Thursday, March 26, 2009

How Full is your Quiver?

Just when I think religion couldn’t possibly get any bat-shit crazier, something comes along to make me change my tune. If you’ve read anything I’ve ever regurgitated into the blogosphere, then you’re aware that I view religion as little more than sanctioned lunacy – a mass delusion that, for deeply ingrained sociological reasons, gets a pass from the majority of humanity.

The other morning I was buried under the covers, trying to avoid dragging my ass out of bed, while NPR blared from the clock radio. A story came on about the “Quiverfull” movement. After listening for a few moments, I emerged from my morning fog. I was intrigued. I was aghast. I was horrified.

I present to you a brief overview of the “Quiverfull” movement. It’s a Christian invention. It’s based on Psalm 127, which states that, “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.” (In a nutshell? Kids are like arrows. The more arrows a warrior has, the better his chances of killing everybody and everything that he can.) The movement shuns birth control, content in the knowledge that god knows just how many children a family can handle. You know, because that has worked out so well in Appalachia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

We live in a free society. There are no limits on the number of children you can eject from your womb and into the world. Sure, there’s the issue of personal responsibility. The earth has finite resources, and the global population is certainly reaching a tipping point. There’s something to be said for looking at the exploding world population and saying, “do I really want to add 8 or 9 more kids into this hot mess we call planet earth?” It’s no different than choosing the car we drive. Sure, you have every right to buy a Hummer H2 and get 2 mpg and lumber around basking in your freedom to shuffle us one step closer to extinction with each mile you drive. But isn’t it smarter to get a more fuel efficient vehicle to help preserve the only planet we have?

Honestly, I don’t expect much in the way of environmental common-sense from the fundamentalist crowd. After all, the bible is chock full of notions that man helms the cosmic bobsled, and that planet earth is our own personal sandbox to plunder and pillage as we see fit. Live your life according to that book and, well, you can do the math.

The more I listened, and later read, about this Quiverfull movement, the more the ecological concerns took a back seat. Eventually, you muddle through the double-speak and the pictures of happy families and you get to the core of what this group - and many “Christ-centric” groups - are truly all about. You realize that under the shiny veneer of love and harmony and endless singing of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” is an aim that is much, much more nefarious.

One of the leaders of this movement is a woman by the name of Nancy Campbell. Nancy was quoted extensively by NPR, and she wrote a book about said movement called Be Fruitful and Multiply. Listening to Nancy, and reading her words, gave me the creepy-crawlies up and down my spine. Here’s one of Nancy’s greatest hits: “The womb is a powerful weapon; it’s a weapon against the enemy.” Wait…what? Yes, that’s right. You weren’t imagining things. Go ahead, read it again. The enemy? Who is this enemy? Well, let’s let Nancy lay that out for you with another quote.

“We look across the Islamic world and we see that they are outnumbering us in their family size, and they are in many places and many countries taking over those nations, without jihad, just by multiplication.”

Another Quiverfull disciple, Kathryn Joyce, who wrote the book Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, says:

“They speak about, ‘If everyone starts having eight children or 12 children, imagine in three generations what we’ll be able to do. We’ll be able to take over both halls of Congress, we’ll be able to reclaim sinful cities like San Francisco for the faithful, and we’ll be able to wage very effective massive boycotts against companies that are going against god’s will.’”

Getting the picture? I have seen Nancy’s and Kathryn’s enemy, and it is me. Hell, it might be you. (If you’re reading my blog, it probably is you…let’s be honest.) The enemy is the Muslim, the Buddhist, the homosexual, the atheist. Anyone who disagrees with a strict, biblical interpretation of Christianity is the enemy. Let that sink in.

Part of the problem when you deal with fundamentalist Christianity is that it’s a faith born from persecution. I mean the faith itself, the belief, was literally forged from death and misery. I think this instills in many of its followers a sort of “persecution envy”. Jesus was crucified. Early Christians were tortured and fed to the lions. “What about me?” They ask. “When do I get to suffer?” It’s this attitude, this desire to feel the suffering of their Messiah and the church’s early adherents that drives this cult of persecution. This is what causes fundamentalists to perceive “persecution” where persecution doesn’t exist. Simply disagreeing with them is not disagreement, but persecution. You aren’t someone who disagrees with their views, you are the enemy.

