Traumatic Homeschooling: How Evangelicals Use Education to Totalize by R. L. Stollar May 7, 2022

Friends,

Wow! This was an eye-opener. I am reading this in the context of my earlier post today on "unschooling." There is much to know about these suspect movements. I would never want to say that all homeschooling or unschooling is bad, but rather that the growing evidence and first-person accounts like this one by R. L. Stollar, are deeply concerning. 

Based on these burgeoning stories and evidence, particularly of horrific stories of child abuse that range from actual harm to children in an unregulated system of education to the "totalism," or indoctrination that is killing children's wills, is resulting in a growing choir of individuals calling for legal and policy reforms to protect children.  Stollar's entire paragraphs on "totalism" is worth reading:

"Totalism is a concept first developed by psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton in his 1961 book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. Totalism is related to totalitarianism, and signifies a psychological form of totalitarianism — the totalitarian monitoring and control of another individual’s behaviors and thoughts. Lifton uses the term to describe the attributes of ideological movements and organizations that aim for total control over people’s behaviors and thoughts. While these movements and organizations may vary in design and goals, they follow common patterns and cause predicable types of psychological damage to those within them."

The evidence gets even more grim as one learns of the cases of child torture where according to a study by pediatrician Barbara Knox (2014) finds that 

“47% [of the tortured children] who had been enrolled in school were removed under the auspice of ‘homeschooling.’” “Homeschooling,” Knox observed, “appears to have been designed to further isolate the child.”

This is terrifying. I am glad that more people are speaking out. 

-Angela Valenzuela

Traumatic Homeschooling: How Evangelicals Use Education to Totalize

Posted byR.L. StollarMay 7, 2022

The following is the text of the speech I gave at the Conference on Religious Trauma on April 30, 2022.

I’d like to begin by thanking Janice for inviting me to speak here and I’d like to thank my fellow panelists as well as Caleb for moderating. Religious trauma is such an important topic and childhood education is a key vehicle for passing that trauma on from generation to generation.

I will speak to you today about homeschooling, specifically evangelical homeschooling. I will speak about homeschooling because homeschooled children and alumni are intimately familiar with religious trauma. This is because the vast majority of homeschoolers are evangelical Christians. Consequently, many homeschooled children have experienced corporal punishment, threats of eternal hellfire, educational neglect, molestation and rape, and other human rights abuses—all in the name of glorifying the evangelical god. 

In fact, due to the intentionally deregulated state of homeschool laws in the United States, homeschool parents have nearly absolute power over what they can do to and teach their children. Homeschooling has thus become a tool for what psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton has called “totalism.” Totalism is the end goal of authoritarian and totalitarian movements and organizations: it is the total control of human action and belief.  By enabling homeschoolers to use homeschooling totalistically, deregulated homeschooling has created the perfect storm for abuse and neglect to thrive in homeschooling communities.

To understand how this became the case, a short history lesson is in order.

BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Alberta, Tim (2023). The kingdom, the power, and the glory: American evangelicals in an age of extremism

Friends,

I highly recommend this book. It was authored by former Politico Magazine chief political correspondent Tim Alberta who now writes for The Atlantic. He grew up in a white protestant church where his father served as a preacher for many years. It documents in great detail how the white Evangelical church in our country has gotten politicized to the point of deeply divided and wounding internal politics with one side opposing Trumpism and the other, often quiet, timid, or numb, in the crosshairs of partisan politics playing out in the church. Alberta maintains that this mixing of partisan, defensive politics with religion—acting as if the church were "under siege," a claim he handily dismisses, or as if the Kingdom of God needed these self-proclaimed warriors' help—cheapens the Gospel.

It's hard to encapsulate all the drama, fractiousness and hurt that Alberta vividly captures in his visits to around 30 churches throughout the U.S. over three years, from 2020 to 2023. His text is punctuated throughout with soulful reflection on the meaning, purpose, and role of the church in today's world anchored in Christ's teachings that speak, even now, to the redemptive possibilities of a church rooted in compassion and justice.

One can get to the heart of Alberta's treatise from his conversation with former megachurch Pastor Brian Zahnd, pastor of the Word of Life Church who has a Youtube channel to which one can subscribe. In St. Joseph, Missouri, his church experienced great tumult during the last Trump presidency as white evangelical Christians took sides on the Trump agenda. At the end of Chapter 15, Alberta and Zahnd are in conversation about whether the church is optimally positioned to take a stand.  Here is his response.

