I was working the polls on election day, handing people ballots and explaining how to fill them out properly. I made it my mission to come up with interesting uses for the removable tabs and entertain people for the 30 seconds that I had their captive attention. When 7 pm hit, people came in looking grim. “Did you hear about the polls?” they’d ask. “No,” I said, “but don’t tell me, I need to get through the next hour.” I guarded my polling location from news of what was happening because we still had to close – I still had to close – and needed to be able to focus without dealing with the sheer terror of reality.
I checked Twitter as I got in my Lyft back home. Shock bombarded and horror filled me as I scrolled through my timeline. I hoped the panic would vanish once the CA votes were counted. It didn’t. Slowly the new reality set in – the one where I wake up horrified and lose more of my basic human rights every day. The one where I wake up and am reminded that I was prepared for this, I saw this coming, I know what’s happening.
I grew up in the far-right evangelical conservative (Christofascist) movement; specifically, I was homeschooled and my parents were part of a subculture called Quiverfull, whose aim is to outbreed everyone for Jesus. I spent my teen years being a political activist. I was taught by every pastor I encountered that it was our job as Christians to outbreed the secularists (anyone not a far-right evangelical Protestant) and take over the government through sheer numbers. I was part of TeenPact, Generation Joshua and my local Teenage Republicans (TARS).
When the Tea Party rose in 2009, that was my culture. The Tea Party was step one. I was laying the groundwork for those elections in 2006. These people didn’t come out of the blue like it seemed. This plan, this Christofascist takeover of the US government, has been in the works for decades. When evangelical conservatism started becoming popular and more mainstream around the 1970s, the foundation was being laid for the tragedy playing out right now.
Evangelical conservatives started taking over their local republican parties and founding organizations like Operation Rescue, Homeschool Legal Defense Association, Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, just to name a few.
Via hslda.org
Michael Farris founded HSLDA in 1983 as a way to ensure that homeschooling was legal, but what he’s been striving for is the wild west. His organization is trying to keep homeschooling away from any interference so the children he trains through his sister organization, Generation Joshua, would be able to fly under the radar. Generation Joshua started in 2003, primarily catering to children homeschooled by extremely religious rightwing adults. Its purpose was to train us to fight in what the Christofascists have been calling the “Culture Wars.” It’s a loose and ambiguous term that basically means anything or anyone that doesn’t align with this very specific view of Christianity must not be allowed to continue.
Mission statements of GenJ, TeenPact, NCFCA, CFC
How do you do that? Well, you overturn Roe v. Wade, Griswold v. Connecticut, Brown v. Board of Education and Bob Jones v. The United States. Each of these decisions currently protects reproductive rights or non-discrimination based on race. As retribution, you amend the Constitution to discriminate against queers, trans people, women and people of color. Then, you make laws legislating morality. The only way to do this is to infiltrate the government; so Generation Joshua, TeenPact and other organizations exist to indoctrinate and recruit homeschooled youth who have ample free time to participate in politics. The biggest resources for teaching civil discourse are the National Christian Forensics and Communications Association and Communicators for Christ (since renamed Institute for Cultural Communicators). Through these programs we learned how to argue effectively. As students, we were taught critical thinking skills but given only a narrow view of what was acceptable to argue for. We were, after all, being trained to take over the country for Christ, literally. We knew how to perform logical gymnastics about abortion, Christianity and any evangelical talking point you could throw at us.
When we showed up to city council, local political party meetings and tours of the Capitol we asked intelligent questions, were respectful and had a vested interest in how our local political machine ran. We impressed every government official and staff member with our questions, earnesty and demeanor. In short, we were sneaky and polite Trojan horses; we had an agenda. Yes, even as 15-year-olds. It was forcefully handed to us by the adults in our lives who had been preparing for this since before we were born.
I watched the Tea Party takeover and was surprised no one saw it coming. After all, this was part of the plan. Trump being elected is also part of the plan, although not Trump specifically; the true goal is Pence.
Christofascists have been wanting someone like Pence in the White House and, until now, didn’t have a way to get one in. They know Trump is easily manipulated and will change his mind with the wind if it makes him feel more powerful and famous. Trump couldn’t care less about policy, a fact he’s made quite obvious. The Right has given a tyrant power and fame; he will do whatever they want him to do in order to keep it. This way they can sneak Pence in on a piggyback while filling Congress with even more evangelical conservative Republicans. Compared to Trump’s abrasive and terrifying behavior, Pence seems much less threatening. This is not the case. Pence has a proven track record of legalizing discrimination and acting against women and marginalized people. Those of us who didn’t leave the far Right are being elected to federal positions or are taking over states and cities. With Pence in office, even the reasonable-seeming incumbents – who have been and are still at the mercy of the Tea Party – are growing more bold in their attempts to further the Christofascist agenda: To Take Back The Country For Christ.
This was the mantra we heard. This was our mission. This is how we were to win: Outbreed, Outvote, Outactivate. Every class, every event, every pastor or guest speaker reiterated this, choosing to risk the 501c3 status of their church to push their agenda. To take back the country for Christ, we needed to outbreed, outvote and outactivate the other side, thus saith The Lord.
Meanwhile, mainstream Democrats shake their heads in confusion and fundamentally misunderstand the meaning of grassroots organizing, which is where all of this happens. Republicans have a vast network of homeschoolers that HSLDA and others have given them to tap into as a source of free labor. Republicans in state governments are lax on homeschooling oversight because their Get Out The Vote base is made of homeschoolers thanks to Generation Joshua and Teenpact.
Via Generation Joshua
Homeschoolers may make up a small portion of students as a whole, but they are loud, have time and can be activated with one email blast. When HR6 was brought to Congress in 1994, homeschool families realized their power. With an alert from HSLDA, homeschool families flooded the lines of Congress demanding that they exclude private, home and religious schools from the bill. They succeeded. The reach of HSLDA to activate the homeschool community has only grown since then. We are the secret no one knew about and it’s time to come to light. Homeschoolers are a huge reason for the evangelical conservative takeover we’ve seen over the last decade or so; it would be a mistake to write them off.
Self-proclaimed constitutional lawyer Michael Farris, the founder of HSLDA, and revisionist historian David Barton have spent years twisting their interpretation of the U.S. Constitution as some kind of God-breathed document into the minds of parents and their families who will just believe what they say because they’re “Good Christians.” They don’t necessarily practice critical thought, are dissuaded from looking at the Constitution themselves without a law degree and don’t bother to read history from all angles, relying only on the whitewashed Christian versions of the Constitution and our founding.
If you’re thinking that declaring the nation a Christian one and turning into a theocracy is a ludicrous idea that has no basis in our constitution, you’d be correct. However, Christofascists have imbibed this theory and now believe it is their Christian duty to save the country from its secular ways in the name of religious freedom. In this worldview, any non-Christian (including Catholics and Jews) is doomed to eternal torture if they don’t convert. Thus, we are all going to hell in a handbasket if “good Christians” don’t save the country from the liberals who think people should just “do what they want regardless of what God says.” Their religious extremism is worse than any group they fearmonger over, but the irony is lost on them.
Evangelical conservatives are convinced that their agenda will save the country from God-ordained death. Pat Robertson and many others believe that natural disasters are sent from God specifically to punish America for letting marginalized people have rights and be alive. This motivates them to do everything in their power to “save” the country from the ungodly – even, maybe especially – if it involves stripping others of the freedoms they deem to be against God’s wishes. They don’t care if their war for Christ hurts humans they see as living wrongfully, because they are capital “R” Right and that’s what matters. Their Rightness, they believe, comes from God Himself. Their beliefs are callous and without empathy, prioritizing dogma over people. These beliefs are dangerous. Many of us who have come out as queer, trans, or even merely gone to college, have lost family because of this worldview. A single powerful person who is convinced of their own Rightness with no thought of introspection is dangerous. We now have a government full of them.
It is important to understand that they are coming at this from a place of passion and dedication. They have a fire in their bellies. While it looks like a bunch of backwoods hillbillies playing with guns to anyone outside, they are resilient and in it for the long haul. They want America to succeed, but in their America there isn’t room for anyone unlike them. There’s a reason Trump’s mantra stuck despite his deplorable behaviour. They think America was founded on conservative Protestant ideals because that’s what they’ve been fed, because that’s what aligns with their interpretation of the Bible and they will not go down without a fight.
They are scared of anything newer than the 18th century; you can’t logic the fear of change away from people. If you do no research and are instead predisposed to the belief that older is better, it’s easy to think the Puritans were good and wholesome. People wore funny hats, were conservative and hated science. Church was basically mandatory and women weren’t allowed to speak or be autonomous people. These are all comforting things for people who feel as though the world is against them because of their religion, rather than the fact that their views and actions are bigoted, racist and actively harmful to millions of other humans. You cannot be this version of evangelical and not force your beliefs on others. Failing to convert is a failure on you and your dedication to your faith. This religion is based entirely on fear; you can’t argue away a fear so intense that it hardens you to anyone unlike you or your tribe.
They will not be won over with sit-downs and respectability politics. This kind of dogma cannot be reasoned with; it must be fought against. Trying to convince them to come to the other side is a waste of time unless they’ve already started on that journey themselves. The ones in power, actively harming our lives, are past this point. We can only fight back.
The revolution has come and we are the resistance.
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Well, that was far and away the most horrifying thing I’ve read in what has essentially been a year of daily horrors.
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Wow!! I think this is a little extreme, biased and a huge stereotype.. 1 st… not all homeschoolers are Christian… in fact, many are liberal, many fight to protect these very rights you are claiming “homeschoolers” are trying to take away.. I am Christian and a member of hslda and have had none of the experiences you speak of in church or with hslda. This is really your personal opionion and not factual. We have enough stereotypes to overcome, we dint need a political one too
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I’m glad you’re having a positive experience, but some of the stuff HSLDA’s lobbied for hurt a lot of people. HSLDA argued against the ratification of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and Farris was instrumental in rejecting the ERA because he said it would lead to gay marriage
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HSLDA and Michael Farris are among the most significant reasons why we’ve never ratified the UN’s Rights of the Child, too.
They’ve defended homeschoolers who locked their children up in cages and called them “heroes.” The sent out fear-mongering materials about CPS that were outright falsehoods that kept most of the kids I knew who were being abused afraid of ever reporting. These kids who were being beaten with actual cricket bats saw the HSLDA warnings about CPS on their fridge and thought the CPS would be worse than being violently beaten multiple times a day.
Glad you’re not experiencing the HSLDA negatively, but they’ve been the direct cause behind a lot of suffering and your positive experience doesn’t negate that at all.
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Ok most of the concepts and subjects of controversy described here I’m pretty familiar with, but what exactly is CPS?
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Child Protective Services
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Whoops, replace “your personal opinion” with “your personal experience.” You have an experience that differed from the writer’s, and both of your experiences are valid.
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Just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it’s not true. Have you read all the Court Reports? Have you heard Michael Farris or any of the pther HSLDA leaders speak? Because I have.
I’ve been in audience as Farris talked about Christian homeschoolers needing to outbreed the rest of the population so homeschooled kids could take over government. I spent years reading my parent’s copy of the Court Report, as HSLDA charted out their plans and as they spelled out the discriminatory intent behind the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which Farris wrote. I’ve linked to documentation below.
I’ve also been in the audience where Farris wrote off his homeschool alumni critics as atheists and open homosexuals, which was supposed to be enough proof to the audience of conservative Christian homeschool moms that we were not to be listened to.
That’s what HSLDA is, that’s who Michael Farris is, and they’re using homeschool parents and children to achieve a political goal of theocratic domination of American politics.
http://kathrynbrightbill.com/2015/03/31/original-rfra-drafter-admits-discriminatory-intent/
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Yes ! Ty , completely agree
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I grew up very similarly in homeschooled fundamentalism and HSLDA and Michael Ferriss were daily parts of my environment. Very similarly to you I escaped into rationality and a lifestyle of kindness. Kudos to you for standing up to these forces. Sadly redolent of Maajid Nawaz’s memoirs. How hypocritical of the conservatives to create fear about Muslims infiltrating government when it is they who are doing so. I hope reason, truth, and kindness win in this great struggle at the turn of the century. Perhaps Yeats was onto something, and fascism is that strange new beast that slouches round every century. Solidarity!
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Right? That was excellent and terrifying, kind of like “Going Clear.”
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Damn- well said! I’m a 34 year old woman who “left the church” 17ish years ago. I can attest to this young lady’s experience. While not homeschooled, many kids in our church were. I have family that believe this almost to a T. There is no reasoning with someone who owns the Truth. For reals. This shit is as real as it is scary because now they own almost every aspect of our federal government and many of our local governments. But yet….I’m going to fuck’n March and call and write and speak openly about how this isn’t Gids love- this is their Bigotry.
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and NOT the majority of we, Christians, who have a personal relationship with God. We may home school, but for good reasons!
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Apparently she had a miserable time in that home. So sorry to hear it! Just want to say that I am one of those home-school parents, and belong to some of those organizations, and she paints an extreme and in many ways false and destructive portrait. Though I certainly grant her her viewpoint. Somehow amid all this fascist foment we manage to visit the old folks home, build houses for ourselves, our children, and others of our faith and not of our faith, read books and magazines and the Bible and other “bibles” usually to critique them (but hey, If they have truth, let them speak…) grow our own food, and other people’s, raise multiple usually happy (sorry Kieryn) children to be kind and hardworking children of God. We have a vision, we act on it, we train our children, and we generally don’t try to interfere with other people except in our God-given role as citizens. No we don’t want laws that allow or worse yet make us fund abortion. Sorry it’s abhorrent. Yes we want laws that promote order and decency and frankly you dont want to live in the dystopia that video games make seem so wild and fun. Believe me, please. HSLDA while very activist and driven, is not some racist engine that you try to spin it into. It is anti-homosexual lifestyle, and that’s just what you get with a literal reading of the Bible. Sorry. No one there, least of all Michael Farris, nor Mike Pence, wants to hurt, imprison or even really discriminate against self-proclaimed homosexuals. They just push against the homosexual lifestyle being flaunted, promoted, and or forced on their community. It’s a painful tension in America right now. No doubt. But as for me and my church, we like love and kindness too, and will cleave to those when and if times get tough, and will reject and fight violent fascism right along with you Kieryn if it comes to that– which I do not believe it will. Let’s do our best to get along. Forgive your parents and treat them with as much kindness as you can muster. God is at your side!
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Nah, I owe nothing to the people who abused .E or people who defend them and think I should be punished for my queerness, thanks tho
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Also, thank you very much for proving my entire point.
I can’t just _get along_ with people who think I should be dead/punished/tortured because I’m queer and trans, and who say that as though it’s matter-of-fact.
