Michael Pearl, Extreme Child Discipline - To Train Up Your Child
A child is beaten with a plumbing supply line for seven straight hours, with periodic breaks only for family prayer. In another family, a girl is unresponsive to the CPR efforts of the officer on the scene – she lied stripped naked, malnourished, and hypothermic. Perhaps you remember these stories, and their connection to one another.
Below I have all four parts of an Anderson Cooper interview with Michael Pearl, author of To Train Up Your Child and head of No Greater Joy Ministries – the teachings apparently upheld by this family and others whose actions have killed their children.
I first heard of this book a couple of years ago while in the student lounge at seminary – and no, while seminary students are typically spankers, it did not come up in a laudable conversation. These particular stories were not in the conversation, but I was told by one concerned student about this book and the odd (at times, extreme) advice given by Pearl and the poor theological convictions underpinning the text. He was perplexed because several families at the church were buying and rabidly promoting the book. I was told never to get the book for my own parenting library, which seemed like sound advice.
Well, I forgot about the conversation until I turned on the radio today. They were talking about this interview: