#michael & debi pearl

[fundieshaderoom]

Wonder If This Would Count As An Endorsement Legally?

This was written by the Pearl's granddaughter via Nathan, Ashley Pearl. She writes for NGJM page a lot.

[bucketofdeltav]

Sometimes you want to get a book out that you remember having in the house as a kid so you can read it and go 'no I'm not crazy and I'm not making things up, this is a real book that my parents really bought and my friends parents really lived by' because when you're not in that community anymore it does sound completely insane.

Also, 'non-fiction investigations into child abuse' start with... investigating texts that were really common foundational texts in a lot of eerily similar child abuse cases.

newbie asked if we're supposed to look out for 'red flags' in interlibrary loan requests in reference to a request a patron had made for a book about cannibalism. she was looking expectantly at me like she was expecting me to be equally aghast at this........girl why would you work at a library if you want to play book police

[imsorryimlate]

the terror, 1x04 "punished, as a boy", 1x06 "a mercy" // to train up a child – michael and debi pearl

[this-world-of-beautiful-monsters]

every time I'm reminded that to train up a child is a book that exists I want to give every kid who was traumatized because of it a million dollars and a big hug and I kind of also want to skin Michael and Debi Pearl alive

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

I’m going to begin this story by asking you to imagine that you are a new parent.  You and your wife or husband or significant other had a baby in the hospital and took the infant home with you.  You’ve done all the right physical things – you’ve got a new-fangled crib that is certified safe for infants.  Nothing your baby does in that crib can cause the baby to hurt himself or herself.  You’ve got all the baby blankets, and colorful mobiles your friends recommended because they worked with their babies.  You’ve got baby-safe washing powder to launder clothes with, so there won’t be any harsh chemical next to the baby’s skin. 

You’ve got a shelf-full of products recommended by websites, friends and family members – lotion for the baby’s skin, some kind of white ointment to prevent diaper rash, shampoo that won’t make the baby cry if it gets in its eyes.  And you have diapers – tiny ones for infants that are so small they look like they wouldn’t fit a baby doll you or your sister had when you were kids, and larger sizes, too, because you’ve been told they grow faster than you can possibly imagine.  You have the latest Diaper Genie, complete with extra diaper bag refills and something called “Antimicrobial Odor Control” so the things won’t stink you out of house and home.

But once you’ve unstrapped your infant from the car seat and carried your baby inside your own home, a daunting thought occurs:  there aren’t any more nurses you can call on with the press of a button for help with this baby of yours.  Nobody will come if your baby begins crying, and you can’t get him or her to stop.  In other words, it’s all up to you from now on. 

One of you is carrying the infant, still swaddled in a pink and blue striped cotton blanket from the hospital.  The front door closes…and now what do you do?  Where do you put the baby down?  In the crib?  Oh, my goodness, it looks so alone in there!  Maybe we should put it on the bed.  No, somebody told you not to put babies on the bed, because they might roll off.  Well, you think, how about this?  We can put the baby between us lying on the bed, so maybe we can watch some TV, and the baby will be safe because nothing’s going to roll over me or you!

It's all new, having a new baby – every moment of it.  At first, you live in a kind of icy fear that despite everything you’ve read, everything you’ve heard, all the preparations you’ve made, you’ll do something wrong.  So, the two of you tip-toe through the first days and weeks of the baby’s life, being careful about everything, so nothing terrible befalls your new child. 

Now imagine this:  you’ve been successful!  The baby is now several months old, and you can put him or her down on a soft blanket on the living room floor or in one of those portable mesh playpens in the kitchen, so you can watch the baby as you go about your normal chores, the way, more or less, that you lived your life before you brought the baby home with you from the hospital.  So now your baby is beginning to be mobile, making its first moves to crawl across the blanket or around the playpen, and it’s acting curious – reaching for things and grabbing them in its hand and examining them and usually sticking them in its mouth.  The baby is changing so rapidly!  It’s so cute, the way it does something new every day.

So what do you do now that your baby is approaching toddlerhood?  Well, now imagine this:  you’ve read a book called “To Train Up a Child” by two conservative Christian authors who are very influential in the world of raising Christian children and home schooling.  And what does this book written by Debi and Michael Pearl tell you to do?

