family-integrated church

The Story of an Ex-Good Girl: Part Eight

HA Editorial Team10 Comments

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HA Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Exgoodgirl’s blog The Travels and Travails of an Ex-Good Girl. It was originally published on August 19, 2014 and has been slightly modified for HA.

<Part Seven

Trigger Warning: Depictions of physical abuse and gaslighting

Part 8: A Whip for the Horse, a Bridle for the Donkey, and a Rod for the Back of a Child!

From the beginning, my little brother B was a happy-go-lucky troublemaker, more interested in exploring and trying new things than in whatever rules he might be breaking!  Like most small boys, he was often getting into things he shouldn’t, being loud, engaging in rough boy-play, and sometimes careless with the truth.  Nothing too unusual for a small boy (or girl!).  These small misdemeanors brought scoldings from my parents, after which he’d continue on his happy-go-lucky little way.  He wasn’t a bad kid.  He was just a kid.

His personality did not sit well at all with Joe LaQuiere and his philosophy of parenting.  Everyone had the responsibility to be self-controlled and model godly behavior at all times, he said, and children were absolutely no exception.  The reason everyone around Mr. LaQuiere had bad results (bad children) while his were good was that he recognized that it was a misconception that children needed to act and be treated as children.  They should absolutely not be held to a lower standard than anyone else – that was insulting them and their Creator.

They were subject to the same expectations as adults.

And if they violated the rules, stern discipline was the key to correcting the problem.  “As the twig is bent, so grows the tree”, said Mr. LaQuiere.  If you want to correct the wrong bent in a twig, you must exert as much force as necessary to force it to stay in a straight position and maintain that force until the new position becomes permanent.  Children are malleable.  If they are expected to act like adults, they will learn to act like adults.  They will rise to the level of expectation placed on them – and if they don’t, it is the responsibility of their parents to forcibly hold them to those expectations.

From the first, Joe LaQuiere zeroed in on my brother B as a “bad seed” in need of a strong hand of correction.  He didn’t like his attitude, his carelessness about rules, his little-boy jokes, or his tendency to be found in the middle of any mischief.  These were all characteristics of a fool, he said.  Mr. LaQuiere despised anyone who was a fool.

Because B was a fool, Joe decided he needed to make an example of him whenever possible, to teach him (and the rest of us watching) a lesson about how God feels about fools.  This started when B was five years old.

One of the character flaws Mr. LaQuiere hated most in B was a tendency to lie to avoid getting in trouble.  As B was always getting scolded for getting into mischief, he’d often lie about things to avoid being punished for his little crimes.  Mr. LaQuiere decided this was one thing he would not stand for, and he intended to stamp it out quickly and forcibly. He informed everyone in the group that my brother B was “a liar”, and nothing he said was to be trusted at any time.  Unless there was independent verification from someone else “trustworthy”, any statement B made was jumped on and accused of being a lie.  Mr. LaQuiere encouraged all the men in the group to join in on “helping” to correct B in this way.  One time, the husband of my mom’s best friend, Mr. W, decided he would give B an object lesson.  He pointed to a green ball on the grass and asked him, “What color is that ball?”  B said it was green.  Then this man turned to me, and asked me, “What color is that ball?  Tell me it’s yellow.”  I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I had to respect and obey all adults, so I squirmed a little, and said it was yellow.  He turned to B and said, “See?  You’re a liar.  I trust your sister because she tells the truth.  You…you’re a liar.  It doesn’t matter what you say: everything you say is a lie.”  That scene impressed itself deeply on my memory and my conscience.  It was just one of many conflicts that raged in my heart from then on.

I knew B hadn’t lied, but I was told that adults were infallible, not-to-be-questioned, and God’s direct representatives to us.  How does a child reconcile those two things?

Punishments (though they were never called that–Mr. LaQuiere made it clear that this was “discipline”, never punishment) were many and varied.  B was often made to stand in the middle of the floor for some misdemeanor or other, and stay there all day, missing meals, until Mr. LaQuiere said he could move.  He wouldn’t be allowed to work with the other boys and men (“that is reserved for boys with good character who we can trust”) and was made to help Mrs. LaQuiere with laundry and other “women chores” as a mark of shame.  He had all privileges revoked, even the privilege of speaking sometimes, or having anyone speak to him for days at a time.  He was “tomato-staked”, which meant he was to be within twelve inches of Mr. LaQuiere or my dad at all times, and not allowed to interact with anyone, because he “couldn’t be trusted” out of their sight.  But those were the mild punishments.

“The rod is for the back of a fool,” Mr. LaQuiere would say, and he didn’t mean it figuratively.  In the bottom drawer of a tall chiffonier in his living-room he kept The Paddle.  About 2 1/2 feet long, and 1/4 inch thick, the Paddle was made of wood and had finger-grips carved into it, to make spanking easier for Mr. LaQuiere.  It was an instrument of fear to all of us and used to “correct” children for anything from minor rule infractions to major “sins of rebellion”.  The offending child would be sent to fetch their own instrument of punishment and bring it back to Mr. LaQuiere.

In our own homes, our parents would inflict corporal punishment: in Mr. LaQuiere’s home, he always carried it out personally, no matter whose child it was.

B was sent to get the Paddle more than any other child in our group.

Being “paddled” involved telling the child to bend over and hold his ankles.  They were not to let go under any circumstances until Mr. LaQuiere finished the punishment and said they could move.  They were also only allowed to cry silently, or as silently as possible.  Wails or screams were punished with further beating.  Any infraction of the rules resulted in starting the punishment over again.  The minimum number of “paddles” was 5, but that was reserved for extremely minor infractions, or for very young children, maybe 3 – 5 years old.  For most of us, the average beginning number was 10, but this was quickly increased for any breaking of form while being paddled: if you let go of your ankles, Mr. LaQuiere started counting again from the beginning.  If you put your hands behind you and they got hit with the Paddle, Mr. LaQuiere started again from the beginning.  If you cried loudly, he started over.  If your crying sounded angry, he started over, and sometimes tacked on extra paddles for showing “rebellion”.  It was common for my brother B to be struck upwards of 20 times during one “paddling”.

Each “paddle” was accomplished by Mr. LaQuiere taking a full-bodied swing and hitting the exposed rear end of the child with the full force of an adult male (this was modified for the small children, but it still hurt good and proper, as it was intended to).

For the children that were considered “good”, like me, spankings were rarely experienced first-hand.  Instead, Mr. LaQuiere told my parents that I was a child “who learned best by watching”.  Meaning that I wasn’t actually committing offenses deserving of being spanked, but I was forced to watch all my siblings and friends get spanked, because that would teach me to be “afraid of sinning” and I would be even less likely to sin myself.  I was forced to watch a lot of these spanking as a young child.

What made it the most traumatic for me, even more than seeing my terrified brother or cousins being hurt, their wide eyes streaming tears as they fought to hold back the cries that would earn them further punishment, was the fact that Joe LaQuiere treated it like it was funny.

He would smile, laugh, and even joke with the other adults while he was carrying out these beatings.  This was to show that he wasn’t punishing “in anger”, but out of love and genuine care for us.

Once when I was 9 or 10, during a public “paddling” of my brother B, I ran into the dark front room and hid under the piano, my tears mixing with my panic.  I sat there in the dark, hugging my knees, until Mr. LaQuiere’s oldest daughter came and found me and coaxed me out, telling me “everything was fine”, and “there was nothing to be sad about”.  I dried my tears and went with her, but the fear remained.  Maybe these kinds of experiences – watching my siblings be hurt by other adults while my parents watched and joined in laughter – are why I can’t remember ever being afraid.

I live with fear every day of my life since then, and it took me well over a decade after we left to realize that it is really not normal for a child to live life in constant fear.

The thought of how I’d feel if my own children were forced to endure or watch the things I was made to, makes me want to vomit.

When my brother B was 10, he developed a nervous tic – an involuntary twitch in his eye. I’m personally surprised it didn’t start sooner. It started off happening every time an adult made eye contact with him but increased until it was nearly a constant thing.  It was nearly impossible for him to look anyone in the eye.  To correct this “misbehavior”, Mr. LaQuiere told my parents to put rubber bands on his wrist, and snap him every time he did it.  His wrists were red from then on; even so, it was a long time before he could learn to control the eye twitching.

“Paddlings” were not the only punishments my brother B endured.  As he got older, it seemed like any and every expression of anger, contempt, disgust and violence was fair game.  The most violent of the treatment took place during the times we were working construction with the rest of the families.  My memories of this time are somewhat hazy, maybe because my subconscious is protecting me, but I easily recall him being called “lazy” “foolish” “ignoble” “idiot” “knucklehead” “stupid”, and other names — not by other children, but by the adults.  In addition to the regular beatings he received in public, or behind closed doors in Mr. LaQuiere’s home office, he was often dragged places by his hair.  He was thrown against walls.  He was held up against the wall by his throat, high enough that his feet dangled off the ground.  These things were mostly done by Mr. LaQuiere and the other men in the group, but eventually they were also done by my father in the privacy of our own home, as he fought to control an increasingly-troubled B who was getting older and older, and still a “problem” to his authorities.

Other children were considered “hardened” and “problem children”, but none received as much time and attention at the hands of Joe LaQuiere as my brother.

B was targeted for verbal, emotional and physical abuse from the age of 5 until we left the group when he was 13 (though the pattern continued at home for many years after that).

Years later, my dad would express regret over this treatment of B, but his most recent comments on the situation to me were that “he doesn’t have much sympathy for B and J, because they weren’t ‘innocent’, and also, it’s hard to feel too bad for them when they’ve gone on to make bad life choices as young adults”.

I’d like to ask my dad why he considers my brothers “not innocent” for acting like children, but seems to carry no lasting guilt for himself for letting other full-grown men physically abuse his sons and joining in on it himself.

I’d like to ask him how he can see the devastation and depression in my brother B that followed and that has plagued him through his adult years, and not feel responsible.  How he can’t see the link between the abuse and the high level of control they grew up under and their tendency to make “bad choices” later on.

But I also feel guilt myself.  Guilt that I didn’t stand up for my brother.  That I didn’t tell somebody who could have stopped it, though we were strongly ingrained with fear of Child Protective Services, and heard horror stories of older children who “informed” on their parents, and had CPS come snatch all the children away.

So calling CPS would never have entered my mind as a possibility, even if I hadn’t been too afraid to take action.  Though my adult logic can admit that I couldn’t have done much, if anything, to stop the abuse, I still feel guilt and grief over what was done to my brothers, and my own inability to stop it.

Part Nine>

photo credit: Joel Dinda via photopin cc

The Story of an Ex-Good Girl: Part Five

HA Editorial Team2 Comments

Barn

HA Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Exgoodgirl’s blog The Travels and Travails of an Ex-Good Girl. It was originally published on August 2, 2014 and has been slightly modified for HA.

< Part Four

Part Five: A Brave New World

This marked the end of my childhood proper; from this point on, I felt, and was expected to be, more like a small adult than a child.

It was also the end of thinking the world was a friendly and safe place.

My sense of security and my unconscious trust in adults as havens of reliability was replaced by uncertainty and an ever-increasing tendency to withdraw into the safety of my own thought life.

Outwardly, a period of relative peace settled in, with weekly meetings at what was to become not merely a resource for child-training, but our new “homechurch” family.  Sometime around this point we stopped attending the Baptist church that we had been attending since I was a baby.  It used to be pastored by Pastor Chase, a fine old preacher, who I adored and respected enormously, as much as you can adore and respect anyone when you are 4 years old.  The times I got to skip Sunday School and sit in the adult service to hear him preach were my favorite!  Then Pastor Chase either retired or died, I forget which, and was replaced by Pastor Boymook.

