Nurturing the NationsReclaiming the Dignity of Women

in Building Healthy Cultures

The Reign of WomenThe Reign of WomenNurturers of NationsNurturers of Nations

“For the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules

the world.”

Lawyer & Poet

William Ross Wallace

Preview

• Be Not Conformed to this World

• The War Against Motherhood

• The Dismissed Passages!

• The Nature of Motherhood

• The Home: The Nursery of Nations

• Infecting the Market Place

• Infecting the Public Square

Conforming to the World!

“At every turn Christian women found that their biological, economic, and social roles were considered worthless. Men’s ministry, men’s money, men’s building and programs – these were the areas that mattered.”

Mary Pride

The Way Home

Mother World Vs. Money World

• Maternal Feminist• Biblical Worldview• Mother world – “care,

connectedness, inter-dependence, and the other values necessary for nurturing human beings and building human relationships.”

• Egalitarian Feminist• Secular Worldview• Money world –

“radical individualism, relentless work, the quest for material success, and speed.”

Motherhood is Time Wasted

“The idea that time spent with one’s child is time wasted is embedded in traditional economic thinking.... The extraordinary talents required to do the long-term work of building human character and instilling in young children the ability and desire to learn have no place in the economists’ calculations. Economic theory has nothing to say about the acquisition of skills by those who work with children; presumably there are none.”

Ann Crittenden, The Price of Motherhood

The Death of Motherhood!

“Role obliteration is the coming thing in evangelical, and even in fundamentalist, circles. If women can’t be women, by golly they will be men! All because two or more generations have grown up and married without even hearing that the Bible teaches a distinct role for women which is different from that of a man and just as important.”

Mary Pride

The Way Home

The Death of Motherhood – The Death of Nations

“Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries. There'll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands—probably…. it's merely a designation for a piece of real estate.”

Mark Steyn

The Death of Motherhood – The Death of Civilizations

• Global Fertility Leaders• Somalia 6.91• Niger 6.83• Afghanistan 6.78• Yemen 6.75

• Western Fertility Statistics

• USA 2.07• Ireland 1.87• New Zealand 1.79• Australia 1.76 • Canada 1.5• Germany/ Austria1.3• Russia/ Italy 1.2• Spain 1.1

The Fault Line in the USA

• "Replacement" fertility rate- 2.1 babies/woman

• USA 2.07

• Blue States (most secular) lowest birthrates (approaching European)

• Red States (most conservative) highest birthrates

1 Timothy 5:9-10, 14

• Older widows – godly characteristics:– faithful to her husband– well known for good deeds– bringing up children– showing hospitality– washing the feet of the saints– helping those in trouble – devoted to doing good deeds

1 Timothy 5:9-10, 14

• Younger widows– marry– have children – manage their homes - oikodespoteo

oikodespoteo

• Oikodespoteo: "guide the house,” “to rule a household, manage family affairs”

• This is the picture of the functions of a godly woman in Proverbs 31

• To be the queen of the manor!

Titus 2:3-5

Older women are to mentor younger women to:– be sober minded– love their husbands– love their children– be self-controlled and pure– be busy at home – “caring for the house, working at

home” – be kind – be subject to their [own] husband

The Nature of Motherhood

• There are millions of things that a woman is free to do

• There are only two things she is proscribed from doing

• There is one thing that she has been designed, above all else to do: nurture the next generation

• Women in the very fiber of their being have been made to nurture and nurse

The Meaning of Nurture

• Hebrew – kuwl, translated: feed, sustain, nourish, hold

• Greek (1st) – trepho, translated: feed, nourish, bring up

• entrepho – to nourish in: a person or a thing; metaphorically: to educate, form the mind

The Meaning of Nurture

• Greek (2nd) paideia – chastening, nurture, instruction, chastisement

• The whole training and education of children (which relates to the cultivation of mind and morals…). It also includes the training and care of the body

• Instruction which aims at increasing virtue

English Meaning of Nurture• To feed and cause to grow; to supply

with nutriment.• To support; to maintain by feeding.

