“Who puts that system together that says you leave your home for four years..and you get your ticket punched...That [breaking with that system] was the next part of the journey that led to our commitment to Jasmine’s education...not schooling...but her education...something that we oversaw and superintended, all the way through. A lot of people mistake it to mean we are against education for women...nothing could be further from the truth. She is more educated now than I was when I graduated from college...easily...She now serves as my research assistant...and is getting a tremendous education through that process...and we are preparing her for something bigger than getting her ticket punched at the university...She has grasped this multi-generational vision and wants to be a faithful daughter to her father, and a faithful wife and mother to her husband and to her children, and to her children’s children.” Dr. Voddie Baucham
Is There Something Better for the Daughters of Zion?
For more than a decade, a growing number of parents have been asking the question: Is college best for my sons? For my daughters? Many home educating parents have asked: “Should the philosophy of mentoring and discipleship which undergirds home education inform my approach to higher education?”
There are hundreds of reasons cited by parents as to why they are rethinking the question of university education. Here are a few: (1) The expense; (2) The moral bankruptcy of the typical college environment; and (3) The inadequacy of the education itself.
In my view, the education crisis in America is an example of “they meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” The detestable nature of modern education has been used of the Lord to spark revival and reformation of church and home. It has forced Christians to go back to the drawing board and ask fundamental questions like these:
- “What is a distinctively biblical philosophy of education?”
- “What are the true goals of education?”
- “What are the wisest tactics for implementing a distinctively biblical approach to equipping our sons and daughters for success in Christ?”
- “How do our biblical priorities for raising feminine, noble, intelligent, entrepreneurial, virtuous daughters inform our approach to higher education?”
This last question is especially controversial. It is controversial because Christians have largely embraced the presuppositions of modern feminism which blur biblical distinctions between the sexes—distinctions rooted in the creation order itself.
Whether it’s the acceptance of girl soldiers on the field of battle, lady pastors in the pulpit, or couples that largely reflect the domineering women and weak-minded men of Isaiah 3—this toxic, feminist revolution has poisoned the Church and infected it with a theology of gender virtually unheard of for the better part of the last two millennia of church history.
Dr. Baucham on Why His Daughter Will Not Be Going To College, and Why She is Far Better Educated Because of It
Enter Dr. Voddie Baucham.
Voddie is a dynamic Southern Baptist preacher who has encouraged many through his personal ministry, his bold stands in the Southern Baptist Convention against government school education, and his important messages at Vision Forum’s National Conference for Uniting Church and Family on the dangers of youth-driven church life and the importance of a family-integrated, multi-generational culture built on the biblical model of family life (see The Centrality of the Home in Evangelism and Discipleship, and Tenets of Biblical Patriarchy).
Now Voddie joins other Christian leaders and laymen as part of a controversial, groundbreaking documentary from Anna and Elizabeth Botkin, the ladies who gave us So Much More. Their new film, Return of the Daughters, rejects the sacred cows of feminism in favor of a presuppositionally biblical approach to training noble, intelligent, and virtuous Christian daughters of the 21st century. Voddie argues that the biblical approach produces women of higher education, opportunity, and virtue than the cultural counterpart. A clip of Voddie’s helpful observations from Return of the Daughters can be found here.
Thinking Creatively About Higher Education
For many years, ministries like Vision Forum have been urging parents to think afresh, by asking the types of questions raised by Voddie in Return of the Daughters.
We have, for example, advocated the proposition that parents consider a wide range of alternatives to traditional college. My tape series “Making Wise Decisions About College and Life After Homeschool,” takes the position that there is no one-size-fits all approach to higher education for our sons and daughters, that there are are important areas of overlap as well as areas of differences in the educational objectives of men and women, but that both men and women should be fully prepared, trained, and educated for the glory of God. I raise these concerns because, in my view, the majority of Christians approach the “who, what, when, why, where, and how” of higher education blindly. They are either handicapped by false notions that a college degree is a prerequisite for success, or they unwisely abandon altogether the importance of post-high school education. My goal in this controversial compact disc set is to clear away the intellectual and factual debris and to open a path for parents to use clear biblical analysis to determine whether college is a wise choice for their child. I take a hard look at the realities of the college classroom and culture and examine the strengths and weaknesses of various alternatives to college.
