For most of my life, my story was dictated to me. God had already planned my days, and if I wanted to honor him, I was supposed to follow my father’s interpretation of the Bible in order to fulfill God’s plan.

I was always a secondary character in this story. One could say the protagonist was God, the controller of the universe, but since he’s invisible, his stand-in was my father, eventually to be replaced by my future husband.

I remember once as a twenty-four-year-old, when I was trying to assert myself, I was told, “You can think whatever you want, but you can’t act on it.” That statement encapsulated the essence of the spiritual abuse I was experiencing…

Spiritual Abuse in the Christian Patriarchy Movement

When I was asked as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would say, “I’m going to be a stay-at-home wife and mother.” This wasn’t what I really wanted to be, but I believed that it was my destiny and that I had no other option.

As I got older, I was trained for this future, and I was told that after I graduated high school, I would stay in my parents’ home as a stay-at-home daughter until I got married. All my friends from church were given the same expectations. This was the norm in the Christian patriarchy movement.

Daughters were treated differently from sons because we were helpers in training. We were supposed to be dependent on men, protected by men. Any independence of thought or action was shut down . . .

November Update

When I was little, I used to fold pieces of printer paper, staple them together, and write “nature books” in the pages. I loved watching Reading Rainbow because I could learn about new books to borrow from the library. I couldn’t wait till bedtime when my mom read me stories before I fell asleep. In short, I’ve always been obsessed about reading and writing and stories, so it’s probably no surprise that I now work in publishing and spend much of my spare time reading and writing.

For the past few years, I’ve been working on creative nonfiction essays, threads of my life in the Christian patriarchy movement as a stay-at-home daughter. And now I’m starting to weave these threads together into a memoir. It’s not finished quite yet, but I’m getting close. I can feel it coming together. Finally.

Which brings me to some exciting news . . .

Book Review: The Making of Biblical Womanhood

I remember being taught that women were created to be under men, to be their helpers, to find their purpose only through the purpose of their fathers or husbands. The Old Testament served as a foundation for this kind of teaching: Eve was created after Adam because Adam needed a helper. Eve also led Adam into sin and was cursed with always having a “desire” for her husband. This phrasing was written in a different language thousands of years ago, but still Eve’s curse was translated to mean modern-day feminism in the religious world I grew up in.

It’s easier to go along with sexism and misogyny than it is to speak up for yourself, especially when you’ve been indoctrinated into a patriarchal system that doesn’t have any safety net for those who are abused, neglected, hurt, or questioning. It’s easier to live under Eve’s curse, accept your fate as a female to be passed from father to husband as if you are property.

I only knew what I was told, and any outside information was strictly filtered or banned. I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

My First Job

When I first left the Christian patriarchy movement and moved to Michigan, I knew that I wanted to work, but I didn’t know much at all about how to get a job. As a stay-at-home daughter, I hadn’t been allowed to work outside the home because that would mean being under submission to a man who wasn’t my father. The only thing I could do to make money was teach piano lessons from my parents’ home, which ended up being a significant reason I was able to save up enough resources to eventually leave.

In Michigan, it seemed like there were endless opportunities, but I had limited options and very limited experience. I didn’t have internet in my apartment, so I would spend my days at the library looking for job openings on the computer and submitting applications. I applied to more jobs than I could count, from retail work to babysitting jobs, anything entry level that didn’t require any college education. I got a few interviews, but I had zero practice, and I felt so inexperienced, even though I was in my mid-twenties. Another snag was that I shared a car with my husband, making it difficult to find a job flexible enough to correspond with his work schedule.

MemoirCait WestJune 28, 2021work, Dutch, first job, stay at home daughter, christian patriarchy, exfundie, equality, gender rolesComment

Getting Out of a High-Control Group

Eight years ago, I left my life as a stay-at-home daughter in the Christian Patriarchy movement.

I was struggling with depression, anxiety, and terrifying fear. My voice was silenced, and I had no agency over my life. I was not allowed to get a job outside the house, not allowed to go to college, not allowed to date. I had few friends and was mostly cut off from extended family.

The conservative Christian church I was a part of as a teenager was deeply invested in teaching strict gender roles, homeschooling as the only way to raise children, courtship instead of dating, and father-controlled families. Hate speech toward women and the LGBTQ+ community was preached from the pulpit. In this church, I learned to fear everything and to hate myself . . .

On Loss and Leaving

I’ve been thinking about those of you who have lost through leaving.

Maybe you have lost your family, community, sense of safety, belonging, friends, church, or work. Maybe you feel this loss in ways you can’t share with others. Maybe you have lost everything, or what used to be your everything.

Maybe you feel like you’ve lost yourself.

Leaving can mean different things: leaving behind something or someone you care about, leaving a faith, leaving your past self in an effort to grow into who you are becoming. For me, leaving Christian patriarchy meant losing some family relationships, losing the scattered kind of community I grew up in, losing my sense of certainty, my support network.

When I left, I felt like I was losing pieces of myself, only to find that leaving was the only way to healing, to becoming more whole. . . .

Sleeping Beauty

We were told daughters need protection, daughters need help, daughters need supervision.

Daughters need fathers.

We were told a daughter is a princess, and her father is the king. It doesn’t matter if this daughter is 5 or 35 years old. She is bound to her father’s kingdom, waiting for an approved prince to marry her and become her new protector.

I was one of those stay-at-home daughters. . . .

Book Review: Jesus and John Wayne

Reading Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a little like reading a biography of my upbringing, just not the fun parts. With all that I’ve processed in the past decade, I am so thankful for this book and the work it is doing. The book untangles the web of Christian nationalism, American evangelicalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy, and if you don’t think those things are connected, then you definitely need to read it. . . .

Stories like Ours

We all need books that move us, change us, challenge us, enlighten us, educate us, heal us. One book that has been healing for me in my journey away from fundamentalism and spiritual abuse has been Devoted by Jennifer Mathieu. This is just one of many that have made me feel less alone in my experience, that have opened my heart to the possibility that my story is important too, that this hasn’t all been for nothing. That our experiences mean something.

When I first heard about Jennifer Mathieu, I was attending the Festival of Faith and Writing three years after leaving the stay-at-home-daughter movement, and I saw her talk in the conference program, with a description of her book mentioning Christian Patriarchy. I hadn’t heard of any fiction books about the world of fundamentalist Christianity, and I was curious to see what she had to say and what her book Devoted was about. . . .