According to an excellent article published this week in the Washington Post, the book written by the Pearls “advocates ‘training sessions’ in which infants, as soon as they are old enough to crawl, are placed near a desired object and repeatedly struck with a switch if they disobey commands not to touch it.”

Take a minute.  Have you digested it so far?

That’s not all.  The Post reports that “the Pearls advocate hitting children with tree branches, belts and other instruments of love’ to instill obedience and recommend that toddlers who take slowly to potty training be washed outdoors with cold water from a garden hose.” 

Look at the page depicted above.  It’s from a handout called “Gospel-Driven Parenting” distributed by a conservative Christian group run by a minister named Chris Peeler, who is part of a larger Christian home schooling network run by a man called Gary Cox, described by the Post as “an evangelical pastor and pioneer of Maryland’s home-schooling movement.”  Here’s what the handout says about beating your child: “The use of the rod is for the purpose of breaking the child’s will.  One way to tell if this has happened is to see if they can look you in the eyes after being disciplined and ask for forgiveness.”

The handout does not explain how an infant who has just begun to crawl is supposed to “ask for forgiveness” after they have been beaten with a switch for the crime of reaching for a toy in a playpen.

This isn’t raising a child or even “training up” a child.  It is child abuse, pure and simple, and it is a crime in all 50 states and the territories of the United States.  Yet it is going on every day in this country, because there is an entire network of Christian home schoolers who have organized to insure that once parents get their children inside their homes and behind closed doors, the states can do nothing to stop them from “using the rod” to discipline and “train” their children as they are being “educated” by home schoolers.

The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) and its leader Michael Farris have built what the Post calls “the most influential homeschool organization in the world.  Over decades, they have eroded state regulations, ensuring that parents who home-school face little oversight in much of the country. More recently, they have inflamed the nation’s culture wars, fueling attacks on public-school lessons about race and gender with the politically potent language of ‘parental rights.’”

Sound familiar?  Those are the “we own our children” advocates supported by Moms For Liberty who have been running, and winning, school board races across the country.  They advocate laws not just allowing but mandating that the Ten Commandments be posted in every school classroom.  They advocate that Christian prayer be allowed in the schools like it was in the years before the Supreme Court struck down the practice in the 1960’s.  In fact, they want to bring much of the agenda being pushed by the home schooling networks run by Michael Farris and Gary Cox and Debi and Michael Pearl into public school systems everywhere.

Now imagine this Bible verse being taught in a public school: “Do not withhold correction from a child, for if you beat him with a rod, he will not die. You shall strike him with a rod and deliver his soul from hell.”  This jewel of wisdom is from Proverbs 23: 13,14.

The Post describes the Christian home schooling movement as advocating an education teaching “Bible-based arithmetic necessary to calculate the age of a universe less than 8,000 years old…in which dinosaurs were herded aboard Noah’s ark…believing Christians could out-populate atheists and Muslims by scorning birth control.”

 “It’s specifically a system that is set up to hide the abuse, to make them invisible, to strip them of any capability of getting help. And not just in a physical way,” a woman who had been home-schooled but had left the movement told the Post. “At some point, you become so mentally imprisoned you don’t even realize you need help.” 

The Post describes the Christian home schooling movement as “a conscious rejection of contemporary ideas about biology, history, gender equality and the role of religion in American government.  Among conservative Christians, home schooling became a tool for binding children to fundamentalist beliefs they felt were threatened by exposure to other points of view. Rightly educated, those children would grow into what HSLDA founder Michael Farris called a ‘Joshua Generation’ that would seek the political power and cultural influence to reshape America according to biblical principles.”

That’s what they’re doing out in public, standing up at a school board meeting near you and demanding that this book be banned because it’s about a child with two fathers, or that book should be banned because it teaches about evolution and Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which of course goes against the Bible’s story that God made the earth and all its creatures in six days and rested on the seventh, and presumably, a few thousand years ago little children played with baby dinosaurs in their front yards instead of with dolls and toy trucks.  Michael Farris, who founded the HSLDA, now works for the Alliance Defending Freedom, the non-profit that has funded lawsuits around the country seeking to infect the public sphere with conservative Christian beliefs and even laws.