I despised Pastor Boymook with all the fierceness my 4-year-old self could muster, not just because he wasn’t Pastor Chase, but because I instinctively felt with the intuition of a child that he wasn’t completely genuine.  He was a smooth talker, and I didn’t trust him.  Pastor Chase always talked to me like a person; Pastor B talked to me in the condescending way some adults use with children because they think they aren’t smart enough to know the difference.  I hated that.  My opinion of him was just reinforced when I went through a class he taught as a prerequisite to being baptized, when I was 6.  The other members of the class were two adults, and when we finished the class, we were all given books as presents.  I was thrilled!  Being precocious, and a child of parents who valued books as a self-education, I regularly read all sorts of books that were “too old” for me, and understood most of them.  I read all of my dad’s books that I could get my hands on, and I was excited to have a new “grown-up” book of my very own!  Pastor B handed the adults thick, leatherette copies of some classic Christian theology book.  Then…he handed me a children’s board book, with colorful pictures and simplified stories about Jesus.  I hated it.  I was insulted.  Even my copy of the NIV Bible, which I used to look up Bible verses and follow along during the sermons, was more advanced than this.  Pastor B had sealed his fate: he was officially persona non grata to me from that day on.

I wasn’t sorry to leave Pastor Boymook behind for our new Wednesday night “church” – at least Mr. LaQuiere talked to children like they were adults too, and I found that very gratifying.

Little by little, Mr. LaQuiere became the final word in all matters of our daily lives, whether the issues were theological, familial, financial, or even regarding the kinds of food we were allowed to eat.

Traditional church was bad.  Public school (even private school) was bad. Letting your children play with other children was bad.  Eating pork and seafood was bad.  Christmas trees were pagan, and therefore, bad.  So we started a new way of life.  We cut out all pork products from our diet and replaced them with things like turkey bacon.  There was no substitute for marshmallows, which I was sad about.  Who knew they were made from pork by-products?  We shunned the neighbor kids for their “corrupting influence”.  We banned Christmas trees from our home.  I hated this one the most. I missed the Christmases of old, with the twinkling lights of our tree glowing through our frosty front window when we came home on dark winter nights.  I missed falling asleep to the lights of the Christmas tree, shining in the dark and promising the wonder of Christmas mornings and presents as-yet unwrapped!  But we all had to sacrifice for the sake of godliness, so that was that.

Joe LaQuiere had an obsession with the Jews and Jewish traditions (hence the “no pork” rule).  He explained to us that the Jews were God’s “favorite people”, and we should be following their example.  If your father had a favorite son and gave him special rules, wouldn’t you try to follow the same special rules so you could gain the approval of your father as well?  If we wanted God to be pleased with us maybe it wasn’t absolutely written in stone that we must act like the Jews, but certainly it was going the extra mile, and aren’t we told to go the extra mile?  If we loved God with our whole hearts we would do everything we could to please Him.  So we replaced traditional Sunday church-time with Saturday Sabbath.  The Sabbath was the day God instructed all of us (not just the Jews) to rest and not to do any work.  It was treated very seriously.  This meant not only no physical work but also no playing games, no reading books- except for the Bible (or maybe very spiritual books, if approved by a parent…cue ‘Elsie Dinsmore’), no buying anything at a store (causing others to work) from sundown Friday night until sundown Saturday night, and in general being quite solemn, as befitting a day in which we are to honor God.  It was also the day we took “the Lord’s Supper” (not “communion” – that sounded too much like what those people in regular church did).  All the women wore head coverings during the Lord’s Supper and worship time and sometimes the whole day long.  My sister and I and the other girls were exempt until we were about 12, then we were considered adult enough and required to wear them as well.  The men would pour out red grape juice (wine was alcoholic, and being definitely warned against in the bible, was not an acceptable substitute) in crystal glasses, one per adult, and after reading the new testament portions about “this cup is the new covenant in my blood; drink it in remembrance of me”, we would solemnly drink it, after first being warned that not taking it seriously, or worse, “partaking with unconfessed sin on your conscience” could result in getting seriously sick, or even dying, because it says so right there in the bible.

Once I was old enough to take part, I always worried that there would be some sin I had forgotten about and secretly wondered if this would be the time that it caught up with me.  I didn’t know if dying in this manner would invalidate my salvation or not, so it was especially nerve-wracking not knowing if my final destination hung in the balance!  It seems like a silly worry when I look back on it today, but it was taken very seriously and was just one of the things that contributed to my believing that being constantly guilt-ridden was a normal state of being!

Sin of any sort was a serious matter, and we were constantly reminded that not only was our sin the reason that Jesus had to die, but also that God specifically demanded that sinful, rebellious children be stoned to death (the process was described quite graphically to us), and though we somehow were able to escape this fate by the skin of our teeth, it is what a holy God said we deserved.

With this new solemn knowledge of sin came the reassurance that we could be accepted by God if we lived “godly” enough lives.  It was hard to give up Christmas trees, and bacon, and our friends, but we had been given the Rulebook for Eternal Life, and we were going to live by the rules!

It was a brave new world.

Part Six>

photo credit: Joel Dinda via photopin cc

Rewriting History — History of America Mega-Conference: Part Eight, Closing Thoughts

HA Editorial Team10 Comments

Rewriting History — History of America Mega-Conference: Part Eight, Closing Thoughts

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Ahab’s blog, Republic of Gilead. For more information about Ahab, see his blog’s About page. Part Eight of this series was originally published on July 18, 2013.

*****

Also in this series: Part One: First Impressions | Part Two: Doug Phillips on God in History | Part Three: “Religious Liberalism” And Those Magnificent Mathers | Part Four: Kevin Swanson Is Tired Of Losing | Part Five: Messiah States and Mega-Houses | Part Six: Doug Phillips Rages Against the 20th Century | Part Seven: Christian Vikings, Godly Explorers, and Strange Bacon | Part Eight: Closing Thoughts

*****

I’ve infiltrated several Religious Right events for Republic of Gilead over the years, but none left me as drained as the History of America Mega-Conference. The fundamentalism and revisionist history pervading the conference was difficult to digest, but it offered me a glimpse into an disquieting homeschooling subculture. Woven through the conference presentations were several common themes:

Dominionism / Christian Reconstructionism — Dominion theology and Christian Reconstructionist thought were everywhere at the History of America Mega-Conference. From presenters who quoted from Gary North and R.J. Rushdoony, to merchants who sold Rushdoony’s books, to the banner in the dealer room that read “READ RUSHDOONY”, it was difficult to ignore the affection that organizers held for Christian Reconstructionist writers. To boot, speakers such as Doug Phillips and Marshall Foster attributed Christian principles to America’s foundations, ignoring evidence to the contrary.