"Taking a stand," Zhand scoffed. "There is this soft assumption of action we're called to take. The task of the church is simply to be the Church. All of this high-blown rhetoric about changing the world—we don't need to change the world. We're not called to change the world. We are called to be the world already changed by Christ; that's how we're salt; that's how we're light. (p.293)

This is just one of the many gems that grace the pages of Alberta's book, which he masterfully narrates in its audiobook version. Treat yourself to the wisdom and healing power of this timely and exceptional text that is among the best books I've read this year.

-Angela Valenzuela 

References

Alberta, T. (2023). The kingdom, the power, and the glory: American evangelicals in an age of extremism. Harper.

How the Fight Over Critical Race Theory Became a Religious War, by David French

It's sad to see the church getting so profoundly manipulated and mobilized against something that the church would totally benefit and grow from, namely, a greater understanding of race and race relations and how the church itself is profoundly implicated in the reinscribing of white supremacy.

At some point they'll understand that they're getting left behind by a no-nothing ideology that robs them individually, and the church, collectively, from the inner and outer engineering that must occur if we are to reform ourselves as individuals, and as a society and world. Whatever the reason or justification, to step out of—and even eschew—the race conversation is to abandon ship and avoid the inescapable fact that we all co-create the events of this world.

Hopefully, at some point, a real awakening will occur within the church that allows ministers and church members to see this, as well as to how they have been played. At the end of the day, these useless polemics amount to weapons of mass distraction in a world that is universally impacted by an ever-present pandemic, devastating forms of climate change, and a clear and present danger of nuclear holocaust.

Thanks to Jorge Haynes for sharing this piece that helps deconstruct the ideological qua theological elements that undergird the "religious war" that the church clearly wants to have. And what's so offensive in all of this is the deep sense of Christian righteousness and duty that have motivated so many of us on the left for generations—and continues to do so. 

Where would Jesus be on all of this? Clearly on the side of love. Let's all work to clear the smoke out so that in and through our differences—including religious ones—we can all find our way to that new world where we can co-create a deep, abiding sense of love toward one another, and our Earth mother where the threatened soils and seeds of life on this precious planet are contained.

In Lak' Ech! Tu eres mi otro yo. You are my other me.

Sí se puede! Yes we can!

-Angela Valenzuela

THE FRENCH PRESS

How the Fight Over Critical Race Theory Became a Religious War

This is the wrong time to close Christian hearts and minds to challenging debates about race and justice in the United States.

by David French | April 10, 2022 | The French Press

( Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images)

In the late summer of 1991 I arrived at Harvard Law School a devout Evangelical, conservative Republican. I grew up in a small town in Kentucky, attended a private Christian college in Nashville, and then walked into an intellectual home for a new theory I’d never encountered: critical race theory. 

I remember reading the some of the key early texts, including Kimberle Crenshaw’s seminal law review article, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” first published in 1989. I remember being assigned excerpts from Derrick Bell’s book, Faces At The Bottom Of The Well: The Permanence Of Racism. 

I remember being both challenged and frustrated by CRT. There were elements that, even in the moment, were immediately enlightening, such as Crenshaw’s discussion of the inability of contemporary antidiscrimination law to grapple with the nuances of “intersecting” identities. 

There were also troubling elements, including a pervasive pessimism about the ability of America’s classical liberal structures to achieve true racial equality and an unwillingness to acknowledge the extent of America’s racial progress. In addition, some of CRT’s most ardent adherents could be remarkably intolerant, sometimes even seeking to shout down competing ideas or suppress dissent.

What I did not think, at any point, was that I was reading an idea fundamentally at odds with orthodox Christianity.

If you wonder why I raise such a thought, you’re not following the grassroots debate about CRT closely enough. You don’t understand the reason for its raw intensity. The Republican attack on CRT isn’t just an attack on an academic idea. At the grassroots it’s seen as a defense of Christianity itself. The origin of this belief, like everything related to CRT, is complicated. But its elements are simple enough to explain. 

The process went like this: 

First, there was and is an interesting and highly technical academic and theological debate about the compatibility of Christianity and CRT, with a number of voices arguing that CRT clashed with the Christian faith.

