Vaughnshire Farm

I wish I could remember where I read this quote in regards to the upcoming election…. 

“Pray hard and plant a bigger garden….”

(this would not be a picture of our garden)

To serve …beside such a man would be the privilege of a lifetime. And it’s fitting that this trust has been given to me 88 years almost to the day after the women of America first gained the right to vote…. It was rightly noted in Denver this week that (there are) 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America, but it turns out the women of America aren’t finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all.

…no woman should have to choose between her career, education and her child.  I believe in the strength and the power of women…

So can you name the feminist who made these statements?  Was it the pictured Hillary?  Perhaps, it was Condoleezza Rice?  Or the beloved Margret Sanger?

If you said any of the feminist above, you’d be wrong.  The feminist that made these statements was in fact Governor Palin.  In fact, Governor Palin was speaking of exceeding Hillary Clinton in the speech where she mentioned the glass ceiling.  Since when should a Christian woman be seeking to follow after or over take the path taken by an anti-Christ Marxist?  I am amazed that so many of the normally sound conservative Christians are so quickly willing to give Ms. Palin a pass on how she has embraced the feminist agenda that conflicts so clearly with the teaching of the Bible she claims to follow. 

The aged women likewise, that they be in behavior as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.  (Tit 2:3-5)

But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.  (1Ti 2:12-15)

BTW - Scott Brown has noted here that when a glass ceiling is shattered there is going to be and indeed already has been a lot of bloodshed due to feminism.

As someone who writes occasionally on the topics of feminism, I can tell you that few subjects lite the back end of the firecracker like feminism.  Whenever I write an article or publish something relating to feminism or the roles of women, I just brace myself for the firing squad.  The wonderful thing about this firing squad is they don’t have real bullets…

We take a hard line stand on feminism because we believe that is one of the top major battles in our day. 

Martin Luther said:

If I profess, with the loudest voice and clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battle fields besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.

I have followed the rise of feminism over the years and have learned many interesting things.  One being is that it is infective, potent and extremely deceptive.  I have had much exposure to many flaming feminist extremist and could spot them a mile away.  My family was very active in pro-life work so I grew up seeing the liberal of the liberals.  I always tried to figure them out.  I remember the first time I saw a male feminist screaming at the top of his lungs and holding a hot pink Feminist Majority sign.  I remember looking at that man trying to figure out what in the world was wrong with him…he’s a man…screaming that he’s a feminist…waving a hot pink sign…out on a public street corner.  

At that point, I had always assumed those who embraced feminism were those exaggeratedly masculine looking females who ran abortion clinics.  That day, my view of the stereotypical feminist changed.  I have since learned that feminism parades around in all different shapes and sizes.  As the Church further falls in to apathy and slumber, the fruits of feminism become all the more apparent even in the church pew. 

Feminism has invaded and infected our culture like a rabid disease.  Feminism has hooked women on the lie…the same lie the serpent hit Eve with in the Garden.  The lie of humanism.  The lie of “Hath God really said?”  The lie that you can be as God, deciding what is good and evil in your own eyes.   Feminism has gripped a hold of manhood and squeezed the man right out of him.  Feminism had mocked strong male leadership and declared it as oppressive.  Feminism has declared my rights, my body and my choice.  Feminism enslaves the very ones it has promised to free.  Feminism has exchanged truth for a lie.

While feminism in the Church may not look like the stereotypical feminist image most see in the liberal extreme, the lies of feminism are still very much alive in the Church.  And just because feminism in Christian circles may be seen as less brutal, doesn’t mean that it isn’t still the same brutal, rabid disease with serious consequences.   In fact,  so called “christian feminism” is a wolf in sheep’s clothing and is a blasphemous misrepresentation of the true liberty Christ gives to His children.  Feminism can never be Christianized.  The two are entirely different roads.  

While Roe v. Wade is a horrid symptom of the major ills in our society, it is not the root cause.  Many early feminists, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Alice Stokes Paul, were also pro-life.  Many early American feminist spoke out against abortion.  And get this…..They all wore long skirts and dresses!

Just because they dressed more modestly than the average Christian today or the fact that they deplored abortion or the fact that some had more than 1.2 children did not make the feminism they fought for good.  The early feminist were anti-God because they spewed forth a venomous egalitarian “theology” defying God’s design and order.  And that defiance has led to all sorts of evil that is still wrecking our homes, churches and nation. 

There is nothing like the first female vice president nomination to quickly stir up the waters in Christian circles.  She claims to be a Christian.  She claims to be pro-family…. and a feminist.  She is pro-life and of that I can certainly agree with her on Biblical convictions on life in the womb.  But this whole ordeal isn’t about picking on one person.  In fact, the Republican and Democratic presidential races are just a picture highlighting just how impotent American Christianity has become in the last 100 to 150 years.  The fact that Christians at large are swooning over a mother of 5 who happens to have some conservative politics and is quick to place her in as 2nd in command says something about where we are as a nation…and as a Church.  This is not a personal attack on Mrs. Palin–It is very much about addressing,  like Luther said,  the ”little point that the world and the devil are attacking.” 

