Homeschooling and Religious Trauma

 Hi! 

Our latest podcast is now live. Homeschooling and Religious trauma. In this podcast Ray talks about his experience with being homeschooled and then transitioning into Community College. Going from a bubble of church and home and suddenly needing to make your own decisions and navigate in the adult world can be jarring. Ray talks about how well prepared for adult life his schooling taught him and it's pitfalls.  

A little history: The book Hijacking History: How the Religious Right Teaches History and Why it Matters, by Kathleen Wellman is very helpful in understanding what is going on. When schools in the south became unsegregated a few men got together and started homeschooling and Christian Academies in order to keep their children from mixing with black kids. It starts out to maintain the status quo in the south and becomes as one family member put it, "the Baptist thing to do". Parents were essentially sold a bag of goods that promised a better education than the public schools could. There are many publishing houses who do Homeschool curricula, so in her book Wellman studies the top 3 curricula used by the majority of homeschooling and non denominational Christian schools. Read her book to fully understand what is at stake and what 100,000s of young people since the 1960s have been taught and believe to be true about our nation's founding. 

Some things that really stuck out to me. Ray's curricula used Noah Webster's Dictionary from 1828.... Nearly 200 years old. It's definitions are based on the Bible (King James version) and reinforce an 1828 view of the world and Bible. Modern Biblical scholarship which is practiced in major universities and most colleges is rejected. Schools and universities that reject these teachings were once not accredited and so they came up with their own standards and accreditation that often has left graduates unable to transfer their credits to an accredited university. Seminaries that prepare mainline protestant and Catholic pastors use modern Biblical scholarship that is rejected by these mainly evangelical and fundamentalist churches. 

Language: Another eye-opening experience from the book that Ray confirmed was the curricula's definition of post enlightenment words and philosophies. "Humanism" is not defined in these curricula the way the modern dictionary defines it, and would not be in the 1828 dictionary. "Humanism" in these curricula is defined as worshipping people and is linked to the fall of the tower of babel. Why does this matter? The current speaker of the house, for example uses language of Christian Nationalism, which these curricula teach. The Speaker of the House also supports the far right's unwillingness to have systems of government that help people. Anything that disagrees with their world view is designated as wrong, or sinful, and should be rejected. As Wellman explains, after the civil war by their own theological understanding the Southern leaders should have seen their defeat as God's will and their belief in slavery as wrong. But instead they saw it as everyone else is wrong and themselves as the true Christians. Then they birthed the myth of the lost cause and the civil war being about state's rights. 

In a real sense, we are in the political situation of today because of the South's religious unwillingness to see their defeat as judgement from God and to change their ways. Instead we have generations of thought and people continuing to reject the modern world. Rather than living by themselves peacefully, they are using fear tactics and propaganda to teach children that they need to save the US and bring it back into pre-civil war culture. With the help of the end of the fairness doctrine, unchecked right wing media, Christian tele-evangelists, and powerful lobbyist and think tanks, Christian Nationalism has arisen and is now in many levers of power in our society. It's rise in many churches has left young people traumatized, unable to attend other Christian denominations that do not teach Christian Nationalism, and wondering why the alternative voices from progressive and liberal churches are not being told. 

Please be aware that the Christian Nationalist curricula are from 3 publishing houses, which Professor Wellman examined. Not all curricula in homeschooling and private Christian schools are teaching a false sense of history or Christian Nationalism. But enough are that we should be aware of the language changes, the ignoring and rejection of major philosophical movements that influenced our founders, and propaganda that teaches these users that the US is a Christian Nation. If you listen to newscasters who are trying to understand why the right says liberalism as a dirty word, or why it appears the nation has two different planets on which people are living, Wellman's book explain's it, and it has to do with changing the meaning of words, and telling history in a way that seeks to interpret Biblical events through the lens of White American Protestant exceptionalism. 

Other books that are helpful on the topic of Christian Nationalism:

Pamela Cooper-White's "The Psychology of Christian Nationalism"

Whitehead and Perry "Taking America Back for God"

Andrew Whitehead "American Idolatry"

Kathrine Stewart "The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism"