Woman accused of child abuse gives jurors her side

Despite the picture painted by her former stepchildren and other witnesses, Sara Anne Woody said she was a loving, Christian woman who tried to raise her children and stepchildren as best as she could.
,,,

As the two blended their families, Sara Woody said she was in the middle of a difficult pregnancy. She had several medical issues and was constantly weak and nauseated, she told jurors.

Sara Woody began watching the children and later homeschooling them when her older stepson continued to struggle in school, she said.

She told jurors she found a Christian-based curriculum and began trying to teach her children herself, even though she had never technically been a teacher or had any formal training.

Sara Woody began struggling with all her newfound responsibilities – watching the children and battling the older stepson to do his chores and schoolwork – while constantly vomiting and trying to keep on weight.

Woman accused of child abuse gives jurors her side

WND Puts Discredited Author on Its Homeschool Reading List

PLEASE NOTE I WAS UNABLE TO SHARE THIS ARTICLE VIA NORMAL MEANS FOR SOME ODD REASON.  AS IT DEALS WITH BARTON AND HIS SHITTY BOOK IT IS OF INTEREST. THIS IS AS IT APPEARS ON THE CONWEB PAGE AND FULL ATTRIBUTION GOES TO THE AUTHOR NOTED AT THE END OF THE PIECE.


Wednesday, August 23, 2017

 

WND Puts Discredited Author on Its Homeschool Reading List
Topic: WorldNetDaily

 
Liam Clancy writes in an Aug. 12 "news" article that, like so much of WND's content, is actually just an ad targeted to homeschoolers:

It’s August – and you know what that means.
It’s “back-to-school” madness, and parents around the country are shopping for supplies that will help propel their children to success.
But what does your child really need?
As state-run education gradually clamps down on freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and the values that make the United States so great, the WND Superstore has you covered on the books your kids might not find on the classroom bookshelf.

And what's the first book Clancy lists, after a "mini United States Constitution"?

Another great selection for more advanced readers is “The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson,” a book that uncovers truths about the third president of the United States that your child won’t learn in school.
Author David Barton, a historian, attempts to set the record straight, upending centuries of smears from disingenuous scholars.

Except, of course, it does none of that. Clancy doesn't mention that the book's original publisher pulled the book from the marketplace after historians and others found numerous errors. Not only did WND continue to sell Barton's book despite it having been withdrawn everywhere else, it published its own version of the book, which made few changes to the challenged content but added a section attacking the book's critics. To this day, WND is still trying to defend Barton and his book.
Clancy continues shilling:

For adults, especially those interested in homeschooling, the Superstore also has a variety of books for parents directly invested in the education of their children.
“Crimes of the Educators” reveals how “progressive” educators have dumbed-down American children by taking over government schools and pushing dubious reforms such as Common Core.
“How many parents … send their children to school so central planners can mold them into functionally illiterate cogs in a centrally planned machine, having just enough knowledge to do their preassigned task? How will such cogs be able to think critically, much less sustain liberty and the American experiment?” ask authors Samuel Blumenfeld and Alex Newman.
The answer is far too many.

Smearing teachers as criminals, as Newman and Blumenfeld effectively do here, is hardly the way to make that argument and should disqualify Newman's book from serious consideration. But this is WND, after all.

Posted by Terry K. at 4:04 PM EDT

Stories I didn't get too from January 2016 (pg 2)

Ken Ham calls Newsweek anti-Christian for further exposing his Ark Encounter discrimination

On Saturday, Newsweek ran a great expose on the Ark Encounter and the employment discrimination that led to the park losing its $18 million tax incentive.
Lindsay Tucker wrote in her piece:

Why did the state reject an application nearly identical to one it initially approved? Because AiG posted Ark Encounter job listings on its website requiring a “salvation testimony” and a creationist statement of faith. Bob Stewart, then-secretary of the Kentucky Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet, wrote in a letter to AiG: “The Commonwealth doesn’t believe that Ark Encounter, LLC will be complying with state and Federal law in its hiring practices.” AiG insisted that the job posts were not exclusive to Ark Encounter, but state officials remained unconvinced. After months of pleading with the tourism cabinet, AiG filed a lawsuit against Kentucky officials, asserting that the refusal to extend tax aid was a form of religious discrimination.

Judge says Kentucky theme park can hire people based on religious beliefs

A federal judge ruled that developers building a replica of Noah’s Ark for a controversial Kentucky theme park can use religious beliefs as part of their hiring criteria and still retain tax incentives.
,,,
U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove wrote in his 71-page opinion on Monday (Jan, 25) that while Answers is “clearly a religious organization,” tourist destinations could be affiliated with religion if they serve the state’s “secular” goal of boosting local revenue.
\
“Bringing non-residents into Kentucky who will spend money on food, lodging, gas, and tourist attractions will increase revenues and benefit the state’s economy through jobs and spending,” Tatenhove wrote. “Such a purpose is plainly secular.”

Texas Homeschooling Family Sued for Allowing Children to Play Outside

A husband and wife in Texas are being sued by their neighbors for allowing their homeschooled children to play in their backyard.
,,,
 But two of the Counts’ next-door neighbors, Irving and Anita Ward, are now suing the homeschooling family, saying the kids are a nuisance and make too much noise. First, the neighbors asked the local homeowners association and the City of Plano to force the Counts to remove the playhouse and swing set. When that initiative failed, they took the issue to court.

Atheists Sued to Stop Drug Rehab Program That Uses ‘Biblical Principles.’ Here’s How a Florida Court Just Reacted

A court has ruled against atheist activists who sued the state of Florida and two faith-based halfway houses over the claim that the government is violating the state’s constitution by doling out money to religiously affiliated private programs, according to a religious liberty legal firm.

The Circuit Court of Leon County in Florida ruled that the state can continue its partnership with Prisoners of Christ and Lamb of God ministries — an arrangement that helps assist recently released prisoners. The court ruling goes against the wishes of the Center for Inquiry, an atheist group that had been challenging the arrangement since 2007.

Mom: Son killed friend after worshipping the devil (VIDEO)

Where In The World, What In The World, Is Kent Hovind's "January Surprise"! -Guest Post By Robert Baty


 Two points stand out:

1]   Officially, Kent is not allowed contact with Paul because they are both convicted felons and under supervision of United States Government while they finish out their sentences.

Unofficially, it appears Kent may be violating the rules by using agents to communicate with and coordinate certain activities with Paul who appears to be continuing to promote the notion that he is going to be holding common law court in Pensacola to redress his grievance and maybe Kent's as well (kinda like the Oregon occupiers are trying to do).

All of that effort might have garnered more attention were it not for the fact that the Oregon "stand-off" is taking the spotlight on behalf of the militia/sovereign citizen promoters like Kent and Paul and so many of their followers.

2]   From what I observe, Kent keeps his real self rather well hidden from the outside world.  What I see are his public performances which appear to me to be very well crafted to maximize his monetization of his renewed efforts to raise money for what he wants to do.  It seems to be working out rather well for him for the time being and as he begins 3 years of Supervised Release.

In my opinion, if Kent really didn't care about being a convicted felon for the rest of life and never again being able to buy guns and use them which he was so fond of doing, he would let it go for he has no good reason for doing what he is supposedly doing to supposedly try to get his 2006 convictions overturned, structuring law repealed, and collect millions in damages for false imprisonment.