<3
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Okay – a lot to unpack there in AJ’s ‘comment’
First – The author (Keiryn) isn’t a woman, everyone here needs to understand and respect this. Stop using ‘she/her’
Second: I’m just going to break this transparent act of manipulation and abuse down for you all
First point – throughout we have a bunch of false and entirely disingenuous nods to ‘respectability’ and ‘politeness’ that are supposed to influence readers to believe ‘AJ’ is a reasonable and respectable person and not *at all* attacking the author
These respectability dogwhistles are deployed solely to provide a negative comparison to the author ‘look how reasonable and nice I am, and after the author was SO MEAN AND UNREASONABLE’
You can tell this from how almost every respectability phrase is coupled with either derision or an accusation of misbehavior or misrepresentation on the authors behalf
eg. “Apparently she had a miserable time in that home. So sorry to hear it!” (n’aww, look how nice I am, how much compassion!)
“Just want to say that I am one of those home-school parents, and belong to some of those organizations, and she paints an extreme and in many ways false and destructive portrait” (Now that I’ve shown you all how compassionate I am, I want to emphasize the author is LYING in order to DESTROY me)
The next paragraph pretty much follows the same pattern – ‘grants’ others a veiwpoint, then deploys sarcasm to again emphasize the author LIES.
Then, and this is fun, the sheer arrogance and overweening pride here means AJ starts breaking cover and being more revealing. The ‘apologies’ become openly snide and the rhetoric of Christofascism starts to bleed through:
eg. “grow our own food, and other people’s, raise multiple usually happy (sorry Kieryn) children to be kind and hardworking children of God”
Hardworking Children of God – hmm, what does that remind us of?
The wonderful moment of mishandling this attempt to gaslight, shame, and derail Keiryns testimony comes next in this paragraph. Particularly note words like ‘vision’ ‘train’ ‘God given role as citizens’ ‘promote order and decency’
“We have a vision, we act on it, we train our children, and we generally don’t try to interfere with other people except in our God-given role as citizens… Yes we want laws that promote order and decency”
Considering the article this is in response to, this confirms and serves to solidify Kieryn’s testimony and experience, and that of the many respondents to this piece. This parent is outright stating that thier children are being TRAINED in their GOD GIVEN ROLE AS CITIZENS in order to promote what they believe is ORDER AND DECENCY’ and we all know what that means for anyone not them.
This kindof deteriorates after this into the general confused rhetoric we’d expect and is mostly abuser phrases meant to further undermine Keiryn and people who agree with the article:
“you dont want to live in the dystopia that video games make seem so wild and fun. Believe me, please.” (look how these young people who are younger did I mention YOUNG they just think the world should be like video games they don’t know what they are saying because YOUNG)
followed by pretty much ‘we can’t help discriminating against homosexuals the Bible says so’ which I don’t even need to address because thousands of theologians and others have already done so
The ‘homosexual agenda’ (we’re bored of this one)
as for “no one wants to hurt [you]” that’s pure abuser gaslighting and pretty much expected from a member of the organization that’s invested in children not being able to recognize or flee their abuse
This is extremely revealing though:”But as for me and my church, we like love and kindness too, and will cleave to those when and if times get tough”
Because it outright slips and admits love and kindness are NOT what they’re cleaving to now.
“Let’s do our best to get along” is another respectability dog whistle meant to conclude with another attempt to show you how nice and reasonable this person is, compared to Keiryn, who is being DIVISIVE!!
And rather ruined by the end bit, which AJ doesn’t seem to realize is going to look like a plain attempt to injure by any abuse survivor forever ever: “Forgive your parents and treat them with as much kindness as you can muster. God is at your side!”
This person, knowing Keiryn’s history, is deploying a number of Christofascist morals to (silently, they think) accuse them of sinning against God and a nasty ominous little reminder that God is always there and ready to judge them.
This person just proved everything Keiryn is saying and writing about this movement with one disgusting lot of transparent, abusive, awful rhetoric
Congratz.
We have a vision, we act on it, we train our children, and we generally don’t try to interfere with other people except in our God-given role as citizens. No we don’t want laws that allow or worse yet make us fund abortion. Sorry it’s abhorrent. Yes we want laws that promote order and decency and frankly you dont want to live in the dystopia that video games make seem so wild and fun
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ugh um… forgot to delete the last bit, I had the comment in screen for eaze, I am disabled and spoons are low… :/
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ditto. legitimately terrified. vive la revalucion!
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I live in Georgia, as a bleeding heart liberal. I have been watching this, knowing on some level what was happening, and still somehow underestimated the sheer tenacity of christo fascists.
This election at least has energized many of us who believe in equality for all with a strong protection of secular government.
I’m all in now. Thank you for sharing this excellent personal account.
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Terrifying, but empowering because we better see anf understand what we are up against. Time to pull armies of diversity, acceptance and love together to break this tide.
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yikes.
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Interesting insight. Bless you for sharing. It clears up a bunch of my confusion.
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wow this was so informative and important.
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Thank you for speaking up, Kieryn. This is absolutely terrifying, but knowledge is power, and it’s so important that we learn about this.
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Kieryn, your story is important, I implore you to amplify it as much ax possible and I will lend my voice and access to do the same. An alarm must be sounded.
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Can I premise this by saying that I am FOR a majority of what you are saying here. There is a type of simplification that comes with a certain subset of religious ideology, but the last paragraph alarmed me a bit.
“They will not be won over with sit-downs and respectability politics. This kind of dogma cannot be reasoned with; it must be fought against. Trying to convince them to come to the other side is a waste of time unless they’ve already started on that journey themselves. The ones in power, actively harming our lives, are past this point. We can only fight back.”
If I were reading this out of context, it seems a lot like the mantra that some of those same people use to discriminate against people who come from a non-Christian background. I’m speaking specifically about Islam, but I don’t think the language is exclusive to Islam.
This is a question I raise out of a strong desire for discussion and clarity. What is the difference between painting with this broad brush and the painting that the far right has done of other religious view points with their broad brush?
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Also, I can not stress enough the amount of grief that I’ve felt daily since Donald Trump was elected as the next president in November.
This is something I struggle with because I am also someone who comes from a family that has very right leaning view points, though not quite with the mantra that you’re speaking of here, Kieryn. I know what it feels like to try to reason with some people that hold these beliefs.
I just question what this fight looks like, you know?
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I’ll be going into more detail about that in a follow up, but largely it looks like getting involved at the grassroots level, in your community, fighting for housing, healthcare, transit, education, etc. Directly changing the things we can control and not spending time trying to convince the unconvincible.
It might feel like a large brush but it’s not, nor is it inaccurate. Alot of religions have similar dogma, you’re right. Any religion that attempts to oppress people through government needs to be fought against. The religious right have been planning this decades before I was born, they’re sold on it… They’re succeeding even. The only way to stop it is to get involved ourselves.
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Thank you for both of your responses, Kieryn. I’ll be looking forward to your follow up!
Thanks for your insight!
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Thank you for writing this, it’s terrifying and enlightening at the same time. Had I not read the comments I would almost have though this to be perhaps.. inauthentic.. I have inlaws/family like this and I feel this level of intense Rightness is just under the surface of their very polite and friendly manner. I agree that the fight is a loud and point for point counter, a challenge at every assertion..
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I call what you’re describing a cult. I’ve never trusted them. I totally get what you’re saying and thank you for saying it. I have found them suspecious for a long time. In fact there are books on this subject that any library will be happy to provide.
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It looks to me, like a call to ‘out’ zealotry and fundamentism, wherever it rears its head. It’s something we all need to do, I think.
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Because this isn’t a broad brush? It’s not based on assumptions but first-hand experience of a particular subculture in America.
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Totally valid.
I was hesitant to even ask this question, because I know it is a complicated one with a lot of nuance.
I have found refuge in the AS community and I come here to learn and grow. What I’m seeking is a sincere discussion about the language we use. Religious ideology is so sticky and it has been vastly oversimplified and abused by people in power.
How does one truly change that though?
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I ask because if we don’t have the framework for this fight, how can I talk about it?
I really want to be a part of this fight, but I don’t know how. I’ve been taught to use reason and I don’t know how to be part of a conversation that eliminates it.
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That’s fair, it goes against everything we know about civil discourse.
Our fight doesn’t look like punching them (tho I won’t stop anyone from it) it’s more activating against everything they are activating for. So protecting planned Parenthood when they dismantle it. We’re not going to win them over, so we shouldn’t be focused on dialoguing with them; rather, being more engaged in our communities and replicating as many social services on a local level as we can
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“I’ve been taught to use reason and I don’t know how to be part of a conversation that eliminates it.”
I feel like this is EXACTLY where our movement is stuck right now.
Someone tweeted a few days ago something along the lines of, “it’s like the Democrats and Republicans sat down in a house to play Monopoly, and then the Republicans said “fuck it” and set fire to the house, but the Democrats are still sitting there, in the burning house, playing Monopoly.”
We need a new mindset. We need to quell the fire, but we also need a strategy for future fires. This is not Friday game night, this is an emergency.
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I agree with the sentiments in this piece. I was an evangelical Christian for 35 years- now an atheist. You can’t reason someone out of something that they didn’t come into through reason. They are intoxicated by their certainty- it’s the drug they sell. Reason and logic are not part of their lexicon.
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Not just in America, it’s been happening over the last 30 or more years, to a lesser extent in Australia too (it’s just starting to “payoff” politically in our Parliament for a subgroup of the Liberal Party. This is probably happening in other Anglephone Protestant countries as well and non Protestant countries probably have their own versions, having seen how effective it’s been.
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Yes! I have a friend who moved here from Australia and their experience mirrors mine very closely!
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The Christians Kieryn is talking about are a tiny minority of Christians. Kieryn isn’t saying all Christians are like that. Kieryn is saying specific movements inside Christianity are doing this. Evangelical conservatives are a minority of Americans (though a large one) and the people Kieryn calls Christofascists are a smaller portion of conservative Evangelicals. At no point does the article claim all Christians or all conservatives or even all homeschoolers are part of this subculture.
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Oh but most if not many christians can easily be converted to more radical belief, if they too are at risk of losing it all. Let’s never underestimate our enemies strength
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The bottom line is they are willing to let us die, starve, kill ourselves, never reproduce. How long are we willing to argue ideology, rather than fight?
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this isn’t a broad brush. this is a fine brush with specific details about people who have infiltrated our government and are actively destroying everything we hold dear as we speak. big difference. RESIST!
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What you are doing here with your seemingly respectable questions is a form of gaslighting. You are “nicely” attempting to equate this person’s legitimate fear and anger at these people whose _entire lives_ are aimed at creating injustice for others, with the bigotry of those same people.
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I agree. Felt as though I was listening to ex mother in law. I think she’s one of them
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The difference would be targeting extremists. She’s not saying ALL Christians. The Far Right does demonize ALL ‘muslims’ when meaning ISIS or extremists of Islam. No I do see that this is tricky territory. How do we tell the difference between what is ‘extreme’ and what is ‘normal level religious belief’. I’m not sure the answer to that, but I would think that on some level it would be to swear in on the understanding that the USA was founded on the FREEDOM of religion and not of any one faith. This is a fact and it needs to be ingrained into our society. Religion is not bad, but religion with a political agenda is. Always.
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Normal level of religious belief doesn’t try to take over the country, I think is a good starting point.
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Rick Santorum for example is a right wing radical Catholic ideologue while most Catholics are socially liberal.
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The logical flaw is that your assumption may be that fundamentalist Christianity is in any particular different from fundamentalist Islam. In order for a monotheism to be right, all others must be wrong. They are remarkably similar in that respect and “discrimination” is not a bad thing when it accurately describes a world view that will never stop until all other world views are subsumed under it.
The difference is that as a largely rational, deity-free human, I am aware that I can’t make a robot for Christ/Allah/random Bronze Age figment into a rational person using rationality. So I don’t try. God-addled people will, by contrast, never cease to convert me. Or kill me should I prove “possessed by Satan” because I do not share their delusions.
I’ve long believed that religion of this sort is like any other psychologically rooted addiction: you can’t talk people out of it. They have to want to leave it behind, and the nature of the God delusion is such that few will even have the idea of abandoning a faith-based world view occur to them. The presence of such people in a democracy is antithetical to the democracy: such people cannot bear that others think differently to them or live in a world without their flavour of deity, which is far more compelling a concept than this world, which is, in their conception, a vat of sin and corruption, could ever be. Whether these appraisals will ever occur to those of a humanistic, rational tendencies is unclear, because it leads to some uncomfortable conclusions.
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“They are remarkably similar in that respect and “discrimination” is not a bad thing when it accurately describes a world view that will never stop until all other world views are subsumed under it.”
Thank you for pointing this out.
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I don’t know that I agree with everything in the piece, but to answer your concern that the piece sounds like what others say to oppress other religions, let me offer an alternative view. Perhaps the reason this sounds like other anti-religious positions is that it IS the only effective to response to fanatics of all religions, not any religion per se. Whether you’re talking about extreme Muslims or extreme Christians, they represent a fundamental threat to a diverse and harmonious society and cannot be reasoned with and must merely be prevented from gaining power. The difficult question is ‘what do you do with religious extremists (or any extremists) who are beyond reason and hell bent on imposing their life on society at large?’ They are an anathema to a happier world, but our own standards demand we tolerate them. I guess we are engaged in a long-term and perhaps endless war of ideas where we hope to eventually convert the dogmatic and unthinking into at least tolerant.
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Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Michael!
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The difference is that these people are a racial and religious majority actively trying to enact religious law and strip minorities of their civil rights right now, here. When they say that we have to fight back against Muslims, they are talking about “fighting back” against an already oppressed minority who are trying to mind their own business.
It’s right to fight an aggressor actively threatening you and others. It’s wrong to pummel someone smaller than you to gain power.
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Great point and thank you for your reply!
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I don’t read this as discrimination or painting with a broad brush. I think it’s a sad but informed statement of reality from someone who really knows. Kierstyn is describing the culture she grew up in, not stereotyping some “other”.
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I see a clear distinction in that this is surfacing the actions of ‘Christian’ jihadists in this country (many of us thought this extent was an urban myth — especially that Pence is their holy Grail), whereas Muslims are being painted with the extreme brush of the handful of jihadists who are terrorists so that we will fear them irrationally. This is an alarm bell that needs ringing! Especially since we have become a country that allows anything underscored with the word “Christian” to go unquestioned/ unchallenged.
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Consider what it means to “fight back,” can vary dramatically from one person or group to another.
From my perspective, this means that we must also get out the vote, but rather than trying to change the minds of the far right Christof assists, we must reach out to our friends and neighbors who previously didn’t bother with voting or activism.
The majority didn’t vote for either Trump or Clinton. Instead, the majority didn’t vote. We need to change apathy to activism.
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From my perspective, I would say the biggest difference is most times when people speak against Islam, they are not FROM Islam and therefore most of their info is propaganda.
