Read Part One HERE
In this post I will continue to focus on Bill Gothard, the founder of the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP). This time I will be sharing from his teaching on children and, in particular, girls or young women.
Children as long as they were under the authority of the father, were protected from destructive temptation. However, if they got from under the father's authority, they exposed themselves to the realm and power of Satan's control. Children were to obey their parents even when they knew God's will was something different. There should be unquestioning accountability to the authority of their parents, even after the child moved into adulthood.
As for girls or single young women, Bill Gothard demanded a strict dress code, taught that girls should never run and that girls style their hair wavy - not straight or curly - because "wavy hair is attractive and becoming - it causes a person to focus on the woman's face instead of her body."
According to him, this would attract men to their bright eyes, which will attract them to God, instead of their bodies.
Girls and single young women were required to live under their father's authority, even in adulthood. They should be serving their fathers and at times they should do ministry things under their father's direction. They were to be homeschooled to protect them from worldly ideas and made to minic their mother's "helpmeet" role (see my previous blogs on Debi Pearl's book "Created To Be A Helpmeet.") until their mid- to late teens or early twenties, when their father approved a husband. Their wifely training included helping to raise siblings and mastering what such families call "Advanced Homemaking Skills," ranging from menu planning and budgeting to interior design and disaster preparation. These "Stay-At-Home Daughters" were not supposed to go to college or have a career, proponents described independent women and egalitarian men as "destructive of civilization."
P.S. Bill Gothard resigned in 2014 from IBLP after having been accused of sexual abuse by dozens of women associated with his organisation.
No comments:
Post a Comment