Kent, to me, seems a bitter man who has pledged the rest of his life to pay back the Government for daring to call him to account for a few of his crimes and to keep from paying what he owes.

Former Rep. Michele Bachmann: Laws Passed by Congress Cannot Contradict Biblical Law

Hemant sums it up well, "The beauty of our legal system is that we can, in theory, change it when we realize it’s wrong. If a law is unjust or ineffective, we can revise it. We can write new laws that supersede the old ones. Biblical law isn’t subject to change. Conservatives see that as a strength, even though that’s its biggest weakness."

To pass laws that do not uphold God’s moral law, Bachmann said, “degrades us as a nation, it degrades our liberties and it degrades the greatness of a nation and that’s what God understood from Old Testament times: The greatness of a nation is built up by His law.”

Topeka city councilman Jonathan Schumm, wife arrested Thursday after child abuse investigation; couple has 16 children | CJOnline.com

http://www.kake.com/home/headlines/Topeka-city-councilman-wife-arrested-for-child-abuse-351984611.html

So this is how it started,,,

Topeka City Councilman Jonathan Schumm, who as a candidate pledged to make public safety “my top priority,” and his wife, Allison Nicole Schumm, were arrested Thursday in connection with aggravated battery and other offenses in which the victims were children.

Warrants were obtained earlier on Thursday for the arrests of the Schumms, a statement issued by the city of

Topeka said, and the warrants were served on Thursday evening.

Later, a bit more information,,,

According to the city's statement, on Wednesday, November 4th, the Kansas Dept. of Children and Families (DCF) asked the Topeka Police Dept. for help investigating reports of physical abuse against children. DCF social workers and police detectives investigated the reports and notified the Shawnee Co. District Attorney's Office, who obtained the arrest warrant.
,,,
Court documents list five children as victims, all between the ages of five and 16. In detailing accounts of Aggravated Battery and Abuse of a Child, the document states a 12-year-old was tortured, or cruelly beaten by the Schumm's.

It get's worse,,, 

In 2013, the same year the family was given an award for their adoption activities, Kansas DCF investigators were looking into allegations that Jonathan Schumm and his wife had abused a child. A child’s foster care family had accused the Topeka councilman and Allison of “inflicting bruises” on him, and possibly abusing other children inside the home.

Allison wrote about the visit from Kansas child protective services staffers on her blog. She said that she took a trip to Manhattan to visit her family because she didn’t want to “deal with DCF at that point.” She also wrote that the children involved in the DCF investigation were separated from the rest of the family during this time.

“Up to this point, nobody had told us anything other than you can’t see the children. At this point we decided to leave all the children who the charges weren’t addressing at my mother-in-law’s house and only bring home the children the DCF wanted to talk to,” Allison Schumm wrote. “I was still terrified, but knew that I would need to trust God for His protection of our family.”

Much worse, according to Wonkette,,,

,,,We come knowing that people can snap on a kid, not out of malice but out of a lack of any more rope. And we wonder why the fuck social workers in the state of Kansas allowed this woman to adopt eight more children after she wrote this:

Here is my Desperate. My need to breath. Shortly after Kyrsten was born, I started getting sicker. I had been sick most of my life, but doctors had never been able to tell me what was wrong. After she was born I kept getting sicker and sicker. I was suffering from depression, bipolar, IBS, numbness in my hands, complex migraines, regular migraines, insomnia and fatigue. Being a mom of 8 at the time, I couldn’t understand why God would give me 8 beautiful children and then allow me to be unable to care for them.

So what did Allison Nicole Schumm do after releasing her burden to God? She and her husband adopted eight more kids, and she homeschooled them, with three still in diapers. And the state of Kansas, apparently, was just peachy with that — if by “peachy,” you mean “they tried to disrupt the second family adoption due to ‘unfounded’ abuse allegations, but people ‘lobbied’ to let the Schumms hoard kids and why does this remind us of Justin Harris anyway?”

Topeka city councilman Jonathan Schumm, wife arrested Thursday after child abuse investigation; couple has 16 children | CJOnline.com

See also::

• Jonathan Schumm, Topeka city councilman, appears in court with handcuffs, notes children's removal from home
• 16 Children of Jonathan and Allison Schumm
• Jonathan and Alison Schumm Abuse Case Raises Questions

I was surprised that the family received an Angels in Adoption award with (apparently) so little vetting. I read through the linked posts in which Allison tells her family’s adoption story (part 1, part 2, and part 3) and found additional details. It seems the Angels in Adoption award was not the only one the family received. Shortly before adopting the second sibling group of five, the Schumms received the “Project Belong 2013 Adoptive Family of the year” award. I also learned that the Schumms were initially told they would not be permitted to adopt this second sibling group, because they already had eight children (three biological and five adopted). 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott picks homeschooler to chair State Board of Education

Anti-intellectualism at it's finest or can a balance be struck? 

The issue is not homeschooling versus traditional schooling per se but, that someone may have an agenda that is detrimental to a child's education as a whole.  An issue Amanda Marcotte notes for Slate:

Bahorich is one of the quieter members of the board, largely going along with the board's radical right-wing agenda, which has included voting to approve history textbooks that claim Moses helped shape democracy, show sympathy with Joseph McCarthy, and argue country music is culturally relevant but hip-hop is not,,,.  But the school board battles that Republicans have been waging in Texas have nothing to do with improving the quality of the state's public schools. Most of these efforts are about making the education experience less educational, by injecting conservative propaganda into history class and religious dogma into science class. Texas is bent on undermining public schools, not fixing them. This appointment only serves as further proof.

An individual with a background with homeschooling might, conceivably be a good candidate - as in fixing issues that caused them to choose that option - but not if that person denounces the public school system. Nobody belongs in a job they don't believe should exist.

According to Texas Public Radio, Bahorich homeschooled her own sons before sending them to a private high school.

The Texas Freedom Network, a watchdog group, warned that Bahorich would “put culture war agendas ahead of educating more than 5 million Texas kids.”

“If Gov. Abbott wanted to demonstrate that he won’t continue his predecessor’s efforts to politicize and undermine our state’s public schools, this appointment falls far short,” Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller said in a statement. “The governor has appointed as board chair an ideologue who voted to adopt new textbooks that scholars sharply criticized as distorting American history, who rejected public education for her own family and who supports shifting tax dollars from neighborhood public schools to private and religious schools through vouchers.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott picks homeschooler to chair State Board of Education

BTTP graced by the presence of Renee Davis-Pelt and Vyckie Garrison

This past week, Beyond The Trailer Park was graced by the presence of Renee Davis-Pelt and Vyckie Garrison (of No Longer Quivering).

Unless y'all have been living under a rock, Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the recent SCOTUS case of Obergefell v Hodges made the following statement :

[Same-sex couples] wouldn't be asking for this relief if the law of marriage was what it was a millennium ago. I mean, it wasn't possible. Same-sex unions would not have opted into the pattern of marriage, which was a relationship, a dominant and a subordinate relationship. Yes, it was marriage between a man and a woman, but the man decided where the couple would be domiciled; it was her obligation to follow him.

There was a change in the institution of marriage to make it egalitarian when it wasn't egalitarian. And same-sex unions wouldn’t — wouldn't fit into what marriage was once.

Hidden within that argument are some deep concerns, yoking marriage to traditional gender stereotypes. A stereotype that subjugates women. Or as our guest Renée Davis-Pelt will address "How to be a Biblical Women" (to borrow from Atheism 101).