This person LIVED this and likely more qualified to inform that there are some past the point of being reasoned with. Therefore, we must fight for laws and policy just as hard as they do.
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I was trained for this stuff as well……. horrifying. I’m believing less in a god now a days and probably never believed in one in the first place. Which means I wasted my time hating and hoping for no reason. It’s scary and sad. Mostly scary. Dark times are coming, lets try to shine some light guys.
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Avawn – just because those folks twisted God and faith for you (and so many others) doesn’t mean they’re not out there, in a truer form, waiting for when you’re ready. Never lose hope. Now people like you and Kieryn can expose the truth about this to us – who need it very much right now!
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Avawen, I want to hear your story next!
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KEEP TELLING YOUR STORY, please!
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Thank you for this. I was on some tangent of this culture as someone who was homeschooled by their grandma in elementary school only, but thankful that since she was Catholic we never got too deep into this. Hope you’re healing from the wounds i’m sure this has left.
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This was INCREDIBLE.
Also, deeply scary. Wow. Thank you, I’ve learned a lot from this!
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This is pants-shittingly scary. Thank you for sharing, and I hope these people leave you alone forever.
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i was a christian homeschooler, too–luckily i was pulled away from it bit by bit over the course of high school after my mom came out of the closet. (i’m writing a novel about that whole thing now; would love to talk about it if you’re interested!) this essay is chilling and all too familiar–glad you’re getting the word out about this world.
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Kerry, let’s amplify. I’d love to help promote any side of the story that will tell the truth!
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I have a question: you mention ‘non-discrimination based on race’ as being something they are against, but I’m confused as to why? There’s plenty of Evangelical people of color around, are they not welcome to this party? Is there a biblical connection to racism involved (such as was the case with Mormons)?
I get the anti-science, the pro-discrimination/punishment for lots of other groups but racism is just so random to throw in there? This is confusing to me.
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Evangelical conservatism is extremely racist, despite the fact that POC are there. POC are only acceptable if they act white, tbh. Hating on illegal immigrants (i.e. non-black POC) was common place in every environment I was in. As far as biblical connections…there’s a lot of genocide of other races in the bible and the Crusades were white europeans taking over countries, racism and christianity are very closely linked, despite people of color participating in it.
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I am trying to reframe my question but…. I don’t mean ‘is it happening’ but rather ‘what argument do they utilize to justify this’ if that makes sense? Is it religiously motivated or are they just racists who are also religious?
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I think both.
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Fred Clark on Slacktivist does a really great job of demonstrating that a lot of American, conservative, white Christian movements grew out of a need to justify racism–as far back as the fight over slavery. In the sense that the spirit of Christ’s teachings would absolutely prohibit slavery–and yet you can also find individual passages in the Bible that speak of having slaves. So, all pro-slavery Christians needed to do was develop the idea of “Biblical inerrancy”–the idea that every word of the Bible is God-breathed and absolutely perfect and unquestionable. The words, exactly, themselves. Interpretations are just liberal bias, clearly.
This idea was and is still huge in Evangelicalism. <a href="https://twitter.com/NateSparks130/status/824447158590013440"Here's a recent twitter thread on how innerancy is based in ableism and ethnocentrism and how it keeps the powerful in power.
…I don’t know if this explains how they justify it, exactly, but it’s not a coincidence that there’s so much racism involved. Evangelicalism was designed to make sure the powerful stayed that way.
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That’s super interesting, thank you!
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I believe that the bible does indeed have some things to say about slavey – it seemed to assume that it was part of the world, but if you did keep slaves there were certain ways you should treat them – for example, if someone serves you as a slave for six years, you are then supposed to give them freedom, and “not send them away from you empty-handed”; you were supposed to give them a good stash of food and drink to take with them.
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I agree. I think the key here is about keeping the powerful in power. The rest is really a way of justifying the first. Give people someone or something to a) be frightened of and b) feel superior to and then c) provide them with an inarguable source of justification to feel both scared and superior with a CAUSE and you’re in business. The lure of some prospect of money helps too even if you have to dedicate some of it to, in their case God.
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From my experience within this movement, anti-black racism was abundant, but usually couched in “cultural” terms. That is, “black culture” was deemed to be “pagan” and “ungodly” and viewed as a danger to proper Christian morality. Black influences on music and media were sources of white Christian hysteria, and black people (especially black youth) were seen as sexually immoral and frequently violent or criminal. While in my experience, most people I knew weren’t outright pro-discrimination, they still harbored a lot of religious hostility towards black people. Many also objected to anti-discrimination measures because they felt they were “unnecessary” and “government overreach” and determined that racism was a thing of the past.
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I call what you’re describing a cult. I’ve never trusted them. I totally get what you’re saying and thank you for saying it. I have found them suspecious for a long time. In fact there are books on this subject that any library will be happy to provide.
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When I was growing up, my mom met some far right folks who had a whole manifesto explaining how the bible says anyone who is of a non-white race is an animal and anyone of mixed race will automatically go to hell.
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Christianity absolutely has a history of using the bible to justify racism.
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I grew up in the same culture as the author, in the south. I’d say that they’re just racist, and then they find a “biblical” justification for it.
In my religious culture, the transatlantic slave trade was praised as being the way God decided to introduce African people to Christianity. A good example of this argument is Doug Wilson’s “Southern Slavery As it Was” and “Black and Tan.” Wilson, btw, is a partner with The Gospel Coalition, which is one of the more powerful organizations in evangelicalism, so he’s not exactly “fringe.”
Chattel slavery was defended because of the Curse of Ham– which is a badly misunderstood rendering of Genesis 9, which has the descendants of one of Noah’s sons serving his brothers in perpetuity. So, black people are, biblically, *supposed* to serve whites. It’s God’s curse, who are we to undo it?
Another argument tossed around for segregation and racial purity was Acts 17 and a phrase supposedly about how God set up nations and for people to living in the “bounds of their habitations.” I heard this argument when I was being counseled for marriage by a Baptist minister who said he’d never marry an interracial couple and that was why.
I also heard it from a preacher at a church service, when a black family came in and the preacher got up and told them to leave, that they weren’t within the “bounds of their habitation.”
There’s also Christian opposition to this way of thinking– a book written by a fundamentalist Christian against this whole argument style called “One Blood: The Biblical Answer for Racism” by Wieland. That book was sold in my fundamentalist Christian college bookstore– Pensacola Christian, which was founded partly to oppose Bob Jones University– of Bob Jones vs. The United States fame. It was against the rules at BJU to date someone of a different race until 2000, and PCC’s founders were explicitly against it. Didn’t stop them from being hella racist in their own way, but their racism was more of the “inner city culture is so violent and vulgar” variety instead of the “white and black people aren’t allowed to mix” stream of thought.
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Wow I’ve never heard my family’s bizarre pseudo twist on racism wrote out so well. Thank you for taking the time to do that. This stuff is frightening.
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In Evangelical thought, the different races are born from the three sons of Noah. African people are cursed forever because their progenitor, Ham, saw his father naked one time. Thus, because they’re cursed, (as the thought process goes) they’re not as good as Asians/Europeans (descended from Japeth) and Semitic peoples (Descended from Shem). This has been your Sunday School lesson for this week.
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The demographic tends to vote Democrat would be my guess. Minorities overwhelmingly voted Democrat in this most recent election. Ultimately, religion is used as a tool, but the ultimate power is in the White House, not in the churches. They care that you identify as Christian only so far as who you’ll vote for when the ballots come in.
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Racism is, forgive the complex and ironic pun, the trump card of liberal angry rhetoric. So ya gotta throw it in. It’s like MSG to make the msg taste good.
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Racism is “thrown in” because it is pervasive in American life. Sounds like AJ would just like to pretend it doesn’t exist.
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They believe that dark-skinned people are the descendants of Cain, and therefore lesser/cursed/in a perpetual state of sinfulness & need of redemption by their ‘God-chosen’ keepers.
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Andrew’s got it right up there – not Cain, Noah’s sons – thanks for the reminder Andrew.
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Guess what! The logic won’t ever matter
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If you knew Evangelical POCs, you know that they feel unwanted and unseen when they try to be a part of a White led/majority church.
Heck, I am Korean/White and my wife is White, and our pastors thought it was a good idea for us to leave the church because we, I don’t know, stood up for people of color and other marginalized people.
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As an African American woman who was a part of a congregation that did not overtly call themselves “Evangelical”, but they definitely fit that description, I can understand your confusion. However, I would suggest to you that the race-based discrimination that is common in these churches is usually very different than typical acts of overt racism. It can be subtle, and people of color who fully conform to the culture of these churches are welcomed, and likely don’t feel discriminated against. Those of us who desire pastoral leadership and church engagement that specifically speak to the unique and sometimes difficult issues around race, injustice, and inequality eventually realize that those issues are not deemed worthy of attention in church. My family’s worth to our former church went only as far as our willingness to conform to the church culture, and deny the hurt we were feeling due to racial tensions and injustice, and our church’s blind eye to those issues.
Bottom line: most of these churches dismiss the notion of on-going racial injustice and discrimination, so they are definitely unlikely to support non-discrimination legislation.
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This was an unbelievably informative and terrifying piece of writing, thank you for sharing it.
I am afraid of what is happening in the US right now and I am not even on the same continent, I can’t even imagine the constant anxiety you are living with right now.
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I was also homeschooled in a similar manner and this is all terrifying and just awful and I am so scared all the time ugh.
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As a middle eastern Jew this sounds pretty scare to me, thank you for sharing. Just one question though, do these people not realize what Middle Eastern(specially non-Persians) look like?
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I don’t think so. My family may be the exception (we’re partially Lebanese) because we were the only people who rolled their eyes are blue-eyed Jesus 😛 At least stateside, the image of Jesus is pale skin, light brown hair, and eyes as blue as Elijah Wood’s.
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To be honest, Al, I don’t think they care. Just as you can’t confuse them with facts, that knowledge would get in the way of their ideology, so they ignore it.
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No, actually, they don’t. Their films about Jesus are filled with pink-skinned blue-eyed people. Jesus Himself is depicted as blond. I once watched a short Christian Fundamentalist film about one of their theme parks run for children, based loosely on Disneyland, with people wandering around playing Biblical characters. The crowning glory of the family’s experience was an encounter with “Jesus,” whom they said they could recognize because of his white robe and blond hair. A popular book, Heaven is (for) Real, was studied intensely by these Fundies in as many churches as they could infiltrate. I was attending a United Methodist Church at the time where this had happened. The book was said to be the afterlife experiences of a young boy who had died and then been revived. He was said to have painted a picture of Jesus, which was touted among these people as showing what Jesus really looked like. A large picture of Jesus was available on a website, and the Fundies in this church enthusiastically ordered it and hung it in a prominent place. The man in the picture looked a little like Rand Paul, with very light brown hair, small even nose, and light green eyes. When I pointed out that Jesus had been born in the ancient Middle East and must surely have had something like long black hair, dark brown eyes, and olive skin (as a few very early Christian woodcuts do indicate), they were mad at me. By the way, this book has since been admitted by its authors to be complete fiction. But that portrait was not taken down. They want to believe that Jesus and his cohorts somehow shared their own magical superior Northern European genes.
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That is one of the long list of things these people do not realize, I would say. In the crazy Christian world view, the purpose of a Jew and of the state of Israel is to create the conditions and the locale of Armageddon, the world-flattening battle that will spark The Rapture and the world’s end, which they believe is a positive thing (for them).
The Israeli government and evangelicals are pretty strange bedfellows. See http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.736790
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I am a Christian and my church is one of the ones these people would say is going to hell if they knew about it. I hate the Quiverfull and Christian Right ideology so much. Thanks for writing this. We need to stand together and resist.
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I was also homeschooled religiously – luckily my parents were libertarians who weren’t that into government and let me read Harry Potter and listen to rock music, but I knew people like this. I had friends like this.
You’re right, the left doesn’t get it. The unyielding belief that you are right, that everyone who doesn’t agree with you is going to hell, is strong, and it is terrifying. It took a lot of strength for me to break those bonds and I wasn’t all that involved in this community – applause to you for breaking out as well.
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Hi Robin … just want to say that I am on the left and I do get it. I know I’m going to hell because I don’t buy into the poor theology that drives the far right ideology. I am a heretic, a nasty woman, a libertard and a snowflake. I know I will never measure up to the standards the far right espouses because I actually think for myself and I will not allow my image of God to be rubber-stamped by anyone. Just wanted to say that those of us who live on the left have fully realized how we are viewed by those who want to destroy our sense of well-being, even though we live and work together in America. We’ve known for many, many decades that a culture war was being waged against us. We’ve also known that the whole homeschool movement and the undermining of public education was supporting the ideological agenda.
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Well, that was terrifying. :/
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Ok speaking as a science educator at a community college in arizona, i would like to say that i am a leftie who *does* get it: I my conservative students are smart, passionate, and organized, they just come from a different culture and experience than mine.
What I *don’t* get is how to reach these students: my science training includes zero information on how to make classroom content equally accessible across these culture gaps. Any advice? Like, I can feel the energy in the room change when I talk about evolution or climate change. Arguing facts is useless. I don’t know how to invite the conversation without making my classroom political.
Thank you for this terrific article.
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My advice is to keep teaching facts. Don’t compromise, don’t coddle these people. You’re planting seeds that may grow one day. They won’t be won by any type of persuasion. We were taught every cliche in the book about how to argue with “evolutionists”. Until I wanted to learn, there was nothing anyone could say to me to get through to me. Some of your students will want that, maybe they don’t know it yet. But your uncompromising devotion to facts, logic, and science will be the best gift you can give them. We were taught that you were all stupid and we had the best answers. They need to see the world is so much bigger than their tiny scripts.
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Love this answer, thank you.
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Hi, I used to be a science journalist, and have some potential insight. Creationists do read science news and one article I wrote on the origins of life was reposted on a creationist site. One commenter I remember very amused at how scientists think they can know everything, even though they do not create those things. However my article, in the list below, had room for these responses because it had a sense of humor about the limitations of scientists (in it, one tries to brush up on his knowledge by googling), and uses words like “mere chemistry” – a friendly choice of words to creationist perspectives, though not intended that way. My point is that there are ways of coding yourself as friendly to different beliefs about where life comes from while still delivering scientific facts. Part of that comes from humorously conveying what spots are still knotty for scientists working in these fields.
http://www.livescience.com/6539-theory-life-energy-source.html
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Hi, I used to be a science journalist, and have some potential insight. Creationists do read science news and one article I wrote on the origins of life was reposted on a creationist site. One commenter I remember was very amused at how scientists think they can know everything, even though they do not create those things. However my article, in the link below, had room for these responses because it had a sense of humor about the limitations of scientists (in it, one tries to brush up on his knowledge by googling), and uses words like “mere chemistry” – a friendly choice of words to creationist perspectives, though not intended that way. My point is that there are ways of coding yourself as friendly to different beliefs about where life comes from while still delivering scientific facts. Part of that comes from humorously conveying what spots are still knotty for scientists working in these fields.
http://www.livescience.com/6539-theory-life-energy-source.html
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Hi Rey! my advice would be to really invest in that beautiful thing that scientists have to the desire to be always learning more.
