The Quiverfull Delusion

Many American Christians are adherents of the Quiverfullmovement, which is one of the most oppressive and evil ideas to have ever used Christianity as a means of spreading. Its adherents consider themselves Christians, while in reality they are showing God just how much they despise his creation and the other people with whom they, whether they like it or not, share it.

The Quiverfull Delusion is not a Christian idea. It is based on Old Testament concepts that might actually have made sense thousands of years ago but which are not, in fact, incorporated into New Testament law. There are two main ideas on which the delusion is based. First, Genesis 1 has God telling humans to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth.” Second, there is a psalm that says that having lots of sons makes a man happy “when his quiver is full of them,” as if they were arrows.

Let us suppose, for the moment, that the Genesis and Psalm references are valid for modern life. Maybe God really did want humans to be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth. Well, there are over seven billion people in the world, so we have already filled the Earth. Time to do something else already. The way I demonstrate this idea to my students is to fill a glass with water. Once all of the students agree that the glass is full, I proceed to pour more water into the glass so that the water spills all over the floor. It makes a mess. God did not command humans to overfill the Earth and to create a far worse mess than the one that I created. And what about the Psalm reference to a quiver full of sons? A quiver is something light that you can carry on your back. The psalmist did not say, happy is the man who tries to pull along a quiver that is as big as an elephant.

The Quiverfull Delusion uses religion as an excuse to afflict the Earth (which religious people supposedly believe is God’s creation) with resource depletion and pollution. High population densities also make conflict nearly inevitable.

The Quiverfull Delusion also uses religion as an excuse to afflict women. The man is happy if his quiver is full and that itching sensation in his dick gets relieved. The woman? Shut yo mouth and spread yo legs. I know that is not a Bible verse, but it is, in fact, the fundamental scripture upon which the Quiverfull Delusion is based. The ultimate power of the delusion is that men have convinced many women that they want this. It is psychological tyranny, carried out by men who pretend to be shocked at sexual immorality but whose prime directive in life is unlimited sperm production.

As you might expect, the best insight into this question, as into most questions, comes from Marx. Groucho Marx, that is. When he interviewed a woman for his TV show You Bet Your Life, she said she had seven kids. “I love my husband,” she said. Groucho said, “I love my cigar but I take it out of my mouth once in a while.”