Obedience

I spoke at a homeschooling conference in Vancouver, British Columbia in the 1990s and I followed a Christian curriculum writer from Texas. I arrived about 15 minutes early and listened to her closing lines while her final slide filled the large screen behind her. It was a photo of a medieval tapestry depicting a king on a throne in the center, with all the courtiers, knights, and peasants before him on their knees, bowing their heads. The word OBEDIENCE was superimposed over the image.

The room was full and the audience enjoyed the presentation, which ended on this authoritarian note to strong applause. I became nervous about giving my talk following this one, since mine was about unschooling—questioning authority and allowing children, and ourselves, to explore and learn about the world in our own ways. I didn’t have nearly as many people stay for my talk and since I never sold a curriculum, just books and materials about how you can develop your own curriculum based on what you and your children are interested in, and subscriptions to Growing Without Schooling (GWS) magazine, so my vendor table was sparsely attended. I also did my best to create a safe space for people to discuss how you don’t have to turn your home into a conventional school in order to help your children learn and grow into competent adults.

Me and my colleagues at GWS noted how personally difficult it was for us to be invited to present our views about educating children to groups that largely didn’t want us there. We went because some free-thinking, independent families within those groups invited us there, perhaps to make arguments for unschooling to their friends that they couldn’t. There were often speakers telling the audience how thick a switch to fashion in order to punish disobedient children, how the government would abolish homeschooling, and how America is a Christian nation that needs to be retaken from non-Christian interests. We were the small counterweight that spoke to those who were open to hearing about unschooling—working with children, not on children, to help them learn and grow. We kept our politics to ourselves as much as possible because we were invited guests, but it was not easy.

At a luncheon for a North Carolina homeschooling conference, I was excoriated just for being from Massachusetts, which had recently legalized gay marriage. A man at the head of the table never introduced himself but launched an enthusiastic tirade at me against the liberal politics of Massachusetts. No one challenged him or his manners and I didn’t want to raise the temperature further by defending gay marriage, since I’d already raised their animosity with my speech encouraging self-directed learning, so I remained silent.

When I started working with John Holt in 1981 it was clear to me that GWS existed in a unique space—the borderland between back-to-the-land hippies and Evangelical churches, alternative schools and conventional schools—and bridging those differences has been educational. For instance, I first learned about militias, the right to bear arms, and state’s rights directly from homeschoolers in the 1980s (I don’t remember these issues being taught or discussed much, if at all, in any of my classes in high school or college), and there is a strong connection to the extreme right-wing politics of today. For instance, these three letters appeared in GWS magazine in 1985 (issues 46 and 47):

1) From Indiana: … As to events on the homeschool front here, the Christian extremists are getting into this with a vengeance locally, seeing homeschooling as a way to force confrontation with the bureaucrats in order to air their ideology. That’s really scary. … I attended a meeting of about 40 of these folks, although I did not stay to the end. The rhetoric was hinging on sedition and was flying the banner of homeschooling. Scared the heck out of me I am on good enough footing with the local superintendent that I do not feel my situation would be compromised, but I think those who come after me will have a difficult time if these radicals succeed … It’s a little weird to hear the same diatribes from these people that I used to hear from Abby Hoffman and Bobby Seale in the-old days; the stuff about rights being taken away and the government is against the people and we must not fall for the brainwashing that tells us this is a democracy. They said that a democracy is an inferior kind of government because the majority is always wrong. They perceive Reagan as a radical liberal, which gives you some idea of where they are coming from. … I believe these people should be able to do what they want with their kids, but I don’t like it that they may jeopardize what I want to do with my kid. Actually, they are fighting a battle that does not exist, since most homeschoolers in Indiana have had little difficulty. What they want is the platform for a fight. These people believe they will be fighting from bunkers, literally, for their right to practice their religion. A lot of the “sermon” sounded like quotes from the MOVE organization. But they are calling themselves homeschoolers. ARGH! …

2) … As Christians, we are sorry that there are some extremists in Indiana giving Christian home education a bad name (GWS 46). We personally are excited about what the Lord is doing in our home and others we know. Please don’t label all Christians in your minds as extremists we too, are personally embarrassed by those who use the name of Jesus Christ to do what they want and not what He wants.
—An Ohio Reader