I think that my journey into cracking open the shell people tried to put over my scull really strayed with a desire to always be learning.
So for the kids to see that learning and expanding knowledge and having a dynamic, flexible brain that can handle new knowledge is desirable and good.
Learning isn’t just about repeating and memorising things someone has told you but to come up with your own questions and to find the answers and that those answers tend to come from different places, not all the same place.
Sorry, this is so wordy I just woke up but does that make sense? If I had to trace back to what started my journey it was that. And having ridiculously patient friends, and hopefully those will come for your students too. Good luck!
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My experience has been that the culture we are talking about sees the scientific community as a dark mirror of itself: religiously committed to an essential dogma, but the wrong one. You can challenge that by teaching about the process of science, which at its best is anti-dogmatic and commited to a theory only until some new theory does a better job of describing the universe. You don’t attain celebrity status among scientists by following and repeating, but by innovating and challenging. The joke is that a scientist who says all the other scientists are wrong is called a fool, but that a scientist who *proves* all the other scientists are wrong is called a Nobel laureate.
You can use that to deconstruct their notion of what science is: not a set of beliefs claiming to be the truth, but a set of tools for finding the truth.
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I grew up attending Christian schools until college. Although they (mostly) were much more sane and moderate than the homeschooling experience described in the article, there were people who were close to the Christofascist movement as the author describes. Christian schools typically don’t have a lot of financial resources, so anyone who is vocal and threatens to withdraw their kids, and therefore money, tends to get more influence than is justified. My dad was a pastor, and although very conservative, is thoughtful and introspective to a point. Over the years I have seen my mom and sibling moving further to the right until now they seem to be very narrowly apart from the most extreme right/Right ilk of Christianity. I have also had a great deal of scientific training throughout undergrad and med school. I went through years of struggling with reconciling my faith with the observable universe, so perhaps I can offer some helpful insight.
1. Try not to be confrontational. I have found that the far right won’t listen to their opponent, but rather tries to state their point by twisting or ignoring what you are saying. It is very frustrating and difficult sometimes not to get emotionally caught up in a yelling match, but that is often what they seem to want, or at least confrontation. This bolsters their belief that ALL scientists, and really anyone who is an outsider, is deceived and wrong and blinded to their version of “truth”. I grew up in Kansas City and if you know anything about the Westboro Baptist Church and/or Fred Phelps, this is what they do. (Fall From Grace, 2007, is an excellent documentary that may help you gain some insight. So is “Jesus Camp” which is about a different group from Missouri that is in the homeschooler movement. Another one that demonstrates these same tactics though from a non-Christian group is the one on Scientology that BBC Panorama did, “Secrets of Scientology with John Sweeney” or even the HBO “Going Clear”. All give good examples of how reason, logic and civil discourse are not really possible. In the Scientology case, one top guy, Mike Rinder, left and now is on Leah Remini’s series. You never know what will spark a person to question what they have been taught and to start seeking the truth and answers for themselves.
2. Don’t fall into the false dichotomy of science vs religion- Both sides have those who do this, and it doesn’t help advance the discussion. They are not mutually exclusive of each other, and there are many people of faith in the sciences. The religious right are masters at setting this up along with straw man arguments.
3. Strive to fully explain what “Theory” truly means- The right throws it around, as does our culture at large, to mean simply someone’s opinion. If you break down the scientific progression from hypothesis (and how it should be a null hypothesis that is either disproven or supported) to theory built upon multiple hypotheses that are supported by a large body of research and evidence, this should eventually open the door to your students considering some other views vs their dogma. This could be viewed as the baby steps needed to get started.
4. Acknowledge scripture, but consider the context, historical and cultural, of when it was written and how language changes over time – I would suggest using “evolves” judiciously when discussing how language changes as many of your students would likely stop listening as soon as that word is uttered. Consider reading several translations for a broader understanding. Not everyone is an expert on ancient languages, especially many pastors who like to portray themselves as such, and there is some horrible scholarship in this regard out there. For instance, in Genesis the King James says man is to have dominion over the earth. Today, most would think that means we are in a confrontation with nature and we must subdue and dominate it. I believe a truer interpretation is that we are to be stewards of the earth that God has entrusted to us. Ask them if they don’t think God will be upset with us for trashing his creation. For me, this works well to get the wheels turning. Don’t jump right in to climate change. Again, they will likely tune you out if you do, but rather build a foundation on which to then address it. Kind of like the parable of the man who builds his house on sand without a foundation, they don’t have solid ground on which much of their indoctrination is based. They may think they do. I’m not advocating trying to destroy their world view or belief system, but keep in mind they may be quite vulnerable at this stage. Everything they have been taught is now coming into question and that is a frightening thing.
5. In time, try to get them to consider that perhaps the Bible isn’t the “complete book of knowledge about everything” that they were told it is – Most have likely been taught that it is an “owner’s manual” and that the answers to every question can be found there. In my opinion, that is claiming more than what God claims about it within the Bible itself. This is a difficult thing to accept, however. It is comforting to have something you can defer to as the ultimate authority, and ignore any issue that doesn’t fit neatly within it. I suppose the concept of the Christian ghetto would fit into this. If something is outside their understanding from the Bible, they ignore it. If they can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. If they have to confront something right in front of them, it then becomes evil, wrong, shameful, etc. It is easier to cloister themselves in their own community than to engage “others” outside their world. They have been taught that world is evil and therefore must be converted to their belief system through any means necessary. To them, it is a war. The Bible doesn’t claim to have the answers to everything to ever arise, but is a book of knowledge and wisdom whose principles can be applied thoughtfully and prayerfully to try to discern the will of God. It is not a hammer or club to beat someone with. The Christian right love to use the passage about the armor of God, where the Bible is a sword and view it as a weapon, not a tool to be used to know God better. The Bible was written over thousands of years, and is a distillation of what God’s message is to us. It is foundational and simplified for the greatest number of people throughout history to be able to understand. It is the “Living Word” of God, and the Holy Spirit is sent to be a comfort and to help guide us. If they believe in an infinite God, no book will ever contain all there is to know of Him. No book could. He is much bigger and greater than that. However, a book can contain the basics of what we need to know in order to start our journey to better know Him.
I went through years of struggle myself with much grief and heartache, and realized long ago that struggling through many of these issues is part of the journey of life. The age of the universe or the earth is not something that impacts salvation, despite what “Creation Scientists” will say (very popular in the home schooler movement as well). In fact, my dad has told me that when he was in seminary, the day-age and gap hypotheses were considered perfectly compatible with orthodox Christian beliefs. When I was in high school in the 80s, both had become heresy to many. If you even considered the earth could be billions of years old you were being corrupted by the “world”, despite the (poetic) language of Genesis of the earth being without form and void, and the Spirit of God moving across the face of the waters, both of which suggest that something did exist prior to God reforming the earth into what we see today.
I hope some of this helps you, and that God can use you to foster the minds of your students to be the best humans they can be. Christ himself said the greatest commandment was to love God, and the second was just like it — to love your neighbor as yourself. This is what the religious right has lost sight of.
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If these students have truly been taught how to think critically within certain bounds, you might reach them by setting up cognitive dissonance. Show them that critical thought cannot have boundaries except logical boundaries. Dogma cannot withstand the brutal honesty of good and logical arguments.
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My advice is just keep teaching the facts. I considered myself a creationist just three years ago. I had to take a Biology class and lab in college, and sat through it the whole time disagreeing quietly and thinking it was bs, but as the teacher presented fact after fact about evolution and different aspects of science we were taught was wrong, I started to realize the worldview I had grown up with didn’t hold water and that evolution and climate change were studied, researched facts that actually made sense.
So, even if your students are sitting there disagreeing, over time they may realize what they were taught doesn’t add up. You just have to tell it like it is.
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Wow everyone I want to thank you so much for your replies; this is very very helpful. And thanks again Kieryn and AS for hosting this conversation. It’s so good, y’all. I’m reading all the comments on this article and learning a bunch.
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As to evolution – try using the concept of allele frequencies in different populations of the same species. Tay-Sachs in Ashkenazi and Sephardic popultions and in other ethnic and racial groups. If students come from a religious world view, the disease incidence could give them something to think about. After all, the basic unit of selection and ultimately evolution is the gene. And you might get some ideas from reading Dean Hamer’s book The God Gene. There is quite a lot of neurophysiology in it, as well as population genetics. Try not to get yourseld fired.
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I briefly attended such a church in my teen years. My devout and highly intelligent Jewish biology teacher (who also loved the Bible but had read it in Hebrew and understood poetry) really helped us out. He gave a brief speech saying our Biblical beliefs were fine, and he didn’t want to force us to believe differently. He said he did not mean to attack our belief that God had created the world but just needed us to show that we were paying attention to the details of living creatures. He laid out specimens in order on counters around the room, and Fundamentalist kids could get good grades if they would accurately describe the specimens with a few precise details as listed. In this way, we were able to learn enough details about biology to satisfy the curricular goals and generally understand the categories of plants and animals on Earth. Also, we could gradually put the pieces together in our minds in later years as we matured and read and saw and heard more.
The key is to avoid triggering their fear that you will sneakily undermine the faith that is helping them get through each difficult day.
Incidentally, I am still a Christian, and I still believe in God our Creator. However, I do not expect to understand God. I do not believe in what is called Intelligent Design, and I do not think that we should impose Fundamentalist curbs on our thinking. By definition, God must encompass our entire universe and possibly beyond. I do not expect biological accuracy from books written during the Iron Age, any more than I expect an accurate formula for rocket fuel. Just because Jesus said He was the True Vine, nobody insists that He must have had green leaves sprouting all over Him. Like my old biology teacher, I have come to understand poetry.
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Teach exponentials. Evolution and climate feedbacks can be demonstrated once the mind can grasp exponentials.
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Perhaps quoting Revelations 11:18. God will destroy those who destroy the earth. Actually all of Revelations is a pretty graphic description of the earth destroyed by climate change. If people think that accelerating “the end days” by helping the destruction of the planet will help them get ascended to heaven, they have sided with those who will be destroyed. Plus they are trying to push the hand of God and God’s timetable, I’m sure God isn’t okay with that. (Not very scientific, but it might make them think).
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I was taught that scientists hid evidence and lied blatantly in their quest to undermine creationists — all part of satan’s plot. So I legit believed that evolution was merely a nice little theory with not enough facts behind it. I was raised to just ignore secular scientists.
Be consistent, be positive, openly embrace questioning (the opposite of religious insecurity that demands obedience). Avoid being the asshole that religious propaganda teaches their children that all atheists are.
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This article is so illuminating, thank you so much for sharing. I can’t imagine the strength it takes to speak out about this
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Yes, this is the culture in which I was raised, though my parents were too poor to be that involved and weren’t this extreme. I can attest that every word of this is true. Thank you for laying this out so clearly.
There was a young man in my state named Robert Saunders. He was running as a state representative last year. He was a graduate of Patrick Henry, one of those trained to take over America for God. Thankfully, his racism got the better of him and his racist words were spread all over Facebook and the local news, tanking his chances at winning. But there is more where he came from.
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Is there a good program for assisting teenagers who get kicked out of situations like that? (Especially LGBTQ and such) I would love to help a teenager, but we don’t run in those circles.
Thanks!
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Not so much a program, but you might look into Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out (HARO) and Coalition for Responsible Home Education* both places are more resource oriented but might be able to help point you in a direction depending on what you’re looking for, or have ideas on who to talk to.
*I’m one of the founders of CRHE
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^ https://responsiblehomeschooling.org should be CRHE’s link but I have a headache and forgot to actually put the link in :3
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There’s a program in Atlanta called Lost-n-Found and it’s for LGBTQ homeless youth, a lot of who get kicked out of their homes for being LGBTQ. But I don’t know if they’re nationwide or not.
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Well this article is a whole lot of information that I haven’t seen discussed anywhere else. Never heard of Quiverfull, etc. before. Thank you to the author for illuminating us and good job to Autostraddle for publishing it. Hope to hear more from the author on this site.
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The Duggar family of the 20 kids and more or whatever it is called tv show is the biggest representation of the Quiverfull movement in media. They are kind of hard to ignore, but I am impressed that you managed. Impressed and a little jealous! People love them on tv and it started normalizing their religion, which is more than a bit creepy. They are seriously all over the place.
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There needs to be more publicity about the child molestation (Josh Duggar of Duggars 22-and-counting TV fame, physical abuse, cover-ups by prominent members of the community, and murder (by violence or neglect) attributable to fundamentalist home-school culture. After all, these kids can be hidden away from all outside adults – perfect prey for pedophiles and sadists. There are lots of break-away blogs detailing the evil tolerated in the fundamentalist Christian home-school culture, but only fellow break-aways (escapees) and a few students of the sociology of religion follow the blogs.
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Resources with more information:
Kathryn Joyce, “QuiverFull – inside the Christian Patriarchy movement”, circa 2009, this book should be in larger public libraries.
http://kathrynjoyce.com/books/quiverfull/
Long-standing blog by former QuiverFull:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/
Lots of links
https://homeschoolersanonymous.org/ more links
Documentary “Jesus Camp” Summer camp in the home-school culture
BTW I see homeschool moms bring very young children (toddlers to K)to picket the local abortion clinic – and letting the young kids wander at will. The sidewalk where the picketers congregate faces (is 2 feet from)a very busy 8 lane divided highway with some stop lights, typical speed 40 mph or more.
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CRHE has a database, called Homeschooling’s Invisible Children (http://hsinvisiblechildren.org) that thoroughly documents this as well.
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I homeschooled my three children as secular as possible, but with just enough Christianity thrown in so that hopefully they didn’t feel like aliens when we interacted with homeschool groups that thought differently than ours, and that was almost all of them. It’s a very difficult balancing act. The Christian entitlement is so pervasive in homeschooling! It’s very difficult to find any curriculum that’s not heavily Christian. The hslda and state organization can’t even imagine there are homeschoolers different from them.i saw the quiverfull movement and Generation Joshua growing and was helpless to speak against it. I would walk around the state convention seeing young people, knowing that some of them were lgbtq, and that the attitudes they had to live with may put their very lives at risk. I am thrilled that you are speaking up. Keep speaking! Maybe some day homeschooling will be more accepting of everyone, but not in this generation.
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In same boat here with one still school age. Very difficult to find secular homeschoolers though curriculum choices availabe through on line content have improved. Once the GOp ends net neutrality it will be a though slog to find appropriate secular material.
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Thank you so much for this informative article! It wasn’t something I expected to find on autostraddle, but I’m so glad you wrote it.
