Unlocking the Power of Homemakers: How the Heart of the Home Shapes Society and Our True Identity

“Homes are the springs among the hills, whose many streamlets, uniting, form like a great river, society, the community, the nation, the Church. If the springs run low the rivers waste; if they pour out bounteous currents the rivers are full. If the springs are pure the rivers are clear like crystal; if they are foul the rivers are defiled. A Curse upon homes sends a poisoning blight everywhere; a blessing sends healing and new life into every channel.”

-JR Miller, The Family

Woman as Executive

In my last post, Feminism: The Real War Against Women, I quoted an article in which one line has stuck with me and encapsulates so much truth:

“For the woman to be a ‘homemaker’ was to be an executive over the central nervous system of society.”

Pastor Wedgeworth goes on to say,

“The home used to be the place of oikonomia. As it lost that function, the notion that anyone would be stuck there became torment.”

We don’t understand homemaker

When a woman says, “I’m a homemaker“, most who hear her think, “laundry, cleaning toilets, changing diapers (which someone else could do just as well).”

Which is why if a young woman exiting high school answers the “What are you going to do?” question with, “Prepare for my profession as a homemaker”, her answer is received with shock and dismay.

Because we don’t understand home, much less what a “homemaker” should be.

Ponder the term…“The central nervous system of society.” (I like it even better than the overused and trite, “basic building block.”)

What happens when one’s nervous system is damaged? It’s the worse injury possible to a human body, and the most likely to result in death.

What is home?

But remove the “executor”–perhaps we could compare her to the nerves making it all happen–of the CNS, and what we have is a very dysfunctional and disabled body, a dysfunctional and disabled society.

Yes, there are many, many noble careers and professions. But to hail any more useful than the profession of “executor of the central nervous system of society” is to harm ourselves on a large, devastating scale, and to miss the most profound way to influence the world.

What is home, really? A lot. Too much for one post.

So I would like to, over the next few posts, unpack the details of what Wedgeworth meant:

“The home used to be a center of agriculture, economic affairs, and education….It was to be a master of arts. It was to be a farmer. It was to be a maker. It was to be a temple, a sacrament, a superlative.”

I hope you’ll join me because, as he ends his article, “Gone are the days when things can be decided by force. …We have to do it a different way. We must persuade. Indeed, we must woo.”

Part 2: Our True Identity