Just as Hobby Lobby wasn't just about contraception, neither is Obergefell just about marriage equality. Gregory Lipper of AU terms it as, "old-fashioned discrimination on the basis of sex." Or in Renee's case Religious Trauma Syndrome It is religiously based discrimination that is taught from the pulpit, preached on TV, and espoused by politicians.

That is basically how I introduced our discussion, a discussion loaded with important talking points:  Christian patriarchy, Quiverfull, covenant marriage and a whole lot of other creepy stuff. It is religiously based discrimination that is taught from the pulpit, preached on TV, and espoused by politicians. And in some cases, it is what is being taught to the children under the guise of home schooling; specifically Christian home schooling.

Often our conversations go in various directions covering many topics, such was the case on Monday.  Below are some "resources" used in preparing that may be of interest:

• Where and how I first learned of both Renee and Vyckie,well worth the time to listen
• Renee telling her experience, it's a two parter
• Vyckie's experience::  How Playing Good Christian Housewife Almost Killed Me
• Religious Trauma Syndrome and/or How Dr. Dobson, Billy Graham, Bob Jones, Christianity Today, Wheaton College et al, Do More Harm than Good
• Marital Rape, how it can become a serious issue within the Patriarchy Movement
• The story that brought Domestic Violence to the fore:: Tracey Thurman
• An issue touched upon by Vyckie in regards to Quiverfull, Christian Home Schooling:

Escape from Christian Fundamentalism - the Kids Who Flee Abusive, Isolated Christian Homes

A powerhouse of information, a great illustration of how poisonous religion is in the lives of human beings. Further along in the article is an "outline" of the history of the home school movement based in Christian ideology, as well as, the influence of the Quiverfull movement. A veritable who's who of the Reich and those who do battle against them.

Barely Literate? How Christian Fundamentalist Homeschooling Hurts Kids

Why did she stick with homeschooling for so long, despite her difficulties? “We were convinced that it would be better for our kids not to have an education than to be educated to become humanists or atheists and to reject God,”
,,,
Garrison believes that homeschooling has become so popular with fundamentalist Christians because, “there is an atmosphere of real terror among some evangelicals. They are horrified by the fact that Obama is president, and they see the New Atheist movement as a vocal, in-your-face threat. Plus, they are obsessed with the End Times, and believe that the Apocalypse could happen any day now...They see a demon on every corner.

“We homeschooled because we wanted to protect our children from what we viewed as the total secularization of America. We listened to people like Rush Limbaugh, who told us that America was in the clutches of evil liberal feminist atheists.” 

Now that I am over my 50 year old fangirl crush (sorta), I realized that there was one question I did not ask Vyckie:  If someone from a secular perspective, or even a liberal/progressive Christian perspective, suspects that a friend/family member/co-worker is falling into the quiverfull or patriarchal trap, how should or can we help?

I have been in this situation and I'm still at a loss myself as to how to help?

Why the answer is important is summed up by Vyckie with this point:  

It is essential to seriously consider this question because, truthfully ~ if you are only interested in picking apart your friend’s lifestyle choices and criticizing her for whatever seems to be wrong with the way she’s living ~ you cannot help and, in fact, you will only be contributing to her misery.

Regretfully, I fucked up royal and allowed my "angry atheist" mode to get the better of me. As Vyckie explains,,,

Truthfully, these people only made the situation worse for me and my children. At one point, our family began attending a church which was not strictly fundamentalist. Our large, homeschooling family definitely stuck out and almost immediately people began to “snoop around” ~ asking the children about our lifestyle choices. This sent Warren into a frenzy of panic and defensiveness and he became all the more difficult to deal with.

When unhealthy families feel threatened, they withdraw ~ isolating themselves even further and creating more potential for abuse. That’s what we did. We left the church ~ and it’s too bad because if we’d have stuck around, we would likely have been exposed to a more balanced approach to the bible.

We have received some wonderful feedback concerning this episode, I am just thrilled that BTTP was able to give both Renee an Vyckie the platform to share their experiences.  Unlike what the Duggars present weekly, there are more thorns than roses.

A Theocratic Campaign Against Public Education in South Carolina

This is an older article (2014) by Fredrick Clarkson detailing the ideology behind the Reich's war on public education. In the current piece Clarkson excerpts from an older work from 1994. Make no mistake, the underfunding of K-12 and the massive cuts experienced by universities in Kansas and Wisconsin are not a fluke but part of an overall strategy being implemented by the Reich.

Similarly, the Christian "home schooling" movement is part of the longterm revolutionary strategy of Reconstructionism. One of the principal home schooling curricula is provided by Reconstructionist [the late] Paul Lindstrom of Christian Liberty Academy (CLA) in Arlington Heights, Illinois. CLA claims that it serves about 20,000 families. Its 1994 curriculum included a book on "Biblical Economics" by Gary North. Home schooling advocate Christopher Klicka, who has been deeply influenced by R. J. Rushdoony, writes: "Sending our children to the public school violates nearly every Biblical principle.... It is tantamount to sending our children to be trained by the enemy." He claims that the public schools are Satan's choice. Klicka also advocates religious self-segregation and advises Christians not to affiliate with non-Christian home schoolers in any way. "The differences I am talking about," declares Klicka, "have resulted in wars and martyrdom in the not too distant past." According to Klicka, who is an attorney with the Home School Legal Defense Association, "as an organization, and as individuals, we are committed to promote the cause of Christ and His Kingdom."

A Theocratic Campaign Against Public Education in South Carolina

I Helped Start the Religious Right: Here's How We Tried to Undermine Secular America -- and Build a Theocracy

I have read this article five times now trying to get a feel as to what to highlight.  It is packed with a lot of pertinent information for those of us trying to get a handle on exactly what the Reich's game-plan is and what the fuel behind the movement may be.

So as I read this again, some thoughts that come to mind,,,

Schaeffer begins with the primary method of "Christian" indoctrination outside the church, education or the Christian Homeschool Movement.  "[Y]ou can’t understand the modern Republican Party and its hatred of government unless you understand the evangelical home-school movement. Nor can the Democrats hope to defeat the GOP in 2016 unless they grasp what I’ll be explaining here: religious war carried on by other means." 

Although Schaeffer lumps the entire GOP into this mix, I wouldn't go quite that far.  There are some within the party who I believe have not bought into Dominionism and Reconstructionist ideology (what I call the Reich) but are to weak and/or too scared politically to have an impact. (Rob Portman comes to mind, specifically after lending his support to Marriage Equality.  Touted as a potential running mate of Romney in 2012, I will be interested to see just how much clout he has left in 2016.)

For those that don't follow Dominionism and Reconstructionist ideology, this statement may sound over-inflated, "believe me when I tell you that the evangelical schools and home school movement were, by design, founded to undermine a secular and free vision of America and replace it by stealth with a form of theocracy."

"This happened because Evangelical home-schoolers were demanding ever-greater levels of “separation” from what they regarded as the Evil Secular World. It wasn’t enough just to reject the public schools. How could the Christian parent be sure that even the Evangelical schools were sufficiently pure? And so the Christian schools radicalized in order to not appear to be “compromising” with the world in the eyes of increasingly frightened and angry parents."

Now bare in mind, one of the spheres of control in Dominionist ideology (via the 7 Mountains Mandate) is education.  One of the pillars of education is science, which leads us to (que the music from Jaws) the foundation of biological science, the Theory of Evolution.  At a glance one may pass "the controversy" off as just a bunch of hyper-literal Bible nuts, but it goes much deeper.