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I used to be a very conservative Christian myself- and that was only 7 years ago. I didn’t have the rigid upbringing the quiverfull parents gave their children, as my parents were relatively lax about religion. When I got into my later teens I wanted to find that “true Christian” ideal and it basically lead me to discover how horrifyingly destructive their beliefs and political positions are.
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I was raised in a Southern Baptist household. My family completely bought into the chosen one’s idea. My grandparents were extremely racist. My parents managed to pull away from that thought process. I’m not saying they weren’t prejudice at all but they didn’t consider people of color inferior to them. They left the church they were initially members of because it was whites only. There’s a split in my family that can basically be compartmentalized as people who never went more than 10 miles away from home and still are entrenched with these beliefs and people who left home and was introduced to different people and cultures. Incidentally my parents grew up in the shadows of Bob Jones University. One of my uncles went to school there. They will never be convinced that there way isn’t the only way. All others will go to hell and suffer for eternity. We were taught it was our responsibility to save others. This is what shocks my friends raised outside of evangelical churches. They don’t view it as forcing their beliefs on you. They are in fact saving you. There is no debate, and they can find a bible passage to interpret however they wish to justify anything. When you hear something all your life that is reinforced by those you are surrounded by it becomes difficult to walk away from that indoctrination. There’s a lot of fear in thinking that what you have always known to be true may not be. Even if your faith is fear based. Because it is a sin to even question the word of God. My experience is similar to the author’s but not quite as intense. I look forward to hearing more from her. As well as the thoughts of others.
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I don’t mean to insult, but this essay is so exaggerated and over the top, a diatribe that promotes a Machiavellian plot onto a group that is little different than any group trying to live their beliefs and promote what they believe to be the best world view for how to live as human in a temporal world. How is what they are doing different from everyone else? LGBT groups promote their worldview and are activists in politics. Climate change acolytes have their priests and are activists in politics. There are mermaids and pirates who want to be taken seriously. Every group wants a piece of the identity-rights pie. It amazes me that anyone can get paranoid and upset at Christians who at their most extreme lament sex outside marriage or what they consider deviant sex or taking a life in the womb, which they consider wrong (it kinda is), or having bathrooms just for boys and girls. Horrors! That’s about as bad as it gets, folks. Some may wag their figurative fingers and want you to feel guilty, but you can say no thanks and go about your business. They are not sending sinners to the gulag, no beheadings here, no gays tossed off buildings, no burning folks alive for blasphemy.
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There are mermaids and pirates?
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I’m not personally acquainted with any mermaids, but I’m pretty sure they’re not trying to force everyone else to breathe underwater.
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Conversion therapy: just GROW a tail! It’s God’s plan.
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I’ve got tax breaks and loopholes aplenty
I’ve got legal protections galore
You want lobbyists in Congress?
I’ve got twenty!
But who cares?
No big deal
I want more!
I wanna pee where straight people are
I wanna see, wanna see their ID
Conforming to all of those – what do you call them?
Gender norms!
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OMG CHANDRA
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You two are amazing. Never stop, please.
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Chandra, it is the tragedy of my LIFE that I didn’t see this in time for the comment awards.
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So amazing.
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It’s ok, I’m still working on it:
Up where they judge
Up where they shun
Up where they pray away their gay son
For Jesus’ sake
Wish I could take
Over the woooooorld
(You guys really must stop encouraging me)
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The most extreme forms of Christianity are mere moral lament and finger waging!? Someones sounds like they’ve been living in a cave! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_violence
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Also I find you’re talk of a “Machiavellian plot” more than a little amusing, since the backlash against LGBT rights (lead by groups and leaders of various religions) has been largely dependent on spreading panic through the notional of a radical gay agenda. A uniting notion of a sinister cable that threatens to devour us all, similar to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion meant to demonize Jews. They might as well call it The Protocols of the Elders of San Francisco.
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Yeah, nope. Freshman year at my evangelical liberal arts alma mater, in my required freshman seminar class about the role of Christians in society, we were expected to debate whether or not Christians should take over the government through democratic means in order to implement Old Testament civil law as the law of the land. Including the stoning homosexuals, adulterers, and rebellious children part. This was a popular topic for debate on my campus message boards.
This is very real and the end game is to turn America into a Christian version of Saudi Arabia.
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That is just frightening.
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“Christians who at their most extreme lament sex outside marriage or what they consider deviant sex or taking a life in the womb, which they consider wrong (it kinda is), or having bathrooms just for boys and girls. Horrors! That’s about as bad as it gets, folks”
That is not as bad as it gets. I also grew up in a similar religious cult and these groups of people who call themselves Christians actively brainwash their children – that’s not hyperbole, they use methods of indoctrination that are categorized as brainwashing by scientific and psychological associations. These groups are for exterminating all queer people, they just know that up until now declaring that desire out loud wouldn’t win them any allies. They are for forced conversion therapy. They are for forced sterilization of groups they consider sinful.
This isn’t people wanting to live they way they choose. This is a huge group of people demanding that everyone ELSE live they way these people decide they should, and are willing to make laws that ensure it. They are terrifying. I know. I was one.
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No, it’s not painful at all to believe there is something fundamentally wrong with you. To pray and be baptized, in constant fear of eternal damnation, so god will fix you. To know everybody in your life, people you love more than anything else in the world, will turn there backs on you if they knew you were gay. Because according to them you are an abomination. To spend years trying to ignore or get rid of that nawing feeling in your gut that they are right. Because even though intellectually you know it isn’t true you still feel it. To no longer consider yourself a christian and not believe the bible is the word of god yet feel the shame and the fear. Constantly being on guard and afraid to live your life so you aren’t rejected, beaten, or killed in the name of god. To spend most of your life seriously considering ending it. And then spend years trying to dig out of that crap. All because of other people’s faith. It’s incredibly naive to think these views do no harm. Domestic terrorism is overwhelmingly committed by “good christians”. I understand the concern people may have with the language. The author shared her own personal experience. She did not make a blanket statement saying all christians do this. Every person lives their own experiences. Just because mine aren’t the same as others that doesn’t make mine or theirs less valid.
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Hi Kathryn, I think I get how it could seem over the top, particularly if your experiences with the community referenced have been mostly positive–if in your view they’re mostly trying to spread Christian love, strengthen families, worship as they choose without interference, etc., I can appreciate that.
It becomes much harder to view the belief system positively when its adherents are making concentrated political efforts suggesting people like you are dangerous and should not have equal protection under the law. When, on account of its teachings and adherents, you or your friends have been kicked out of their homes as kids for acknowledging their sexuality, or when you or your friends worry about getting beaten up in public restrooms for being trans or gender non-conforming in part because of laws supported by the group in question, then it doesn’t seem so blameless. When people claiming to protect families have torn yours apart, their cause doesn’t seem innocuous.
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I’m Australian. During the leadup to our 2007 Federal elections a candidate for our Conservative party (Liberal & Nation Party Coalition) ended up being dis endorsed by that party because of his public statements about the need to burn lesbians and gay men (and everyone else who is part of our group) at the stake. He was “silly enough” to state his evangelical group’s beliefs publicly in a national TV interview. The uproar was instantaneous and he lost his party endorsement.
Ten years later, others like him albeit, with the coolness to keep these particular ideas to themselves but openly supportive of many just as appalling, are now holding ministerial position within our now conservative government.
These people should be feared as they are toxic to society. They also should be respected, given just how clever and determined they have been to forward their beliefs.
If we want to defeat the influence of their beliefs on our societies, we need to know where they come from and how and why they have achieved so much already. Do not write them off.
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Not sending sinners to the gulag YET.
What’s the difference?
Evangelicals are tainted by the worship of god. An unreasoned and unreasonable authority that extorts adoration and butt-licking. Love me, or suffer eternal punishment. Love at gunpoint is no kind of love.
God is not just, god is not truthful, god is not one.
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The problem with fundamentalist Christians is they are forcing their views on other people, views that can take rights away. I spent 20 years in a church and it wasn’t even fundamentalist, it was kind of conservative, but I always knew the right-wing Christians in America were just something else. And I was taught to hate gays and blindly follow our conservative leaders and basically be close minded to the issues happening in the world.
All that we’ve worked for, including civil rights and women’s rights, marriage equality and LGBTI rights, could be taken away. And how about autism awareness movements and advanced medicine? All the right wing have to do is deny it and it’s gone. Imagine if they completely disregarded what Hans Asperger and Lorna Wing said and mild autism was no longer diagnosable anymore? I know so many people who will be utterly screwed by that. And what if they got rid of childhood vaccines? Women will have unsafe abortions that can damage their bodies. Fundamentalist Christians don’t actually care about human rights. They don’t. I’ve talked to them. They would vote to ban abortions before they vote to help the homeless, the disabled and people doing it tough on welfare. Those are the things the Bible tells them to care about and they don’t. All those services under Trump will be gutted. They also don’t care much about the environment which is also something Christians are meant to do. 90% of scientists support climate change because there’s actually evidence of it when you actually look into it.
They’re not Christians. They cherry pick the Bible and choose what ways to live.
I’ve been under a conservative Christian backed government for two years. They’ve already killed the live music scene making many venues and businesses in the area shut down. They’ve cut the aged pension. They’re destroying homes to put in a motorway. They’ve made up false claims that people on welfare owe them between $3000-$20,000. They’re forcing disabled people in low paid work. They are trying to build a mine close to a reef where many many species of sea life live.
In my experience Christians in government don’t look out for the common man or even the environment.
Because of my Christian upbringing I suppressed transgender feelings, so now I’m trying to re-visit them to see if I can finally be what I felt as a child. Churches are very indoctrinating, controlling and it’s bad for people who actually want to think for themselves.
By the way, I have nothing against more open minded Christians. I’ve just been subject to a lot of conditioning growing up. It’s something that still fills me with anger.
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Hi fellow Australian. I hope you feel that you can be yourself and feel better soon. I agree things are not good.
If we keep working at it we may be able to dump the LNP soon.
At least the ALP can usually be shamed into better behaviour much of the time. Not ideal though, I know.
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“They are not sending sinners to the gulag, no beheadings here, no gays tossed off buildings, no burning folks alive for blasphemy.” No, not yet.
Give them a few months. They cannot fail to do these things. It’s part of their programming as to how to treat those who defy them.
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Listen to Today’s Issues on American Family Radio to hear demonizing and marginalizing in action. Then think about where that brain process leads.
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Finally, someone responding with an open, commonsense mindset! Thank you!
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I know *you* understand this, because you’re doing it – but I’m going to explain for people reading
This reply is a great example of some classic tactics of dismissal, where the actual argument matters less than the way this person is framing the writer
These words encourage you to believe the writer is psychologically unsound in an attempt to undermine their testimony and analysis. So all it boils down to is ‘this person must be crazy, don’t believe them’
Considering the article this is in response to, this reply is pretty revealing of the intent of the person behind it
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Yes, Kathryn, this all sounds like a lot of hyperbole and wildly inflated, but I think you have missed the central tenet of this article. The far right, ‘Chrisitofscists’ want to take over, and IMPOSE their views on the whole country. They literally want to establish a theocracy. Do you think there is the slightest room in that for women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrants rights, etc, etc?? The LGBTQ community isn’t ‘promoting a worldview,’ they simply have wanted the very same civil rights that straight people hold. I could not care less who people want to marry or what they want to do with their own bodies, but there are A LOT of people who think it is their business to regulate that. These whacked out, supposed ‘Christians’ want to do just that, to everyone.
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You’re comment is so damn laughable I can’t even muster up anything in the way of a response. Do some damn research.
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Read the works of R.J Rushdoony or Gary North. Yes, they do want to kill gays, atheists and other non-Christians. They just know they need to get enough power before they can get away with it.
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The writer clearly states that he’s talking about a subset of extreme Christianity, and many of those who commented have stated that they came from similar backgrounds. This isn’t about those who might just have a stricter sense of the scripture, this is about the extreme and to ignore or diminish what they are is not just naive but similar to excusing the thought processes of those who would normalize extremism of any sort.
Maybe you don’t understand the issue of seeing someone as less than human, as less deserving of rights just because of their sexuality and gender identity race etc, but Emmett Till and Matthew Sheppard might be able to educate you. Maybe you don’t understand the issues (and death) that can come from things like strict abortion laws: I’d suggest you’d read this to get an idea: http://prospect.org/article/what-happens-when-abortion-outlawed
Things like this are the first step to beheadings and burnings – all you have to do is see how those places that you mock as being extreme started off as open as your country, the cycles of violence exist in human history and to ignore them will make you equally complicit when they happen. Pick up a history book and you might be able to learn that.
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Kathryn the difference is that the mermaids and pirates and LGBTs don’t think EVERYBODY needs to be a mermaid or pirate or LGBT, and they don’t impose their laws on the lives of non-mermaids, non-pirates and non-LGBTs.
LGBT folks want to be allowed to marry each other but they aren’t advocating for straight people to NOT be allowed to marry each other. That’s the difference. We want everybody to have equal rights. Women want the option to have an abortion, they’re not requiring everybody to have an abortion or to even consider abortion.
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Well. This comment is representative of exactly what she spoke of in her article. A response made by someone trained to argue, trained to respond to every negation of their belief, to outright lie about their intentions, knowing full well, that yes, their culture will eventually lead to gays being tossed off buildings, eventually folks will be burned alive for blasphemy, and pariah prisons will be established for retrain all those who do not comply. The difference here is fanaticism. It always leads to the devil eventually, and let’s face it, this is fanaticism at it’s worse. You’ve elected someone who is the antithesis of anything the bible has claimed as good, laid down with the devil so to speak, to that you can spread your Christian values.
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This is the subculture I grew up in—all the groups you mentioned were immediately familiar, and people I knew were/are involved with them. My parents started homeschooling myself and my siblings initially because they thought it would be more academically rigorous and more tailored to individual kids’ learning styles, but they became noticeably more religiously conservative in their motives over years of involvement with the community. It gradually shifted to homeschooling mostly to “protect” their kids from the perceived dangers of secular influences in public schools—evolution, sex ed., “the homosexuals”, “the liberal agenda”…
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand spoiler alert, despite the total lack of exposure to anything LGBTQ-related in my younger life, I still turned out to be totally gay.
Thanks for sharing.
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Congratulations on escaping that repressive world! Thanks for sharing your wisdom with us <3
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Thanks so much for this enlightening article. You’re in a unique position to reach out to other victims of homeschooling, and I’m glad to have you on our team.You go,boi!
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Sweet Sweet Jeebus. Every hair on my arms is at twelve o’clock. First, thank you.
Second, stay safe. Third, stay safe. No. Seriously.
HOW do we get this to go viral?
Ken Blackwell is in charge of domestic policy!
In all the churn and burn no one is paying attention.
Yikes.