Second, the definition of CRT was fundamentally and intentionally changed by conservative activists to encompass an enormous number of arguments and ideas about race, including arguments and ideas that have nothing to do with CRT.

Third, the result is that large numbers of Christians who now hear unfamiliar or unpopular arguments about race not only think those ideas are “CRT” but also that they’re positively unchristian and poisonous to their souls. 

Let’s start with the theological debate. The thoughtful Christian argument against CRT boils down to the notion that it’s, in essence, not so much an academic theory as an all-consuming worldview. As Christian writers and scholars Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer argued in an important piece in the The Gospel Coalition, critical theory (CRT is one aspect of critical theory)* purports to answer “our most basic questions: Who are we? What is our fundamental problem? What is the solution to that problem? What is our primary moral duty? How should we live?”

The authors contrasted what they described as the “metanarratives” of Christianity and critical theory. Christianity “provides us with an overarching metanarrative that runs from creation to redemption,” whereas “critical theory is associated with a metanarrative that runs from oppression to liberation.”

While the essay doesn’t claim that everything critical theory affirms as false, it asserts that the Christianity and critical theory’s “respective metanarratives will vie for dominance in all areas of life.” How does this work? Shenvi and Sawyer ask us to consider the question of identity: “Is our identity primarily defined in terms of our vertical relationship to God? Or primarily in terms of horizontal power dynamics between groups of people?”

I'll repeat again as I often say, "curriculum is the reproduction of consciousness." This is a sobering and troubling read on what is getting taught to many students in many Christian K-12 schools.  

As we know from many years of battle before the Texas State Board of Education—about which I have blogged repeatedly in the context of the battle for Ethnic Studies, a right-wing agenda has similarly held sway in Texas' K-12 standards and text book selection battles. These battles are important and we as a polity need to be more involved, including running for these posts.

-Angela Valenzuela

These Textbooks In Thousands Of K-12 Schools Echo Trump’s Talking Points

Their religion-centered, anti-Democrat, anti-science, anti-multicultural message mirrors the Christian nationalism seen at the U.S. Capitol riot.

By Rebecca Klein | Huffington Post

01/15/2021 09:11 AM ET 

Christian textbooks used in thousands of schools around the country teach that President Barack Obama helped spur destructive Black Lives Matter protests, that the Democrats’ choice of 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton reflected their focus on identity politics, and that President Donald Trump is the “fighter” Republicans want, a HuffPost analysis has found.

The analysis, which focused on three popular textbooks from two major publishers of Christian educational materials ― Abeka and BJU Press ― looked at how the books teach the Trump era of politics. We found that all three are characterized by a skewed version of history and a sense that the country is experiencing an urgent moral decline that can only be fixed by conservative Christian policies. Language used in the books overlaps with the rhetoric of Christian nationalism, often with overtones of nativism, militarism and racism as well.

Scholars say textbooks like these, with their alternate versions of history and emphasis on Christian national identity, represent one small part of the conditions that lead to events like last week’s riot at the U.S. Capitol, an episode that was permeated with the symbols of Christian nationalism. Before storming the Capitol, some groups prayed in the name of Jesus and asked for divine protection. They flew Christian and “Jesus 2020” flags and pointed to Trump’s presidency as the will of God. The linkage between Christian beliefs and the violent attack on Congress has since pushed evangelical leaders to confront their own relationship with Trump and their support for the rioters.

“These textbooks made this brand of nationalism more mainstream,” said Kathleen Wellman, a Southern Methodist University history professor who is working on a book about the two Christian publishers. “I’m struck by how coherent of a worldview [the textbooks] promote and how thoroughly it resonates in current culture.” 

Representatives from BJU Press and Abeka did not respond to inquiries about how many schools use their products. However, a 2017 HuffPost investigation found that about one-third of Christian schools participating in private school choice programs used a curriculum created by these two publishers or a similar company called Accelerated Christian Education, amounting to around 2,400 schools. The number of schools using these company’s products that do not participate in a voucher program likely amounts to thousands more. (Voucher programs allow students to use taxpayer funds to attend private schools.) 

Both Abeka and BJU Press have ties to Christian colleges. Abeka was launched in the 1970s by Arlin and Beka Horton, who also founded Pensacola Christian College, a Florida institution that outlaws dancing and other “satanic practices,” such as astrology. BJU Press is affiliated with the evangelical Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, which famously lost its tax-exempt status after banning interracial dating in the ’80s, a policy it didn’t reverse until 2000.

