| This web site promotes "patriarchy." |
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| So do a few other sites. | |||
| Our conception of "patriarchy" is a Christian one. |
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| Some "patriarchy" sites on the Internet are thoroughly pagan | |||
| Biblical Patriarchy has provided for the greatest measure of liberation for women. |
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| Non-Christian "patriarchy" has meant the enslavement of women | |||
| Christian Patriarchy has laid the foundation for the greatest measure of social energy, freedom, and progress. | |||
| Pagan "patriarchy" is selfish and ingrown; it is culturally barren and collapses under its own dead weight. | |||
| Jesus Christ the Bridegroom is a model of monogamy. | |||
| Non-Biblical patriarchy tends toward polygamy and male domination of women. |
This site opposes both those ideas. |
Some Internet websites attack "patriarchy." By "patriarchy" they mean rich Republicans. They promote self-centered sex (lesbianism, homosexuality) and attack Biblical absolutes. Well, this site has not been befriended by any rich Republicans—nor rich Democrats. Nor any independents—nor anyone who supports the "United Nations" or the "New World Order." We oppose the "eastern liberal establishment." Our brand of PATRIARCHY is pretty much unique on the Internet.
By "Patriarchy" we mean
There are two things that make the "patriarchy" caricature offensive. The "oppression" caricature, if true, is genuinely and rightfully offensive. But perhaps more offensive is the idea of a family or community which is independent of the State, and resists being controlled by the Eastern Liberal Establishment. Some use the word "anarchy" to describe a society without a "state." Such people usually depend in some way on government checks. They think social order is created by a Harvard-educated elite, rather than by a multitude of obedient Christians, obeying God's Law in their daily lives, creating vast networks of businesses, charities, and voluntary associations, and passing Christian morality and wisdom on to their descendants.
The State has never been bigger; social order has never been more endangered.
We must cultivate a "paradigm shift" from politics to patriarchy.
In the Garden of Eden there was the Family. There was no priesthood, no State.
All human beings are created in families. The Institutions of Church and State are unBiblical. They reflect the rebellion of families against God's Law.
The whole history of man as recorded in the Bible is the history of sinful rebellion against society as created in the Garden of Eden, and the construction of institutions based on coercion and violence. It is the history of Politics vs. Patriarchy.
Obedience through the Family eliminates tyranny, protects property.
Here is the definition of "Patriarchy" found in Funk & Wagnall's Encyclopedia (left). It is not very helpful, as the quotations on the right make evident.
| in sociology and anthropology, system of social organization in which descent is traced through the male line and all children bear the name of the father or belong to his clan. | |||
| Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. Genesis 2:24 |
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| The system is often associated with inheritance in the male line of material goods and social prerogatives, as in primogeniture, in which the eldest son is the sole heir. | |||
| [T]he Biblical law of primogeniture was governed by the prior standard of moral and religious requirements. Whereas in Western
European history primogeniture governed almost without exception, in Biblical history, the exceptions are almost the rule. In the Biblical record, inheritance by
primogeniture without moral qualification is rare. Again and again, the firstborn is set aside because of moral failure. Thus, very obviously, the spiritual and moral
considerations governed inheritance, from the days of the patriarchs to Christ's testamental provision for Mary from the cross R.J.Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, p. 181-182 |
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| The social organization of the ancient Hebrews, as described in the Old Testament, was strongly patriarchal | |||
| The Justice Department heads a system of criminal justice that is a holy terror toward small Christian colleges and deadly
toward police departments with single-sex squad cars, but that fosters a rate of violent crime 62 times higher than Japan's patriarchal society. Phyllis Schlafly, Who Will Rock the Cradle?, p.148 |
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| patriarchy still exists among nomadic peoples today, particularly in the Arabian Desert and the steppes of Central Asia. | |||
| The World Council of Churches was present at the Beijing conference on women. Many readers will no doubt remember the WCC.
Among the speakers was Mercy Amba Oduyoye, a Ghanaian Methodist theologian, who said, "The Christianity in Africa today is 'bad news' because it brings us patriarchal
structures and a European economic system of greed." Even if the product of that system, in the hands of religious bureaucrats who despise it, provides free trips to
international conferences for angry Africans trained to condemn the benevolence by which they are oppressed. First Things, January 1996, No. 59 |
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| The family and clan organization of the ancient Greeks and Romans was also patriarchal, as was the family and social organization of Europe during the Middle Ages. | |||
| Roman religion was originally a form of ancestor worship. Cicero said, "Our ancestors desired that the men who had
quitted this life should be counted in the number of the gods." Ancestor worship involves not only the deification of the dead but also of the family and the clan. As
family declined in importance in Rome, the state assumed the more central religious role and the dead emperors became gods, and the living emperor, as their presence, was
the object of worship. The religious forms in Rome varied . . . but all had as a basic aspect the recognition of the inherent deity of the state and its emperor. Rushdoony, World History Notes, (1974) p. 60 |
| Many forms of this earlier patriarchy, such as the inheritance of the family name through the male line, still persist in modern Western society, but exclusive male inheritance of property and other patriarchal features are gradually disappearing. |
| The Biblical laws of inheritance are God's law; the modern laws of inheritance are the state's law. The state, moreover, is
making itself progressively the main, and sometimes, in some countries, the only heir. The state in effect is saying that it will receive the blessing above all others.
There is, however, a perverse justice and logic in the state's position, in that it is assuming the dual roles of parent and child. It offers to educate all children and to
support all needy families as the great father of all. It offers support to the aged as the true son and heir who is entitled to collect all of the inheritance as his own.