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I will absolutely second all of this. I grew up Mormon, rather than Quiverfull and basically refused to be homeschooled, but I’ll second the sentiment Kieryn describes. These people actively and honestly want to take over the world. To make laws requiring everyone to live by their set of ideas. Logic does not reach them. They’re like the hosts in Westworld – they simply can not see things that they’ve decided would upset them. There is absolutely no reasoning with them because they are so convinced they are Right. It is horrifying. It is paralyzing. It is real.
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I grew up in rural MO, and the mindsets were very similar among other kids I knew in the public school system. Terrifying. As a non-Christian who was religiously bullied in school, I’m not comfortable around Christians in informal social settings despite years of distance from K-12. Christians who want to talk religion with me today still want me to have read all of their sacred stories when they have read 0% of mine, and the implicit end goal seems to still be conversion, not mutual respect.
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This article made me go cold. out of everything that I have heard about, seen, read, this article has scared me more than anything. I don’t know how to fight back, but I know I will figure it out. And I know I won’t be alone!
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Oh Quiverfull, I forgot about them. I was homeschooled and ran across them a few times. These are some of the folks that give homeschooling a bad name. In trying to raise active citizens, they end up teaching their children to be well-spoken and hyper-religious. Most of the homeschooled kids I know swung to the Left as we grew older. Our parents didn’t realize what they taught us: we can convert people to the Left now. 😉
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Oy. I was homeschooled/unschooled with a very non-religious liberal swing. I’m a huge proponent of homeschooling/unschooling, but also situations like this are so awful.
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Thanks for writing what needs to be said!! You are a strong, brave beautiful woman! I have a hard time getting people who haven’t experienced the far religious right to understand the danger. In a world of tolerance, it is viewed as benign.
From:
An ex-fundamentalist, evangelical, far-right, conservative Christian turned liberal, feminist, homeschooling humanist.
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Hi I think your support and comment are lovely but also the author isn’t a woman and pronouns are they/them
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Chilling. Thank you for your insight.
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omg i had no idea any of this existed. i’m terrified, all of a sudden The Handmaids Tale could be the future and not just a dystopian novel??? how can we fight this, how do we fight this? i always joked evangelicals are extremist christians just like members of isis are extremist muslims… as a catholic this whole thing is so bizarre and alien to me and it only seems to be a phenomenon in America?? again, how do we fight this if people like pence et al are already in power?
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Unfortunately, for those of us who grew up in the subculture, The Handmaid’s Tale is all too real. My parents weren’t quiverfull like Kieryn’s, but if you’re in the Christian homeschool subculture it’s inescapable.
My old youth pastor gave me a marriage book for my high school graduation. I was seventeen. This wasn’t just any marriage book, mind you, it was a book that told women that if their husbands were beating them, the solution was to submit even more. That was the expectation that many people in my life had for me–to find a husband as soon as possible and start having children. If that husband beat me, well, it was my fault for not submitting better. If that crowd had their way, I’d have been in a marriage to a man I wasn’t attracted to, with half a dozen kids, by the time I figured out I was queer.
Everyone knew I was college bound with the plan to go to law school, but outside of my parents and a few other people, no one supported that choice because I was supposed to be married and having kids. I lost count of how many times I justified my decision to major in computer science instead of a more suitable for a homeschool mom degree like elementary education by telling people that I could code from home. I had no intention of doing that, but it was the only way to stop the questions.
Between the messages that I was supposed to be a submissive wife popping out a dozen children and the training to take over politically, when I finally read The Handmaid’s Tale in law school, it was like reading the story of the life I was supposed to have.
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Apart from Michael Farris, who are the politicians and lawmakers that come from this ultra-conservative homeschooled background?
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Too many to list. Pence, Terry, Jindal, Perry, Ralph Reed, Huckabee… It goes on but I haven’t had coffee yet
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I appreciate your article! What you have described looks absolutely nothing like Jesus. They may be using the term Christian but there is nothing Christ-like about it-Not the mission, the purpose, the methods or the outcome. As a Christian, I am deeply saddened.
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This article really spoke to me because I spent a few years in Christian Homeschool education. I actually enjoyed the lessons as they let me work at my own pace and well, I was raised Christian so I didn’t mind almost every subject being about God. But I just begun to look into them and well they seem to echo the same views as Generation Joshua but are less focused on getting Christian kids into government.
This is I guess, their platform: https://www.aceministries.com/aboutus/pdf/Great_Commandment_Commission.pdf
I haven’t read all of it but I guess after spending 10 years away from this type of language it feels very indoctrinating.
I am a Christian. I have my own issues with that. Being born and raised into a church, I never felt like I had a choice in what beliefs should be. Two churches I went to were cults and I was taken in by a false prophet. I just want to have my faith and not get in the way of anyone’s beliefs. I’m also transgender so I’m dealing with a lot of cognitive dissonance I guess you can say. I know what I feel and I know what I feel is right but I also have this strict Christian upbringing that I just can’t reject. I also became quite far-left in my teens years. First communist then anarchist and now I’m pretty comfortable as a Trotskyist socialist.
I’m a pretty confused person these days but I know one thing is for sure: religion doesn’t belong in politics. I don’t care if I end up in Hell. I firmly believe that you can’t force your views on a multitude of people with different beliefs or no beliefs.
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OHMYGOD I FORGOT ABOUT ACE
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I was trained for a similar movement North of the border – Canadian neo-fascists are less religious, more under the guise of that brand of “libertarianism” which amounts to “a totalitarian regime where I and people like me are the ones who call the shots,” but they employ a lot of the same techniques and strategies.
Like the Quiverfull group, though, they do believe in outvote, outbreed, outactivate, and they brainwash their kids to be good little neofascists.
And it took for me, really well. For years. I was finishing up my master’s degree before I even started to doubt. It’s fucking scary how well the brainwashing gets you. Weirdly, the first crack was climate change – I wound up getting a project on carbon capture in grad school and I approached writing the intro as a trick to try to find evidence to “disprove” it (this was around the time of the Climategate scandal so climate change deniers had a lot of fuel for the fire). Except, when I actually got into the literature… everything seemed to support it. So I dug deeper. And all of that supported it. And I looked for flaws, and where there were flaws they weren’t deal-breakers in terms of study design and oftentimes repeat studies which filled the gaps had been done. And there was study after study after study, thousands of them, and hundreds of different approaches and thousands of different lines of evidence and virtually all of it pointed in one direction, and that direction wasn’t my direction. So I looked into the denialist side of things and it’s like cherry-picked data left, right and centre, and massively flawed studies all over the place, and so on and so forth. Stuff like “Climate change stalled from year X to year Y!” … well yeah but it also continued unabated after year Y and also the stall was due to the well known global cooling effect of Z phenomenon so if you superimpose the average warming trend with the cooling effect imposed by Z, you’d expect it to stall… that it stalled isn’t evidence against climate change – that it didn’t cool is evidence of it! By the time I was done the literature search it was like, “Well. Crap. I was on the wrong side of this one.”
Which then got me thinking “If I’m on the wrong side of that one, what else am I on the wrong side of?” So I started with gay rights because I’d known I was bi since my teen years and it was always one of those things I kind of viewed as a personal weakness because I’d been brainwashed that SSA people are damaged (I’d been sexually abused as a kid which fit the narrative) or pedophiles (terrified the heck out of me because of my own history), and I found that.. nope. And conversion therapy doesn’t convert you straight but it does make you more likely to kill yourself. So I’m on the wrong side of that. Well, feminism! Surely that’s a lie, right? Nope. Free market health care? Haha no. Well, surely it’s better for disabled kids to be excluded from the classroom? Actually everyone does better with inclusion – oh, and you’re autistic. Oh. Crap. Trans rights? Nope, oh and the trans experience is something that resonates with me at the core and hey guess what I’m a trans dude and that’s why I’ve spent my entire post-puberty life hating my body and wishing I could cut certain parts off and thinking I would’ve been a better boy than a girl…
I’m not and have never been a religious person, but my experience with the deprogramming was almost like a crisis of faith – once the solid face of belief is chipped, it starts to crack. The crack spreads and spreads, and finally you hit the point of no return and everything just shatters all at once. It was quite honestly the most painful period of my life – and I’m still emerging from it. The most difficult part is this sense of deep shame regarding the-me-that-was 10+ years ago and this driving need to make up for the things I did out of ignorance and brainwashing.
My point I guess is that your experience is probably more common – and more international – than you think it is, sadly.
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Thank you for this article! It was very informative and incredibly scary to read. I’d also like to print your final sentence on a shirt and walk around in it all day, and I’m safely in Europe (which does have it’s very own problems and plenty of them, and we need to work on this shit for real). I’ve only very recently encountered crazy christian americans for the first time, and as a scholar who knows the bible for professional reasons (and a flaming atheist) their inner workings made me run for the woods screaming. I also waved a rainblow flag in their face, of course. We gotta do what we gotta do. People, I hope you’re all safe. Be careful, and if possible loud. You are the resistance.
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Please do not try and place all homeschoolers under the umbrella of the HSLDA and Evangelical folks. There are those of us who homeschool for purely secular reasons – because we want to give our kids a more robust and individual education full of logic and reason, not to train them as soldiers for Christ. Please ensure that any and all articles that bash homeschoolers as a group like this include the idea that there are many people homeschooling for secular reasons and our concerns and valid and separate from religious homeschoolers.
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Indeed. These are the reasons we chose to homeschool our children. Public education is failing because the curricula are being watered down by state school boards that are infested with right-wing Christofascists.
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Then this article isn’t talking about you, is it? Secular homeschoolers ought to be fighting this harder than anybody, because you stand to lose if they take over. Perhaps you should speak out against fundamentalist homeschooling instead of pulling the #NotAllHomeschoolers card.
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Thank you for sharing your story.
My large, atheist, activist, homeschool family is working hard to do what we can within our diverse homeschool community as well as in the bigger picture. We are out there, and we are gaining strength!
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This makes me so happy <3
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Wow! I grew up as the daughter of a pastor and forced to participate in Operation Rescue and watching my dad get arrested for blocking abortion clinics. It disturbed me then and disturbs me even more now to know its this deep. We are the resistance!
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We can’t change the “Christofacists” with our science.. but we can teach them through their own doctrine.
Jesus was a leftist. Religion of his time and his teachings were done through storytelling; the there were reoccurring themes, slightly different choices which caused different outcomes. Religious scholars tell us that these stories where the means to teach rules to a largely illiterate populace.
We can’t turn a “Christofacist” with science, but we can help them see the light through scholarly presentation of their Bible!
We can gently nudge the “Christofacists” into the epiphany that their teachings have been tainted by the Anti-Christ..& that our job is not to judge, but to love ❤️.
For an example of how this war can be won, checkout this Brilliant, young theist pastor, Katsuya (Kats) Omine, at the Westlight Community Church in Los Angeles, CA.
Kat’s casual, sometimes self effacing delivery is enjoyable “edutainment” on the Highest Order.
To hear his teachings, you’ll have to go to your smart phone’s App Store & download an app called BulletonPlus.
Then hunt through all the churches to find Westlight Community Church.
———-
I am an agnostic, who is active in Westlight’s Free Methodist Church. The result of a “mixed marriage” (Roman Catholic & Orthodox Jew), raised and taught comparative religion in the Unitarian Church & as an Anthropologist, before attending a Jesuit Law School.
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Fought against how? I hear and believe you. I’m surrounded by these people. But it sounds hopeless. What do we do?
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By getting our own children to understand how government works and to be interested in something besides pop culture and themselves.
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Thank you thank you. Amazing and terrifying and fantastically well written. In these dark times it would be inspiring and hopeful to hear the story of how you came to critical consciousness. I hope you’ll consider sharing that part of the story- we certainly need it.
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I don’t know how we go about fighting back in any real effective way but I think that in one of the other comments above, the author seemed to suggest that this article was the first of a series.
I really hope so, this fight is going to be essential, I think.
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Your essay lays out the problem; the “enemy” is well-prepared, numerous, already entr nched in government at all levels, and irrational. “They” can’t be persuaded, or reasoned with. You conclude with the admonition that the only method available to “us” (rational liberals and/or progressives) is to to “resist”…particularly to “fight back”. I have r we numerous people, from Rachel Maddow, to Robert Reich, to Bernie Sanders, to Keith Olberman, saying the same: rising, fight back. What–precisely–does this mean? I want to resist, I want to “fight” (using the structure of our laws and government to press for individual rights and freedom for all) but, what exactly should I do? What does “fight”, mean? What specific steps should someone who wants to “resist”, actually take? Thank you for your time.
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Any advice on just how to fight back?
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Very well written, insightful, and informative. This could be made in to a horror movie quite easily! Thank you, Kieryn, for the fantastic article.
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My husband’s 4 children were home-schooled and home-churched by his ex wife and her “pastor” step-father. For the past 16 years we have lived in a parental-alienation hell. The now adult children have false memories of us implanted in their minds that they believe are true. At some point we became “characters” to them rather than people. These “Christofascist” are very real. This article is 100% accurate, and if we don’t pay attention, we’ll only realize what’s happened when it’s too late. I pray these 4 people, that we still love very much, find the strength to one day break free as well. “Believe in the Truth, and the Truth shall set you free”.
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This is the first time I’ve been on this site, and I have to say how impressed I am by both the article as well as the comments. These are real conversations handled respectfully. What a joy to find this. I hope to spend more time here.
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Comment Award!!!
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Autostraddle, best comment section of all time
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WELCOME, KATHERINE!
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Fascinating and horrifying. Most interested in how you, Kieryn, came to change your mind about what you had been taught, and whether you have been estranged from your family as a result. In your story, I see hope for others in Quiverfull, though I’ve pretty much given up on those poor Duggar girls …
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You are an ignorant jackass.
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Well, that’s not very christlike.
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Kieryn, I just have to applaud your courage. Leaving your family and community – all that you knew, really – couldn’t have been easy. Thank you for educating us on this. You are mighty and strong.
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I have to ask, where does environmentalism fall into their ideology? I don’t mean being a “hippie”, I mean, preserving the earth and being its stewards as God supposedly called people to do. Do they just ignore that? You’d think they’d have more to say against the destructive ways of modern agriculture and wastefulness, and be against things like oil pipelines and fracking. Surely God doesn’t want humanity to destroy earth?
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My chemistry teacher is a Christian and one year for Earth Day chapel, he talked about how on the 7th day God rested, and this is an example of how we should have a balance of benefiting from the earth’s resources, but also spending time giving back and restoring those resources. Letting the Earth rest/recover, essentially.
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Sounds like the systems that allow this line of thinking are totally ingrained into Federal homeschooling legislation and state / local government offices. Against this sort of cemented opposition, how do we fight? Great article, don’t get me wrong, I just can’t see a way to combat this strong of a zealatous fanatical base.
Wait for Tom Cotton to die I guess?