3) … I was sorry to read of the experience one mom had with a “Christian” homeschool group [“Excluded Because Of Religion,” GWS 43]. I am part of a large group here in San Diego, called Christian Family Schools; there are 12 park days all over the county which meet at least once a month, functioning somewhat as support groups. We plan field trips, seminars, beach days, and picnics; in June we had a “Curriculum Fair” which was attended by about 300 people. Anyone is welcome at any of our functions, regardless of religious beliefs (or the lack thereof); we do not actively proselytize, our main purpose being to help homeschoolers, but certainly, if the subject comes up, we will talk about spiritual things. As for the reader from Indiana and his extremists (GWS 46)—I too have met people like that; in certain ways I agree with them, but not with their comments about the government trying to take control of us all—I think a lot of that stuff is plain wacko! … I have met those same kind of radicals who were not “Christian” and still come up with some wacko ideas. I just don’t want people to begin equating all Christian homeschoolers with the wackos who believe the big bad government wants to control my children’s minds. We aren’t all like that.—Ellie Andrew (CA)

The paranoid strain in conservative politics is strong and has been written about often, but the paranoid strain in liberal politics is no better. Liberal paranoia claims homeschooling will undermine public schooling and democracy, and leave us with generations of uneducated children. Neither strain supports families who want to raise their children with as little interference as possible from government and educational authorities, though both strains claim to support freedom for everyone.

Being among speakers who actively opposed our point of view that children can be trusted to learn and their families can help them without resorting to corporal punishment, bribes, or emotional manipulations was never easy. But at least, we hoped, the people who invited us there got a boost of confidence and affirmation that it’s okay to swim against the tide of authoritarian education and behavior with children.

In those early years there were Christian lawyers and leaders who encouraged state and national groups not to limit their membership or leadership just to Christians who sign a statement of faith. Dr. Raymond Moore was a popular Christian writer and speaker in the 1980s and I heard him say from the podium, more than once, that everyone, “including atheists,” should be welcome to support from homeschooling groups.

But that openness to different points of view in the homeschooling community changed as the Homeschool Legal Defense Association came on the scene. Dr. Moore’s ecumenical vision was sidelined by the militant Christian wing that keeps its base scared of enemies and wants committed warriors, not peacemakers. When speaking in Washington state in the early 1990s, a local Christian homeschool leader lamented to me how tired he was of the scare tactics the Homeschool Legal Defense Association used to build its membership: “They keep telling people the boogeyman is coming to get them if they don’t join!” The boogeyman was some government or education agency that was going to take their children away because of homeschooling, so pay your annual dues to HSLDA to keep them off your back, just in case.

It is true that some families were being taken to court just for homeschooling, but I always felt HSLDA exaggerated the threat in order to build their business. Groups, like the Rutherford Institute, or individuals, like Dr. Patricia Montgomery, founder of the Clonlara School, also successfully defended and testified on behalf of homeschoolers. Dr. Montgomery often succeeded in convincing the courts that alternatives to conventional schooling work and these families were not prosecuted. Local lawyers, like Gene Burkart of MA, also helped homeschoolers get the schools off their backs when legal action was threatened. But women and men like Pat and Gene are not celebrated much by the homeschool community, nor are they as well-known as those who connect homeschooling to religious and political grievances.

Mark and Helen Hegener’s Home Education Magazine had a series entitled “Homeschoolers Freedom at Risk” that they started in 1991, noting how the diverse homeschooling movement was becoming homogenized by the efforts of HSLDA and its allies. It is a prescient work.

Long established support and political networks have been damaged, and in many cases replaced with new exclusive groups. Legal actions have been taken which have resulted in the strengthening of states’ rights over the education of our children. A view of homeschooling has been actively promoted which advances the notion that there is only one way to homeschool, and which ties that one way to an extremely narrow range of social and political support. (Endnote 1)

This risk became very apparent in the hysteria HSLDA created in 1994 over a bill, HR 6, which they claimed was a “nuclear bomb” aimed at shutting down homeschooling. The bill wasn’t nearly the threat it was made out to be—it proposed that all public and private school teachers be certified in the subject areas they teach but HSLDA claimed this meant homeschooling parents would need to be certified as well. The number of calls Congress received to “not end homeschooling” set a record and the donations and attention HSLDA received made both realize homeschooling was a bigger issue than anyone thought.