First is the Wedge Strategy or Wedge Document which appeared in 1998/99,

The wedge strategy is a political and social action plan authored by the Discovery Institute, the hub of the intelligent design movement. The strategy was put forth in a Discovery Institute manifesto known as the Wedge Document, which describes a broad social, political, and academic agenda whose ultimate goal is to defeat materialism, naturalism, evolution, and "reverse the stifling materialist world view and replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions." The strategy also aims to affirm what it calls "God's reality." Its goal is to change American culture by shaping public policy to reflect conservative Christian, namely evangelical Protestant, values. The wedge metaphor is attributed to Phillip E. Johnson and depicts a metal wedge splitting a log to represent an aggressive public relations program to create an opening for the supernatural in the public's understanding of science.

[Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross delve into the Wedge Strategy in their book Creationism's Trojan Horse:  The Wedge of Intelligent Design.  A book I just recently started to read and why Schaeffer's article has hit a nerve.]

Couple that with a 2002 statement made by Ken Ham that I have highlighted before,

Many Christians, including most Christian leaders, don’t understand the connection of evolution to the social ills of our culture and the difficulties in getting people interested in Christianity. They see evolution as something totally separate from such issues. I think the main reason for this misunderstanding is because many Christians have been indoctrinated to believe that evolution is factual science,,,.  What I am saying is that the more a culture abandons God’s Word as the absolute authority, and the more a culture accepts an evolutionary philosophy, then the way people think, and their attitudes, will also change.

A point re-iterated by Ham and his lackey Terry Mortenson's in 2014:

Sitting with Ken Ham and Terry Mortenson, a historian of geology and a theologian on staff, I asked why it is so important to convince their visitors—more than 2 million since the museum opened seven years ago—that Genesis is a book of history. "There’s a slippery slope in regard to authority,” Ham replied. “If you say that the history in Genesis is not true, then you can just take man’s ideas as true. When you go outside of Scripture, why shouldn’t you just reinterpret what marriage means? So our emphasis is on the slippery slope regarding authority.”
,,,
Mortenson stayed on the subject of gay marriage. “The homosexual issue flows from this. Genesis says that God created marriage between one man and one woman. He didn’t create it between two men, or two women, or two men and one woman, or three men and one woman, or two women and one man, or three women and one man. If other parts of Genesis aren’t true, then how could this idea of marriage be true? If there were no Adam and Eve and we’re all evolved from apelike ancestors and there’s homosexuality in the animal world and if Genesis is mythology, then you can justify any behavior you want.”

Which brings me to a point made by Wayne Besen, "[f]ind inflammatory wedge issues and scapegoats to divide people and force them to choose sides." The topic of homosexuality in all its iterations is a prime example of the "Evil Secular World" that Schaeffer mentions; transgender issues are a close second.

Schaeffer continues, touching on two prominent foundational leaders in the movement whose influence is still felt today.

The Evangelical home school movement was really founded by two people: Rousas Rushdoony, the extremist theologian, and Mary Pride, the “mother” of fundamentalist home-schoolers. I knew them both well.
,,,
By contrast, the leaders of Reconstructionism believed that Old Testament teachings—on everything from capital punishment for gays to the virtues of child beating—were still valid because they were the inerrant Word and Will of God and therefore should be enforced. Not only that, they said that biblical law should be imposed even on nonbelievers. This theology was the American version of the attempt in some Muslim countries to impose Shariah (Islamic law) on all citizens, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

And a third Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Prides' successor in the Patriarchy Movement and instrumental in the formation of the Quiverfull Movement which piggy-backs on the writings of Roman Catholic philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe.

,,,the wealthy author/guru Nancy Leigh DeMoss, was also one of those do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do best-selling career women doing high-paid speaking gigs while encouraging other women to stay home and submit to their men.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss happened to be the daughter of a former friend of my mother’s, Nancy DeMoss, who was instrumental in my parents’ rise to Evangelical superstardom. Nancy DeMoss was also pivotal in the role of facilitator and financier when it came to seamlessly merging Reconstructionist ideology with the “respectable” mainstream Evangelical community.
,,,
But unlike the Schaeffers, the DeMoss clan had tens of millions of dollars with which to back its pet far-right schemes, one of which would be the Quiverfull Movement– a group dedicated to early marriage and huge families.

Are you confused yet? Have you figured out why I don't sleep?

You now know why it has taken me five readings of this article.  To an outsider, it sounds as if Schaeffer is a name-dropping, raging lunatic with a conspiratorial mind-set.

,,,Good minds by themselves, however, are no guarantee against obsessions, rants, and angry vendettas. I have no idea why Frankie Schaeffer is so hostile. This article impresses mostly by name-dropping, by assigning dark motives to most of the Christians that Schaeffer once knew, and by grand conspiracy theories,,,.  They simply wish to pass down perspectives and values that are important to them. 95% of American Christians are not involved in the kind of right-wing politics that has Schaeffer so upset. It would be well for all of us to practice some civility.

And the above comment is correct, "Not all Christians are Dominionist, but all Dominionist claim Christianity."  It was aptly stated by Leah Burton. But as Michelle Goldberg points out, (and an ideology I highlighted here),

For believers in Dominionism, rule by non-Christians is a sort of sacrilege—which explains, in part, the theological fury that has accompanied the election of our last two Democratic presidents. “Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ—to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness,” wrote George Grant, the former executive director of Coral Ridge Ministries, which has since changed its name to Truth in Action Ministries. “But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice ... It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time ... World conquest.”

To remain silent is to condone.  What Schaeffer is offering, a behind-the-scenes history lesson.

Back to the name-dropping,,,

Antonin Scalia because of his friendship with, Robert George; a name I was not familiar with prior to Schaeffer's article.  A name we all should get to know.  As David Kirkpatrick writes in a 2009 piece for the New York Times:

FOR 20 YEARS, George has operated largely out of public view at the intersection of academia, religion and politics. In the past 12 months, however, he has stepped into a more prominent role. With the death of the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, a Lutheran minister turned Roman Catholic priest who helped bring evangelicals and Catholics together into a political movement, George has assumed his mantle as the reigning brain of the Christian right. And he is in many ways the public face of the conservative side in the most urgent culture-war battle of the day. The National Organization for Marriage, the advocacy group fighting same-sex marriage in Albany and Trenton, Maine and California, has made him its chairman. Before the 2004 election, he helped a coalition of Christian conservative groups write their proposed amendment to the federal Constitution defining marriage as heterosexual. More than any other scholar, George has staked his reputation on the claim that same-sex marriage violates not only tradition but also human reason.

[,,,]
In the American culture wars, George wants to redraw the lines. It is the liberals, he argues, who are slaves to a faith-based “secularist orthodoxy” of “feminism, multiculturalism, gay liberationism and lifestyle liberalism.” Conservatives, in contrast, speak from the high ground of nonsectarian public reason. George is the leading voice for a group of Catholic scholars known as the new natural lawyers. He argues for the enforcement of a moral code as strictly traditional as that of a religious fundamentalist. What makes his natural law “new” is that it disavows dependence on divine revelation or biblical Scripture — or even history and anthropology. Instead, George rests his ethics on a foundation of “practical reason”: “invoking no authority beyond the authority of reason itself,” as he put it in one essay.

