Who wouldn't like him...he's a wonderful guy!

Unfortunately, Christian child-rearing "experts" tend to lure people in with their charm, wit, and seemingly happy and functional families. In fact, the strange, but frequent plea, from Tripp supporters here in Seattle was:

"Why don't you come and see him? You could hear what he's really like! You'll see that he's a wonderful guy!"

Clearly, there was a confidence that Tripp's personal charm would override his written beliefs and fix all misunderstandings.

The problem is that the Christian community is rife with parenting experts who achieve a cult-of-personality status because worried and insecure new parents look to them for answers.

These teachers assure parents that by following their advice, no matter how repugnant to the average person, they can guarantee the result will be an obedient child and godly adult. They promise that families will be free from the scourge of teenage rebellion and the embarrassment of children who "turn out" badly. They will produce submissive housewife daughters and sons who go into the ministry.

Although these teachers dispense advice that is quite similar to previous generations of Christian parenting gurus, each new generation of parents seems to be convinced otherwise.

Faced with the difficult task of raising a child, they rush into the arms of various "experts", many of whom dispense harsh advice with a folksy arrogance.

Sadly, by the time parents realize that this advice can harm their children and does not guarantee their children's "success", it is too late.

Take the example of Reb Bradley, author of the notoriously harsh parenting book, Child Training Tips. The Bradleys' technique was one of extreme control over their children, including physical punishment to enforce their dominance. Their approach to children is endlessly adversarial, seeking and creating opportunities to "subdue" the will of a child at all times.

Yet, the Bradleys were extremely popular conference speakers, known for their funny and warm presentations and what appeared to be a happy family. They sold many books and recordings of their presentations.

However, recently, Bradley wrote an article exposing himself as a gullible victim of his own advice. Eventually, when he could no longer dominate the boy, he kicked his teenage son out of his house. He watched a few of his other children rebel and unravel once they were free from his complete dominance in the home.

He notes:
http://www.familyministries.com/HS_Crisis.htm
"As each of my three oldest children reached adulthood I was shocked to discover that they did not conform exactly to the values I had sought to give them. They had retained much of what I had given, but not everything. Instead of being perfect reflections of my training, they each turned out to be individuals who had their own values and opinions. I had wrongly thought them to be exactly like wet clay, me being the potter with total control over what they would become. I was not prepared for their individuality, nor was I ready to see them as fleshly beings."

Interestingly, his disappointment is largely for his wife and himself and his comments sympathize with other similarly disappointed parents who spanked and spanked with rods and spanked babies and endlessly controlled and isolated and limited and dominated their children.

Strangely absent is an apology to his and other people's children who endured a painful childhood and were denied many opportunities for growth and independence because of his advice. Those children's relationship skills, educations and decision-making capabilities were all stunted in an effort to produce a person who would mirror their parents' conception of godliness, whatever the cost.

I give this example because it displays the danger of allowing a guru's charm to override the implications of what he or she is actually saying. That is why I quote Tripp's book and do not wax sentimental about his charm as an individual.

Mars Hill parents saw Ted Tripp once. The books they bought will be reread over and over as problems surface. They are young and convinced they have stumbled on a child-rearing formula that the rest of us fools cannot possibly understand. That's why I'm worried.

Some good news and some bad news...

I want to make a belated recognition of the protesters and the press coverage they generated regarding the Mars Hill Tripp conference. Incredible.

http://westseattleblog.com/blog/?p=10636

Believe it or not, peaceful protesters were spat upon and yelled at by parents attending this conference and demonstrators were hounded on public property by church security.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008189313_marshill19m0.html

http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/09/ted_tripp_the_paradox_and_how_to_wield_t

http://www.myballard.com/2008/09/16/controversial-author-coming-to-mars-hill-church/

http://www.westseattleherald.com/articles/2008/09/26/news/local_news/news05.txt

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/379884_robert20.html

By and large, Seattle citizens have responded very negatively towards Tripp's harsh teachings and the endorsement by Mars Hill of baby spanking and the infliction of pain and fear on young children's minds and bodies.

And Mars Hill? They intend to go right on promoting Ted Tripp's book in a church full of young, impressionable parents:

http://shoreline.marshillchurch.org/2008/09/19/praxis-in-shepherding-your-kids/

Children’s Ministry Director:Matt Grante. shorelinekids@marshillchurch.orgt. 206.816.3742

The Shoreline campus seems to be affectionately known as the "Mars Hill Baby Factory", so there will be a lot of babies and toddlers there to receive Ted Tripp punishments.

What you and Tripp do to a toddler could have permanent consequences

"Spank. When I picked up this book, my son was about to turn 18 months old and Justin and I were thinking through how to biblically discipline a toddler. Tedd Tripp reinforced our belief that we would be harming our child if we did not spank him. His book includes a detailed list of how to properly go about spanking, which we now have posted on the fridge in shortened form. It’s our cheat sheet (novice spankers need help!). The most important point Tripp makes here is that spanking must never be done out of anger. Rather, it is done because we represent God as the authority in our children’s lives, and we must bring them back in line with his will."

http://www.buzzardblog.com/buzzard_blog/2008/06/tedd-tripp-shep.html.

