Training Up

Take a moment to ignore the credit-card ad and then read this engrossing article in Salon on fundamentalist Christians' elaborate ideology of "training up" children to be obedient and "Godly," whatever that is. Among other things, you'll learn that "spare the rod, spoil the child" comes from Samuel Butler, not the Bible; that quarter-inch PVC plumbing pipe is a good substitute for the Biblical rod; and that there is some sort of distinction between "chastening" and "child abuse." Please let me know what that distinction is, if you figure it out.

For my money, the best part of the article is the way - which the author does not comment upon - in which fundamentalist parents' chastening of their kids is clearly and ironically a way for them to play God on earth:

Still, as the Pearls define it, "training" is considered a means of showing love. "Training" children to obey unconditionally is much more than training them, say, not to bother Mommy. It is training them to submit to the will of God. "When the child is young, the parents are the only 'god' he knows. As he awakens to Divine realities, it is through his earthly father that he understands his heavenly Father," Pearl writes in the book. "As the child relates to the figurehead of authority (his parents), in like manner he will later be prone to relate to God. If, when the parents say, 'No,' they do not mean 'No,' then the 'thou shalt not' of God will not be taken seriously either."

As in so many other areas of society and culture, this ideology of chastisement depends on a tenuous, decontextualized interpretation of a prehistoric source which, it just so happens, reinforces patriarchy while pretending to enact God's ineffable will. As in the house, also in the church and the polity. Of course, the West abandoned those ideas, at least in part, centuries ago, and we're better off for it.