Child abuse on the religious right – The Pearls at Bene Diction Blogs On

Child abuse on the religious right – The Pearls

I’ve mentioned Michael and Debi Pearl of Tennessee in previous posts.

One of the reasons I feel so strongly about about their religious views on child rearing is because of my childhood abuse, done for my own good, and in which God was often part of the equation. To see abuse promoted by so called ‘christians’ is something that has to not only be known, understood and rufuted, but condemned and if possible it’s profittering purveyors prosecuted.

Salon has an extensive article. (ad viewing or subscription required to read) Spare the quarter-inch plumbing supply line, spoil the child.

The Pearls have no training, yet promote their ‘corporal punishment as against liberal ideas’ and ‘doing it God’s way. This is nothing new for fundamentalists, but is now seen as part of the ‘culture war.’

As stated in previous posts, the Pearl’s No Greater Joy Ministries makes in $1.5 million a year. They donate thousands of their method products to churches and home schooling groups to suck young, socially, emotionally and spiritually parents in.

“Select your instrument according to the child’s size,” writes Pearl. “For the under one year old, a little, ten to twelve-inch long, willowy branch (stripped of any knots that might break the skin) about one-eighth inch diameter is sufficient. Sometimes alternatives have to be sought. A one-foot ruler, or its equivalent in a paddle, is a sufficient alternative. For the larger child, a belt or larger tree branch is effective.” Additional advice from their Web site: Switching with a length of quarter-inch plumbing supply line is a “real attention-getter.”

“Hands,” by contrast, “are for loving and helping,” Pearl writes.

Yet again, in a sense, so is the switch. “The parent holds in his hand (in the form of a little switch) the power to absolve the child of guilt, cleanse his soul, instruct his spirit, strengthen his resolve, and give him a fresh start through a confidence that all indebtedness is paid…” writes Pearl. “After a short explanation about bad attitudes and the need to love, patiently and calmly apply the rod to his back-side. Somehow, after eight or ten licks, the poison is transformed into gushing love and contentment. The world becomes a beautiful place. A brand new child emerges. It makes an adult stare at the rod in wonder, trying to see what magic is contained therein.”

Over and over the Pearl’s deny they advocate abuse, yet the recent death of Seth Paddock has raised necessary alarm bells, particularily in the Pearl targeted home schooling movement.

Speak against the Pearl’s and you are a target of severe verbal abuse.

Because Seth’s death, other children’s injuries, breaking a child’s spirit and ‘the war of us/them’, the Pearls and other religious fundamentalists warn about spanking in public. Most people are unaware of PVC pipes, branches and paddles. Most people are unaware the Pearls have a mailing list of 74 thousand American parents. One of Micheal Pearl’s grown up daughters thinks her father is doing God’s work and is being persecuted.

Her father goes farther. “Don’t be so indiscreet as to spank your children in public — including the church restroom,” he writes on his Web site. But discretion, here, is more than just the better part of embarrassing your kid. “I get letters regularly telling of trouble with in-laws who threaten to report them to the authorities,” he goes on. “Parents have called the Gestapo on their married children. Church friends who have noses longer than the pews on which they perch can cause a world of trouble. If you cannot get [your children] trained before going out in public, stay home and read our four books again. If the Federal or State agencies take me to court over advocating corporal chastisement, this will be part of my defense: ‘He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes (Prov. 13:24).’”

For similar reasons, the Home School Legal Defense Association recommends spanking only in private. (The HSLDA is a Christian organization, though it serves home-schoolers without regard to affiliation. It is dedicated to preserving the “fundamental right of parents to choose home educations, free of over-zealous government officials and intrusive laws.”)

Parents and others speaking out and shedding light:
Doc
Dare to Know
A Small Corner of Nowhere
O’Donnell Web
Tulip Girl
Wrong Words

“After a short explanation about bad attitudes and the need to love, patiently and calmly apply the rod to his back-side. Somehow, after eight or ten licks, the poison is transformed into gushing love and contentment. The world becomes a beautiful place. A brand new child emerges. It makes an adult stare at the rod in wonder, trying to see what magic is contained therein.” – Micheal Pearl

Published 3 years, 9 months ago 24 comments

24 Responses to “Child abuse on the religious right – The Pearls”

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1 Al Johnson on May 26th, 2006 at 6:44 am

One of the reasons I feel so strongly about about their religious views on child rearing is because of my childhood abuse, done for my own good, and in which God was often part of the equation.

I can identify with what you said. The same abuse happened to me, although when the abuser was really raging (which often happened), then even God got left out of the equation.

