Michael Pearl and his schtick

[barnhart]

...
Anyway, the Pearl's publish (published?) on a blog, so you can bite off just as much as many people bit into Gothardism. And while the Pearl's never built a sort of economic empire of materials and classes and "institutes", their books are just as much "out there". I looked over one book by Michael Pearl where the thesis was an emphatic argument that the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven were two very distinct and completely different/seperate things, and that the knowledge of this distinction leads to the most important knowledge of the gospel.

I picked up one of their magazines, I think it was theirs, and read two articles related to the blessings of submitting to husbands and fathers and then I was taken back by the third article which was a primer on how to make a large Bowie knife from a discarded chainsaw blade for the defense of the home. It occurred to me the same Jesus whose apostles teach submission also teaches submission to cross bearing and loving enemies, not making swords to attack them.

[JohnH]

Pearl definitely does not believe in nonresistance, which makes it rather odd how many nonresistant people listen to him.

Pearl and Gothard are two quite different things, though. I have a lot more respect for Mike Pearl, partly because he still upholds local church authority, and partly because he is not a pervert running some kind of bizarre ideological “cult”.

[Praxis+Theodicy]

...
Anyway, the Pearl's publish (published?) on a blog, so you can bite off just as much as many people bit into Gothardism. And while the Pearl's never built a sort of economic empire of materials and classes and "institutes", their books are just as much "out there". I looked over one book by Michael Pearl where the thesis was an emphatic argument that the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven were two very distinct and completely different/seperate things, and that the knowledge of this distinction leads to the most important knowledge of the gospel.

I picked up one of their magazines, I think it was theirs, and read two articles related to the blessings of submitting to husbands and fathers and then I was taken back by the third article which was a primer on how to make a large Bowie knife from a discarded chainsaw blade for the defense of the home. It occurred to me the same Jesus whose apostles teach submission also teaches submission to cross bearing and loving enemies, not making swords to attack them.

Yeah, I read an article that addressed parents on how to handle your kids sharing toys. Essentially, they were VERY against parents asking their children to share, because that was compared to USSR-style communism (literally made that comparison in the article), and that it was more important for children to understand boundaries and which toys belonged to whom, as a way of instilling an understanding of Property Rights.

From what I can gather (along with the Bowie-knife article you mentioned), they seem like they've synchronized Christianity with homesteading, homeschooling, and American-capitalist libertarianism. But you'd have to find their articles to get a lot of that. Their parenting books probably focus more directly on parenting. "To Train Up A Child" is their book that I think is pretty widely known. I have heard of ex-Gothard people talking about that book in particular, so I know there is a lot of "Pearl" that mixed into the "Gothard" which mixed into the Anabaptist world at some point.

[JohnH]

No discussion of Mike Pearl is complete with this set of his anecdotes:

https://nogreaterjoy.org/letters/pacifism/

I have been struck and pushed and cursed for the gospel’s sake. I have had my life threatened several times. I have been non-resistant in all cases, but when I came across a man raping a woman in the woods, I reached for my pistol and saved her life. To this day she is thankful that I was not a pacifist. She didn’t need a spectator; she needed a deliverer.

We have a Mennonite neighbor who practiced non-resistance under all circumstances. Some evil men found out about it and came into his home demanding to take sexual liberties with all his daughters. He did not resist but gave them his younger daughters as well. The men returned. His daughters became pregnant and bore little bastards. No man ever wanted them for wives. He stood by and watched the evil men strip and rape his daughters. It destroyed the family. They had to move so as to cease being used by evil men at their will. He was a fool. His doctrine was of the Devil. He should have risen up in righteous wrath and slain the enemy, like Joshua of old.

I have quoted the above to a plain person who responded there is no way Michael or Debi Pearl would have ever said such a thing, despite it having been on his website for north of a decade.

[barnhart]

... Their parenting books probably focus more directly on parenting. "To Train Up A Child" is their book that I think is pretty widely known.

I was gifted a copy, sat down and read two or three chapters, got up and threw it in the trash. The first item that caught my attention was the concept of "breaking a child's spirit", my thought was I'm not subduing wild horses... I wasn't so sure I wanted to break my children. The next item was intentionally setting up enticement traps for your child to fail as a pretext for discipline. This seemed a little foolish as I was confident opportunities for discipline would arise naturally. But most alarming was the justification that God operates this way. I was not ready to accept the image of a capricious God who sets his children up to fail so he can strike them with discipline.

Soon after an older person taught a Sunday school class on child training under the title "Shepherding a child's heart" which I liked much better.

[Ken]

No discussion of Mike Pearl is complete with this set of his anecdotes:

https://nogreaterjoy.org/letters/pacifism/

I have been struck and pushed and cursed for the gospel’s sake. I have had my life threatened several times. I have been non-resistant in all cases, but when I came across a man raping a woman in the woods, I reached for my pistol and saved her life. To this day she is thankful that I was not a pacifist. She didn’t need a spectator; she needed a deliverer.

We have a Mennonite neighbor who practiced non-resistance under all circumstances. Some evil men found out about it and came into his home demanding to take sexual liberties with all his daughters. He did not resist but gave them his younger daughters as well. The men returned. His daughters became pregnant and bore little bastards. No man ever wanted them for wives. He stood by and watched the evil men strip and rape his daughters. It destroyed the family. They had to move so as to cease being used by evil men at their will. He was a fool. His doctrine was of the Devil. He should have risen up in righteous wrath and slain the enemy, like Joshua of old.