But once they get those kids behind closed doors, out comes what the Washington Post describes as “the rod — interpreted by different people as a wooden spoon, dowel, belt, rubber hose or other implement.”  The Post describes one man they interviewed who had been home schooled as “being struck several times a week — sometimes more, sometimes less — with what he describes as a shortened broomstick for disobeying commands or failing to pay attention to his schoolwork,” who underwent “‘killer bee’ spankings, when the rod was used against his bare skin.”

Now imagine this:  According to the Washington Post, in the state of Virginia alone 57,000 children were being home schooled in 2022, a 28 percent increase over the figures for 2019. 

Somewhere on your street, or on the street behind your house, or just across town, children are being home schooled.  Some of them are being taught at home by reasonable parents who only want the best for their children.  But, some of them are being brought home as infants from the hospital and within a few months, their parents are hitting them with switches because they reach out for a toy or a stuffed animal.  The crime of child abuse is being committed behind closed doors probably in nearly every town or city in this country in the name of a Christianity that no sane person would recognize, and there is an entire movement dedicated to the proposition that the state should pass no laws against a parent’s right to do what he or she wishes to the child they believe they own. 

Lucian Truscott Newsletter

[cometcrystal]

my least favorite fundie is probably a tie between lori alexander & michael and debi pearl. other fundies like girldefined and the rods also have really harmful beliefs but theyre entertaining to read about. everything that lori and the pearls say just incites such intense fucking anger in me.

[woodsfae]

Debi and Michael Pearl's disgusting child abuse manual has been responsible for multiple children being tortured to death, and countless cases of PTSD (*raises hand* hi. my parents loved their fucking books)

Skagit, WA death. graphic & horrible.

The above death and two others reported on here.

To Train Up A Child has sold more than 670,000 copies.

[fundieshaderoom]

Fundies and Adjacents with the Most Grandchildren (as of 12/23)

Tim and Patricia Noyes- 35

Mike and Suzette Keller- 34 (2 expected)

Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar- 31 (2 expected)

Matt and Clara Trewhella- 29 (1 expected)

Gil and Kelly Bates- 27 (2 expected)

Michael and Debi Pearl- 26

Loren and Gloria Wissmann- 25 (1 expected)

Brian and Susan Waller- 22

Daniel and Sandy Webster- 22

David and Lisa Keyes- 20 (1 expected)

JL and Mary Duggar- 20

Charles and Tammy Paine- 20

John and Cheryl Burnett- 19

Ken and Lori Alexander- 16

Raphael and Jackie Perez- 12 (3 expected)

Note: The Paines, Burnetts, and Wallers likely have more than that.

[weirdcultstuff]

[wtffundiefamilies]

[greater-than-the-sword]

And I thought it was out of touch when some people (DEBI AND MICHAEL PEARL!!) wanted to pay $50 an image for 40 realistic illustrations in just over a month!

[dogbearinggifts]

The fandom makes Vanya out to be the most compassionate but when Allison was confronted with the fact that she had been a part of vanya’s suffering she felt sympathy for her sister. She even took responsibility (though she was 4!) because Vanya was the victim and Allison knew it. Vanya hasn’t acknowledged that her siblings ever had to deal with anything bad in their life because they are special

I think it goes back to the old trope of abuse making kids into better people and just how deeply it’s entrenched in literature and culture. And when I say it’s entrenched in culture, I mean that there are actual parenting books advising young parents to abuse their kids. Train Up a Child by Michael and Debi Pearl offers advice on exactly which materials are best for beating your children, and The Strong-Willed Child by James Dobson recommends emotional abuse and isolation as a means of showing a strong-willed child that they have no power and must obey Mother and Father unconditionally. The latter of those two was always on my parents’ bookshelf while I was growing up. 

There has been some pushback in recent years. The Pearls’ books are often condemned as the child abuse manuals they are, and the deaths linked to them have not improved public opinion in the slightest. And if you browse reviews of The Strong-Willed Child on Amazon or Goodreads, you’ll find a sizable number of scathing one-star reviews from parents who either identified the terrible advice while reading and want to recommend Dr. Spock’s books instead, or who put Dobson’s advice into practice and claim it destroyed their relationship with their kids. But you’ll also find glowing four- and five-star reviews from parents who claim it saved their relationships, or their sanity, or made their unruly children into good and obedient ones. In other words, more people might be recognizing child abuse as harmful—but the idea that it refines kids and makes them better is still very much a part of our collective consciousness. 