I have been blogging about my abuse, including poetry written as part of my recovery from it. I invite you and anyone else to visit my Wrong Words blog. My hope and prayer is that others who grew up in a religious home but experienced abuse can better understand the effects that abuse has on their current behavior and attitudes, and can begin to make changes so that they will not abuse themselves and others.
2 Barry - pmPilgrim on May 26th, 2006 at 8:06 am

Bene:
We know this is going on in many places, so THANKS for posting this along with some of those refuting it. It should be common sense to know that this is NOT the way to raise a child- but in religious circles, common sense is often subjugated to some inner understanding of god’s will as, I would think, God’s will.

Blog on.

Barry
3 Steve on May 26th, 2006 at 8:55 am

Astonishing. I would report anyone I saw using anything to hit their child, even their hand, in a flash.

As for the practice of hiding at home, well if anything led people towards dangerous practice, that would be it.

Insane.

Steve
4 Lee Anne Millinger on May 26th, 2006 at 11:29 am

Bene, TulipGirl has posted on the Pearls here:

http://www.tulipgirl.com/mt/archives/001058.html

She often has posts about these abusive fundamentalist parenting fads … has written extensively about the Ezzos, for example. She is an excellent resource on this subject.
5 Marj (aka Thriver) on May 26th, 2006 at 12:14 pm

This makes me sick. Literally. I feel sick to my stomach reading this. “Hands are for loving and helping.” HA! As if the abused child does not know what hands are wielding the weapon! From my own experience I can say that it may be possible for the abused child to develop a phobia over plumbing supplies, but he/she will never confuse the tool with the actual abuser. These people aren’t really fooling anybody.
6 Bene Diction on May 26th, 2006 at 12:16 pm

Thank you Lee Anne: I’ve added Tulip Girl, and Al, thank you – I’ve also added your link to the list. I am so sorry for what you have been through, and I commend you on your journey of recovery.

Abuse can’t hide in light.
7 Wood on May 27th, 2006 at 3:52 am

Revolting. I’m glad that Bene’s not afraid to call a spade a spade and show it for what it is: child abuse.

I will never, ever, hit my child.
8 graham on May 27th, 2006 at 9:41 am

If you’re interested, I wrote a piece a while ago on why we don’t hit our kids.

It irritates me that the religious right claim greater fidelity to the scriptures because they are willing to do what any loving parent would baulk at.
9 Bene Diction on May 27th, 2006 at 9:49 am

Thanks Graham.
10 TulipGirl on May 27th, 2006 at 6:18 pm

Thank you for the very kind words, Lee Anne. (And the link.)

A difficult book to read, but worthwhile (with discernment) is Alice Miller’s “For Your Own Good” and “Banished Knowledge.”

One of the most heartbreaking elements to the hold the Pearls’ teachings have, is that parents who are following these ideas, truly love their children and believe what they are doing is “best” for the child. While at times anger and lashing out may occur (which I believe happens more often than the Pearls and their followers like to admit) the primary and initial motivation is to discipline their children the “right” way–not to harm them.

And yet these actions do harm–both the child and the parent.
11 Drina on May 27th, 2006 at 9:12 pm

Somehow, after eight or ten licks, the poison is transformed into gushing love and contentment. The world becomes a beautiful place. A brand new child emerges. It makes an adult stare at the rod in wonder, trying to see what magic is contained therein.”

I’m not entirely against spanking, but this statement makes me concerned about the Pearls’ mental state.
12 rb on Jun 30th, 2006 at 8:10 pm

This is typical religious parenting…you can read all about religious parenting in any dysfunctional behavior book. Religion causes mental and emotional brain damage. Its a medical fact that religion is the ultimate terrorism and causes also genetic brain damage in religious families.
Religion is the sickest thing we humans ever came up with.
13 Bene Diction on Jul 1st, 2006 at 6:04 am

I don’t know where you are from RB, allow me to say this is not typical ‘religious’ parenting for many of us all over the world, and indeed not even from the small corner of the US south the Pearls live in.

Yes, religion can harm, I appreciate you speaking up with others including those of faith, those without, and those inbetween who know abuse and dysfunction when they read it or see it and step up to speak out against it.

It’s pretty apparent the Pearls has the smarts to use the insecurity of others to make piles of money, he is unbalanced in every sense most of us understand that. If he wasn’t using religion as his hook, he’d probably use something else.

Fred Phelps and his family don’t lack smarts either, do they?
14 David on Jul 24th, 2006 at 12:19 pm

Hitting a child (or indeed anybody) is a sign of weakness. But often the weak don’t like their weakness and try to turn it into a strength. This is when they become tyrannical.