Genesis 47• To supply the means of support and

increase; to encourage; as, to … nourish the virtues.

• To cherish; to comfort. James 5 • To educate; to instruct; to promote

growth in attainments. 1 Timothy 4

The Meaning of Nurse

• Hebrew – yanaq – translated: to suck, to nurse, nursing mother

• Greek – trophos: nurse– From the base trepho - nurture

The English Meaning of Nurse

• To tend, as infants; as, to nurse a child.• To suckle; to nourish at the breast.• To cherish; to foster; to encourage; to

promote growth in. We say, to nurse a feeble animal or plant.

• To manage with care and economy, with a view to increase; as, to nurse our national resources

Webster’s 1828

From Transcendent to Physical

• To nurture relates to the transcendent nature of being female

• To nurse is a physical manifestation of nurture

Nurture and Educate

• In the mother’s function of nursing and nurturing, is found the concept of education

• The words for nurse and nurture speak of “promoting growth,” “educate,” “instruct,” and “to build virtue.”

Education and Nation Building

• When God brought Israel out of bondage in Egypt, He was going to transform an impoverished and enslaved nation into a great nation.

• Paideia - chastening, nurture, instruction, chastisement – education was one of His major tools to build this nation.

Nation Building Deut. 4:4-8; Matthew 28:18-20

• Questions Set # 1:– What are the parallels in these passages?– For nations to be developed, what must they

be taught?

• Questions Set # 2:– What does God admonish in relation to His

laws?– What will obedience to God’s laws produce in

the nation of Israel? What will it reveal to other nations?

The Paideia Principle

• The purpose of paideia is to create a nation that is wise.

• Paideia builds a nation:– individual righteousness – economic sufficiency for all – lasting social peace– public justice even for the poorest of

the poor

Major Components of Education

• The bringing up, instruction and formation of manners in a child.

• Involves instruction and discipline

• The end of which is to: – Enlighten the understanding– Correct the temper– Form the manners and habits– Fit for usefulness in their station – calling

Responsibility for Paideia

• Read:– Set # 1 Proverbs 1:8; 6:20; 10:1– Set # 2 Proverbs 15:20; 17:25; 23:22

• Questions:– Where does the responsibility for a child’s

education rest?– Where do most societies place the

responsibility for education of children?

Maternal Feminists

• The feminists of the second half of the 19th century were homemakers and nurturers.

• They understood that their children would someday inherit the world and that they needed to be prepared for that day.

• They also understood that the home was the foundation for the health of the society.

Mothers Shape the Eternal Soul

“[T]he mothers of a civilized nation … [work], not on frail and perishable matter, but on the immortal mind, moulding and fashioning beings who are to exist for ever…. They work not on the canvas that shall perish or the marble that shall crumble into dust, but upon mind, upon spirit, which is to last for ever, and which is to bear, for good or evil, throughout its duration, the impress of a mother’s … hand.”

Daniel Webster

Mothering the World

“A woman’s place is in the home; and out of it whenever she is called on to guard those she loves and to improve conditions for them.”

Nellie McClung

Maternal Feminist

Lydia Sigourney

• American poet and educator

• 1852, published a series of Letters To Young Ladies

• She reminded women of their maternal calling to nurture and educate the future citizens and leaders of the nations.

Sigourney’s Opening Lines

“The mind of the present age, acting on the mind of the next, is an object of concern to every being endowed with intellect, or interested, through love or hope, in the welfare of the human race.”

Contrasting

• Maternal Feminist• Interest in ideas• Interest in the future• Interest in the entire

human family

• Modern Feminist• Interest in things• Interest in the present• Interest in the self

Instructing in Just Laws“Is it not important that the sex to whom Nature has entrusted the moulding [sic] of the whole mass of mind in its first formation should be acquainted with the structure and developments of mind? [sic] that they who are to nurture the future rulers of a prosperous people should be able to demonstrate, from the broad annal [sic] of history, the value of just laws and the duty of subordination?”