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Thank you for this article. I’ve come into contact with the strain of homeschooler Christians that you’ve described, both in my personal and professional life. I was part of a Bible study group in college where some members believed a moderate version of what you’re describing, as well as spending unending hours talking about the Genesis narrative and contrasting it to science. I don’t know why I stuck around for so long, but doing so definitely delayed my realization that I’m queer!
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very interesting.
stories about how people who have been brainwashed begin to change their view of the world are very important.
i look forward to such a prequel.
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well I for one WILL FIGHT to MY DYING BREATHE to PROTECT MY RIGHTS, and Those of The People I Love…..Black, Women and LGBTQ….. F with me – and I F with YOU 10 FOLD! ..its no wonder Im an ATHEIST NOW/.
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Brilliant article! I was just having a conversation with my son about how so many people fear Muslims, which makes no sense when we have the far-right trying to force their religion on all of us.
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I am not trying to be a fear monger. I’ve known about this for a while, and it’s why I believe that there will be another civil war in this country. It’s just a matter of when. While we hear a lot about Muslims, ISIS, Sharia Law, Islamic Extremists, these “Christofascist” ain’t no better. We are going to have a fight on our hands.
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I was also home taught, thankfully, not for religious or “Protect the children” reasons. My parents always gave me the option of going to school, but I always turned it down. As a result I had an interesting childhood, growing up in a music store and acting as a clerk long before most people start working. It was a pleasant way to grow.
But that said, it’s horrifying that so many people brainwash and push their agenda onto their children, how hard it is for those children to break out of it. You’re a lucky one, many of these commenters are lucky as well.
The fight is coming, and sadly I’m certain that blood will end up spilled in the long run. But I hope that everyone knows that talking, that backing down, that remembering everyone is human is always an option. It’s a shame that brainwashing is such a difficult thing to undo…
Stay strong peeps. Stay strong.
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Kieryn, I homeschool and my kids participated in NCFCA. I didnt feel the pressure to take over the US for Christ but rather to teach kids how to discuss issues in a Christ-honoring way. However, there are many types of homeschoolers and Christian beliefs as Ive come to understand. I was caught up in supporting groups that you mentioned to take our country back to Christianity. Lol. I’ve since been ‘awaken’ to the sham that these groups are. I’m afraid the rabbit hole goes much deeper than you even know..yet. I’ve researched and truly believe now that those behind ALL of these groups are tied to the true goal of a one world order. You may not want to believe it but behind the scenes I believe the leaders work hand in hand with groups from the left. The culture war keeps us agitated and distracted. Dont fall for it. You are smart.Dig into freemasonry. Check out Luciferianism. Start there to see what religion really runs the world.
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Thank you for your insight into a world of which I was not aware; rather, to what extent its tentacles reach. Props to you for escaping their clutches. Keep up your writing!
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Wow, super useful and very brave. Please help think of solutions to act on. Obvious first move is to form very similar movements with the progressive message, we have missed out on our commitment to sharing and teaching a liberal, compassionate, inclusive agenda. The suggestions that you might have and the people that are commenting (also bravely ) on this string could be very useful – Keep writing. !
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Here is something I’m working on trying to start in Philly – albeit on an adult-education level. The idea, though, if it works, may be adapted not only to other cities, but maybe to childhood education too: https://www.facebook.com/groups/philadelphiastoa/
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Holy cow, do I feel this. We weren’t part of the organized end of it, but the ideology is all there. I was raised a survivalist, homeschooled for years, taught that Christians were persecuted in this country, and that it was going to get worse. My brother and I were denied basic medical care for many years, relying instead on “faith healing”. My mother nearly let me die of an ear infection.
All of this resonates. This was the culture I grew up in, a culture of fear, and hatred of anything and anyone different. A deeply racist culture. A powerful narrative that has put distance in between me and my family for decades now.
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Oh my god faith healing. I’m so sorry. I have literal scars from this as well <3 <3 <3
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This + this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvsb8f6mL4E
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My childhood best friend and her family were part of this movement. I remember being around 8 or so and her father sitting me down to teach me about “straight pride” (apparently he saw the queerness in me before I did). It was incredibly manipulative and I remember even as a kid pushing back against that idea and he made me do “bible homework” before being allowed to hang out with daughter again. They were also actively trying to convince me that I was a product of sin (and inherently representative of sin?) since my mother wasn’t married when she had me. That’ll do a lot to fuck you up as a kid and I wasn’t even directly part of that movement.
Thank you so much for sharing this with us, Kieryn.
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Kieryn Darkwater , That is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever read. Now how do we defeat them?
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I’m the parent of three homeschooled young adults – 18,23, and 25. You are spot on about the culture! As a deeply religious, conservative Catholic family we didn’t fit in that culture, but we have many friends who were part of it. Lately, I’ve been seeing these kids – MANY – turn away from the politics of their parents, becoming outspoken pro-whole life and diversity activists. It’s a beautiful thing and keeps me hopeful during these crazy time.
Yes, parents taught their kids to think critically, analyze, and respond well beyond their public school peers. Now those kids have met the rest of the culture and expanded their sources, those very skills lead them away from patriarchy. Not all, but from what I’m seeing some of the best and the brightest.
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Kieryn, can you tell us about what led you out of the right-wing Christian community you were raised in? Was it a gradual process or an all-at-once ‘epiphany’ moment? If you haven’t written an essay about this already, I hope you’ll do so.
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I’ve been documenting it for years 🙂 http://mxdarkwater.com/category/healing-and-awareness/christianity/
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It is critical to understand the scope and influence of the Christianist organization that refers to itself as ‘The Family’ ( http://a.co/gzjXxa6 ) at C Street ( http://a.co/44wFige ).
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this comment has been removed b/c it was racist
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Moderators please remove this comment
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Thank you!!! SO useful, and we need all the intel we can get. Thank you thank you thank you!!!
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So what is their response to God granting humans free will?
Thanks!
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sometimes Calvanism/Predestination? which is like, god knows what’s gonna happen so nothing you do matters/is out of god’s plan, so you don’t really HAVE free will.
It’s been a while so my calvanism could be rusty but that was one way of dealing with it.
Also was….ignoring it. or justifying things in olympic level gymnastic feats.
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The question is: How can we prove that this single-person anecdote is emblematic of what’s actually going on in the Christian world? How do we know if this bat-shit crazy stuff is prevalent? Are a majority of “home schooled” Christian children brainwashed to “outbreed everyone for Jesus”? (Though, I don’t deny that’s likely; I’ve also heard some liberal friends say the same. In the end, this world does get tribal, which I eschew.)
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I’m not the only voice on this, in fact buried in the comments are many many many other homeschoolers or people of similar religious upbringing that confirm this. Many people have written about this. Kathryn Joyce has written extensively about this subculture as well: http://prospect.org/authors/kathryn-joyce
Much of this is also documented by these organizations, I have access to archives and speeches that have said these things. Tim Echols of Teenpact told a room full of teenage girls that we needed to get married and have babies ASAP in 2007.
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I’m a Christian homeschooler. I have 3 boys, and am done. I have also never talked to my kids about outbreeding people for Jesus. I am also not saying these people don’t exist, but most people I know who also homeschool, have a couple of kids, and are done.
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This isn’t Christianity this is white supremacy.
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you’re not wrong
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Christofacism (or what I’ve known as Dominionism) has been a secret weapon of the GOP since the 70s. While the author talks about homeschooling, this movement is also a big reason the GOP supports Vouchers in education. The ruse is that it will help disadvantaged children, but what it really does is funnel government money to religious institutions. Evangelical Christian schools really started proliferating after desegregation laws started to have some real teeth in the South. This coincides with the turn of white Southerners away from the Democratic Party because of the Civil Rights movement. Without the support of these people, the GOP would be a permanent minority party.
Also, regarding the question of manipulating Donald Trump, I would say that the argument cuts both ways. People like Trump, Bannon, Mnuchin, Tillerson and Kushne, think they are the ones manipulating these simple backwater folks who will allow them to lower taxes on the rich, pollute in their backyards, and foreclose on their homes as long as they fight against Roe v Wade and “the gays”.
Rather than talking policy with Christofascist politicians like Pence, the media should start every interview with one simple question: “Vice President Pence, am I going to hell?”
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Yep. Corporate America and Christian extremists have been using each other to sneak their agendas into politics and legislation for decades. What’s the word for an evil symbiosis?
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The Duggars and Bateses follow Bill Gothard’s teachings which are exactly what this essay talks about. The fact that they are promoted on TLC and UP TV is terrifying because it’s another way to normalize this sect of American’s who refuse to accept facts. People and US Magazine also normalize them with front cover stories. This is insidious stuff and we ignore it at our own peril.
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Would like to hear more from this author about how, given this upbringing, a breakaway occurred.
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peruse my archives: mxdarkwater.com
This has been an 8 year journey. :3
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This is nothing short of a cult, and deprogramming needs to happen in the same way that it happens for other cults. We need to start thinking of it as such. I am a Christian. I would never try to push my beliefs on another person. We are supposed to lead by example, not by tyranny.
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I am a former juvenile prosecutor who attempted to help a child who was home schooled and who I had ample evidence was being abused. I was contacted nastily by a national home schooling organization who told me I had no right to be interfering. Even for a child who was being beaten behind closed doors. These are very powerful organizations and I appreciate your insight which is even more than I ever knew.
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Thank you for sharing!
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Yeah, this is one of the reasons we started the Coalition for Responsible Home Education. Kids like that were us or our friends. If you ever need resources on what to look out for and how to report things, or if you’d like to help a homeschool kid and don’t know how. We can probably point you to people. (responsiblehomeschooling.org)
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My youngest son lived with his dad and grandma for a few years. Eventually my son was pulled from public school and,homeschooled(he lost a lot of fundamentals during that time) One night I picked him up for visitation and he tells me how sad it is the Jewish people aren’t going to heaven because they don’t believe in Jesus. Now this came from Grandma. She attends a Luthern church but you can’t prove it by me. I attended that church several times and never heard this message but I never sat in with kids during their teachings.
My oldest was attending a Baptist church for awhile until he came home and told me how Gay people are going to hell.
So tired of that kind of dogma. It’s demoralizing.
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Thank you so much for sharing your perspective. I was raised in a similar cult in the buckle of the Bible Belt before homeschooling was prevalent, but moved west as soon as possible after graduation. I think it’s important for people who have no context for how parents and religious leaders brainwash their children to be educated on why there are people with this perspective. Keep up the fight!
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Thank you so much for this take. Your perspective is one I have, thankfully, grown up without.
A point of clarification if you please. You say there is no reasoning with this movement, this community. That instead we must fight. -Is this a suggestion that this threat can be answered in no other effective way other than with violence?
If your answer is yes to violence I urge you and all reading your article to consider that violence will betray us. It cannot be controlled. The institutions of state and control hold all the cards of violence and militarism. And even if the state were toppled the vacuum of power left would result in endless and spiraling bloodshed and horror. Uncontrollable by any party. Violence eventually spilling out between liberal groups with only slightly carrying agendas and perspectives.
A constant eruption of bloody universal bloody sorrow. That is the only fruit we could ever harvest.
If you are not suggesting violence then I am starved to hear your ideas. If you do not think we should use violence please lead us in thinking new strategies. But if yes indeed you are suggesting violence, then please think further.
Think instead organization. Nation wide strikes. Shutting the country down through economic means (the only counter conservative principle capable of countering christofascism (as you call it): we have the power if we organize. ECONOMIC STRIKES. Shut the country down peacefully until we are ready to open it back up for business under a governance that is not fascist, authoritarian.
Our understandabley fearful and angry emotions must be controlled and thoughtful. We must control them, they are too easily whipped up to violent and mindless curved and it is NOT how to stand up.
We can stand up against this regime, and we can do so without us violateing our humanity or our ideals by spilling the opposition’s blood.
Revolution does not have to look like bullets and blood and broken bodies, like the mythology of our country would portray,,, revolution can look economic. It can even be a revolution against our own violence.
Revolution yes. Violence NO. And we can do this.
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Apologies for the typos/autocorrects.
“slightly varying perspectives and agendas”
And
“whipped up into violent and mindless fervor”
Appolgies.
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I’m writing a follow up, don’t worry!
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Excellent. Thank you again.
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Serious question- why is your screenname an email address?
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Yeah, that’s dumb. It is because I am not a member. I need to change that but at work and no longer on lunch.
If you have a suggestion how to remove my email addy that would be great.
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Are you going to follow up this blog-article with more suggesting ways of fighting back?
Of course, your article is still important even if you don’t follow it up with such suggestions — but I’m still asking anyway because I would like to know how to best fight back.
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yes, that’s currently in the works!
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This is by far the one of the single best written explanations and correct descriptions of the TRUE theocratic encroachment. Hell yeah
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I’ve been mentioning this in comment threads, but as it keeps coming up:
I’m currently putting together a follow up that details how to fight back. It wasn’t in this article because it was already approaching a small book :3 But yes, I have ideas, they’re being put into coherent sentences and then they’ll be put up here 🙂
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Awesome, I can’t wait!
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So many of you commenters say you’re scared. I’m scared, too. Let’s not sit in a corner being scared, ok? Let’s see this as a call to action to not let extremism rule the day. Band together and #Resist and such. Kthanks.
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I too was not surprised. While I never grew up in the movement, I became aware of them shortly after 9/11 when I started to read about religious extremists, not just those from the Middle East, but all over the world. They are typically called Dominionists, which is the label I use in the science fiction novel I’m writing. I hope to have it published in a year or two. Got an editor. He’s great, but the trick is finding a publisher. Also, it still needs a lot of revisions. Hopefully it won’t be too late.
Understand, Trump is a threat for being unstable, but unless he destroyers the world with nukes (and with Trump, that’s not out of the question), Pence is the greater concerns. He has Trump’s ear and he will make sure that all Supreme Court picks are crazies from the dark ages. This will slowly push America, which has the most powerful army on Earth, towards becoming the Kingdom of God.
As a Canadian, there is very little I can do but write my story and hope it gets publish. The American people have no idea that this threat exists. The media dismisses the Dominionists as harmless. They are too worried about the jihadists. Don’t get me wrong. The jihadists pose a grave danger, but if the Dominionists get control of the United States military, well, we might soon find ourselves fighting alongside them, just as we once sided with the Soviets against the Nazis.
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These are thoughts that crossed my mind while I was probably suffering from psychosis. Is any of it true?
Laci Green says both forced celibacy on everyone and hyper aggressive sexualities are wrong.
Laci says that religion, especially Christianity and Islam, shapes the way we think about sex even if we aren’t religious ourselves. This is something she wants to fight against.
Conservatives create this environment and players play around in it, forcing anyone who wants out of it back into it. Players are masters of the black market created by the far conservative right in their efforts to keep people from having sex.
