Evangelical Homeschooling, White Nationalism & Replacement "Theory"

[Howl]

First, if you are a current or former homeschooled or homeschooling person, please don't even with "not my homeschooling experience."  As Heather says in this thread, * I am specifically addressing white fundamentalist/evangelical homeschool parents. These are the communities that I grew up in and what I know. *Secular/atheist homeschoolers, READ THE ROOM. Learn the history of homeschooling.

unroll of Part I of Heather King's thread: Let's talk about how homeschooling communities are a breeding ground for white supremacy...

Part II of her twitter thread: The main point of this tweet is that what people label as fringe beliefs in homeschooling communities is WAY more mainstream than they would like to admit. I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL

 

Edited May 17, 2022 by Howl

[JermajestyDuggar]

TAM fully admitted to it at one point. I remember when she blogged that they needed to outbreed the Muslims.  Proof is somewhere on an old TAM thread on FJ. 

Edited May 17, 2022 by JermajestyDuggar

[noseybutt]

1 hour ago, Howl said:

First, if you are a current or former homeschooled or homeschooling person, please don't even with "not my homeschooling experience."  As Heather says in this thread, * I am specifically addressing white fundamentalist/evangelical homeschool parents. These are the communities that I grew up in and what I know. *Secular/atheist homeschoolers, READ THE ROOM. Learn the history of homeschooling.

unroll of Part I of Heather King's thread: Let's talk about how homeschooling communities are a breeding ground for white supremacy...

Part II of her twitter thread: The main point of this tweet is that what people label as fringe beliefs in homeschooling communities is WAY more mainstream than they would like to admit. I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL

 

I am curious about the "read the room" comment for secular homeschoolers. John Holt was a huge voice/precursor to the "modern" US homeschooling movement and he was very child-centric and atheist. He laid the foundation for legalization although his strain became more unschooling.

It wasn't until the 80s and 90s that the evangelicals and fundamentalists came to homeschooling in large numbers. As they tended to be well resourced and large in number, they tended to "control" what local support groups became. (I am generalizing here but not by much. Even in very diverse parts of the country, the evangelical groups were able to dictate rules and activities via statements of faith.)

I do agree that fringe beliefs in religious homeschooling communities are the NORM, not the exception.

I also think that, since covid, homeschooling is going through another shift as radical as to what happened in the 80s and 90s and we have yet to see how this will shake out. 

 

[JermajestyDuggar]

TAM posted this 5 years ago. She’s always associated with OSA and those types. Like the Mortons, Thomases, and Campanas. This isn’t the only time she’s posted stuff like this. I’m sure I could find more. 

[BensAllergies]

This reminds me of Ayla Stewart, aka A Purposeful Wife, whose account on Twitter has since been suspended. But circa 2017 she was tweeting and/or blogging that white women needed to make more white babies and that they shouldn’t be afraid of embracing white culture.

She posted a lot of controversial and hateful things but I think the one that put her over the top (meaning it got the LDS Church’s attention and they made a public statement that was obviously in response to her) was the “let your light shine” scripture reference captioning a picture of white nationalists holding tiki torches in Charlottesville.

She’s a homeschooling mother of six.

Edited May 17, 2022 by BensAllergies

[sableduck]

It was pretty blatant in the 1990s.  Somewhere around 1994 or 1995, I went to a homeschool conference with my Mom who was trying to decide whether or not to continue homeschooling through high school.  I remember her flipping through demo textbooks in the vendor hall and finding such ridiculous and racist things in some she wouldn’t even let me look at them. And she veered fundie in many ways, but those companies weren’t trying to hide the racism.  Stuff like the enslaved people were happy to be learning about God and crap like that. 

Edited May 17, 2022 by sableduck

[smittykins]

I’ll have to read it again to make sure, but I think Kathryn Joyce’s Quiverfull also mentioned that an implied purpose of the movement was to outbreed not only Muslims/Blacks, but progressives so that their kids would grow up to “take the country back for Jesus.”

[FluffySnowball]

16 hours ago, BensAllergies said:

This reminds me of Ayla Stewart, aka A Purposeful Wife, whose account on Twitter has since been suspended. But circa 2017 she was tweeting and/or blogging that white women needed to make more white babies and that they shouldn’t be afraid of embracing white culture.

She posted a lot of controversial and hateful things but I think the one that put her over the top (meaning it got the LDS Church’s attention and they made a public statement that was obviously in response to her) was the “let your light shine” scripture reference captioning a picture of white nationalists holding tiki torches in Charlottesville.

She’s a homeschooling mother of six.

Oh yeah, I used to read her stuff (with disgust, obviously) and couldn’t really comprehend how someone could be so insanely racist. Ayla used to be very active on Twitter and YouTube but has kind of disappeared from social media since a few years. The last thing I heard was that she left the LDS church and turned catholic. She seemed to me like a vile and unfulfilled person always searching for some greater purpose - while never finding it. 

[danvillebelle]

I homeschooled my kids and not only am I not offended, I agree with her 100%.  It was one of the major reasons we kept to ourselves and never got involved in any groups.  I knew we'd encounter the white nationalist types and didn't want my kids ANYWHERE near them.

[Alisamer]

I know a woman who, for some reason (I think so she could stay home instead of working) homeschooled her two daughters for a few years. She started out fairly reasonable (dumb, this lady is not smart, but reasonable) but after attending a homeschool conference or two she started going skirts only, wearing those long denim skirts all the time, and basically leaning fundier and fundier. 

To the point that at one church business meeting she stood up and said something about how people in the church need to dress more modestly. Which got her a polite "thanks for your input" and private eye rolls from the president of the deacons. Who was at that time a woman. Wearing a pantsuit. The rest of the church looked at denim skirt lady like she was off her rocker. You could see "we're not THAT kind of Baptist" running through their heads. 

After a few years of this, her husband (a three wolf moon T-shirt wearing type guy) filed for divorce. The kids ended up in public school again. The mom gave up the skirts only thing, but stayed super conservative. She's the picketing abortion clinics type and also a Trump-humper and Q adjacent. One daughter stayed with her and followed mama in basically everything. The other went with dad and rebelled like whoa. 

They are both young women now, out of school. I haven't heard from the one who went with dad. I hope she's living her best life. She always seemed the smartest of the family. The one who stayed with mom has a severe speech impediment that could have used serious therapy in childhood, but she didn't get that because homeschooling. She's full time at McD's last I heard, and doing very well there. 

This lady leaned conservative before she started homeschooling, but it didn't take much involvement in the homeschooling community at ALL to suddenly start shifting her more and more evangelical and fundamentalist. 

[Howl]

23 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

(a three wolf moon T-shirt wearing type guy)

I get it! Hubs went through a three wolf moon T shirt phase.  Still has it.  It wasn't quite as magical as the reviews would lead one to believe, but pretty good. 

 

[louisa05]

On a related note, the Christian school movement began in the South as a reaction to desegregation of public schools. 

The school I taught at had a more diverse student population than one would expect, but curriculum from A Beka and Bob Jones University Press (both used frequently by homeschoolers as well) were inherently racist. 

[stylites]

2 hours ago, FluffySnowball said:

Oh yeah, I used to read her stuff (with disgust, obviously) and couldn’t really comprehend how someone could be so insanely racist. Ayla used to be very active on Twitter and YouTube but has kind of disappeared from social media since a few years. The last thing I heard was that she left the LDS church and turned catholic.

Someone from the LDS being racist isn't exactly unexpected given the history of their theology when it comes to different ethnicities.

[FluffySnowball]

59 minutes ago, stylites said:

Someone from the LDS being racist isn't exactly unexpected given the history of their theology when it comes to different ethnicities.

Yeah, I know. I'm not surprised in the sense that I don't know about LDS theology, just on a human level. Like, how can people be such scum?! 