Commissioned to Light the Lamp of the Soul

“Is it not requisite that they, on whose bosom the infant heart must be cherished, should be vigilant to watch its earliest pulsations for good and evil? [sic] that they who are commissioned to light the lamp of the soul should know how to feed it with pure oil?” [italics mine]

The Theme of the Essay

“The natural vocation of females is to teach…. It is in the domestic sphere, in her own native province, that woman is inevitably a teacher…. Is not the infant in the cradle her pupil? Does not her smile give the earliest lesson to the soul? Does she not enshrine her own image in the sanctuary of the young child’s mind so firmly that no revulsion can displace, no idolatry supplant it?”

Be Intentional!

“Admitting, then, that whether she wills it or not, whether she even knows it or not, she is still a teacher, and perceiving that the mind in its most plastic state is yielded to her tutelage, it becomes a most momentous inquiry what she shall be qualified to teach…. Has she not power to impress her own lineaments on the next generation.”

A Mother’s Importance to the Community

“The good mother, the wise mother … is more important to the community than even the ablest man; her career is more worthy of honor and is more useful to the community than the career of any man, no matter how successful.”

Theodore Roosevelt

26th President of the United States

The Essence of Kingdom Culture

• Kingdom Culture

– Truth– Beauty– Goodness

• Cornerstone of paideia – Science– Art– Ethics

Preparing Citizens for Governing

“This influence is most visible and operative in a republic [where the power of the state rests in representatives elected by the people]. The intelligence and virtue of its every citizen [italics mine] have a heightened relative value. Its safety may be interwoven with the destiny of those whose birthplace is obscurity. The springs of its vitality are liable to be touched, or the chords of its harmony to be troubled, by the rudest hands.”

No Ordinary Children

• Every child has a name

• Every child has a purpose

• Every child has a story

• Every child has a place in HIStory

• Each child is unique!

Dr. Elizabeth Youmans

Mothers are Allies of Legislators

“Teachers under such form of government [Republic] should be held in the highest honour [sic]. They are the allies of legislators. They aid in regulating the atmosphere, whose incessant action and pressure causes the lifeblood to circulate, and return pure and healthful to the heart of the nation.”

The Educator of All Mankind

“Oh what unspeakable importance, then, is her education, who gives lessons before any other instructer [sic]; who preoccupies the unwritten page of being; who produces impressions which only death can obliterate; and mingles with cradle-dream what shall be read in eternity [italics mine]. Well may statesmen and philosophers debate how she may be best educated who is to educate all mankind.”

The Downfall of Greece & the Downfall of the Secular World

“The Ancient republics overlooked the value of the sex whose strength is in the heart. Greece … failed in appreciating their excellence….”

The Acanthus-leaf or the Corinthian Column?

The Downfall of Greece & the Downfall of the Secular World

“….If, in the brief season of youthful charm, she was constrained to admire woman as the acanthus-leaf of her own Corinthian capital, she did not discover how, like that very column, she was capable of adding stability to the proud temple of freedom. She would not be convinced that so feeble a hand [italics mine] might have aided to consolidate the fabric which philosophy embellished, and luxury overthrew.”

Only the Warrior is Counted Godlike

“Rome, notwithstanding her primeval rudeness, seems more correctly than polished Greece to have estimated the ‘weaker vessel.’ But still, wherever brute force of the warrior is counted godlike, woman is appreciated only as she approximates to sterner natures…”

The High Calling of Motherhood

“Sloth and luxury must have no place in her vocabulary. Her youth should be surrounded by every motive to application, and her maturity dignified by the hallowed office of rearing the immortal mind.”

Her Noble Service

“While her partner toils for his stormy portion of that power or glory from which it is her privilege to be sheltered, let her feel that in the recesses of domestick [domestic] [sic] privacy she still renders a noble service to the government that protects her, by sowing seeds of purity and peace in the hearts of those who shall hereafter claim its honours [sic] or control its destinies.”