George's list of friends reads like a who's who in America politics and jurisprudence.  Not only is he (very) smart but connected and not necessarily in a "bad" way.  George is founder of the American Principles Project, a past chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, and co-founder of the Renewal Forum.  He is also the originator of a document called the Manhattan Declaration, "a 4,700-word manifesto that promised resistance to the point of civil disobedience against any legislation that might implicate their churches or charities in abortion, embryo-destructive research or same-sex marriage."

Not only is George a friend of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, but Justice Clarence Thomas as well:

Good As You founder Jeremy Hooper just published an article with this image he found on Twitter. In the center is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. On the left is Ryan T. Anderson of the very anti-gay Heritage Foundation. On the right is none other than Robert P. George.
,,,
But it's Robert P. George that the LGBT community and all on the left really should know better.

My introduction to Peter Kreeft came via my unusual interest in C.S. Lewis.  After listening to a few of his lectures concerning Lewis (and Tolkien), I decided to explore some of his philosophy-minded talks when I realized I was listening to the Catholic version of William Lane Craig.  It wasn't until two years later that I discovered he really was a Roman Catholic apologist.  What I didn't know at the time was just how entrenched and active in the Reich's warfare against us common folk he was.

According to Schaeffer, Kreeft sounded a rallying cry for a "jihad against the secular West" writing a book titled, Ecumenical Jihad: Ecumenism and the Culture War in which he envisioned Christians, Jews and Muslims joining together, "[t]hese groups did not share each other’s theology, but had a deeper link: anger at the “victimhood” imposed on them by modernity."

Kreeft and Neuhaus were calling abortion murder. Thus, the logic of their argument was that of my father’s, too: The U.S. government was enabling murder and was thus disparaged as a “regime,” even a “counterfeit state,” that needed to be overthrown. George and Colson and the others who wrote and then signed the “Manhattan Declaration” (like Kreeft) also called for fundamentalists to unite if need be for civil disobedience to stop the U.S. government from doing its worst—in other words, to pass laws that did not comply with their religious “values.”

Buried in this section concerning Kreeft's influence are two more names.  One should be familiar to those of my generation, Charles Colson of Watergate fame and founder of Prison Fellowship.  The other, Richard John Neuhaus, may not be familiar to anyone not following the Reich but he came on my radar way back in 2005 when Time magazine published The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America.  I was an angry atheist back then and did not understand the ramifications of what I was reading, or what I was posting.  Many of the current power brokers where on that list:  Rick Warren, James Dobson, Billy and Franklin Graham, Richard Land, Joyce Meyer, Rick Santorum to name a few.

Here is what Time had to say about Neuhaus:

When Bush met with journalists from religious publications last year, the living authority he cited most often was not a fellow Evangelical but a man he calls Father Richard, who, he explained, "helps me articulate these [religious] things." A senior Administration official confirms that Neuhaus "does have a fair amount of under-the-radar influence" on such policies as abortion, stem-cell research, cloning and the defense-of-marriage amendment.

Neuhaus, 68, is well-prepared for that role. As founder of the religion-and-policy journal First Things, he has for years articulated toughly conservative yet nuanced positions on a wide range of civic issues. A Lutheran turned Catholic priest, he can translate conservative Protestant arguments couched tightly in Scripture into Catholicism's broader language of moral reasoning, more accessible to a general public that does not regard chapter and verse as final proof. And there is one last reason for Bush to cherish Neuhaus, who has worked tirelessly to persuade conservative Catholics and Evangelicals to make common cause. It's called the conservative Catholic vote, and it played a key role last November.

So why are Kreeft, George, Neuhaus and Colson important?  It goes back to the Manhattan Declaration and what David Badash said in regards to the Thomas photo-op with George, "But it's Robert P. George that the LGBT community and all on the left really should know better."  As Schaeffer explains,

So if the U.S. government legalizes gay marriage and thus “compels” all Americans (including church groups) to recognize gay men and women’s civil rights, the government need no longer be obeyed when those laws affect religious people who disagree with them. The “Manhattan Declaration” called believers to “not comply.” And just as Neuhaus dismissed the U.S. government as a “regime”—and my father did the same when saying the government was a “counterfeit state”—George and his co-signers also used dismissive and demeaning language about the U.S. government.

The “Manhattan Declaration” called laws with which its signers disagreed “edicts,” thereby conjuring up images of dictators handing down oppressive rules, rather than legitimately elected democratic bodies passing legislation. In other words, when the right loses in the democratic process, “other means,” like civil disobedience, are encouraged. In fact, George, who authored the “declaration,” then headed up the group that successfully won on the Hobby Lobby case and also won the Evangelical Wheaton College suit to allow them to not cover contraception for women.

I'm not going to dig too deep in the Manhattan Declaration and what it is or isn't.  What is surprising, not all within Christendom are on board with its tenets and their reason may surprise you.  From Matt Slick of CARM:

However, it is with sadness that CARM cannot sign the declaration for one significant reason:  it includes Roman Catholics as Christians. If CARM were to sign the declaration, it would be inadvertently supporting the anti-Christian teachings within the Roman Catholic Church by implying that Roman Catholicism is Christian when it is not.  Does this sound harsh?  I suppose it does.  But, more important than Christian unity is the truth of God's word.  We must not sacrifice "the faith once and for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3) for a can't-we-just-all-get-along type of sentiment even if the the intent is truly noble.

CARM stands for orthodoxy and fidelity to the word of God.  Therefore, we could no more sign a declaration that included Mormons as Christians any more than we could sign the Manhattan Declaration which calls Roman Catholicism Christian.

Even those of the Catholic persuasion are not convinced and leery.  From Frank Cocozzelli writing over at Talk To Action in his piece The Madness of Robert P. George:

As an American Catholic I find the religious and secular views of Robert P. George maddening. While giving lip service to religious freedom in the Manhattan Declaration, the statement's content actually promotes religious supremacy.

Reading between the lines of Kirkpatrick's The New York Times piece, George is saying that American law must be based upon an unyieldingly orthodox form of Catholicism. Other faiths may be tolerated provided they cede to his subjective interpretation of Christianity on issues of life and death. Catholics who, like me, view dissent as healthy and the Gospels as an on-going journey of understanding appear to have no place at all in the theoconservative world according to George.

While George claim's that his view of natural law "... disavows dependence on divine revelation or biblical Scripture - or even history and anthropology" it all-too-subjectively draws upon a thirteenth century version, one where the state and Catholic Church were intertwined. Nowhere in this calculation is any reliance upon Richard Hooker, the sixteenth century Anglican theologian whose views on natural law, latitudinarianism and religious tolerance greatly influenced John Locke and in turn, the Founding Fathers.

For shits-and-giggles, I may have to devote a posting just to George and his masterpiece.

What Scaheffer has done is provide, as he calls it, "the ideological background noise" that has set the stage for the Quiverfull and Patriarchy movements. "They gave a gloss of intellectual respectability to what was nothing more than a theocratic, far right wish list."

As Schaeffer notes, "we lashed out at 'godless America' and demanded political change,,,yet also urged our followers to pull their own children out of the public schools and home-school them."  Schaeffer then goes on to highlight Evangelical Protestant efforts that support(ed) that bizarre dichotomy.