Patriarchy — A heavy musk of Christian Patriarchy ideology hung over the conference. All speakers were white men, several spoke harshly of feminism, and some romanticized stereotypical gender roles and family arrangements. Glaringly, most of the historical figures they spoke of were men. The idea that women have played dynamic roles in history, or that female presenters could have brought meaningful content to the conference, was ignored. When the speakers spoke of “men” in history, I don’t think they meant humankind, but rather people with Y chromosomes.

Christianity as Monolithic — It soon became clear that when presenters spoke of Christians, they meant fundamentalist Protestants. In more than one talk, America was celebrated as a “beachhead” for evangelical Christianity throughout history. Anti-Catholic sentiments reared their heads in several talks, suggesting that some speakers did not recognize Catholics as Christians. Moreover, Doug Phillips claimed that the church was silent on political and social issues in the first half of the 20th century, ignoring the rich contributions of Catholic and progressive Protestant Christians during that time.

Sanitization of Christianity in History — Speakers trumpeted real or imagined boons from the spread of Christianity while ignoring violence and oppression committed in Christianity’s name. Whether speakers were ignoring the violence of Iceland’s Christianization, the bloodshed of King Sigurd I’s Crusade, or the ethnocide of the Native Americans, the conference painted a very sanitized picture of Christianity’s role in history.

Distrust of Secular Government — Several speakers, including Doug Phillips and Geoffrey Botkin, condemned the U.S. government for its alleged “statism”. Government programs and social services intended to help the vulnerable were caricatured as the tentacles of a “Messianic” state.

Distrust of the Present and of Mainstream Culture — Speakers repeatedly slammed the modern era and its imagined boogeymen — “statism”, secularism, abortion, feminism, evolution, and same-sex marriage — as fallen and evil. Mainstream culture was caricatured as a corrupting influence from which homeschooling must shield children. At times, Vision Forum’s history conferences hints at a longing to return to the past, a past imagined as more virtuous and Christian.

Children as Torchbearers — Presenters understood children to be transmitters of fundamentalist Christianity unto future generations, and thus concepts such as “generational thinking” often came up. The History of America Mega-Conference was a homeschooling conference, after all, and its revisionist ideas were intended for the curricula of homeschooled children. To boot, children are to be steeped in fundamentalist Christian thought and shielded from mainstream culture, according to Kevin Swanson. Presenters refused to consider how such revisionist education might leave children ill-prepared to integrate into American society, and failed to grasp that some children might reject their fundamentalist upbringing altogether.

At the History of America Mega-Conference, I was exposed to a subculture whose worldview is at odds with modern society. As American society slowly embraces religious pluralism, gender equity, LGBTQ equality, and the paradoxes within its own history, fundamentalist subcultures find themselves out of place in their own country. Since these social upheavals show no signs of abating, will fundamentalists subcultures such as this one retreat even further into their own bubbles? Or will they desperately try to reshape society in their own image by molding the minds of the next generation?

As I listened to workshop after workshop on revisionist history, my heart broke for the children being raised in fundamentalist homeschooling households. The vision of the world they were receiving was incomplete and inaccurate, and I worried about how they would integrate into the larger society as young adults. Would they have the curiosity and will to seek out fresh perspectives and new information, or would they be weighed down by the propaganda of their youth?

As people who recognize the problems with fundamentalism, how do we counter the messages of groups such as Vision Forum? By challenging historical revisionism. By remembering that history encompasses many narratives, not just one. By demanding accuracy in homeschool curricula. By reaching out to current and former homeschoolers and making accurate information available to them. And finally, by educating ourselves on the past and recognizing its impact on the present.

To end on a lighter note, after days of listening to History of America Mega-Conference workshops, I think I’ve earned a beer. Let’s toast to a world free of fundamentalism someday!

Photo courtesy of Ahab at Republic of Gilead.

*****

End of series.

Crosspost: Methodological Problems with Kevin Swanson and Brian Ray’s Gen 2 Survey

HA Editorial Team7 Comments

Crosspost: Methodological Problems with Kevin Swanson and Brian Ray’s Gen 2 Survey

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was written by a guest writer, Apodosis, and was originally published on Patheos on July 17, 2013. 

Libby Anne posted recently about a new survey conducted by Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute, a non-profit which conducts studies of questionable scientific validity on homeschooling. As a Ph.D. social scientist myself, I looked over the new survey with a critical eye and I’m sorry to say there won’t be much useable data gleaned from it because it is rife with methodological problems.

The survey has over 100 questions and nearly every question needs revisions, so I’m just going to summarize my main critiques of the study.

1. Institutional Review Board

When you are conducting a survey that collects personal information from the participants, every IRB in the country requires that you have signed informed consent forms for each of your participants. In online surveys, these tend to include a cover page describing the purpose of the study and what is asked of the participants, as well as a signature box to show you have understood your rights.These forms often include the phrases “You may stop the survey at any time without giving a reason” and “You are not obligated to answer any question you don’t want to”. They provide contact information for the primary investigator (PI) and other associated researchers, as well as for the IRB that approved it. “If you feel your rights have been violated, call this number” etc.

In the Gen 2 survey, there is no such information. It is not clear who is being asked to participate (see #2), the goals of the study are not honestly stated (see #3), and there is no contact information for the PI or an IRB to contact if you feel your rights have been violated. I had to dig on NHERI’s website to find the email address of the PI, Dr. Brian D. Ray (it’s bray@nheri.org, btw, in case you feel your rights have been violated), and he actively discourages you from contacting him. Red flag.

A peer-reviewed publication will not publish any results from research that was not overseen by an IRB.

2. Target Population

It is not clear who is being asked to participate in the survey. In the “About” section, Ray says the participants are “those between the ages of 18-38 years old that grew up in religious homes”, but in the FAQ he says “Anyone between the ages of 18-38″ may participate. I am between the ages of 18 and 38; I was raised in a moderate mainline Protestant family, and I am now a progressive mainline Protestant. I honestly cannot tell if he wants my data or not. Though both of those statements about who should participate apply to me, the questions on the survey indicate otherwise.