[katilac]

On 5/17/2022 at 4:30 PM, noseybutt said:

 It wasn't until the 80s and 90s that the evangelicals and fundamentalists came to homeschooling in large numbers. As they tended to be well resourced and large in number, they tended to "control" what local support groups became. (I am generalizing here but not by much. Even in very diverse parts of the country, the evangelical groups were able to dictate rules and activities via statements of faith.)

I do agree that fringe beliefs in religious homeschooling communities are the NORM, not the exception.

I also think that, since covid, homeschooling is going through another shift as radical as to what happened in the 80s and 90s and we have yet to see how this will shake out. 

 

Yes, John Holt was way ahead of the religious homeschooling movement, and it drives me bananas that so many people get this very-easy-to-discover fact wrong. He wasn't the only one, and homeschooling wasn't unknown even before Holt and company made it better known. Most homeschoolers in the '60s and '70s were the polar opposite of the religious homeschool movement that came later. 

I agree that they have had an outsized influence on homeschooling in many places because they had the resources of the church behind them. In my area, it's still much easier to find groups at the two extremes - unschooling and religious - than it is to find a middle of the road, inclusive group. 

 

[Caroline]

8 hours ago, louisa05 said:

On a related note, the Christian school movement began in the South as a reaction to desegregation of public schools. 

The school I taught at had a more diverse student population than one would expect, but curriculum from A Beka and Bob Jones University Press (both used frequently by homeschoolers as well) were inherently racist. 

A dear friend of mine was a fundamentalist christian (an odd occurrence in my region).  We remained friends through her crazier times ( her Your Amazing Womanhood phase comes to mind) because we didn't discuss religion and she gave up trying to save me.  Anyway, her son wanted to go to a smaller school than the large public junior high in his town.  My friend scraped the money together so he could go there through high school.  It was a good decision socially because he was a real follower and probably would have gotten in trouble in that particular public school.  The crazy thing is that my friend was a highly educated, very smart nurse practitioner.  Science was her thing, and her son was going to the only Christian school for miles because it was the only affordable small private school choice.  The science curriculum was so dismal (Creationism all the way) that she had to supplement the kid's science education from 7th to 12th grade.  He knew he wanted to work in health care (and does) and would need a good foundation in real science.    This was in the early 90's, and that school is still going strong for the evangelicals who use it.  I don't know if they're science curriculum has improved, but I hope it has.

[Cults-r-us]

10 hours ago, danvillebelle said:

I homeschooled my kids and not only am I not offended, I agree with her 100%.  It was one of the major reasons we kept to ourselves and never got involved in any groups.  I knew we'd encounter the white nationalist types and didn't want my kids ANYWHERE near them.

My friend homeschooled in the late '80's, early 90's. There were two homeschooling groups in her town: 1) the old hippies who met at the food coop and 2) the religious fundamentalists. Guess which group she chose? Clue: one family had a child named Taj Mahal.

[Cults-r-us]

5 minutes ago, Cults-r-us said:

My friend homeschooled in the late '80's, early 90's. There were two homeschooling groups in her town: 1) the old hippies who met at the food coop and 2) the religious fundamentalists. Guess which group she chose? Clue: one family had a child named Taj Mahal.

@Giraffe The "old hippies" homeschooling group were no strangers to cannabis consumption which may have resulted in offspring with funny names.

 

[Giraffe]

1 hour ago, Cults-r-us said:

@Giraffe The "old hippies" homeschooling group were no strangers to cannabis consumption which may have resulted in offspring with funny names.

 

Ah, ok. 😅

[noseybutt]

13 hours ago, Cults-r-us said:

My friend homeschooled in the late '80's, early 90's. There were two homeschooling groups in her town: 1) the old hippies who met at the food coop and 2) the religious fundamentalists. Guess which group she chose? Clue: one family had a child named Taj Mahal.

That pretty much sums up my corner of the world. 

If you want group activities, you get to pick between the smell of patchouli or the stink of sanctimony.