Within days of the HSLDA warning, some members of Congress had received hundreds of thousands of calls in opposition to the amendment. Volunteers personally visited the office of every Representative on the Hill to explain their opposition to the amendment. Not only did the amendment fail, but Congress added language to the Education Act stating that the Act did not authorize any federal control over homeschools. (Endnote 2)

Michael Farris noted years laters that “HR 6 was the biggest event in years … it is the event that put homeschooling on the map.” (Endnote 3) While HR 6 provided much publicity and solidified HSLDA and it’s branches, the National Center of Home Education and the Congressional Action Program, as national political players, HR 6 was never the threat to homeschooling that HSLDA and it’s media amplifiers made it out to be.

HSLDA and its associated networks of Christian groups have long been proponents of Christian dominionism:

a group of Christian political ideologies that seek to institute a nation that is governed by Christians and based on their understandings of biblical law. Extents of rule and ways of acquiring governing authority are varied. (Endnote 4)

Those who hold this ideology know it is not a way to gain popular votes by stating everyone in the country should be ruled by Christian nationalists, so they prevaricate. In his book The Joshua Generation: Restoring the Heritage of Christian Leadership, Farris does this as he describes how fighting for homeschooling rights is not the end goal of his work:

“While those battles are important and will always continue to some degree, homeschool freedom is not the end goal. It is a means to a far greater end,” Farris wrote. The Christian homeschool movement can judge its long-term success, he said, by evaluating their results against a passage in the Book of Hebrews that describes godly heroes “who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames … and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies.”

The end goal of the Christian homeschooling movement, he said, was to raise a generation of children who would do those very things in the “Christian assignment of redeeming the culture.” “How should we judge our success? … Do we see our children administering justice, gaining what was promised, shutting the mouths of lions, and quenching the fury of the flames? … Have they become powerful in battle?” (Endnote 5)

The “children as weapons” idea is explored by some adults who were raised this way. Ryan Stoller notes,

The late Chris Klicka was HSLDA’s senior counsel and … wrote his seminal book The Right Choice: Home Schooling in 1995. … In Chapter Four of the book, entitled “The Biblical Principles: A Support for Home Schooling and an Indictment of Public Education,” Klicka articulated his and HSLDA’s understanding of the child–world relationship.

According to Klicka, children are the property of God but they are—in a sense—on loan to their parents: “Children belong to God, but the responsibility and authority to raise and educate them is delegated to their parents.” Parents have a responsibility to “craft” their children to be weapons for God: “God describes our children as arrows in the hands of a warrior! … Have we diligently crafted our ‘arrows’ so they can be trusted to hit their target as we launch them into the world?…Have we personally guaranteed our ‘arrows’ are the most carefully crafted and have the sharpest point?” (Endnote 6)

I have often understood such words to be metaphorical when spoken by religious leaders, but it is clearly not the case here. These words don’t describe a battle for people’s souls, but a battle for people’s compliance to a dominating power.

Kieran Darkwater writes:

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. (Endnote 7)

Being obedient to a religious doctrine or leader is a choice everyone has in America. Choosing to join a religion and adhere to it’s mandates is a personal decision, one made willingly, and there is no argument about obedience to authority structured like this. The military, police, and fire departments, for instance, require such obedience in order to save lives and protect people. They are not acting as civilians, but as paid volunteers doing work that puts their lives in danger, and they willingly submit to authority to do their work. But forcing unwilling civilians to adhere to a minority’s beliefs about God and civil society, and who use the law and threat of force to do so, is domination.

Further, there is no choice for homeschooled children born into this religious framework, as Tara Westover made clear in her moving memoir, Educated, and many others do on sites like Homeschoolers Anonymous. They must obey or be disciplined, often harshly.

This is also true for adult women. For instance, Cheryl Seelhoff, a single homeschooling mother of nine, operated a homeschooling magazine, Gentle Spirit, and was a popular speaker at Christian conferences. Her marriage had fallen apart, her husband moved to another state, and she eventually started a relationship with another man. Her pastor told her to end the relationship but instead she withdrew from the church. What followed is a classic case of busybodies inserting themselves into a woman’s personal affairs in order to put Seelhoff out of business and obtain her subscription base through a smear campaign, all in the name of acting as good Christians. The judge noted:

A claim of good motives, like a claim of ignorance of the law, cannot justify or excuse a violation of federal antitrust laws. (Endnote 8)

The case, Seelhoff v. Welch, (Welch published The Teaching Home magazine) was won by Seelhoff; the other defendants—Mary Pride, Greg Harris, Michael Boutot, and Calvary Costa Mesa—settled out of court before the trial began.