Bill O’Reilly is a category 5 fuck-tard. Everyone with a functioning brain knows this. O’Reilly was also one of the original talking heads to begin vomiting endless venom and nonsense about a “war on Christmas”. Not to be left out, fellow Fox News anchor and intellectual fly-weight John Gibson actually published a book entitled: The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday is Worse Than You Thought. This war of which they speak? Well, it involves the audacity of other cultures and religions to observe holidays over the Christmas season. It involves non-Christians not wanting a 30-foot, light-up baby Jesus on the lawn of a secular courthouse. The nerve of these people, right?

See, wishing people “happy holidays” rather than “merry Christmas” is a shot across Christianity’s bow. It is, if you are to believe the O’Reilly’s, Gibson’s, Joyce’s and Campbell’s of this world, a declaration of war. The Jew who celebrates Hanukkah or Chanukah or however those heathen non-Christians spell it? The atheist who doesn’t celebrate Christmas or any other holiday in December? The Pagan celebrating the winter solstice? Well, these people can go fuck themselves. They will be wished a merry Christmas, like it or not, because quite frankly their own holidays and beliefs take a back seat to the whims of the teeming employees of Jesus Christ, Inc. Other cultures and religions and belief systems simply don’t matter. Ask that your own, non-Christian beliefs be respected? Well, then you’re persecuting the poor Christians.

Don’t get me started on the Muslims. Where Christians just whine and stomp their feet if you “insult” their religion (while inside they secretly relish their time to “suffer”), the Muslims will just cut to the chase and fucking kill you - and they don’t care if they have to grease themselves in the process. Done. Period. End of story. I think this is where much of the Muslim/Christian animosity stems from. Quite frankly, the Christians are pissed because the Muslim’s totally one-upped them on the whole persecution complex.

One thing unites both faiths, however. In each of their individual holy books it implicitly states that they are each far, far superior to all the “non-believers”. They’re both so special. They’re both so…right. All the other faiths? So, so wrong.

Yeah, I know. They both can’t be right. Do you want to be the one to tell either one of them? Especially the ones with the explosive-filled knapsacks? I know I don’t.

So here we are. Myself, and the rest of the non-religious and the “sinners” and “infidels”, are fighting a “war” we didn’t know we were engaged in. See, I don’t give a frog’s fat ass what the Christians and the Muslims and the Jews and all the rest of them do when they’re at church or temple or whatever. I don’t care what they do in their own homes. They’re free to practice their faith. That freedom is guaranteed under the United States constitution. I would certainly never advocate taking that belief from them. What I don’t want, however, is to have their faith bleed over into my private life or my government. I don’t want their gods telling my gay friends they don’t deserve rights. I don’t want my laws crafted on their morality. Is that so much to ask? I don’t expect them to respect what I do or don’t believe. What I do expect is for them to respect my right to hold those beliefs (or lack thereof). Just keep your faith out of my government, public schools and personal life. You do that, and we’ll all get along like gangbusters.

What do we get instead? We get Nancy Campbell getting into a bizarre pissing match with the Muslims over who can shit out more kids and dominate the world. We have O’Reilly and his “war on Christmas”. We have legions of whack-jobs like Kathryn Joyce who want their “full quivers” to multiply like some holy Ponzi-scheme until they take over Congress and the Presidency. Remember the Taliban, those nasty Muslims the god-fearing people of America wanted to overthrow in Afghanistan? Well, rest assured that if the fundamentalist Christians ever seized control of the U.S. government, it would make Shira Law look like 3rd period gym class. I think you’d be surprised how many of your rights violate “god’s will”.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go track down Nadya Suleman. I really have to find out what religion she subscribes to.

(If you like, here’s the link to the NPR story that prompted this blog: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102005062
NPR provides a link to the Quiverfull website.)