Global Security and Intelligence Studies Volume 3, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2018 | Page 20

Conflicting Values Shaping Perceptions of Community Security and Women’s Health Security
extinction, in particular, people who for lack of faith do not go forth and multiply”
(McLerran 2008). This aligns with the Quiverfull goal to gain cultural victory by
out populating non-Christians.
For women in particular, this means sacrificing their own health to give
birth to large numbers of children who will not only stop an imagined demographic
winter but will also raise up a “Joshua generation”—that is a generation
who “will be victorious warriors, dependent on God’s Spirit for supernatural victory”
(Parsons 2016, n.p.). In preparation for their duties as part of the Joshua generation,
Quiverfull boys are encouraged to pursue careers as politicians to influence
political and societal norms (Seelhoff 2012). Adherents have the goal of “reclaiming
sinful cities, such as San Francisco” (Joyce quoted on NPR 2009).
The risk to women’s health is a real one; women are expected to continue to
have babies even if they are at risk. There is also pressure to bear children at home,
even if they have had caesareans in the past so as to put the birth in God’s hands.
The mental and physical toll of repeated childbirth and the resulting large family
cannot be understated. When the woman or man encounters fertility problems,
they are often suspected by the community of practicing some type of birth control
(Freiman 2011). For Quiverfull women, any act to avoid pregnancy, including
abstaining from sex on certain days, is considered a form of self-control. That type
of self-control is sinful because control over family size should be handed over to
God. Even the act of not having sex when a husband wants it is denying God’s will
not only because of general strictures on complete submission to the husband but
also because of 1 Corinthians 7:5.
There are multiple blogs and sermons on this topic. See, for instance, Tom
Challies, a church elder who writes in his blog (2007), “The Bible tells us that
spouses are to have sexual relations regularly and are not to deprive each other.
... Abstinence is not to be used as a method of birth control. It seems to be part
of God’s plan for sexuality that there is always the possibility that a woman may
become pregnant as long as she is physically able to bear children,” or Pastor Keith
Krell (2009) who argues that “Therefore, before a couple gets married, the question
needs to be asked, ‘Are you willing to be sexually available to your spouse till
death do you part?’ If the answer is, ‘Well, I’m not so sure about that,’ I would suggest
that the couple postpone their marriage or not get married at all” (16). Thus,
the anti-birth control strictures go beyond that of the even the Catholic Church
which allows for abstinence and “natural methods.” 6
The key message for women is that it is selfish to focus on their own individual
welfare. In the movie Demographic Winter: The Decline of the Human Family
6 See, for instance, The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), no. 2370 which states, “Periodic
continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile
periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality. 158 These methods respect the
bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic
freedom.”
17