught in educational institutions in 1990s New York State. As I watched 19 Kids and Counting and reflected on this reaction, I began to slowly realize that the worldview I had been immersed in as a child was invisible to most people who hadn’t directly experienced it. To them, people like the Duggars were almost characters from a fictional narrative. I began, then, to wonder about the extent to which they right about the rarity of 1 people like the Duggars and my childhood peers. I began to ask just how pervasive Duggar values were in society and how large of an effect they had on broader U.S. culture. As I pursued research—casual at first, as I was then planning to write a dissertation on 17th century British literature—I soon realized that the Duggars, while they did indeed share many of the values on which I had been raised, were participants in a further-reaching ideological system