3. Goals

Which brings me to my most serious methodological critique of the study, which is that the goals are not honestly stated. There are two different studies conflated here which have entirely different goals. Dr. Ray even alludes to this in the “About” section: one goal is “to come up with data points of key influences that either encouraged or deterred the participants from practicing the same faith as their parents”; the other goal is to “use the statistics from this survey to help equip parents to make more informed decisions in the education and spiritual guidance of their children.” That is, in simpler terms, the goals are (A) to find out how young people’s religious views change as they reach adulthood, and (B) to figure out how to make sure young fundamentalists/evangelicals stay in the fold.

In fact, the main goal of the study seems to be (B) with a shallow veneer of (A) superimposed on it. Now, (A) is an interesting study whose results I would look forward to reading. (B) is not a scientific study. You do not perform a scientific study with the goal of achieving a certain result. Social science is about trying to describe and explain human behavior, not about trying to change it or attach value judgments.

Here are some examples of the problems that arise when the two studies are conflated. Dr. Ray pays lip service to the idea that young people may belong to a variety of faiths, as evidenced by his questions:

Generally, what kind of religious service did you attend as a child?

What kind of church or religion do you currently associate yourself with?

Available answers include Atheist, Agnostic, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, and a variety of mainline Protestant denominations in addition to the exhaustive list of evangelical/fundamentalist groups. However, on the next pages he asks questions like

My current church is serious about applying the biblical principles of eldership, shepherding, mentoring, and church discipline.

Did you ever get any “worldview” training?

How often did your Father/Mother read the Bible to you?

These questions indicate that the primary audience of this study is people raised in a fundamentalist/evangelical/Christian patriarchy home. How are Buddhists and Hindus and Atheists supposed to answer these questions? Note that there is no “Not applicable” option available. This brings me to #4.

4. Not Applicable

It is important in surveys to allow your participants the freedom to answer the questions honestly, and not be forced to pick the “closest” answer. Many of the questions follow the “Have you stopped beating your wife” pattern, where e.g. a person who has never beaten their wife has no honest way to answer the question. “Not applicable” is only an available answer for one of 100 questions in the survey. This becomes a problem with questions like the following:

How distant or close do you feel to God most of the time?

What was the status of your parents’ marriage during your raising?

My father was very involved in our family home life.

How would an atheist answer the first question without “Not applicable”? How would someone answer the second question if they were raised by two parents in a committed relationship who were not married? And in the third case, what if you didn’t have a father?

“Other” followed by a fill-in-the-blank should also occur much more frequently as an available answer in questions such as:

Have you, or your significant other, ever chosen to have an abortion? Yes/ No

Do you think that people should wait to have sex until they are married, or not necessarily? Yes/ Not necessarily

How would you describe yourself when you were a child? I was very rebellious/I struggled with rebellion, but overcame it/I was always fairly obedient and honoring as a child

In the first question, it would be more appropriate to ask “Have you ever had an unwanted pregnancy?” and then to ask how it was dealt with. As it stands, a person who has never been pregnant and a person who has carried a rapist’s child to term would give the same answer. In the second and third questions, there are clearly more than just the possible answers given. My answers would be “No, unless they want to” and “My parents were supportive of what I chose to do and who I chose to be”. Participants in the study need a way to answer these questions honestly, so even if Dr. Ray wants to limit his variables it would be more methodologically sound to provide an “Other” response with a fill-in-the-blank to such questions.

5. Leading/Biased Questions

This brings me to another point: almost every question is leading or has other problems caused, for the most part, by faulty assumptions and a lack of imagination on the part of Dr. Ray.

“What kind of church or religion do you currently associate yourself with?” Some people consider themselves to be a member of a faith without having a specific faith community. Some people consider themselves to be members of multiple faith traditions. A better question would be “How would you describe your religion or faith?” with multiple check-boxes allowed. And he should list all the religions, not just the ones he could think of off the top of his head! He forgot at least (off the top of my head) Baha’i, Sikh, Wicca, Christian Science, Animism, Deist, Shinto, Unitarian Universalist, Not applicable, Other____, and he did not provide any different denominations of Judaism or Islam. In addition, he should have grouped the religions together by type rather than alphabetically—this list makes it very hard to see if your faith is represented. And groups like “Mormons” and “Congregationalists” should be called by their actual names—LDS and UCC, respectively. This list of religions, while it pays lip service to religious diversity, is actually offensive in its exclusions and ignorance. Plus, there is no acknowledgment in this survey of mixed-faith households. What if your parents were of different faiths, or what if you and your significant other do not share a faith?

Questions such as

What is your sex/gender? Male/ Female

How was your relationship with your Mother / Father when you were 16-17 years old?

How often did your Mother / Father explain biblical principles to you?

presume an oversimplified, heteronormative view of gender and family. Sex is not the same as gender; there are quite a few other genders than just male and female; you might have parents of multiple genders or the same gender (and therefore not have a “Mother” and a “Father”); and you might have been raised by other family members, or primarily by friends, or in foster homes. If this was really a survey about changes in young people’s religious views, it would try to get an accurate picture of their lives without limiting them to these binaries. Ray should also ask about people’s sexual orientations if he’s that interested in the status of their romantic lives; however, his reference to “homosexual” “encounters” in one of the questions indicates that he probably does not believe in sexual orientation as a concept (see #6).

6. Limited Mindset

Many of these questions portray a mindset that is isolated to the evangelical/fundamentalist/Christian patriarchy/Quiverfull/Purity movements–it’s possible that Dr. Ray does not even realize there are other ideologies out there. For instance, there is this question/answer set:

What statement most aligns with how many children would you like to have? I don’t want to have children / I want no more than a few children / As many children as God will provide / I don’t know

This really should be divided into multiple questions. First, he should ask “Do you plan your pregnancies?” If no, he should ask about “how many children you hope God will give you”, but if yes, he should ask how many you plan to have. I don’t think Dr. Ray realizes that some people plan their pregnancies. Then there is the following question/answer pair:

If you have—or were to have—children, what form of education do you plan to use for them? Christian school / Christian school and homeschool / Christian school and non-Christian private school / Christian school and public school / Homeschool / Homeschool and non-Christian private school / Homeschool and public school / Private school, non-Christian / Public school / Charter school/virtual charter / Other

At least this one has “Other” as an option, though it doesn’t let you write in your response. First of all, it’s a badly designed question—he should just list the types of school and let you check as many boxes as you want. Second, the question relies on the assumption that parents would choose their children’s manner of schooling before the children even exist. What if the child is gifted or disabled? Would that change the parents’ plans? And Dr. Ray does not even realize that people who would answer like me are out there—”It depends on the child’s needs and wants, as well as other considerations such as expense, distance, quality of education, etc.”