“We unequivocally condemn any rhetoric that promotes illegal or violent behavior,” Amy Yohe, managing editor of Abeka Publishing, told HuffPost. “One of Abeka’s core goals is to teach constructive citizenship through textbooks that accurately represent the facts of history, enabling students to learn from the life lessons it teaches, both positive and negative.”

BJU Press did not respond to requests for comment.

However, scholars who study religion in America say that many of the ideas present in the publishers’ textbooks overlap with rhetoric heard from the rioters last week. Christian nationalists argue that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and has a special covenant with God, meaning that its citizens must implement a particular vision for this country or they will fall out of favor with God. The textbooks parrot these ideas, said Andrew Whitehead, associate professor of sociology and director of the Association of Religion Data Archives at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

“As we see in these textbooks, they’re afraid of outside forces or the U.S. won’t be what it should be,” said Whitehead. “There’s always a particular prescription ― they have to be on God’s good side. I think that’s a big part of it.”

Passages from the textbooks reflect an overarching worldview in which America is constantly moving away from a moral center, with Christians on the front lines beating back the forces of immorality. 

One passage in an 11th-grade U.S. history textbook from Abeka states, “Although many false philosophies were popular in America before 2000, the new millennium heralded a dramatic acceptance of immoral ideology on a national scale. … Three such philosophies are globalism, environmentalism, and postmodernism.” 

“Believing religion — particularly Christianity — to be divisive, globalists discourage its influence on public life,” it continues.

By parroting such conservative political views under the guise of Christianity, the textbooks give those views more legitimacy, making it difficult to distinguish between fact and opinion. While all textbooks, including the secular, cherry-pick narratives and have their biases, these ones fuse a religious worldview with Trumpian talking points using anti-media and anti-immigrant rhetoric. 

“Obviously it’s too simplistic to say these textbooks are causing people to think something, but they play a unique role in giving visual credibility to these ideas by having them be in a very traditionally trustworthy artifact,” said Adam Laats, professor of history and education at New York state’s Binghamton University. “There’s a sense that they couldn’t put it in a schoolbook if it wasn’t true.”

HuffPost’s previous investigation of these textbooks found that they also dismiss evolution as junk science, characterize Nelson Mandela as a “marxist agitator” who helped drive South Africa to “radical affirmative action,” and suggest that Satan hatched the idea of modern psychology. Many of the schools that use these books also ban LGBTQ students and families, and the books repeatedly condemn homosexuality. At one point in an Abeka textbook, slavery is described in purely economic terms, saying that “slaves seemed to be better investments than indentured servants.”

“I absolutely thought of these textbooks when watching what played out last week,” Wellman said. “It’s the anti-science culture, anti-elite, the identification of Christianity with military culture.”

Trump supporters gather near the east front door of the U.S. Capitol after groups breached the building's security on Jan. 6, 2021. 

(Win McNamee/Getty Images)

When discussing protests against the Iraq War and President George W. Bush’s low approval rating at the time, the Abeka 11th-grade U.S. history book points the finger at the media in part, saying that “much of the war opposition in America was the media, supported by a large number of Hollywood entertainers,” and that “spurred on by the media, many Americans wanted a change from the policies of the previous eight years.”

When discussing President Obama, the textbooks accuse him and his administration of stoking racial divisions. Below is a passage from that Abeka history book:

“Many Americans’ views about race relations had improved at the time that Obama was inaugurated. Unfortunately, Americans’ views of race relations declined after Obama came into office. Race riots in places such as Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, greatly escalated racial tensions and worsened strife between minorities and local police. President Obama’s attempts to resolve these problems often seemed to make the situation worse.” 

The books do not mention that such protests came in response to the deaths of unarmed Black men, including Michael Brown and Freddie Gray Jr., at the hands of police.

A high-school-level textbook from BJU Press also blames the Black Lives Matter movement for racial discord. It says:

“Despite President Obama’s call for racial harmony, his eight-year term of office saw an intensification of racial discord. Several controversial shootings of black men led to protests, some of which were violent and destructive with black communities bearing the brunt of most of the destruction. Groups such as Black Lives Matter sharpened the divide between police and citizens, and black and white, with divisive rhetoric. Mixed messages from the Obama administration, the Department of Justice in particular, seemed to increase the racial discord.”