The article was written by a young mother who found Shepherding a Child's Heart to be "helpful and convincing". She cozily notes that she has already begun spanking her son, barely two years old, and jokes about her "cheat sheet" of spanking instructions from Tripp's book on the fridge.

Here is a quote for this mother who is choosing to inflict painful spankings on her son’s buttocks:

“Even without sexual motives on the part of the punisher, spanking can interfere with a child's normal sexual and psychological development. Because the buttocks are so close to the genitals and so multiply linked to sexual nerve centers, slapping them can trigger powerful and involuntary sensations of sexual pleasure. This can happen even in very young children, and even in spite of great, clearly upsetting pain.”

http://parentinginjesusfootsteps.org/sxdangers.html

My question to this mother is whether her son, like all humans, has buttocks which are close to his genitals and which are linked to sexual nerve centers.

Is she aware that painfully slapping her toddler’s buttocks can stimulate sexual nerve centers?

Is she aware that spanking a naked erogenous zone on her son’s body could derail his normal sexual development and cast him into the enormous community of people who have lost normal sexual function in favor of a paraphilia inflicted on them by their own parents?

Does she own her son in such a way that she is entitled to take risks with his sexual and emotional health?

Many Christians view sexuality as an act of will. Perhaps this is the reason that they choose to ignore evidence that spanking pre-pubescent children can set a fetish in them for life. Perhaps they believe that teenagers simply can decide to be sexually normal after being abnormally stimulated by childhood spankings.

But what is the reality? Do people decide to have an abnormal fixation on spanking? Can they be cured? How does this affect their life from puberty onwards?

Tripp: a paddle will spread the "shock" of the smacks over a wide area

I wonder how often Ted Tripp goes to a city and finds the citizens so ready to defend the safety and well-being of the city's children?

In only a few weeks, a small group of determined individuals organized several demonstrations, contacted multiple press sources, facilitated and inspired multiple articles, discussions and blogs.
To those people: Please accept my thanks and admiration. I don't think this could happen anywhere but Seattle.

I want to share some excerpts from the Slog article, which covered the Ted Tripp conference: Ted Tripp, the Paradox, and How to Wield the Power of Christ Against Your Children

http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/09/ted_tripp_the_paradox_and_how_to_wield_t

"Tripp’s image was projected on four giant screens as he condemned modern society for being “obsessed with equality” and refusing to accept the authority of God. "

For those of you who don't know, Ted Tripp is a strong complementarian and is involved in the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. In a nutshell, he is part of the movement obsessed by hierarchy which teaches the dominance of men and the submission of women. This movement teaches that women are less inclined to rational and analytical thought than men. (Don't argue, Mar Hill members, or I will be forced to supply you with a direct quotation.)

Part and parcel of this teaching is that children are part of the hierarchy, just above the family dog, and must be made submissive to their parents at the earliest time possible. According to Tripp, this is about the time they go home from the hospital maternity ward.

And, naturally, that will require some pain to be inflicted!

"His directions, in contrast, were much more specific: “remove [the child’s] drawers,” because “we don’t want the spanking to be lost in the fabric of the pants.”

Of course, we already read that Ted wants people to inflict pain upon the child's bare skin in his book. Once again, we have the odd reference to "drawers" which must be Tripp's attempt to be funny about the infliction of said pain. Because hurting a child is funny, huh, Ted?

"Smack him, and make sure you use a paddle that

I didn't know Tripp recommended using an implement. This makes spanking a baby or toddler much more physically dangerous, because the parent cannot feel how hard the strikes are. I'm sorry, Mars Hill babies.

“spreads the shock over the wide area.”

This sounds somewhat like an interrogator discussing how to cause maximum pain without leaving any obvious or incriminating marks in the prison staff lounge. Calling the impact of the smack a "shock" is a very strange violent way of referring what we are supposed to believe is a loving spanking, isn't it?

Tomorrow, Ted Tripp will commence his conference at Mars Hill Church, speaking to numerous young parents. It will be another business deal for Tripp, one which will line his pockets with a $3,000.00 speaking fee and give him and his wife a free vacation to Seattle.

In his wake, he will leave a residue of poison.

He will teach parents to rely heavily on spanking to discipline children, toddlers and even infants unable to walk or talk.

He will teach parents to spank children and babies based on their perceived motivations. He will teach parents that the primary motivations of their children are dark and fallen.

He will teach a seedy, ritualized form of spanking that will include baring the child, holding the child close and slapping the buttocks until the child cries with pain.

He will teach that the spanking process must be done over and over until a state of "submission" is reached. As the quotation below explains, the child will submit out of fear of pain:

"...the fear induced by corporal punishment belongs primarily to none of these categories. It is essentially and pre-eminently the fear of physical pain. It is the fear inevitably associated with suffering of a degrading, deliberate and debasing nature. Fear which is associated with and restricted to physical pain, as a punitive factor, possesses no true reformative power... "

The child which has been whipped into obedience is a pitiful object By George Ryley Scott From The History of Corporal Punishment (1996) Pgs. 241-243

If you are signed up for the conference, please consider not going. If you go to the conference, please consider not taking Tripp's advice.