Within this fandom, Vanya’s abuse is universally recognized as harmful. No one claims it was good for her to be isolated. No one claims it was good for her to be reminded she was ordinary. The most charitable take I’ve seen on her being robbed of her powers is that it was an easy fix for a problem Reginald didn’t want to solve. No one is claiming that her abuse was a good thing, and that is fantastic. 

However, I think the notion of abuse as a refining agent is strong enough and ingrained enough that some fans only recognize that Vanya’s abuse was bad for her. They see that it left her depressed and bitter, but because they’ve been conditioned to see abuse as something that makes children kinder and more caring toward others, they wind up glossing over all of the instances where we see that Vanya’s abuse made her harsh and self-centered. She was hurt badly, and because other characters who were mistreated like she was (Cinderella, Little Orphan Annie) are portrayed as compassionate and empathetic, I think it’s easy to assume that she too is compassionate and empathetic, and that her actions contradicting this notion are reasonable and justified exceptions to the norm—rather than the rule. 

Because of all this, I think it’s even more vital to recognize that Vanya’s abuse did not make her kind or compassionate. Recognizing that it hurt her is wonderful, but it’s essential to recognize that it also led her to hurt others. The idea that child abuse results in better adults is absolute hogwash, and Vanya—along with the rest of her siblings—exemplifies this. Recognizing how her abuse harmed not only her, but those closest to her, will help further dismantle the idea of abuse as a positive. 

[spurgie-cousin]

Dunno if anyone's checked out the Pearl's Ministry youtube recently (they had almost a year between videos before this September or October) but they've been uploading semi-frequently again and in their new uploads I caught this gem

[cabbagequeen323]

@misdrunk

Growing up in western evangelical churches, I have often encountered what my mother calls "cheap grace". Essentially it's a push to forgive without actually addressing the sin that caused the hurt in the first place. I see it extremely baldly in some of the more "trad" circles, within books like "Created to be His Helpmeet" by Michael and Debi Pearl. (Long story short, it's a vile and dangerous book. I was given it as a bridal shower gift by a family member, etc etc). One story in this book claims a husband abusing his wife stopped after she started talking about how good he was to other people. This is problematic for a number of reasons, but I want to specifically point out that it places all of the onus for reconciliation and improvement of the relationship upon the victim of the sin.

I've seen this personally too. My husband and I were treated in an abusive manner by a prominent person in our former church community. It was a heartbreaking experience, and involved family that we aren't able to have a close relationship with any longer. We lost our home and much of our community due to the pride and rage of a person in a position of power.

When we sat down with the family member, who while intimately involved in this situation (in a messy way that was not on our side) though not responsible for it, their primary response to our hurt was to question how we could have worded emails better. The sin, and the inability to confront the sin of themselves and of others broke the relationship.

In essence, I am responding to a specific trend in the church communities that I have lived in that tramples on the very real damage that sin creates in an attempt to bring peace without the hardship of reconciliation.

The other assumption I want to note is that I generally, and specifically in this case, think of hate as strong feeling, and as setting oneself against, rather than an evil/sinful force. (Like a spirit almost. I just don't find engagement with emotion in that manner helpful to me. Ymmv.) I just don't think that hate prevents you from praying for someone and knowing that there is a greater good for them. I think of it more like recoiling at the real and hideous evil of sin.

Finally, "there is a time to love and a time to hate". I don't agree that hate is sinful, especially as I think of hate as an emotion rather than a spirit/force.

(as an aside, I think as we mature and grow closer to Christ and as we heal, we are often given a divine gift of love for those who deserve our hate. Its like mercy is so much bigger and greater and more beautiful than justice, but I wouldn't know how to conceptualize mercy without the context of justice)

As long as someone is alive there is still hope for them to get to Heaven, no matter how vile their sins are.

In fact, the viler their sins are, the more they need our prayers for their repentance and conversion.

God wants everyone to be saved. Even the people that we think we're justified to hate.

[pickledchickenetti]

Looks like it’s Bobby and Meagan running the Fort Rock facebook page, not Austin and Joy like originally thought.  Either way, I kind of want to write in and voice my opinion as someone who was also raised with spanking and “Godly child rearing” to point out the differences between corporal punishment and the Pearl methods. Does anyone have any specific Pearl abuses they think I ought to mention?