In the minds of Evangelicals, they were re-creating the Puritan’s self-exile from England by looking for a purer and better place, this time not a geographical “place” but a sanctuary within their minds (and in inward-looking schools and churches) undisturbed by facts. Like the Puritans, the post-Roe Evangelicals (and many other conservative Christians) withdrew from the mainstream not because they were forced to but because the society around them was, in their view, fatally sinful and, worse, addicted to facts rather than to faith. And yet having “dropped out” (to use a 1960s phrase), the Evangelicals nevertheless kept on demanding that regarding “moral” and “family” matters the society they’d renounced nonetheless had to conform to their beliefs.

To be continued in part 2,,,
I Helped Start the Religious Right: Here's How We Tried to Undermine Secular America -- and Build a Theocracy

ADDENDUM::Relaxed Educational Standards for Homeschooled Children in Pennsylvania and Beyond Should Frighten All of Us

Hemant Metha is not only a former homeschoolee but and educator as well. He offers some interesting insights concerning Pennsylvania's recent relaxation of its requirements. While I focused primarily on the home schooling issue as a whole, Mehta has dug in deeper.

However, I have concerns when, unlike in a school setting, facts go through the filter of one or two individuals, for whom there is little or no oversight at all. In other words, a well-meaning but wrong individuals can teach their children something entirely, demonstrably false, with no one there to sound the alarm, simply because they believe it to be true. That isn’t education.

Which is pretty much what the NYT piece is about — states making it easier for parents to teach whatever they’d like, however they’d like to do it. The statistics are very worrying:

[,,,]
We shouldn’t relax or eliminate teaching standards for parents who take on the role of educator for the same reason we shouldn’t eliminate all educational standards.

Education is supposed to provide a student with factual information and the tools to reason in order to prepare him or her for life. We have a system in place to guarantee students this basic opportunity. By eliminating standards and guidelines that protect students’ interests in certain cases, we’ve effectively declared that some students don’t deserve the same access to factual information; they can receive it only at the whim of their parents.

And still, those championing largely religious “alternatives” to public education are demanding to be held to fewer — or no — standards.

[,,,]
This isn’t right — not for the children whose educations are at risk, not for the adults they’ll become who may well have to unlearn any number of false teachings, and not for the society that faces the prospect of potentially under-, poorly-, or un- educated citizens. It should hardly be a burden to meet reasonable educational standards. If the responsibility to demonstrate that you are fulfilling your self-appointed obligation to educate your child offends you, your priorities are misplaced. Education is, after all, about the child — not the beliefs or convenience of his parents.

Relaxed Educational Standards for Homeschooled Children in Pennsylvania and Beyond Should Frighten All of Us

Home Schooling: More Pupils, Less Regulation - NYTimes.com

Until recently, Pennsylvania had one of the strictest home-school laws in the nation.

Families keeping their children out of traditional classrooms were required to register each year with their local school district, outlining study plans and certifying that adults in the home did not have a criminal record. At the end of the year, they submitted portfolios of student work to private evaluators for review. The portfolio and evaluator’s report then went to a school district superintendent to approve.

But in October, after years of campaigning by home-schooling families in the state as well as the Home School Legal Defense Association, a national advocacy group, Pennsylvania relaxed some of its requirements.

“We believe that because parents who make this commitment to teach their children at home are dedicated and self-motivated, there’s just not a real need for the state to be involved in overseeing education,” said Dewitt T. Black III, senior counsel for the Home School Legal Defense Association, which has close ties to local Christian home-school associations. Mr. Black wrote an early version of the bill that eventually passed here.

[,,,]
Pennsylvania educators fought the recent changes, which eliminated the requirement that families submit their children’s portfolios, as well as the results of standardized testing in third, fifth and eighth grade, to school district superintendents. The new law also allows parents to certify that their children have completed high school graduation requirements and to issue homegrown diplomas without any outside endorsement.


“Here we are loosening standards for a subset of students while at the same time giving them the same credential as all other students,” said Jim Buckheit, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators. He noted that the home-school law had been weakened at the same time that public school students were being held to more rigorous academic standards and teachers were being judged by the performance of their students.


Home Schooling: More Pupils, Less Regulation - NYTimes.com

Barely Literate? How Christian Fundamentalist Homeschooling Hurts Kids | Alternet

"I don’t believe the answer is to end homeschooling altogether, and neither do any of the women I talk to, no matter what their experience with homeschooling. But neither is it acceptable to allow more homeschooled children to fall through the cracks. And since no one should be deprived of an education, we have a duty to listen to those who were overlooked. "

__

Over time, Garrison lost faith in her fundamentalist ideology and became aware that her children’s education was being neglected. Eventually all but one of her six younger children ended up entering and excelling in the public school system.

Why did she stick with homeschooling for so long, despite her difficulties? “We were convinced that it would be better for our kids not to have an education than to be educated to become humanists or atheists and to reject God,” Garrison says. “We became so isolated because the Quiverfull lifestyle was so overwhelming we didn’t have time or energy for socialization. So the only people we knew were exactly like us. We were told that the whole point of public school was to dumb down the children and turn them into compliant workers – to brainwash them and indoctrinate them into this godless way of thinking.”

Garrison believes that homeschooling has become so popular with fundamentalist Christians because, “there is an atmosphere of real terror among some evangelicals. They are horrified by the fact that Obama is president, and they see the New Atheist movement as a vocal, in-your-face threat. Plus, they are obsessed with the End Times, and believe that the Apocalypse could happen any day now...They see a demon on every corner.

[,,,]
Though she considers herself conservative, Goeller does not demonize public schools as some families do. And contrary to stereotypes about Christian homeschoolers, Goeller is adamant that she will not sacrifice academic rigor, or shield her children from views different from her own. In fact, she says she would welcome more opportunities for them to interact with public school students, for example, in sports and even in certain classes now and then.

Certainly, Goeller is not alone in the care and thoughtfulness she takes with her children’s homeschool education. But in light of what Garrison, Diegel Martin and Palmer tell me, it seems irresponsible to assert, as many homeschooling parents do, that homeschooling neglect is just a fringe element in the homeschooling world. And getting a straight answer about the scope of the problem from people who champion the cause is difficult at best.

Barely Literate? How Christian Fundamentalist Homeschooling Hurts Kids | Alternet

Texas court rules against homeschoolers who expected rapture and stopped teaching kids

This is one of those cases I wish I had payed more attention to. One defense tactic employed was the 1972 Yoder case involving the Amish.and schooling beyond the 8th grade. A second tactic was logic, Christian logic - the Lawd, Christ Jebus is a comin back to earth.

When will people learn that children are not chattel, they have rights and one of those rights is education.. This is just another black-eye on the whole religious home-school movement and why better monitoring is needed.

A Texas court ruled this month that parents who allegedly stopped homeschooling their kids because they believed Jesus Christ was returning to Earth were not exempt from state education regulations.

According to a ruling last week by the Texas Eighth District Court of Appeals, Michael McIntyre and Laura McIntyre removed their nine children from a private school in 2004 to homeschool them.

Michael McIntyre’s twin brother, Tracy, testified that the parents used empty space in a motorcycle dealership that he co-owned as a classroom. But Tracy said that he never saw the children reading books, using computers or doing arithmetic. Instead, the children were seen playing instruments and singing.

“Tracy overhead one of the McIntyre children tell a cousin that they did not need to do schoolwork because they were going to be raptured,” the court document noted.