Then there’s this question/answer pair:

Did your parents use corporal discipline (spanking) with you?No / Yes, consistently and they were generally under loving control / Yes, consistently and often they were not under loving control / Yes, inconsistently and they were generally under loving control / Yes, inconsistently, and often they were not under loving control

These answers presuppose a worldview where the value of spanking is not open to debate (spoiler: we don’t live in that world). It would be more accurate to ask “What was your parents’ position on spanking?” “How often were you spanked?” “Are your attitudes toward it positive, neutral, or negative?” “Would you spank your own children?” etc.

And then there’s the part where he puts these two questions next to each other, clearly conflating them (shades of Libby Anne’s two boxes): “Have you had a sexual encounter or physical relationship with someone to whom you are not married?” and “Were you ever sexually abused before age 18?” Note that a girl who was repeatedly raped by her Christian patriarchy father for ten years and a girl who was raped once by an acquaintance at a party as a teenager would probably have different reactions to their faith traditions, though they would give the same “Yes” response. No effort is made to make this distinction in the survey. And nowhere does the survey ask about physical abuse, since Dr. Ray probably doesn’t think it exists.

Or how about the question “If you were unsure of what was right or wrong in a particular situation, how would you decide what to do?” with the available answers: Do what would make you feel happy / Do what would help you to get ahead / Follow the advice of a parent or teacher, or other adult you respect / Do what you think God or the scripture tells you is right / Something else. These answers reveal Dr. Ray’s belief that morality does not exist outside (his brand of) Christianity.

7. Exclusionary Language

The language Dr. Ray uses is exclusionary and often confusing. For instance, he persists in using terms like church, pastor, scripture, prayer, Bible, youth group, Sunday School when these terms are uniquely Christian and do not apply to people of other faiths–he ought to say faith community, religious leader, holy book, prayer/meditation, religious education if he wanted to get accurate data. He also fails to define several terms which I don’t understand because I was not raised in a fundamentalist environment: family-integrated, homeschooling-friendly, shepherding, church discipline, worldview training. In his questions about belief in “God” and “heaven”, he ought to ask separate questions about each property he wants to assign to these words’ meanings (e.g. “Do you believe in a deity or deities?” “If yes, do you believe the deity/deities is/are omniscient? Omnipresent? Omnipotent? Does it/do they have a gender? Does it/do they affect everyday events?” etc.). If Ray wants accurate data, he should define confusing and ambiguous terms.

You should not be able to tell someone’s political and religious beliefs from survey questions designed to elicit yours. You should not be asked to give dishonest answers to survey questions because your honest answers are unavailable as options. You should not have to infer how exclusionary language in the questions would apply to your situation. You should not be asked to give out your personal information without giving your informed consent.

An IRB would not approve this study. I would not rely on any of the conclusions that come out of it.

Rewriting History — History of America Mega-Conference: Part 7, Christian Vikings, Godly Explorers, and Strange Bacon

HA Editorial Team19 Comments

Rewriting History — History of America Mega-Conference: Part 7, Christian Vikings, Godly Explorers, and Strange Bacon

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Ahab’s blog, Republic of Gilead. For more information about Ahab, see his blog’s About page. Part Seven of this series was originally published on July 18, 2013.

*****

Also in this series: Part One: First Impressions | Part Two: Doug Phillips on God in History | Part Three: “Religious Liberalism” And Those Magnificent Mathers | Part Four: Kevin Swanson Is Tired Of Losing | Part Five: Messiah States and Mega-Houses | Part Six: Doug Phillips Rages Against the 20th Century | Part Seven: Christian Vikings, Godly Explorers, and Strange Bacon | Part Eight: Closing Thoughts

*****

The History of America Mega-Conference schedule was packed with workshops that sounded interesting (or disturbing), but I could not observe them all, sadly. Fortunately, a kiosk in the Radisson grand ballroom was selling audio recordings of of keynote speeches and workshops, so I purchased CDs of “The Early Explorers: Sea Kings and Vikings” and “The Providence of God in the Age of Exploration”. The former painted Norse voyagers as Christians carrying out a Biblical dominion mandate, while the latter imagined the European “discovery” and colonization of the New World as willed by God.

“The Early Explorers: Sea Kings and Vikings” was presented by Col. John Eidsmoe, the same presenter who delivered “The Rise of Religious Liberalism” workshop. Eidsmoe asked aloud “why men climb mountains” — that is, why they explore. He explained human exploration as a product of two forces: the dominion mandate of Genesis 1:28, and the great commission to convert the world of Matthew 28:19-20.

Earth has likely been explored many times over through human history. One example of ancient explorers was the Phoenicians, who were genetically and linguistically related to the Hebrews. However, he quickly reminded listeners that the Phoenicians lived under a “totalitarian” god-king and followed a “religion of paganism and fertility and human sacrifice”.

The Phoenicians, Eidsmoe explained, carried out sea expeditions along Africa’s eastern coast, Britain, and possibly North America. To lend plausibility to the latter, Eidsmoe cited the “Mechanicsburg stones” (also known as the Phoenician Stones or Susquehanna Stones) found in Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna Valley, allegedly with Phoenician writing upon it.

Eidsmoe shared stories of northern Europeans who set sail, reminding listeners that such stories might be fanciful concoctions or actual historical events that were later embellished. He spoke of the legend of St. Brendan the Navigator (St. Bréanainn), an Irish monastic who embarked on an sea journey with fourteen monks in the 6th century. According to Irish legends, he recounted, St. Brendan and his traveling companions found the island of Paradise, discovered an island of monks with magic loaves that prevented aging, faced a volcanic island with demons, and came face to face with Judas Iscariot.

