Rebekah’s Reviews > Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made > Status Update

Amway currently is in the news for settling with the FTC…

“The company’s astonishing growth, however had caught the eye of federal regulators; the FDA sued Nutrilite for ‘false and spurious claims’, and the FTC raised questions about its business practices. Deciding to strike out on their own, DeVos and Van Andel found ‘American Way’ in 1959, later shortening the name to Amway.”

“More significantly, the company did not consider saleswomen employees; this saved overhead costs, and the in the 1930s also enabled CPC (aka Avon) to dodge New Deal employee protections such as the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, and Social Security benefits. Other Direct Sales Organizations followed suit. Requiring workers to purchase merchandise for resale shifted risk to sellers…”

“Since they were not considered employees, they were not eligible for benefits and had no say in company decisions. (Betty Friedan likened Tupperware dealers to migrant workers.) […] To ascend the Tupperware hierarchy, women need to be part of the ‘Total Tupper’ family; when ‘executive status’ was achieved, it was husbands who represented the family unit.”

“Writing in Christianity Today, Leitch [Elliot’s 2nd husband] dismissed the whole conversation around women’s liberation as ‘stupid.’”

Sounds like something someone else we know would say.

From Pg. 142 “When invited to ask Jesus into her heart, Maynard [NYT writer] demurred, but she wondered if her reluctance might owe … more to [evangelical faiths] cultural trappings.”

“While Andelin had largely skirted the issue of sex, Morgan devoted a quarter of The Total Woman to teaching readers how to bless husbands in the bedroom. … Morgan’s advice paved the way for what would become standard evangelical teaching on sex. Three years after TTW appeared, Tim and Beverly LaHaye published The Act of Marriage….”

”In this way, a theology that promised success created perpetual demand, and Christian publishers were happy to keep up the supply.”

”Elliot’s ‘insider’ statue was now an open question. A Christian women’s organization canceled her speaking engagement. New invitations fell off. After one event, an angry man accused her of betraying everything Jim died for and claimed she was beyond redemption. Though No Graven Image sold well, Harper was hesitant to promote the book ‘for fear of estranging the religious audience.’”

“The fact that two of the most prayed-for missionaries in history could not set aside differences for the sake of the gospel was not lost on Elliot. She returned to the US a changed person. She no longer believed the that the words of scripture were always clear, or that obedience would lead to recognizable success. […] Elliot hadn’t abandoned scripture, She was taking the Bible seriously, with all its complexities.”