Texas court rules against homeschoolers who expected rapture and stopped teaching kids

Mom, Grandparents, Nearly Starved Boy To Death: Cops

"The most important medicine used to treat him at the hospital was food. He was within a month of having a major cardiac event that he probably would not have recovered from," said Dr. Jennifer Wolford of UPMC Children's Hospital Child Advocacy Center.

"It is impossible to me that this severe neglect and active abuse was not visible. He was being starved in his own home around others of normal weight," she stated.

The boy's two sisters, ages 4 and 11, appeared healthy, while a 9-year-old brother was underweight but not as severely as the 7-year-old.

According to police, Rader decided to homeschool the 7-year-old last year, and he was not allowed outside the house except to the back porch, where he would sometimes eat the bugs he caught. He was fed small amounts of tuna and eggs and suffered beatings with a belt - particularly when he sneaked food, usually peanut butter and bread, police said.

He was forced to take ice-cold showers as punishment - the only showers he was allowed - and had two abscessed teeth that had to be removed, police said.

Mom, Grandparents, Nearly Starved Boy To Death: Cops

Arizona couple arrested on accusations of abusing adopted daughters | Reuters

Not mentioned in the article, although I would bet my last penny that these cretins are "Pearlites" and avid readers of To Train Up A Child. The abusive behavior is consistent with a corporal punishment style advocated by Debby and Michael Pearl, “spare the rod, spoil the child.”
__
Police in Arizona have arrested a couple on suspicion of repeatedly abusing two of their adopted daughters, punishing them with beatings and leaving the girls severely malnourished, authorities said on Friday.

Johann Glenn Jorg, 61, and Kimery Lynn Jorg, 54, were taken into custody on Thursday in Peoria, a northern suburb of Phoenix, on suspicion of four counts each of felony child abuse involving two daughters, ages 11 and 13, court records show.

Police spokeswoman Amanda Jacinto said the elder girl remained in a local hospital due to her emaciated condition, and that the five-foot-tall (1.52-meter) teen had weighed just 60 pounds (27 kg) upon admission.

[,,,]
The children were also forced to run in the heat for an hour each day, police said, as well as write down, recite and explain Bible phrases. If they made mistakes, they had to run further.

Arizona couple arrested on accusations of abusing adopted daughters | Reuters

Farris: Patriarchy Makes Kids Gays and Atheists

Okay, wow. I have been excited about Farris condemning patriarchy because, regardless of his motives, his words may prevent at least some families from going down that toxic rabbit hole. But this? The patriarchy turns kids into gays and atheists? That is why he’s condemning it? Not, oh I don’t know, patriarchal homeschooling hurts people? Farris has read the stories on Homeschoolers Anonymous (or at least is aware of them), but his conclusion is not “patriarchal homeschooling is toxic” but rather “patriarchal homeschooling turns kids into gays and atheists”? For serious?

[,,,]
What Farris apparently does not realize is that for many of us our parents’ insistence on us adopting their exact religious beliefs was just as constricting and painful patriarchal aspects of our upbringing, if not more so. My troubles with my parents started not when I rejected patriarchy but rather when I determined that God had used evolution to create the world. Ardent young-earth creationists, my parents all but disowned me. That they could treat me like that, and that they could insist on young-earth creationism in the face of clear scientific evidence, made me realize I needed to think through everything they had taught me, because any bit of it could be wrong. That path didn’t lead straight to atheism, taking me first through some other flavors of Christianity.

Farris told homeschool parents, including my parents, that they were the Moses generation, removing their children from Egypt (the public schools) and educating them in the wilderness of Sinai (homeschooling). We children, Farris said, were the Joshua generation, raised up to take back the promised land of Canaan (aka to “retake America for Christ”). But then some of us, myself included, rebelled against the entire purpose we were being raised for and decided Canaan was just fine the way it was and that slaughtering its inhabitants sounded like a very bad idea. That is what provoked our parents’ backlash against us, as they sought for something to blame for our utter failure. That is why we felt suffocated, as our parents blamed us for falling short of the lofty goals Farris had fed them.

Farris: Patriarchy Makes Kids Gays and Atheists

Christian Patriarchy on Educating Daughters

More on Christian Patriarchy and education for "daughters." An important poin that Libby Anne closes with:

"If you tell someone involved in the Christian Patriarchy movement that they do not believe in educating their daughters, they will object to your portrayal and cease to listen to what you are saying. If you, in contrast, tell them that they do not believe in educating their daughters for careers outside the home, they will likely agree. Then, perhaps, you may be able to begin a conversation.
__
The leaders of this movement, in other words, want daughters to be taught skills beyond diaper changing and laundry, but they don’t want daughters’ education to orient them towards a career outside the home. Interestingly enough, I can see how these ideas played out in my own life. My sister Heidi and I both attended college but sought degrees that would allow us to bring in extra income by working on the side, out of the home, while filling our proper roles as homeschooling mothers. When we both decided that was not what we wanted, we faced the challenge of turning an education intended to bring in pocket money into one we could forge careers out of.

[,,,]
Farris and the Botkin sisters are not the only ones arguing that daughters should be educated, though not for careers outside of the home. Voddie Baucham had his daughter Jasmine, who lives in his home as an obedient “stay-at-home daughter,” obtain a bachelor’s degree and now a master’s degree. Doug Wilson emphasizes the importance of a strong classical education for both sons and daughters and takes a pride in his daughters being well educated and well spoken.

[,,,]
In other words, the leaders of the Christian Patriarchy movement are not against educating daughters. What they are against is educating daughters for careers outside of the home. They also have concerns about how their daughters go about being educated—namely, they do not want their daughters educated at secular universities.

[,,,]
The leaders of the Christian Patriarchy movement believe that preparation for being a wife, mother, and teacher-at-home involves more than simply learning to change diapers and do laundry. They believe that being a proper Proverbs 31 woman should involve learning business, economics, history, law, and education. But all of this is seen as preparation for life as a homemaker and homeschool mother—not for a career outside the home. Indeed, these leaders—from Michael Farris to Doug Phillips—argue that daughters should be actively discouraged from even considering a career outside the home, and should instead be “pushed” towards homemaking and homeschooling as their lifelong destiny.

Christian Patriarchy on Educating Daughters

Patriarchy in homeschool culture | Defeating the Dragons

I'm attempting to get a better understanding of the Christian Patriarchy ideology and its sub-categories. There is much to read on the subject (of which I am way behind) but I haven't yet been able to put it together in a coherent manner. Y'all will have to bare with me as my posting will run the gamut.
__

In this culture, it is the sacred duty of every man to police the actions of every woman. Women are not to be trusted with decision making, let alone gifted the ability to make up their own mind on what they want to wear to their Senior Prom. If a man in this culture even notices a woman sexually, it’s a problem, and she deserves to be confronted and chastised because of it.

There’s two options available to men in these situations: either the girl is simply “silly” and telling her that her dress could cause “impure thoughts” is information she should be grateful for, and she should humbly leave in shame and humiliation– or, she is dressing provocatively on purpose, which makes her a “strange woman” who is “playing the harlot” and she definitely deserves to be confronted and removed. When Clare stood up for herself, that put her firmly into “strange woman playing the harlot” category.

It’s rape culture on steroids. It’s “she was asking for it” dressed up in Bible verses and cutesy Victorian language about knights and fair maidens.

patriarchy in homeschool culture | Defeating the Dragons

This Is What Happens When A Kid Leaves Traditional Education |

Interesting, I am not a huge fan of homeschooling as there can be to many abuses that are oft times overlooked and detrimental to the child. But there are some instances where it works out for the better and Logan may be one such example. Motivation, ability and involvement of the parent factors into that paradigm as well as the needs of the child.

