Tag: Submission

  • What to do with an infant with breathing difficulties

    Oops.

    Prosecutors claimed Shannon Hickman never sought prenatal care when she was pregnant with David, who was born two months early at his grandmother’s home and died less than nine hours later when he had trouble breathing. He was born with a bacterial infection and underdeveloped lungs.

    Medical experts for the prosecution testified that the baby had a 99 percent chance of survival if his parents had sought medical care. But prosecutors claimed the couple never considered taking the baby to the hospital.

    Was their face red, eh?

    Actually no; they didn’t trip and fall and forget what you do with a sick infant, they omitted the trip to the hospital on purpose.

    Dale and Shannon Hickman, both 26, are members of the Followers of Christ Church, which has a history of rejecting medical care for congregants’ children and relying instead on techniques such as prayer and anointing the sick with oils.

    “Techniques” that don’t work.  ”Techniques” that aren’t actually techniques.

    Five other church members have been convicted in Clackamas County for crimes related to the rejection of medical care for their children, said Greg Horner, chief deputy district attorney.

    It’s a mark of respect for God, you see – rejecting medical care for your children.

    Dale Hickman testified that he didn’t call 911 once he realized his infant
    son was ailing “because I was praying.” Shannon Hickman said that as a woman in the church, she must defer to her husband.

    “That’s not my decision anyway,” she testified. “I think it’s God’s will
    whatever happens.”

    That’s a touching and illuminating example of the blessings of patriarchy. Remember Doug Phillips?

    We’re not talking about Lord as in the Creator, but your earthly head. And one that you have to follow, even when he makes bad judgments. Are you ready to do the most vulnerable thing that a woman ever can do and submit yourself to a man, who you are going to have to follow in his faith, who is incredibly imperfect and is going to make mistakes? Can you do that? Can you call your husband ‘Lord’? If the answer is no, you shouldn’t get married. [Quiverfull p 3]

    See? Shannon Hickman was doing the right thing. Her husband didn’t say “we have to take this baby to the hospital” because he was too busy praying, and that was a bad judgment, but she has to follow him because he is The Man, so her submissive act in letting her infant die of clogged lungs was a holy thing.

  • Why are women hung up on “submission”?

    Here’s another submitter, courtesy of pittigemaki.

    I like the whole idea and practice of submission. I have heard far too many Christian women snicker, sneer, grumble, roll their eyes, or downright reject the “s word.” But why? Why are women hung up on “submission” when God asks us to do it?

    Because women are human beings like other human beings, and there is no good reason to order* human beings of one type to submit to human beings of another type. It’s degrading; it’s an assumption of inferiority; it’s anti-egalitarian. That’s why. The fact that god is supposed to have commanded it doesn’t make it better; it makes god worse.

    *The claim is not that god “asks” women to submit; the claim is that god tells them to.

     

  • Submission, abject

    Just a little more about Sholto. It doesn’t seem to have gone very well for him – the comments at the New Statesman are scathing, and Google blogsearch turns up only more scathe, no pleased cries of “At last somebody talking sense about sharia.” He must be feeling sadly disappointed in the multicultural broadmindedness and flexibility of – of – well of everybody but himself, I guess. There’s one comment at the NS that looks favorable at first blush, but when you read on it becomes obvious that it’s a parody. So Sholto is 0 for 0 with the “let’s look at the good side of sharia” enterprise.

    Back to the article for a moment.

    The example of Saudi Arabia undoubtedly has much to do with this [distaste for sharia]. Yet it is important to stress that to look at that country and then assume that its version of sharia is the only one, or the one to which Muslims all secretly aspire, would be akin to holding up a vision of Torquemada’s Inquisition and concluding that this was what real Christianity was.

    So the Saudi version of sharia is not the only one; so what other version is there? He never says. He says that in Malaysia non-Muslims are allowed to ignore it, but he doesn’t point to some other kind of sharia that is benign and fair and reasonable and just the right kind of thing. Actually he doesn’t even say that the Saudi version is not the only one, he just says what it would be like to assume that it is. Maybe that’s because even he doesn’t actually believe that there is a different one, he just wants his readers to think so. Tut tut, Sholto.

    He commented only once, and concluded with something really silly when he did:

    There are plenty of atheists and anti-religious writers who appear in the NS – surely you don’t object to the debate being a bit wider than that?

    Yes, I damn well do, when “a bit wider” means “pro-sharia.” The NS is supposed to be a left-wing magazine and there are some things that are not left-wing by any definition. Sharia is right-wing; it’s savagely, harshly, vengefully right-wing, and there is nothing left-wing about it. Nothing at all. The New Statesman is a disgrace.