Because there are simply too many unique fact-specific circumstances and issues which should inform a Christian’s decision making, our focus has been on helping others to ask the right questions—to build their grid—and not on coming up with our own one-size-fits all approach. In my view, the battle is won or lost at the level of presuppositions. We must ask the right questions. To quote my father: “If you don’t know where you are going, any train will get you there.”
The beauty of the analysis of Christians like Voddie and others featured in Return of the Daughters is that it gives Christians an insight into the wonderful potential for family reformation that can occur when they begin to ask the right questions!
The Feminist Dilemma
One consequence of the view advocated by Dr. Baucham, or those espoused by Vision Forum Ministries, is that egalitarians and feminists of all different stripes hate it.
They really, really hate it.
They hate it because it does not fit into their little box. In their little box, people fall into one of two categories: There are reasonable, open-minded, thinking folks who want to end all forms of hierarchy and role distinctives within the family, church, and society. And then there are domineering, close-minded, wife-belittling “patriarchalists” who view women as doormats and chattle, disregard the intelligence of daughters, and oppose their higher education.
The idea that wives and daughters could be highly esteemed, highly educated, equal with men before the Lord, fully equipped as agents of societal transformation for Christ, but functionally and practically different from men, is largely incomprehensible to those who have been infected by feminism. An intelligent, wise, esteemed, entrepreneurial, dominion-oriented, keeper of the home, distinctively feminine woman of God does not fit into their feministic grids.
And that is one reason why the whole key to the type of argument martialled by “Christian” feminists of various stripes against biblical patriarchy is rooted in caricature, mockery, scorn, and the perpetual building of strawmen. Lacking arguments rooted in Scriptural logic or fact-intensive analysis of their opponent’s view, they often attempt to turn family reformers into objects of derision, scorn, and hatred—to objectify them (the very thing feminists rightly hate that men often wrongly do to women).
No doubt, that is precisely what the feministas will attempt against Dr. Baucham and the Botkin ladies as news of this groundbreaking documentary continues to spread, ultimately reaching about one-in-forty American homes later this year. In the end, however, I believe the power of the arguments presented by these anti-feminists will win the day. And the precious, Gospel-transformed testimonies of the fathers and daughters united will bring hope to many who are tired of walking in the filth of the sacred cows of feminism.
Cooking the Sacred Cows
The priests and priestesses of the 21st century would have us believe that the most sacred of our cultural holy cows come from the temples of feminism.
One such sacred cow is the notion that truly enlightened, responsible Christian parents should mortgage their homes to send their daughters to the carnival culture of college, to live for four years in co-ed dormitories, and under the tutelage of Babylonian high priests called professors, so that these blood-bought daughters can aspire to become the next generation of independent working women of the world. Another sacred cow is the notion that people either believe in sending daughters to college or they are small-minded, anti-education, woman-dominating bigots.
Incredibly, these mad-cow disease-infected sacred bovines of modern feminism have left the dung fields of their secular temple culture and have migrated in herds to the living rooms of our Christian community. There they dwell—mooing, snorting, and wreaking havoc on the peace of the Body of Christ.
Dr. Voddie Baucham, Anna and Elizabeth Botkin, Vision Forum Ministries, and thousands of Christians from around the country have reached the conclusion that the time has come to clean house and hold a barbeque. Return of the Daughters should prove to be a veritable banquet.
Out with the sacred cows of feminism! In with the holy daughters of Zion!
Return of the Daughters will premiere during the week of the Christian Filmmakers Academy and the San Antonio independent Christian Film Festival.