And that little point is huge in the future of reforming this Nation. 

I have a small collection of bad books.  Bad old books relating to the topics of feminism.  One of my bad books is called Women and The New Race by Margaret Sanger…Eugenics Publishing Company 1920.  Yes…that is really the name of the publisher!

I quickly found that when you touch the false god of feminism, it unleashes all sorts of rage.  It wasn’t until I began to delve deeply into the false religion of feminism that I began to understand why this issue wakes up a fire breathing dragon, why it is at war with Christianity and why there is no such thing as a Christian feminist. 

My small collection of bad books tells the chilling truth about those women’s rights women. 

So here’s a sample. Just a few little quotes from an influential early 20th century feminist: 

“If Christianity turned the clock of general progress back a thousand years, it turned back the clock two thousand years for woman.  Its greatest outrage upon her was to forbid her to control the function of motherhood under any circumstances, thus limiting her life’s work to bringing forth and rearing children…”  1

“…churchmen deprived her of her place in and before the courts, in the schools…and society.” 2

…The church has always known and feared the spiritual potentialities of women’s freedom.”  3

“The church has sought to keep women ignorant upon the plea of keeping them “pure”.  To this end it has used the state as its moral policeman.  Men have largely broken the grip of the ecclesiastics upon masculine education.  The ban upon geology and astronomy, because they refute the biblical version of the creation of the world, are no longer effective.  Medicine, biology and the doctrine of evolution have won their way to recognition in spite of the united opposition of the clerics.  So, too, has the right of women to go unveiled, to be educated, and to speak from public platforms, been asserted in spite of the condemnations of the church…” 4

“It is within the marriage bonds, (the roles of biblical womanhood)…that the greatest immorality of men has been perpetrated.  Church and state, through their canons and their laws, have encouraged this immorality.  It is here that the woman who is to win her way to the new morality will meet the most difficult part of her task of moral house cleaning.” 5

“Being the most sacred aspect of woman’s freedom, voluntary motherhood is motherhood in its highest and holiest form.  It is motherhood unchained–motherhood ready to obey its own urge to remake the world.  Voluntary motherhood implies a new morality — a vigorous, constructive, liberated morality.  That morality will, first of all, prevent the submergence of womanhood into motherhood.  It will set its face against the conversion of women into mechanical maternity and toward the creation of a new race…”  6

And it just continues to go down hill from there…. 

“In their subjection women have not been brave enough, strong enough, pure enough to bring forth great sons and daughters.  Abused soil brings forth stunted growths.  And abused motherhood has brought forth a low order of humanity.  Great beings come forth at the call of high desire.  Fearless motherhood goes out in love and passion for justice to all mankind.  It brings forth fruits after its own kind.  When the womb becomes fruitful through the desire of an aspiring love (i.e. planned parenthood), another Newton will come forth to unlock further the secrets of the earth and the stars.  There will come a Plato who will be understood, a Socrates who will drink no hemlock, and a Jesus who will not die upon the cross.  These and the race that is to be in America await upon a motherhood that is to be sacred because it is free.” 7 (my emphasis bold)

Feminism, my friends, is at the core anti-Christianity!  Tell me why we don’t have more Christian families boldly speaking out about the evils of feminism in our culture today?

1-  Chapter 14, Woman and the New Morality, pg. 175
2-  pg. 175
3- pg.179
4- pg. 169-170
5- pg. 170-171
6- Chapter 18, The Goal, pg 226
7- pg.234

The competitions of the State and the Church for the educating power have been so engrossing that we have almost forgotten the parent, as the third and the rightful competitor.  And now many look at his claim almost contemptuously.  Because the civic and the ecclesiastical spheres are so much wider and more populous than his, they are prone to regard it as every way inferior.  Have we not seen that the smaller circle is, in fact, the most original and best authorized of the three? …

…It is a maxim in political philosophy, as in mechanics, that when an organism is applied to a function for which it was not designed, it is injured and the function is ill done.  Here is a farmer who has a mill designed and well fitted to grind his meal.  He resolves that it shall also thresh his sheaves.  The consequence is that he has wretched threshing and a crippled mill.  I repeat, God designed the State to be the organ for securing secular justice.  When it turns to teaching or preaching it repeats the farmers’ experience.   The Chinese Government and people are an example in point.  The Government has been for a thousand years educating the people for it’s own ends.  The result is what we see.