I have quoted the above to a plain person who responded there is no way Michael or Debi Pearl would have ever said such a thing, despite it having been on his website for north of a decade.

Both stories sound completely made-up.

[JohnH]

Both stories sound completely made-up.

Which raises rather serious questions when people who purportedly place a great emphasis on truth are looking to such a person and such writings for spiritual guidance. (And, yes, nobody is aware of any such incidents happening in Lobelville, TN, and such stories are so egregious the gossip hotline would definitely have been activated, not to mention the attention of law enforcement.)

On that topic, law enforcement often gets very interested when they hear plain people are being taken advantage of. A seedy crowd was writing bad checks for expensive puppies and other merchandise in Holmes County. Another plain-owned grocery store had a well-dressed, “respectable” woman in a nice car stealing thousands of dollars of butter, bacon, meat and so on. They were reluctant to press charges… the sheriff investigated anyway, got statements from the people involved, and eventually the perpetrators were arrested and charged (with felonies).

[Judas Maccabeus]

No discussion of Mike Pearl is complete with this set of his anecdotes:

https://nogreaterjoy.org/letters/pacifism/

I have been struck and pushed and cursed for the gospel’s sake. I have had my life threatened several times. I have been non-resistant in all cases, but when I came across a man raping a woman in the woods, I reached for my pistol and saved her life. To this day she is thankful that I was not a pacifist. She didn’t need a spectator; she needed a deliverer.

We have a Mennonite neighbor who practiced non-resistance under all circumstances. Some evil men found out about it and came into his home demanding to take sexual liberties with all his daughters. He did not resist but gave them his younger daughters as well. The men returned. His daughters became pregnant and bore little bastards. No man ever wanted them for wives. He stood by and watched the evil men strip and rape his daughters. It destroyed the family. They had to move so as to cease being used by evil men at their will. He was a fool. His doctrine was of the Devil. He should have risen up in righteous wrath and slain the enemy, like Joshua of old.

I have quoted the above to a plain person who responded there is no way Michael or Debi Pearl would have ever said such a thing, despite it having been on his website for north of a decade.

No. But they DID advocate hitting children with PVC plumbing pipe. From the New York Times, 2011:

“More than 670,000 copies of the Pearls’ self-published book are in circulation, and it is especially popular among Christian home-schoolers, who praise it in their magazines and on their Web sites. The Pearls provide instructions on using a switch from as early as six months to discourage misbehavior and describe how to make use of implements for hitting on the arms, legs or back, including a quarter-inch flexible plumbing line that, Mr. Pearl notes, “can be rolled up and carried in your pocket.”

The furor in part reflects societal disagreements over corporal punishment, which conservative Christians say is called for in the Bible and which many Americans consider reasonable up to a point, even as many parents and pediatricians reject it. The issue flared recently when a video was posted online of a Texas judge whipping his daughter.”

IF I ever see anyone hitting a child with 1/4 inch plumbing line, i WILL report the person who does it to Child Protective Services, full stop.

That is not discipline , that is child abuse. An open hand, yes, a wooden spoon ok. Plumbing line cuts! I , in my now distant non Mennonite past had to deal with such a couple. My wife ran from the room to avoid hearing what she suspected was next.

[Judas Maccabeus]

Both stories sound completely made-up.

Which raises rather serious questions when people who purportedly place a great emphasis on truth are looking to such a person and such writings for spiritual guidance. (And, yes, nobody is aware of any such incidents happening in Lobelville, TN, and such stories are so egregious the gossip hotline would definitely have been activated, not to mention the attention of law enforcement.)

On that topic, law enforcement often gets very interested when they hear plain people are being taken advantage of. A seedy crowd was writing bad checks for expensive puppies and other merchandise in Holmes County. Another plain-owned grocery store had a well-dressed, “respectable” woman in a nice car stealing thousands of dollars of butter, bacon, meat and so on. They were reluctant to press charges… the sheriff investigated anyway, got statements from the people involved, and eventually the perpetrators were arrested and charged (with felonies).

Police do that fairly frequently here. Due to the “Stop Snitching “ culture, in some neighborhoods, literally no one will report crimes. The police still investigate, and file charges if applicable.

[ken_sylvania]

No discussion of Mike Pearl is complete with this set of his anecdotes:

https://nogreaterjoy.org/letters/pacifism/

I have been struck and pushed and cursed for the gospel’s sake. I have had my life threatened several times. I have been non-resistant in all cases, but when I came across a man raping a woman in the woods, I reached for my pistol and saved her life. To this day she is thankful that I was not a pacifist. She didn’t need a spectator; she needed a deliverer.

We have a Mennonite neighbor who practiced non-resistance under all circumstances. Some evil men found out about it and came into his home demanding to take sexual liberties with all his daughters. He did not resist but gave them his younger daughters as well. The men returned. His daughters became pregnant and bore little bastards. No man ever wanted them for wives. He stood by and watched the evil men strip and rape his daughters. It destroyed the family. They had to move so as to cease being used by evil men at their will. He was a fool. His doctrine was of the Devil. He should have risen up in righteous wrath and slain the enemy, like Joshua of old.

I have quoted the above to a plain person who responded there is no way Michael or Debi Pearl would have ever said such a thing, despite it having been on his website for north of a decade.

Those two accounts remind me of the discussion not so long ago about the nebulous grasp that Southern Baptist preachers seem to have on reality when it comes to stories to use in sermons. I really don't believe Pearl's story actually happened.

And yes, it makes me cringe whenever I hear his book recommended as a good resource for child training.