In both roles, however, it is the great corrupter and is at war with God's established order, the family. R.J.Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, p. 181-182 |
| Alexis de Tocqueville
Thus the Americans do not think that man and woman have either the duty or the right to perform the same offices, but they show an equal regard for both their respective parts; and though their lot is different, they consider both of them as beings of equal value. They do not give to the courage of woman the same form or the same direction as to that of man, but they never doubt her courage; and if they hold that man and his partner ought not always to exercise their intellect and understanding in the same manner, they at least believe the understanding of the one to be as sound as that of the other, and her intellect to be as clear. Thus, then, while they have allowed the social inferiority of woman to continue, they have done all they could to raise her morally and intellectually to the level of man; and in this respect they appear to me to have excellently understood the true principle of democratic improvement. As for myself, I do not hesitate to avow that although the women of the United States are confined within the narrow circle of domestic life, and their situation is in some respects one of extreme dependence, I have nowhere seen woman occupying a loftier position; and if I were asked, now that I am drawing to the close of this work, in which I have spoken of so many important things done by the Americans, to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women.
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John Adams
Quoted by John Eidsmoe in Christianity and the Constitution, Baker Book House, 1987, p. 272, from Adams, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L.H.Butterfield, Belknap/Harvard, 1962, IV:123.
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A word to “Feminists”about Vine & Fig Tree.
If the word “Patriarchy”strikes you as offensive and threatening, you should explore the rest of this site. You will find that your definition of “Patriarchy” was given to
you by the very institutions opposed by Vine & Fig Tree. Most Feminists don't like the term "Patriarchy," but they worship
the power of the State, which is the power that makes "patriarchy" so loathsome.
In our experience we have found two types of people who might classify themselves as “feminists.” If you hate men and children, and hope to arm yourself with the violence of the State in order to bring about your vision of social order (a socialist system of gun-wielding lesbian matriarchs), you will definitely be challenged by Micah’s vision of Vine & Fig Tree. If politics, guns, condoms, and shouted slogans don’t interest you, you are probably in the right place.
The Bible has not led to the oppression of women: impersonalist, me-first, Secular Humanist statist industrialism is the culprit. The notion that the Bible (and especially Vine & Fig Tree's Biblical concept of Anarcho-Pacifist Agrarian Patriarchy) is in some way the root evil which has brought forth an urban, male-dominated fascist State which "oppresses" women is ably refuted in Barbara J. Berg, The Remembered Gate: Origins of American Feminism - The Woman and the City, 1800-1860, New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
On the psycho-sexual superiority of women and destructive male aggressiveness as a consequence of the rejection of monogamy/Patriarchy, see George Gilder, Men and Marriage, Gretna, LA: Pelican Pub. Co., 1987, or Sexual Suicide, NY: New York Times Book Co., 1973.
Our definition of “Patriarchy” differs from many who oppose that term, because we are pacifists, anarchists, and anti-institutionalists.
Q. What kind of “Patriarchy” can exist in a context of anarchism, pacifism, and decentralism?
A. One you should explore with an open mind; open to ways of thinking which are so old, they appear new.
-- just so you don't have to go searching to see the point being made above about pro- and anti-"Patriarchy" sites which promote lesbianism, polygamy, shamanism, Marxism and stupidism.
If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males. People are afraid to say that kind of stuff anymore.
Perhaps this confirmed the question Interviewer Susan Bridle had in mind when she scheduled the interview:
I was also very curious to find out if she really believed, as it seemed from her books, that the cause of every possible problem in this world, both inner and outer, is the evil of patriarchy, or, in other words, men.
"Favorite & influential writers: Harry Blamire, John Calvin, Jacques Ellul, C. S. Lewis, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Gary North, R. J. Rushdoony, Francis Schaeffer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Pitirim Sorokin, Alexander Strauch, B. B. Warfield, to name a few."
Other than the gnawing fear that their patriotism will evolve into fascism, to these sites we give a hearty
Three Cheers!
(Hope an endorsement from a radical "anarchist" web site like ours doesn't spell the death-knell for these "Patriarch" pages!)
Doug's Blog: Back to Patriarchy
No, the line about "the CIA" was just a joke.
Vine & Fig Tree is about "swords into plowshares." It is about ending war and all forms of violence. That certainly includes domestic violence. But not just overt acts of physical violence. Many "right-wing" defenders of "patriarchy" are robustly opposed to the “Vine & Fig Tree” worldview, a worldview which promotes pacifism and stateless societies ("anarcho-pacifism"). In a recent review of a pro-"Patriarchy" book, It’s Good To Be a Man: A Handbook for Godly Masculinity, Pastor John W. Mahaffy writes:
The book promotes its vision of patriarchy, or “father rule,” “the natural rulership of men.” (p. 8) It is instructive to look at the fruits of this movement, which, admittedly has a certain breadth to it. A detailed analysis is beyond the scope of this review, but in the circles in which I move as a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, I have been deeply disturbed by the fruit of the patriarchy movement. In some cases there has been a subtle (or sometimes not so subtle) attitude of male superiority. I have seen rude mocking of women and of men with whom patriachalists differ. I have seen violent language and even cursing used, in public, no less, against those considered to be in error. It would be wrong to attribute that conduct to the influence of this book, which is too new for that. Certainly, not all who hold to patriarchy engage in this kind of conduct. But there is enough misuse of the tongue (or fingers on keyboards) to remind ourselves of the caution in James 3:12, that a spring cannot produce both salt and fresh water.
Rudeness, mocking, and cursing is definitely "bad fruit." Violent language reflects an "archist" heart. Despite the similarity in branding, our version of "Patriarchy" -- which stands for a family-centered society rather than a state-centered and/or church-centered society -- is probably moving in the opposite direction from "archist patriarchy" -- male domination of women -- as described in that review.
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Vine & Fig Tree