On September 9, 1998, the unanimous jury returned a verdict saying the defendants Welch entered into an illegal conspiracy in restraint of trade in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, that damages were caused and determined the damages to Cheryl’s business were in the amount of $445,000. In antitrust actions, awards are automatically trebled, so Cheryl was entitled to receive in excess of 1.3 million dollars from Sue Welch. In addition, she was entitled to recover her attorneys’ fees and costs. Subsequently, Welch and Cheryl settled for an undisclosed amount. (Endnote 8)

If you’re interested in the whole story, Shay Seaborne has written a detailed account of it on her blog. These stories show that a lot of mischief has already been done in homeschooling under the Lord’s name, and the larger connection to today’s political turmoil is important.

Many speakers and promoters of the Republican MAGA movement, such as Mike Huckabee, Mike Pompeo, and Tucker Carlson, appear on the Christian homeschooling speaking circuit, and other government and military personnel who lean hard right have presented to Christian homeschooling groups over the years. The founder of HSLDA, Michael Farris, founded a political action group, The Alliance Defending Freedom, that acts, among other things, as a defender of Trump’s Big Lie. (Endnote 9) Farris is also a member of the powerful and secretive Council for National Policy (Endnote 10) and is against the concept that children should have rights. He founded parentalrights.org to “protect children by empowering parents.”

John Holt wrote a book about children’s rights, Escape From Childhood, in 1971 and it caused a lot of people to criticize him for making the case. John knew it was not a popular idea then, but felt the issue should be known so we can begin figuring out how to protect children from child abuse and make them more welcome in adult society. I feel the same way, but I also know that women and minorities still don’t have equal rights in the US, and we are all likely to lose more rights if the Republicans win the next election, so to promote children’s rights as an issue doesn’t seem likely to gain support now. Today, securing the right of adults to prevent certain books or ideas from being taught in public schools is presented as being more important than securing the right to personal safety, food, and healthcare for all children. Like so many political and ideological presentations, we must analyze the prevarications to understand what the real meaning of “parental rights” is in practice.

But "parental rights" must be understood as part of a political agenda, said Jeremy Young, the interim executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, a reform advocacy group founded by formerly-homeschooled children, which is to say one of the populations most intimately familiar with the results of Michael Farris' advocacy. This new focus on parents' rights, Young suggested, represents the mainstreaming of positions that until recently were considered extreme: wrapping "these grab bags of everything conservatives are afraid of happening in the public schools" in demands for near-total parental authority. (Endnote 11)

The overriding theme of obedience to authority is important among Christian nationalists who seek to replace our pluralist, civilian democracy with Christian dominion. We see that happening with the loss of personal rights the courts continue to enact, the worship and defense of unlimited firearms that plague American society with mass shootings, and gerrymandered voting that undermines competitive races and true debate in our legislatures. I have watched this storm slowly build in the homeschooling movement and now the time appears ripe for Christian nationalists to capitalize on their efforts. Let’s not remain complacent and think this is politics as usual.

Photo Credit: Nationalism and religion by Quinn Dombrowski. Creative Commons, https://www.flickr.com/photos/quinndombrowski/3976981278

Endnotes

1. http://www.home-ed-magazine.com/closerlook/356/freedoms-at-risk-twenty-years-later/
2. California Law Review, Education Off the Grid: Constitutional Constraints on Homeschooling, Kimberly A. Yuracko, Vol. 96, No. 1 (Feb., 2008), pp. 123-184.
3. Crosswalk chat Feb 29, 2000, https://hsislegal.com/what_has_hslda_done_on_the_national_level/
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_theology
5. https://dianeravitch.net/2023/01/22/mississippi-free-press-what-is-christian-dominionism/
6. https://homeschoolersanonymous.net/tag/chris-klicka/#_ednref1
7. https://www.tribes.org/web/2017/2/6/i-was-trained-for-the-culture-wars-in-home-school-awaiting-someone-like-mike-pence-as-a-messiah
8. https://www.shayseaborne.com/2016/08/truth_about_cheryl
9. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/07/us/politics/religious-conservative-michael-farris-lawsuit-2020-election.html).
10. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/30/revealed-council-national-policy-republicans-extremists
11. https://www.salon.com/2022/01/12/parental-rights-started-on-the-christian-fringe--now-its-the-gops-winning-issue/