The textbook does not mention that those “controversial” shootings were at the hands of police officers or explain the societal changes Black Lives Matter is trying to achieve with its supposedly “divisive rhetoric.” The book does not lay out for its teen readers what those “mixed messages” from the Obama administration were. 

Other targets of the textbooks include “globalists,” environmentalists and “multiculturalists.”

“According to multiculturalists, advancing the achievements of western civilization was an act of hatred toward other cultures. They encouraged people to define themselves by race, sex, or sexual orientation rather than by the pillars of western civilization, such as nation, family, and God,” reads the Abeka American history textbook. “However, many conservatives and Christians within America have attempted to quell these philosophies and once again turn America into a united, moral nation.”

The textbooks don’t give a full-throated endorsement of Trump, noting his crude remarks and previously liberal positions, but they ultimately represent him as someone on the side of Christians who is fighting for their values. One description from the Abeka textbook reads:

“Contrary to the high hopes that Obama’s presidency would bring the country together, Americans were bitterly divided leading up to the election in 2016. The Democratic Party had become increasingly concerned with identity politics, which is the idea that a person’s race, sex, and sexual orientation form the most important parts of their humanity and that politics should reflect that belief. Republicans, meanwhile, believed that their politicians had been too compromising with the increasingly radical left and that they needed a political outsider who would not back down or compromise with the Democrats. 

“... The Republican Party nominated real estate mogul and reality television star Donald Trump from New York, whose determination and bombastic mannerisms gave Republicans the fighter they wanted. As a businessman, Trump stated that he would ‘take the brand of the United States and make it great again.’ However, many conservatives were wary of Trump because of his occasional vulgar speech, his past immoral behavior, and his public support of homosexual marriage; but some were persuaded by Trump’s choice for his running mate — Indiana’s conservative governor Mike Pence.” 

Evangelical Christians were one of Trump’s most important voting blocks. Though white evangelicals only represent about 15% of the electorate, they made up about 23% of the vote during the 2020 election, according to the Associated Press. About 8 in 10 white evangelical Christians voted for Trump last year. 

A passage from an Abeka high school history book.

Images from the Capitol riot felt more familiar than shocking to 28-year-old Mel Garman, who grew up attending evangelical Christian schools.

There were the Christian flags, like the ones she used to pledge allegiance to in school, waving alongside American flags. The rioters’ rhetoric, focused around saving the country, defeating enemies and promoting the will of God, could have come straight out of one of her childhood classrooms, where she said she was taught a distorted version of history with nods to white Christian supremacy. Last week’s insurrectionists could have been her classmates, her teachers, her pastors. She felt a wave of recognition as she watched the pictures on social media. 

“Over the course of my life I can see how what I was taught in Christian schooling has impacted me, and the riots on Jan. 6 played into it. That whole belief system revolves around the idea that you want the rest of the world to think like you,” said Garman, who is now a social worker. “It’s a ‘the ends justify the means’ type of thing.”

Since Jan. 6, popular pro-Trump evangelical leaders have felt driven to judge the rioters’ actions, with some offering full-throttle condemnations and others issuing more temperate responses.

“The Secret Service had to escort the vice president of the United States to safety out of the Capitol building. Gunshots were fired. Tear gas was deployed in the Capitol Rotunda. People were killed. ... This was an assault on law. Attacking the Capitol was not patriotism; it was anarchy,” said Rev. John Hagee of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio during his Sunday sermon, before going on to rally support for law enforcement, according to the Associated Press.

Miles away in Kentucky, Brian Gibson, pastor and founder of His Church, blamed the riot on antifa agitators, a conspiracy theory for which there is no evidence. 

“You don’t get 2 million people together without having some radicals in the crowd or some simple people in the crowd that you could lead anywhere, right?” he said, also greatly exaggerating the size of the crowd that day.

In other places, teachers in public schools that don’t rely on Christian textbooks are struggling to explain to their students the dynamics that allowed such violence to occur. In Chicago, high school teacher Raven Althimer discussed the harsh realities of the insurrection with her students, who are Black.

“They think of when they had Black Lives Matter over the summer, peacefully protesting, and were tear-gassed. People are literally storming the Capitol and nothing is happening to them,” Althimer told HuffPost. “One of my students said, ‘If 20 of us had done that, we all would have been dead.’ I said, ‘No, 20 of you wouldn’t have even gotten that close.’”