When people commit acts of violence out of weakness, it is possible to sympathise with them and to help them change. But when people try to pretend that their weakness is a strength, it is hard to know what to do. In feigning strength they have become inhuman – they have lost their capacities to love, to admit that they can be wrong, and to ask for help, and have therefore gone beyond our reach.

I saw an interesting film a while back, called Dogville. The people in this film lived in a small village, and one day an outsider (played by Nicole Kidman) turned up. Over time, the villagers started to abuse the outsider, out of weakness and ignorance masquerading as justice and concern.

Eventually it turned out that the family of the abused character were in the mob. When they came to find their daughter, their response to seeing her abuse was to kill everyone in the village.

Now, obviously, I do not think that we should kill anyone, including people who abuse their children. But I think that some people have gone beyond our reach, and have to be written off. In my wildest flights of fancy I wish that someone would come along and remove all of these people from the Earth – take away those who think that they can put things right with their own anger. But this is also a weakness, and one that I must overcome. Perhaps abusers of this sort can never be helped, but the best that we can do is to resist them and to lead by a better example.

Unfortunately, in this particular case, the abuse is directed at children from behind closed doors. This is shameful and sad.
15 beepbeepitsme on Aug 29th, 2006 at 6:03 pm

RE: To Smack or not to Smack

Spare the Quarter – Inch Plumbing Supply Line, Spoil the Child
http://beepbeepitsme.blogspot.com/2006/08/spare-quarter-inch-plumbing-supply.html
16 anonymous on Oct 6th, 2006 at 6:52 am

When God is on the equation you even can start a war like we have today.

Say no to any kind of religion!
17 misty on Nov 15th, 2006 at 9:04 am

First off I want to say that I am very sorry to all of you who have been abused. That is most definitely not God’s design or intent for anyone (child or adult) to have to experience. However, I must say that i do not agree with your oppinnions on the Pearls, or any other person’s, take on spanking and discipline. I also find it interesting that while you are all more than happy to bash them and their ideas, you never mention any of your own about how to disciple children. I must say that it seems you have taken what has happened to you, universalized it, and completely unappropriately put it in the same category as loving discpline used in training up a child. Please know that I am not writing this to criticize you, just to ask you to please reevaluate and understand that spanking in order to correct and disciple a child is in NO WAY the same thing as the type of abuse you are mentioning.
18 BD on Nov 15th, 2006 at 1:39 pm

Hi Misty:

I doubt anyone feels bashed or criticized, they are adults.
I can’t speak for everyone who has spoken up, if you are sorry people have been abused then condoning the Pearls methods isn’t being sorry at all, it’s buying into a pseudo-biblical money making scheme that has gotten the Pearls into trouble and will get them into trouble again.

How we treat the weakest members of our society speaks volumes about our love. The Pearls are extremists, falling on the far side of what you seem to think is liberalized parenting.
Using peoples fears, and insecurities to make money and teach them wrong ideas about God is not something readers who have expressed themselves here care to tolerate. The Pearl’s program is a cultural anomaly, and for the Pearls to disavow their extremism has anything to do with peoples difficulties is shameful and a sorry sight.
So no, I doubt anyone here is prepared to re-evaluate this level of grandstanding extremism in God’s name, nor would they feel criticized.

A child is dead.
More could die.

That’s enough.
19 h on Dec 10th, 2006 at 10:25 pm

OUCH! I just read a couple of their articles and I was SHOCKED!

http://www.nogreaterjoy.org/index.php?id=72

Article called the abusive husband.

She uses I Peter 3 saying that women need to just hush and take it! Don’t ask for help! If you leave your marriage due to safety issues – your children will not be saved! LOL she also says if you ignore it your kids will be JUST FINE!

Her husband added a page at the end:

But if your husband has sexually molested the children, you should approach him with it. If he is truly repentant (not just exposed) and is willing to seek counseling, you may feel comfortable giving him an opportunity to prove himself, as long as you know the children are safe. If there is any thought that they are not safe, or if he is not repentant and willing to seek help, then go to the law and have him arrested. Stick by him, but testify against him in court. Have him do about 10 to 20 years, and by the time he gets out, you will have raised the kids, and you can be waiting for him with open arms of forgiveness and restitution. Will this glorify God? Forever. You ask, “What if he doesn’t repent even then?” Then you will be rewarded in heaven equal to the martyrs, and God will have something to rub in the Devil’s face.

I can’t believe these people actually have a following!
20 Hillary Clinton on Dec 20th, 2006 at 1:15 pm

Abortion is the ultimate child abuse. A spanking once in a while when merited is not. In fact, it might be child abuse to not spank a child in certain circumstances. At least, that is the way it is in my village.

HC