Mothers for a Christian Nation

Abstract

Abstract Believers of the American Quiverfull movement reject all forms of contraception. They promote having as many children as God is willing to give and raising these children to be righteous Christians, with the explicit purpose of creating a Christian nation. The movement has no central institutions: believers communicate online, through blogs and forums. This article investigates where the Quiverfull movement can be situated within the realm of American Christianity as well as its relation to modernity. By using Moojan Momen’s fundamentalism-liberalism spectrum to locate the movement on the map of Christianity, the article argues that the Quiverfull position can be best understood by relating its standpoints on gender and family politics to those of American evangelical fundamentalist churches. Yet Quiverfull stances do not entirely fit the fundamentalist frame. The Quiverfull focus on a biblical future, rather than a biblical past, sets this movement apart from evangelical fundamentalism. Though the Quiverfull movement is small now, its tactics and strategies might provide Christian fundamentalists with new perspectives on growth and the preservation of Christian morals. Rearticulating their biblical convictions online in modern ways, Quiverfull women are working towards a modernity that is transformed to be wholly Christian, one baby at a time.