Government powerfully affects national character by the mode in which it performs its proper functions, and if the administration is equitable, pure and free, it exalts the people.  But it is by the indirect influence.  This is all it can do well.  As for the other part of the national elevation (an object which every good man must desire), it must come from other agencies; from the dispensation of Almighty Providence; from fruitful ideas and heroic acts with which he inspires the great men whom he sovereignly gives to the nations he designs to bless; chiefly from the energy of divine Truth and the Christian virtues, first in individuals, next in families, and last in visible churches.

Let us suppose, then, that both State and Church recognize the parent as the educating power; that they assume towards him an ancillary instead of a dominating attitude; that the State shall encourage individual and voluntary efforts by holding the impartial shield of legal protection over all property which may be devoted to education; that it shall encourage all private efforts; and that in its eleemosynary [almsgiving] character it shall aid those whose poverty and misfortunes disable them from properly rearing their own children.  Thus the insoluble problems touching religion in State schools would be solved, because the State was not the responsible creator of the schools, but the parents.  Our educational system might present less mechanical symmetry, but it would be more flexible, more practical, and more useful.

Secularized Education, by Robert Lewis Dabney found in Discussions Volume IV

“Every experienced teacher knows that pupils educate each other more than he educates them.  The thousand nameless influences — literary, social, moral, — not only on the play ground but of the school room, the whispered conversation, the clandestine note, the sly grimace, the sly pinch, the good or bad recitation, mould the plastic character of children far more than the most faithful teacher’s hand. “  Dabney on The State Free School System” (Volume 111 of Discussions with Robert Lewis Dabney, 1892)

The work is great I’m called unto,
Yet nothing’s left for me to do;
Hence for my work heav’n had prepared
No wages, yet a great reward.

To works, but not to working dead;
From sin, but not from sinning freed.
I clear myself from no offence
Yet wash my hands in innocence.

My Father’s anger burns like fire,
Without a spark of furious ire;
Though still my sins displeasing be,
Yet still I know He’s pleased with me.

Triumphing is my constant trade,
Who yet am often captive led;
My bloody war does never cease,
Yet I maintain a stable peace.

My foes assaulting conquer me,
Yet never obtain the victory;
For all my battles lost or won,
Were gained before they were begun

I’m still at ease, and still oppressed;
Have constant trouble, constant rest;
Both clear and cloudy, free and bound;
Both dead and living, lost and found.

Sin for my good does work and win;
Yet ’tis not good for me to sin.
My pleasure issues from my pain;
My losses still increase my gain.

I’m healed even when my plagues abound,
Covered with dust even when I’m crowned;
As low as death, when living high;
Nor shall I live, yet cannot die,

For all my sins my heart is sad
Since God’s dishonored; yet I’m glad
Though once I was a slave to sin,
Since God does thereby honor win.

My sins are ever in His eye,
Yet He beholds no sin in me,
His mind that keeps them all in store,
Will yet remember them no more.

Because my sins are great, I feel
Great fears of heavy wrath; yet still
For mercy seek, for pardon wait,
Because my sins are very great.

I hope when plunged into despair,
I tremble when I have no fear.
Pardons dispel my griefs and fears,
And yet dissolve my heart in tears.

Erskine’s Sermons and Practical Works.
Aberdeen: A. King & Company, 1863 VII:177-178.

It is a strange notion in our world today to consider the majority of the homes across our land and in our great state of Tennessee starting each day with family prayer time or family devotions. Indeed growing up in a small town church in central Arkansas no one ever mentioned the notion at all. I never read one article on it, never heard one sermon on the topic, and certainly never saw it in practice.

In recent years, as we have begun to implement family devotion time in our house, we have discovered it was not as foreign to previous generations as it has been to this one. As I completed “Carry a Big Stick” earlier in the week, I came across a quote by President Roosevelt that is out of place today in our modern world. Yet at the same time, it served as a source of great encouragement to a father who is trying to train up his children.

Morning prayers were with my father. We use to stand at the bottom of the stairs, and when father came down we called out, “I speak for you and the cubby-hole too!” There were three of us young children, and we use to sit with father on the sofa while he conducted morning prayers. The place between father and the arm of the sofa we called the “cubby-hole”. The child who got that place we regarded as specially favored both in comfort and somehow in rank and title” pg 170

Continue Reading »

“When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of a [our] government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty; If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made not for the public good so much as for the selfish or local purposes; Corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded. If a [our] government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the Laws.”

May those who name the name of Christ remember this in our public duty of electing our leaders.

“There are many kinds of success in life worth having. It is exceedingly interesting and attractive to be a successful business man, or railroad man, or farmer, or a successful lawyer or doctor; or a writer, or a President, or a ranchman, or the colonel of a fighting regiment, or to kill grizzly bears and lions. But for unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.”

–Autobiography page 349