On 5/17/2022 at 3:30 PM, sableduck said:

It was pretty blatant in the 1990s.  Somewhere around 1994 or 1995, I went to a homeschool conference with my Mom who was trying to decide whether or not to continue homeschooling through high school.  I remember her flipping through demo textbooks in the vendor hall and finding such ridiculous and racist things in some she wouldn’t even let me look at them. And she veered fundie in many ways, but those companies weren’t trying to hide the racism.  Stuff like the enslaved people were happy to be learning about God and crap like that. 

This fact is not discussed enough. Back in the 80s and 90s, mainstream textbook publishers and educational supply companies were reluctant to sell to homeschoolers. The vendors that stepped up into the void were largely from fundamentalist and white supremacist authors/publishers. The Christian homeschool groups controlled the vendors and conferences through statements of faith. Vendors both had to sign the statements and prove that their materials were consistent with it.

One big flashpoint was creationism and young earth-ism. There was a big stink in Colorado when Sonlight (deeply evangelical and racist in their own way) was kicked out of one of the conventions because one of the owners no longer believed the earth was 6,000 years old. He was a creationist, just not a young earth creationist.

 

Edited May 19, 2022 by noseybutt

[Alisamer]

8 minutes ago, noseybutt said:

That pretty much sums up my corner of the world. 

If you want group activities, you get to pick between the smell of patchouli or the stink of sanctimony.

Patchouli, please! (I really like the scent of a good aged patchouli.)

I'm always a little boggled at the times, like homeschooling and essential oils and such, where the hippies and the fundies find themselves on the same side. 

It's weird.

Like ShaNaNa at Woodstock, weird. Jimi Hendrix opening for The Monkees weird. 

[Howl]

23 hours ago, louisa05 said:

On a related note, the Christian school movement began in the South as a reaction to desegregation of public schools. 

The school I taught at had a more diverse student population than one would expect, but curriculum from A Beka and Bob Jones University Press (both used frequently by homeschoolers as well) were inherently racist. 

This is very important to note and I think strongly related to my original post at the start of the thread. 

[Howl]

Mission to Destroy Public Education Rebrands Under COVID-19   Understanding the Christian Homeschooling Movement

The Federalist Society tweeted today that this might be a good time to start homeschooling. 

...and Chrissy Stroop dropped this yesterday on Religious Dispatches:  WHO’S REALLY POLITICIZING SCHOOL SHOOTINGS?

Edited May 27, 2022 by Howl

[VooDooChild]

21 hours ago, Howl said:

Mission to Destroy Public Education Rebrands Under COVID-19   Understanding the Christian Homeschooling Movement

The Federalist Society tweeted today that this might be a good time to start homeschooling. 

...and Chrissy Stroop dropped this yesterday on Religious Dispatches:  WHO’S REALLY POLITICIZING SCHOOL SHOOTINGS?

Disgusting people. Sad, though, in a way. I feel like a lot of them are just brainwashed. I feel that the US is so polarized and maybe too far gone that we won't be seeing a change any time soon. They just keep digging in their heels and refuse to listen to reason.

I wish I could articulate my thoughts better. But I am emotionally spent from these past...however many years since the orange baboon took office and it's also past my bedtime. 

Edited May 28, 2022 by VooDooChild
Riffles

[ADoyle90815]

On 5/18/2022 at 7:32 AM, FluffySnowball said:

Oh yeah, I used to read her stuff (with disgust, obviously) and couldn’t really comprehend how someone could be so insanely racist. Ayla used to be very active on Twitter and YouTube but has kind of disappeared from social media since a few years. The last thing I heard was that she left the LDS church and turned catholic. She seemed to me like a vile and unfulfilled person always searching for some greater purpose - while never finding it. 

I also remember reading her stuff, out of disgust as well, and I wouldn't be surprised if the reason she left social media is that she was considered too racist even for Parler or whatever QAnon forum she joined after Twitter most likely permanently banned her.