Leader of Hyper Family Focused, Fertility Cult (Vision Forum Ministries) Steps Down After Admitting to Having an “Emotional Affair”
You can read this guy’s resignation letter here:
(Link): Statement of Resignation by Douglas Phillips
Excerpt:
- There has been serious sin in my life for which God has graciously brought me to repentance. I have confessed my sin to my wife and family, my local church, and the board of Vision Forum Ministries. I engaged in a lengthy, inappropriate relationship with a woman. While we did not “know” each other in a Biblical sense, it was nevertheless inappropriately romantic and affectionate.
I am not an expert on all things Vision Forums Ministries, and I tend to lump all these groups together, but like Quiverfulls and Reconstructionsts, if I am not mistaken, VFM (Vision Forum Ministries) is one of thoes groups who teach very, very strict gender roles to the point they may advocate that girls should NOT receive an education, that they should only be brought up to be wives and mothers.
From what I recall, VFM is like Dobon’s “Focus on the Family,” but on steroids. They place far, far too much stock on marriage, having children, and strict gender roles.
Groups such as VFM tend to elevate marriage to the point that singles and singlehood is denigrated. The unmarried are viewed as not being wholly in God’s image, that they are only “one half” until they marry.
If I recall correctly they may be one of the Christian cultic groups that idolize marriage and childrearing/ bearing even more than main stream conservative Christians do.
They probably adhere to the standard stereotypes of the unmarried that mainstream Christians do: that, supposedly, all singles are sleazy, over sexed harlots who are highly promiscuous and who are selfish and immature. So I find it funny that one of their own admits to being involved in an “inappropriate relationship” with another woman.
These hyper family-, hyper traditional marriage- obsessed Christian groups that keep screaming and ranting about things such as single-mother homes, women having more babies out of wedlock, etc, who assume that married people are as sexually pure as the freshly driven snow and that married are superior to singles, need to ‘walk the walk’ that they preach to the rest of us, but they often do not.
I am tired of married Christians acting as though they are more godly or pure than single adult and childless Christians, or they think by virtue of being married and/ or a parent they are “more of a Christian,” but you have long time Christians such as myself, who is age 40+, who is still a virgin (I remained true to biblical sexual teachings).
I am actually living out sexual purity (for three plus decades), but these hyper- pro- family, pro traditional gender roles, sexist, pro patriarchy cretins sleep around (or, in this case, have “emotional affairs.”)
These are the same backwards idiots who have “purity balls,” where they teach their little daughters that their sexuality belongs to their fathers and then later, if they marry, to their husbands.
Novel concept: teach your daughters that their sexuality belongs to them and them alone. You can teach them to believe that sex is for marriage only -that is all well and good- but let them know they can make their own choices in life. Their sexuality is theirs – it’s not even “God’s.”
Quote at me all day about, “you are not your own – bought at a price,” and just no.
How I cringe when Christian pro-celibacy books tell singles, “Your body/sexuality is not yours, it belongs to God/ the community.” Er no, it’s mine, not God’s, not the church’s.
I can see how feeling that one’s sexuality is an individualistic matter can lead to societal problems, but not if you have excellent self control, such as me (virgin at age 40+ here). My sexuality is mine, not God’s, not the church’s, not my “future husband’s” (should I marry).
Anyway, these uber- family obsessed cultic Christian groups cannot even practice what they preach to the rest of us.
(Link): Doug Phillips Resigns from Vision Forum, Cites Affair
(Link): Doug Phillips, Vision Forum Family Man Sabotages Marriage
Excerpt (please click the link above to visit their blog and read the rest):
- Best known for his Vision Forum catalog — a colorful collection of apparently innocuous family friendly products mailed to more than a million people each autumn — Doug Phillips uses the wealth generated by his for-profit sales, as well as donations from the public, to promote his vision on controversial issues including education (home education is the only Biblical method), birth control (wrong in all circumstances), politics (a vote for either Kerry or Bush was a sin), and the roles of husbands and wives (hyper-Patriarchy at home and at church).
Doug Phillips first came to the attention of those of us at Ministry Watchman when he publicly defended his buddy, R.C. Sproul, Jr., who was defrocked after confessing to ecclesiastical tyranny and the theft and illegal use of a church denomination’s tax-ID number.