A Mother’s “Kingly Powers”

“Her place is amid the quiet shades, to watch the little fountain ere it has breathed a murmur. But the fountain will break forth into a rill, and the swollen rivulet rush towards the sea; and who can be so well able to guide them in right channels as she who heard their first ripple, and watched them emerge like a timid stranger from their source, and had kingly power over those infant-waters, in the name of Him who caused them to flow?”

The Mother’s Commission

“And now, Guardians of Education, whether parents, preceptors, or legislators – you who have so generously lavished on women the means of knowledge – complete your bounty by urging her to gather its treasure with a tireless hand. Demand of her as a debt the highest excellence which she is capable of attaining. Summon her to abandon selfish motives and inglorious ease….

The Mother’s Commission

….Incite her to those virtues, which promote the permanence and health of nations. Make her accountable for the character of the next generation. Give her solemn charge in the presence of men and of angels. Gird her with the whole armour [sic] of education and piety, and see if she be not faithful to her children, her country, and her God.”

The Home, the Nursery of Nations

“… For the strength of a nation, especially of a republic nation, is in the intelligent and well-ordered homes of the people.”

The Cultural Mandate

• For imago Dei: female and male

• To steward God’s house

• To create culture and to build godly nations

Oikonomia

• This is the Greek word from which the word “economics” is derived.

• Meaning– Oikos – House– Nomia – Stewardship

• The house is God’s house and the imago Dei are the vice-regents or stewards of the house.

Contrasting Oikonomia

• Oikonomia• management of a

household so as to increase its value to all of its members over the long run

• Focus on benefiting the community

• Planted olive trees and built olive press

• Chrematistics• manipulation of

property and wealth so as to maximize short-term exchange values

• Focus on individual consumption

• Leased all the olive groves

World Bank’s Conclusion

“…this means that in the wealthiest countries, human capital accounts for three-quarters of the producible forms of wealth.”

Conscientious Mothers

“Without conscientious mothers, there would be no economic man. … Conscientious mothers, motivated by feelings of compassion and love, nurture, protect, and train children for adulthood.”

Ann Crittenden

The Price of Motherhood

Conscientious Mothers

“Conscientious mothers, in other words, are the contemporary practitioners of oikonomia: the building and preserving of long-term communal value that used to be the essence of economics.”

Ann Crittenden

The Price of Motherhood

Motherhood – The Foundation of a Nation’s Economic Health

“If most of our national prosperity reflects the productivity of our human capital, then the people who provide primary care to children are the single most important source of our most valuable economic assets. … Conscientious mothers are key players in the drama of economic growth, the stars who never receive top billing.”

Ann Crittenden

The Price of Motherhood

Individual Self-Government

“All societies must be governed in some way or other. The less they have stringent State Government, the more they must have individual self-government.” [italics mine]

Robert Winthrop (1809-1894) American Statesman

The Principle of Self-Government

“The Christian principle of self-government is God ruling internally from the heart of the believer. In order to have true liberty, man must WILLINGLY (voluntarily) be governed INTERNALLY by the Spirit and Word of God rather than by external forces. Government is first internal (causative), then extends outwardly (effect).”

Dr. Elizabeth Youmans

The Christian Principle of Self-Government

Self-Government “ We have staked the whole future of

American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

James Madison “Father of the U.S. Constitution”

4th President of the U.S.

Moral Chains

“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; …. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power be placed somewhere…. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

British Statesman and political philosopher

Four Spheres of Government

God

Family Church Civil Society

IndividualSelf-Government

Mothers – The Teachers of the Human Race

“It is generally admitted that public liberty, and the perpetuity of a free constitution, rest on the virtue and intelligence of the community which enjoys it. How is that virtue to be inspired, and how is that intelligence to be communicated?.... Mothers are, indeed, the affectionate and effective teachers of the human race.”

Daniel Webster