Another northern European traveler that Eidsmoe discussed was Prince Madog, a Welsh “sea king” who allegedly came to the New World. During the Elizabethan era, when England and Spain competed for the New World, English writers used the Madog legend to justify England’s claim to the Americas, Eidsmoe added. Legends also claims that Scottish nobleman Henry Sinclair explored North America in the late 14th century, nearly one hundred years before Christopher Columbus’ arrival.

Many of these examples were fanciful legends — something Eidsmoe admitted — rather than solid historical fact supported by evidence. I wondered why Eidsmoe was citing legends about men who may or may not have come to the Americas, rather than exploring known history.

Eidsmoe noted that Chinese and Muslim civilizations may have also visited the Americas centuries ago. Eidsmoe claimed that Nihad Awad, founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), alleged that Muslim expeditions from Morocco and Iberia may have visited North America centuries ago. However, Eidsmoe quickly dismissed this claim as being based in “political correctness” rather than historical evidence.

The Vikings, Eidsmoe explained, were the first pre-Colombian explorers whose visits to North America had “solid” basis in fact. Before delving into Norse expeditions to the New World, Eidsmoe briefly discussed the Christian conversion efforts of King Olafr and Thangbrandr, neglecting to mention the violence and threats that reportedly accompanied the Christianization of the Norse. (Doug Phillips sanitized Norse Christianization in a similar manner in his July 2nd opening speech.) He quoted Shane Leslie’s writings, which spoke glowingly of Christianity overcoming traditional Norse and Celtic religions.

Eidsmoe celebrated other Christian Norse leaders, including Norweigan King Sigurd I the Jorsalafari (“Jerusalem-farer”), who vowed to lead an army of 10,000 warriors on a Crusade. After sailing around Europe’s coast and battling Moors, King Sigurd I received hospitality from King Baldwin I of Jerusalem upon reaching the Holy Land. During his stay with Baldwin, Sigurd I reportedly vowed to take any Muslim city. After Baldwin encouraged him to conquer Sidon, Sigurd I’s forces took control of the city. Siggurd I’s greatest regret, Eidsmoe claimed, was that he never had the opportunity to directly engage the Turkish fleet in a sea battle.

Eidsmoe depicted the Norweigan Crusade as a swashbuckling adventure, failing to mention the looting and massacres of non-Christians that it entailed. The fig leaf of faith cannot hide the realities of war, slaughter, and looting.

Eidsmoe delved into accounts of Erik the Red and his son, Lief Erikson, who converted to Christianity during a visit with King Olaf. After sharing stories of Norse expeditions to Greenland and New England, as well as violent encounters between Norse voyagers and skraelings (indigenous North Americans), Eidsmoe offered speculation as to why no permanent Norse colonies succeeded.

“Why were these Viking colonies unsuccessful? I’m going to suggest to you why. Because even though they were Christian, they showed no interest in sharing Christ with the natives. They spoke derogatorily about them with a term of derision, skraelings. Sometimes when they came upon Eskimos in Greenland, they simply called them ‘trolls’. In other words, they followed the dominion mandate, but they ignored the great commission.”

I found this theory darkly amusing. First, it ignores the fact that the Norse were intruders on Native American soil, which might explain the lack of interfaith dialogue. Second, it disregards other possible roots of Norse colony failures — disease, difficulties adapting to a new land and climate, lack of critical mass, ongoing hostilities between Norse colonists and Native Americans — in favor of a dominionist Christian narrative. Finally, Eidsmoe’s comment could be interpreted to mean that later European colonists succeeded because they proselytized to the Native Americans, regardless of the conquest and ethnocide it entailed.

Toward the end of his talk, Eidsmoe spoke of the Kensington stone in Minnesota and the Newport Tower in Rhode Island, arguing that these could be remnants of Norse visits to North America. While he did mention that evidence is not fully conclusive, he argued as to why these could plausibly be Norse artifacts from pre-Columbian Nordic visits to North America. He dismissed claims that the Kensington stone is a hoax, apparently eager to show that Norse explorers had an extensive presence in North America.

Eidsmoe’s history of early European travelers wove together history and legends into a decidedly Christian narrative about ancient voyagers and evangelists. In doing so, I feel that he downplayed the violence inherent in that narrative, sugar-coating conquests and crusades as Christian “dominion”. Eidsmoe’s talk, like many others at the History of America Mega-Conference, serves as a reminder of the problems inherent in a narrow view of history.

*****

“The Providence of God in the Age of Exploration” was presented by Marshall Foster, founder of the World History Institute (formerly the Mayflower Institute). Foster began the workshop with a statement about God’s intent for human exploration.

“God, from the beginning of time, has made us adventurers. He has made us explorers, and there really is no age of exploration, there is simply unbelief and belief in the power of God to explore. Depending on the time, depending on the age, there has been an ebb and flow of an understanding of God;s purpose for mankind, and during specific times — that’s why we call it the age of exploration — there was an explosion of exploration and settlement of places around the world. and it took place in the 15th and 16th century, coming out of Europe.”

Exploration and settlement by whom? I thought. Plenty of those places were already explored and settled before Europeans came along. These were stories of European conquest.

A series of events over the centuries brought forth America as we know it, Foster explained. To understand this history, we must go to the root of history, he said. Everything must be seen in context of who God is, who we are, and what our purpose is in relationship to God. Everything one needs to know about God and oneself is written in the Bible, he argued, and to the extent that people understand their purpose, they will become “mighty warriors for God” who transform nations.

God created man in his image, and created man and woman together so as to subdue the Earth, Foster said. He assigned Adam the task of naming the plants and animals in the Garden of Eden, thereby structuring the garden with the expectation that Adam would take the “wilderness” and transform it into a “city on the hill”. God designated humans as his “sub-regent of the universe”, making the dominion mandate a godly task. This command was established through families in the Old Testament, he argued, citing Adam and Eve, Noah and his descendants, and Abraham and his descendants. Foster stressed that the Biblical God devised a predestined plan for humanity, not the “god of the Muslims” or the “11,000 gods of the Hindus”. Foster seemed to have ignored the fact that the Quran clearly establishes Allah as the god of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus.