… The first, an exposé of how Doug Phillips’ family practices have not matched his family preaching, begins below. — MW
Officially, not-for-profit Vision Forum Ministries exists “to encourage and equip the biblical family and to train and facilitate fathers leading their families….” Doug Phillips’ focus on fathers is not an accident; he is perhaps the most prominent leader in the Patriarchy movement, a growing trend of returning to the biblical role models for men leading their families and submissive women helping their husbands or fathers.
Although the inspiration for this movement is understandable — a reaction to the all-too-common problem today of men abdicating their leadership over their families in deference to a radical feminist movement that has pervaded even the church — the danger of reaction is that it can be a pendulum that swings too far to the opposite extreme. While much of Doug Phillips’ teachings on the biblical roles of men and women seems to be sound, some of the applications of those teachings have proven to be very troubling.
(Link): Doug Phillips: The Big Scandal You Didn’t Hear About and Why It Matters
- Posted: 11/06/2013 1:29 pm
by Julie Ingersoll
Doug Phillips, the Home School Movement’s leading Quiverful Patriarch resigned from Vision Forum Ministries, admitting a “lengthy inappropriate relationship” with a woman. It appears that while as he has been fighting homosexuality and feminism as threats to marriage, he has actually been the threat.
His supporters are lauding his resignation letter as appropriately contrite repentance and arguing that this has no bearing on the validity of Biblical Patriarchy. But actually it does, making this more important than another hypocritical cheating scandal.
Phillips is a key figure bringing Christian Reconstruction into the larger home school world. Building upon R.J. Rushdoony’s postmillennialism and “Biblical Philosophy of History,” he teaches home-schooling families to “exercise dominion” through 200-year plans, “multi-generational faithfulness” and “Biblical Patriarchy.”
His influence is hard to overstate; there is barely a part of the home-school movement his empire has not touched.
… Phillips was a founder of the patriarchal Family Integrated Church Movement. He has close partnerships with Henry Morris at Institute for Creation Research, the Duggar family of 19 Kids and Counting and actor-turned-Christian activist Kirk Cameron.
… Phillips’ infidelity is more than a private matter because, by design, his Biblical Patriarchy makes women vulnerable such that even with a husband repeatedly violating his marriage vows, practically speaking, a wife has no options.
The Family, in Biblical Patriarchy, is the primary institution through which God has delegated authority entirely to men. Women are to be “in submission in all things,” first to their fathers and then to husbands, chosen by fathers. The purpose of the family is the exercise of the patriarch’s dominion, especially through procreation. Women are to bear as many children as is possible. Anything short of that is deemed selfishness, accommodation with the “culture of death” and rebellion against God’s will.
….Education for girls within Biblical Patriarchy is focused on training them for domestic duties. Vision Forum’s catalogs, Beautiful Girlhood Collection and the All American Boy’s Adventure Catalog, stated purpose is to teach “Biblical” gender norms: meekness, submissiveness and dependency for girls; chivalry, curiosity and adventurousness for boys. There are strategies for boys to obtain college degrees without actually attending college but college education for girls is often seen as unnecessary and even destructive.
…For girls they offer a “Father Daughter Retreat” (noted for its creepiness), in which fathers “lead,” “woo” and “win” their daughters to become “industrious, family-affirming, children-loving, women of God.”
Phillips’ scandal calls attention to the dangers of the world he wants to build: A woman raised in Biblical Patriarchy is carefully sheltered, most especially to opportunities to develop any kind of self-sufficiency. If she finds herself with a houseful of children and a husband forced to admit publicly to unfaithfulness that extends over a long period of time, she has no options.
The cheated wife is not likely to be supported by the patriarchal community. The leaders (all male) are likely to be sympathetic the husband’s “temptation” and should she discuss the situation outside of the sanctioned forums controlled by men she will be denounced as a gossip. Sometimes the women are blamed: the “other woman” as Satan’s temptress and even the completely innocent wife for having “let herself go” or being inadequately submissive.
(Link): Patriarchy proponent Doug Phillips resigns after extramarital relationship
You can read even more about VFM here (I am not necessarily in total agreement with all views of all blogs/ sites/ articles I link to):
(Link): Rethinking Vision Forum
(Link): Cult-Watch Ministry Publishes Article Exposing Doug Phillips
(Link): Vision Forum Heresy – from Under Much Grace
Here is an April 2014 update to this post:
(Link): Married Preacher, Father of Eight Kids (and promoter of “Family Values” and Leader of wacko Quiverfull- and- Patriarchy type groups that promotes idolatry of “the family” and Marriage and of Having Lots of Children), Used Nanny as Sex Object – update on Phillips story
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