Links:
http://www.q13fox.com/pages/local_news
http://www.youtube.com/user/paulaflowe
http://www.gentlechristianmothers.com/
http://parentinginjesusfootsteps.org/
http://stoptherod.net/

The costs we are responsible for...

(Please keep updated concerning the upcoming protest demonstration at Mars Hill Church this weekend: http://groups.google.com/group/stopthehitting ).

What are the costs of hosting Ted Tripp here in Seattle at Mars Hill Church?

Let's check his website:

http://www.gfchazleton.org/ministry/seminar_host_info.htm#promotion

2. What costs am I responsible for?

The seminar host is responsible to cover the following costs:

■ $3,000.00 speaking fee

■ Travel
- We will procure the airline ticket.

■ One night's lodging

- We ask that you procure the lodging since you will know the most about accommodations in your
area. Due to his frequent traveling, Pastor Tripp prefers to stay in a motel if possible. Pastor Tripp
usually arrives Friday in the late afternoon or early evening, and departs immediately after the seminar
concludes.

■ Checks must be made payable to Grace Fellowship Church.

- You will be invoiced the week after your seminar for the balance of $2,500.00 ($3,000 - $500 deposit)
plus travel costs.

It strikes me that he has not included all the costs on this list.

Here's some other costs:

1. Children will pay pain, fear, bewilderment and anxiety. Some will pay their sexual and/or emotional health. Some may pay their physical health.

2. Parents will pay the price of their compassion and parental instincts not to hurt their babies and children. Some will pay their healthy relationships with their children.

3. Extended families and friends will pay their unity and peace to Ted Tripp, as relationships are frayed by disagreements over his punitive practices. How many in the Christian community have seen grandparents alienated from their children and grandchildren (I have), or have seen long-time friends painfully divided over punitive discipline techniques (I have).

Please check the articles on the "Parenting in Jesus' Footsteps" website:

http://parentinginjesusfootsteps.org/

Here's the testimony of a woman who got Tripp-like spankings, and what they cost her:
http://www.nospank.net/carol2.htm

"Mother firmly believed in spankings as discipline for her children because they "worked" so well. All she needed to do if my behavior displeased her was say, "Carol, do you want a spanking?" and that would frighten me into obeying her. And if she told me to do the dishes and I didn't do them very well and got spanked for it you can bet those dishes were unusually spotless for the next couple of days. But spankings also left me with lifelong emotional and sexual problems that I still don't know how to fix despite years of therapy. My mother got an obedient daughter and cleaner dishes and I got a lifelong mess inside me."

A Post I Wish I Didn’t Have to Write: Tripp, Intimacy, Spanking, Submission and Little Girls

(If you are a troll who has been sexually harmed by spanking, I beg you not to troll on this blog.)

Watching parents and their babies and children at Mars Hill today, I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Mark Driscoll encouraged parents to register for the Ted Tripp conference, lauding him as an excellent parenting speaker. I am afraid of what will happen to those babies and children if Mars Hill parents take Tripp’s advice.

I have blogged a lot about babies, but it is now time to find out what our excellent parenting expert teaches about spanking children, and I’m going to focus on little girls, one of the most vulnerable groups for sexual predation.

Let’s say that a father is spanking his little girl. Here is the process that Tripp recommends:

1. The father takes the little girl to a private place.
2. He strips the little girl of her pants or pulls up her dress. He pulls down her underpants exposing her bare buttocks (and most likely genitals)
3. He lays her across his lap. We will talk about why he recommends this in a moment.
4. He slaps her naked buttocks painfully with his hand.
5. He spanks her until the little girl is “sweet” and “submissive”. Perhaps he will ask her if she is going to be “sweet” now, or if she needs to be slapped on her naked buttocks again.
6. The two hug and proclaim their love for one another.

No one can deny that this is what Tripp teaches. It is stated in his book, Shepherding a Child’s Heart.

Tripp recommends baring the child in order to increase the pain of the spanking. But the
Stop the Rod website asserts that Tripp teaches: “God demands that parents spank bare bottoms, even infants, and that this brings ‘intimacy’.”

Tripp recommends putting the little girl in a position of physical closeness on the father’s lap in order to “put the spanking in context of your physical relationship” (page 151, Shepherding a Child’s Heart). This disturbing statement would be at home on an adult sexual bondage website and we all know it.

Out of the hundreds of men who are being given this advice at Mars Hill Church, do you think there are some for which this combination of purposeful exposure, closeness, slapping and seeking submissiveness of little girls will be a problem?

Is it possible that practicing of Ted Tripp’s spanking techniques will trigger something in a certain percentage of fathers who have latent inclinations that they do not even know about?

Many people who are “not really opposed” to corporal punishment imagine spanking to be a perfunctory swat on the backside of a child who just ran in the street or lit the house on fire.

But Ted Tripp’s spanking method is a ritualized process, which emphasizes bare buttocks, physically positioning the little girl to be in contact with the father’s body and the goal of the little girl’s loving submission to the father at the end of the process.

Mars Hill will be exposing these teachings to hundreds of fathers of little girls next week. Are you as worried as I am?