They seem like a product of the far conservative right telling people not to have sex. This naturally makes people want to have sex. This stems from sex being a biological urge you shouldn’t pent up and telling people not to do something usually makes them want to do it. This creates an environment where people want to do something they view as forbidden.
Is there a huge effort in this area to boot out non-Christians unless they meet one of the following criteria:
1)They were raised as something else
2)They’re still sticking close to what they were raised with
3)They are following the popular stereotypes of what non-Christians are suppose to act like
This seems like some cheap trick to avoid being called a bible thumper.
Maybe set theory and metaethics can save the day.
When certain ideas are popular in an area and it is forbidden to question them straw men of popular opposing ideas are bound to be present. For the people who break free of the initial brainwashing they might not be able to break free of the straw men. Eventually the straw men take on a life of their own and join forces with the original idea to repel all outsiders.
If people aren’t using religion to justify sexism and douche bag behavior they are using biological determinism and evolutionary psychology to justify it.
Some people though they let go of religion don’t want to get rid of certain lies like metaphysical sexual pessimism, Social Darwinism, Freud, Machiavellianism, and most of evolutionary psychology. They like to “play the game” and think this is all humanity is capable of. They feel they are the enlightened ones.
Preventing women with unwanted pregnancies from getting abortions seems like a way of increasing their power. Teen mothers and mothers who can’t financially support their children have a lot of strain placed on them. This increases the chances that they will fall for the Christian idea that they are the cure. Once this has happened it also supplies them with children they can brainwash.
Wasps can use players as a strawman and if people insist on not listening to wasps the wasp can let players have at them. This makes it useful for wasps to keep some players around. Both groups seem uninterested in male privilege. I guess wasps can tackle white privilege if it allows them to get stuff they don’t like seen as racist.
If I just ignore thoughts on the grounds of insufficient data what is the appropriate response if I get tricked in the future?
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So proud of you! I wish you were my kid, because you’d never have heard hate speech of any kind.
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Thank you for your story and call to action.
While I was never submerged in the sort of far right theocratic tendency you were, I did see the rise of the Christian Right overtaking the apolitical stance of the Pentecostal churches in which my father – a Pentecostal preacher – raised me. He resisted it somewhat as a “moderate Democrat” but in 1988, he sided with the Reaganites who had taken over the Evangelical movement.
I had moved decisively to the left at that point. Long story short, by 1994 I was calling myself a Pentecostal Socialist. I turned away from Christianity by 1997 altogether, but over the decades since I have come ever closer to reclaiming Jesus as a universalist radical for freedom and justice.
I may yet return to Christianity of some sort, though for the time being I am in seminary planning to go into the Unitarian Universalist ministry. I am taking my radical rebel Jesus with me and confronting the right-wingers (far or near) with a different vision of Jesus. If they say Jesus is God, they have to take seriously that he called for the emancipation of the poor and oppressed and they are called to do the same.
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Terrifying, but enlightening. Thank you! Wow…
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May you find comfort with others as your family was so willing to distance itself from you. Right-wing evangelicals can SUCK IT and I say that as a Republican Protestant. The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. is open to all.
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Did the lord also tell you to help elect a president that raped his first wife, cheated on her with his second wife and then cheated on his second wife with his third wife?
That’s not the jesus I worship
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Thank you, Kieryn, for this, yes terrifying, article. But it also makes sense of everything that has happened.
I edit for a local blog–EqualityWire–and would be very interested in talking to you in person about this article, if you would be willing.
Thank you!
Ginger
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I’m a secular homeschooling parent in Texas who was always both grateful to the HSLDA for defending non-interference from the state while also sickened, knowing that kids like you were bearing the brunt of the fruit of those laws. I am so sorry.Thank you for publishing this; I will definitely repost. I do have one question: Isn’t Mike Pence Catholic? How does that figure into his being a dream in the White House, for the evangelical far-right?
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I’m a Christian – not a Christofascist – who is also a homeschooler, and felt disgusted reading all the things the HSLDL stands for and fights against. It is definitely an organization that does as much harm as it does good.
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according to the internet he used to be and then converted to evangelical christianity.
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This is exactly it.
No one has written to lay this out as specifically.
I would like to see this author publish more and find others to so so.
The hypocrisy is rich and immoral. They scream about freedom while attempting to take another’s.
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Well we will pray for you Kieryn, that you come back to your faith in Christ if you were even born again in the first place. You make it sound that homeschooling is bad, many home schooled kids out score and perform public school kids on scholastic tests.
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please don’t.
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Matthew 15:9, Mark 7:7 immediately come to mind upon viewing this diatribe. Christianity and conservatism are NOT synonymous with Republican/GOP/Tea Party and certainly not Donald Trump or Mike Pence. The Bible says God is NOT the author or confusion, NOT a respecter of persons and true Christianity undefiled is to obey HIS laws, take care of the fatherless and widows. It also says to care for those without food, clothing, and shelter. We know Christians by their fruit. Mike Pence deliberately left a man proven innocent in prison in Indiana, just last year. Indiana didn’t want him,now the nation has him…and ALEC.
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Yup. The only women of color I know that voted for tr*** did so because of their evangelical christianity.
One of the problems is that church is free, and education is expensive.
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Knowing what you know now, do you think about your own existence, your very birth, as a political statement or tactic by your parents? David Brooks of the NYTimes wrote about the roots of ‘natalism’ many years ago. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/07/opinion/the-new-reddiaper-babies.html
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Thank you for this article. This is something we’ve seen for years creeping up. The “God’s Army” from Xtian Universities with names like “Liberty” where they allow no Dem student clubs. The encroachment on Roe V Wade. And now the despicable Pence. People were told the Tea Party was some grass roots development advocating less Govt Spending. And now look. This was like watching a Tornado. We have to fight this AMERICAN TALIBAN. NOW. They will destroy the country.
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Had no idea.
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A friend of mine posted this piece on their page. Read it and then read the rest of this post, which I’m calling: The Anatomy of Bullshit – How to read a Facebook post and know who is really behind the information
1. Check out the author and their relationships
2. Go to the website of the non-profit and locate their funding sources by finding their IRS 990 tax forms
a. Check out their stated policy
b. Red flag if the tax forms aren’t available on the website
c. Red flag if the non-profit doesn’t have a quick way to donate
3. If the tax forms are not available, go to guidestar.org and download their 990 forms
4. Scroll through the 990 and look for assets and rapid growth year to year.
5. Examine the 990 for relationships with other non-profits
6. Go to the website of other affiliated non-profits to see their agenda and founding members
7. Recognize why the information is being spread
8. Decide for yourself if you trust this source or not
Now after you’ve read this boi’s post, let’s dissect together.
1. The author of this post is Kieryn Darkwater – Tech Director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, a San Francisco based non-profit.
2. The website for the Coalition for Responsible Home Education’s site states that it is a nonprofit organization founded by homeschool alumni to advocate for the interests of homeschooled children.
a. No 990 forms, red flag
b. Donation button takes a while to locate. Red flag – this is a well funded operation, indicative of a not for profit funded by major corporations
3. Guidestar has 990 forms from 2012 through 2015
4. This home schooling not for profit is very well funded, with rapid growth in assets year to year
5. The Coalitions 990 tax forms mention that they are funded by a group called Global Business Coalition for Education Inc, a global group with funding in the US, UK, Mexico, India, and the Middle East.
6. Website for Global Business Coalition for Education Inc. lists the founding members. Founding members include: Accenture, Grupo Carso, Chevron Corporation, Dangote Industries, Discovery Communications, Inc., Econet Wireless Group, GUCCI, Hess Corporation, Intel Corporation, Lenovo Group Limited, McKinsey & Co, Inc., Pearson plc, Reed Smith LLP, Tata Sons Limited and Western Union.
7. The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a front group for industries interested in the promotion of their corporate agendas, including pharmaceutical firms, oil companies, technology companies, financial services, and telecommunications.
8. I don’t trust the writings of activist Kieryn Darkwater. The agenda of a home schooling non profit should not include regulating home schools, forcing vaccinations on home schooled children, HRT – Hormone Replacement Therapy, or the other policies listed on their website.
And that’s how you approach every other non-profit group in the United States.
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Hi, as one of the founders of CRHE, your assessment is bullshit. A look at our website tells you where we are based. I don’t know which 990 forms you’re looking at it but it’s not ours. Great try though, we didn’t even exist in 2012.
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Sorry, I thought you were affiliated with another group. I’ve deleted my post.
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I was actually starting to think this was a promotion for Guidestar, as your organization is there and does not have the information filled out.
Funny thing is, if you go by the criteria above, you should not even trust Guidestar, as it is a non-profit, and violates SEVERAL of the aforementioned things that are red flags (Hard to find the 990’s and cannot easily find the donate button).
Also, there is a huge leap of logic between:
“6. Website for Global Business Coalition for Education Inc. lists the founding members. Founding members include: Accenture, Grupo Carso, Chevron Corporation, Dangote Industries, Discovery Communications, Inc., Econet Wireless Group, GUCCI, Hess Corporation, Intel Corporation, Lenovo Group Limited, McKinsey & Co, Inc., Pearson plc, Reed Smith LLP, Tata Sons Limited and Western Union.
7. The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a front group for industries interested in the promotion of their corporate agendas, including pharmaceutical firms, oil companies, technology companies, financial services, and telecommunications.”
Thought I should point that out.
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This cult has been organizing and building strategically for decades, and have now taken control of our government.
Who remembers the “I Found it” campaign of 1977, when the Christofascist cult was advertising for fundamentalists to register into their databases?
That was the year Jimmy Carter took office, and only three years after Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace from the Presidency.
The Right plays the “long game” strategically, while the Liberal Left wins an occasional election and puts down its guard in celebration. That is why we have been losing our nation since the 1970s.
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(Also I don’t want to de-rail comment threads with this but, I’m a nonbinary trans person and my pronouns are they/them/theirs <3 <3 )
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Kieryn, thank you so SO so SO much for sharing your own history with us and for providing such a COMPREHENSIVE look at what the hell is going on with Christofascism in this country.
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(While I was writing this, hundreds of comments were added here—sorry about the anonymous throwaway account. But maybe it’ll still be of use to somebody.)
Sadly, I can confirm as a former closeted East Texan evangelical, I grew up around some of this 🙁 (not Quiverfulls specifically but related ideologies)
I’ve been thinking about this a lot though, and I want to disagree with the author and the general sentiment about the impossibility of swaying people away from this kind of thought, because the author and I are both examples of people who have been swayed (although we admittedly both had some major personal motivation, and my indoctrination was not quite as extreme as theirs), because I’ve been able to sway a few people substantially (without much personal motivation, and having being indoctrinated much like this author), and because I think changing peoples’ minds is a critical component of sustainable long-term social change. That said, I don’t think it should be the priority for the moment for most people, nor should most people even attempt it probably, unless they already know these kinds of people personally; it requires individual attention, 1-on-1 time, an intimate understanding of their worldview, and… emotional sacrifices (like being willing to argue from their POV and hold your reactions).
However, there is a special role available for people like me and the author, who come from backgrounds that let us comprehend and even to some degree empathize with people like this, but who have already learned (many of) the errors of our ways. We are in the fairly unique position of having insider access and insider status and being able to show insider flags (which is frankly quite important if you want to be listened to in these cultures), of having personal experience with changing our minds in the right direction (we hope!), in particular of having personal experience with the mental and emotional trials of overcoming a deeply problematic worldview (which are substantial, though of course the trials are *warranted*), and of having social and emotional ties that sometimes help keep us from the kinds of strong reactions that people tend to get when a stranger says something abhorrent (although friends and relatives saying abhorrent things is of course worse in a lot of ways, and personally I’ve found this somewhat harder to manage over time, esp. with people that are closer to me).
The process of changing peoples’ minds and changing the culture is slow and ugly and painful, but also, as far as I can tell, critical, esp. when it comes to the more extreme subsets of our society. Kyriarchy needs to be strongly resisted, and for now largely in more traditionally conflict-y ways, but simply fighting and suppressing the huge number of people upholding it is not a sustainable solution. As we’ve seen over and over and over, it causes a backlash, and unfortunately, especially with modern technology and economics, the strength of the backlash is not necessarily in proportion to the (slowly diminishing) number of backlashers. In particular, the highly-visible (to conservatives) “liberalization” of society, esp. the increasing social norms against expression of bigoted, kyriarchical, or sometimes just conservative views, has caused a process where people, rather than actually changing their minds, obscure their views in public, passing them along and strengthening them in private, forming bonds as a result of sharing intimate “confessions”, until eventually, at least in the right clusters, people start to feel like *most* of their friends are privately agreeing with them. At that point, they feel empowered to speak out in public, and then if they get enough support for that, they start to feel like the norm was never a “real” social norm at all, just oppressive crap pushed on them by distant liberals and oligarchs.
That process is incredibly hard to detect and counter if you’re only relating to these people from the outside, because the process is underground-by-default, but occurring in groups that often hold disproportionate power and wealth, with the publicly-accessible forms of their communication full of signals that make most outsiders want to look at something else instead (for a variety of reasons). Perhaps it is true that, with a few more cycles of adults being pressured into acting decently enough and holding their tongues, enough children would grow up uninfluenced that the problem would just go away on its own. But I’m not convinced we *can* endure a few more cycles at all, and even if we can, they will (continue to) be devastating. While I do think the cycle is helping in net, it also hurts everyone in the process, and actually changing peoples’ minds is one of the only ways I see to sustainably slow it down and break it.
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Much love to you for writing this critical summary of what we face now. I was a member of the ICoC from age 14 to 21 (18 years ago now) and the scars of mistrust and fear still run deep. Congratulations on your awakening, and thank you for contributing to the enlightenment of others!
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The author was a member of the Tea Party in 2009 (and was “laying the groundwork for [Tea Party] elections in 2006”), but is now calling them “Christofascists” and warning us about what they’re doing. What happened during the intervening years? How does a conversion like that happen? The answer would be a much more interesting article, IMO.
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Kieryn This is one of the most terrifying things I’ve read in recent history, leaving most of Stephen King’s work in the dust, including The Shining
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Good Article. There were enough men and women in the Women’s marches who hold modern, tolerant, inclusive God-based and/or humanity/organic-based beliefs to know our only problem is we are practicing our cherished American beliefs of freedom under scattered roofs and are not organized into regular worship and supportive circles that continually uplift us and overflow. You know?
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I grew up in the same movement, during the 1990’s. We were raised in isolation on a farm, homeschooled, etc. For some years, our only textbook was the bible. For others, we used textbooks from the 1800’s. When I was a teenager, I was sent to a remote compound in the Upper Peninsula to train in the paramilitary wing of our homeschool cult, which was called Advanced Training Institute. These people are serious as hell. I broke away at 18 after returning from the compound in Michigan (complete with airstrip, barracks, bunkers, etc) and realizing that the whole thing was crackers.