Should we jump on the band wagon? Is he an exception or the rule, ",,,studies done in the US and Canada show that home schooled children out perform their peers from both private and public schools." There is no doubt he is gifted, has the support of his parents, and lives a comfortable middle class life; but this is no longer the norm, just because it work for Logan doesn't mean it will work for all.

What I would like to see, take the concepts of homeschooling (i.e. what Logan has spoken about) and apply them to our current school systems.
__________
Logan Laplante is a 13 year-old boy who was taken out of the education system to be home schooled instead. Not only was he home schooled, but Logan had the ability to tailor his education to his interests and also his style of learning, something traditional education does not offer. As Logan has mentioned, when he grows up he wants to be happy and healthy. He says that educational systems should be teaching us how to make a life, instead of just how to make a living. At a TEDx talk in 2013, he discussed how hacking his education is helping him achieve that goal.

This Is What Happens When A Kid Leaves Traditional Education |

Escape from Christian Fundamentalism - the Kids Who Flee Abusive, Isolated Christian Homes | Alternet

Another great illustration of how poisonous religion is in the lives of human beings.  Further along in the article is an "outline" of the history of the home school movement based in Christian ideology, as well as, the influence of the Quiverfull movement (think "the Duggars").

To most people, it would have sounded like overreaction to innocuous forms of teenage rebellion. But Lauren, who’d cut ties with her family the previous year, knew it was more. The sisters grew up, with two brothers, in a family that was almost completely isolated, they say, held captive by their mother’s extreme anxiety and explosive anger. “I was basically raised by someone with a mental disorder and told you have to obey her or God’s going to send you to hell,” Lauren says. “Her anxiety disorder meant that she had to control every little thing, and homeschooling and her religious beliefs gave her the justification for it.”

It hadn’t started that way. Her parents began homeschooling Lauren when she struggled to learn to read in the first grade. They were Christians, but not devout. Soon, though, the choice to homeschool morphed into rigid fundamentalism. The sisters were forbidden to wear clothes that might “shame” their father or brothers. Disobedience wasn’t just bad behavior but a sin against God. Both parents spanked the children with a belt. Her mother, Jennifer says, hit her for small things, like dawdling while trying on clothes.

[,,,]
Even conservative Patrick Henry felt like a bright new reality. While much about the college confirmed the worldview Lauren grew up in, small freedoms like going out for an unplanned coffee came as a revelation. She describes it as “a sudden sense of being able to say yes to things, when your entire life is no.”  [That is a scarey thought!!]

[,,,]
As of October, Homeschoolers Anonymous had published nearly 200 personal accounts and attracted more than 600,000 page views. For those outside the homeschooling movement, and for many inside it, the stories are revelatory and often shocking. The milder ones detail the haphazard education received from parents who, with little state oversight, prioritize obedience and religious training over learning. Some focus on women living under strict patriarchal regimes. Others chronicle appalling abuse that lasted for years.

They want to show what goes on behind closed doors in some Christian homeschooling families, to share "the stories we were never allowed to talk about as children."

[,,,]
As a teenager, Stollar toured the national homeschool debate circuit with a group called Communicators for Christ, sharpening his rhetorical skills and giving speech tutorials. Along the way, he found himself increasingly disturbed by what he saw. He met families that follow the concept of “Quiverfull”, wherein women are submissive to men and forgo contraception to have as many children as God gives them. He encountered entire communities where women wore only denim jumpers for modesty’s sake, where parents burned their daughters’ birth certificates to keep them at home, where teenagers practiced “betrothal,” a kind of arranged marriage. He met homeschooling kids who dealt with the stress by cutting themselves, drinking, or developing eating disorders—the very terrors their parents had fled the public schools to avoid. “Even as a conservative Christian homeschooler,” Stollar says, “I was constantly experiencing culture shock.”

[,,,]
In 2013, HSLDA lobbied against a proposed Pennsylvania bill that would have required a short period of oversight for parents who decide to homeschool and already have substantiated abuse claims against them—in essence defending the right of abusive parents to homeschool without supervision. The group is currently challenging state laws that allow anonymous tips to Child Protective Services to be grounds for investigating parents. In June, the HSLDA–authored Parental Rights Amendment was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives with 64 co-sponsors. The amendment would enshrine in the Constitution parents’ “fundamental right” to direct their child’s upbringing however they see fit, free of state interference.


Escape from Christian Fundamentalism - the Kids Who Flee Abusive, Isolated Christian Homes | Alternet

 A bit of an addendum:  This article is a veritable who's who of the Reich and those who do battle against them:

The Reich:

• Liberal author and educator John Holt (1960) advocated a child-directed form of learning that became “unschooling”—homeschooling without a fixed curriculum.
• Education researcher Raymond Moore (1970), a Seventh-Day Adventist, who argued that schooling children too early—before fourth grade—was developmentally harmful.
• Focus on the Family founder and Christian parenting icon James Dobson (1982) invited Mooreonto his radio show for the first time.
• Michael Farris and Michael Smith (1983) founded the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). With Moore’s imprimatur and Dobson’s backing, Farris and Smith started out defending homeschooling families at a time when the practice was effectively illegal in 30 states [Farris also is founder of Patrick Henry College.
• R.J. Rushdoony, founder of the radical theology of Christian Reconstructionism, which aims to turn the United States into an Old Testament theocracy.
• The emphasis on discipline has given rise to a cottage industry promoting harsh parenting techniques as godly. Books like To Train Up a Child by Michael and Debi Pearl.
• Youth civics ministries like TeenPact, which hosts training camps for homeschoolers to mingle with lobbyists and write sample legislation, encourage homeschoolers to “change America for Christ.”
• HSLDA’s youth-activism group, Generation Joshua, works on voter-registration drives, lobbies at state legislatures, and door-knocks for conservative candidates.
• Kevin Swanson of the Christian Home Educators of Colorado warned listeners of his podcast, Generations with Vision, about “apostate homeschoolers” who were organizing online.
• Darren Jones, a staff attorney for HSLDA.
• Willie Deutsch, a Patrick Henry graduate who worked on HSLDA’s Parental Rights Amendment campaign.

The battle warriors:
Hännah Ettinger, who writes “Wine & Marble” a blog about transitioning out of fundamentalist culture.


Homeschoolers Anonymous, launched by two homeschool graduates, Ryan Stollar and Nicholas Ducote. Their goal was to show what goes on behind closed doors in some Christian homeschooling families—to share, as one blogger puts it, “the stories we were never allowed to talk about as children.”


No Longer Quivering, “Survivor” blogs written by former fundamentalists, started by Vyckie Garrison.


Rachel Coleman, a 26-year-old leader in the ex-homeschooler movement. “We were the shock troops, the best trained and equipped, the ones who were to make a difference in the fight—a fight between God and Satan for the soul of America.” Coleman, who co-founded the watchdog site  Homeschooling’s Invisible Children, is writing a doctoral dissertation at Indiana University about children and the rise of the Christian right in the 1970s and 1980s.


Elizabeth Esther, author of a forthcoming memoir about leaving fundamentalism, Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother's Memoir of Living with Her Son's Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide.


Heather Doney, who co-founded Homeschooling’s Invisible Children with Coleman.