When we understand this mandate, Foster argued, we can understand the great explorers. He lamented that humans quickly took the dominion mandate too far, with conquerors exercising dominion over other men. Ancient civilizations were plagued by five grave sins: tyranny, human sacrifice, enslavement of both one’s own people and foreigners (empire), the establishment of laws independent of God (autonomy), and persecution of believers.

“Mankind went out and took dominion. The only problem is that men took dominion and they went over what God said. God did not say take dominion over other men, he said take dominion over the plants and the animals. What men figured out through Cain and Abel, and then through the great tyrannies of the ancient world, from the Egyptians to the Babylonians to the Greeks to the Romans, was that you just simply needed to take dominion over other men and then you could make them your slaves. Come up with a false religion, guilt them into obedience to you, and have them build your pyramids, have them build your great tombs called the Seven Wonders of the World. And what you’ve got now is civilization structured on a perverted view of the cultural mandate.”

In making this argument, Foster ignored divinely-sanctioned slavery, patriarchy, conquest, and genocide in the Old Testament, reluctant to admit that the Israelites exercised a “perverted view of the cultural mandate” too.

Foster argued for the supremacy of the Christian faith in history. Rome was an unjust empire, but it now lies in ruins, whereas Christianity has risen from the catacombs to become a major world religion. As proof of its supremacy, Foster claimed that Christianity is the only truly world religion, having spread to multiple continents.

Um, Marshall? Islam and Buddhism would like to have a word with you, I thought.

Christianity allegedly exerted a “civilizing influence” over the ancient world, persuading people to give up their “pagan ways”. He likened ancient Christian evangelists to explorers, spreading Christianity far and wide. In the 15th and 16th centuries, “God put all the pieces together” following the Christianization of Europe, he claimed. Europe had lost its missionary zeal, much like modern America, he argued, and “God was going to shake up the troops”. This alleged shake-up took the form of the “Muslim hordes”, first unleashed in the 7th century, then later surging as the Ottoman Turks. After the Byzantine empire, the “greatest culture of the world”, fell to the Ottomans, many Europeans thought they were facing a “countdown to Armageddon”, he claimed. By frightening Christian Europe and forcing it out of its comfort zone, God was allegedly disciplining Europe and setting the stage for later exploration.

Foster cited Psalm 107, calling it a psalm of exploration that inspired Christopher Columbus. “God is in control of the wave of history,” Foster proclaimed, assuring listeners that God had supremacy over Satan in the world. If one walks with God, God will bless one’s culture, as history demonstrates, Foster asserted.

The travels of Christopher Columbus and other explorers led to the creation of America, Foster reminded the audience. He narrated a history of Columbus’ early life that included a vision to take Christianity abroad.

“[Columbus] goes on to have a vision of what God wants him to do, begins to read the scripture, and his vision is to go to the west and find the Indies, not only to find treasure, but to find a way to reach Jerusalem and take the gospel to the nations.”

Foster shared the story of Columbus’ commission, 1492 voyage, and eventual arrival in the Caribbean. Foster called Columbus a “good man” and a “godly man” while briefly acknowledging that he was a poor governor and witnessed evil take place under his management.

That’s an understatement, I thought. Kidnapping, exploitation, and colonization aren’t exactly the legacy of a “good” man.

However, Foster was quick to demonize the indigenous people that Columbus ruled over as cannibals, likening their alleged cannibalism to modern-day abortion. I wondered if this was intended to soften Columbus’ sins in the eyes of the audience by depicting the colonized Native Americans as monsters.

“The natives were not exactly super-friendly. In their second and third voyage they found the Carib Indians, who created children so that they could string them up, abort them, and eat them for bacon, and so … they were cannibals … This is not unnatural, and I’m not looking down on those Native Americans, because this was a way of life for the Romans, for the Greeks, for most civilizations throughout the world, for the Aztecs, for the Incas, and so when people are found in pagan cultures, they almost always are involved in human sacrifice, and then as Christian cultures become more pagan, what do they do? They go back to that human sacrifice, and there are 58 million babies dead today in America because we have forgotten our vision as a Christian nation.”

Baby bacon? Has Hannibal Lecter heard about this? I thought.

Foster briefly recounted the travels of explorers such as Amerigo Vespucci, Balboa, Vasco de Gama, Magellan, and Ponce de Leon. Foster wove these voyages and their subsequent cultural upheavals into a Christian narrative, arguing that God arranged these events to create a Christian nation.

“Now, those who had a vision for the world, the great commission, the cultural commission had a whole other continent, a wilderness to turn from a wilderness to a city on a hill. And isn’t it interesting that it took five thousand years for the civilized world to discover these continents? You think that maybe providence has set aside for such a time as this for the past four hundred years, the development of the world’s first [inaudible] republic since ancient Israel? Do you think it might be providence that set aside America to be the fountainhead of evangelical Christianity, that creates even to this day 80% of the money that goes for missions in the world? Do you think that even to this day that America is set aside as a land that still can and has represented Christian law to the nations by the fact that our constitution still rises from its base every morning and can be seen and should be understood? Could it be that God has us, at this very moment, as explorers for our day? It’s quite obvious.”

Foster left out many disquieting historical facts from the European colonization of the Americas. First, the Native Americans were erased in Foster’s narrative. The New World was discovered and “civilized” by Europeans, in Foster’s narrative, instead of having been already discovered and settled by the ancestors of the Native Americans. Even more egregiously, Foster ignored the ugly realities of European conquest, colonization, genocide, and ethnocide in favor of a glorious Eurocentric, Christocentric vision. Finally, he shoehorned divine providence into the European colonization of the New World and misrepresented America as a Protestant Christian nation with a “Biblical structure of government”. In doing so, Foster refused to acknowledge that the United States was founded as a secular democratic nation, informed by Enlightenment ideas, and shaped by a religiously diverse populace past and present.

In Foster’s eyes, the European colonization of the New World proved that an “army of compassion” could conquer a land by faith instead of by the sword, ignoring the use of both faith and sword to subjugate indigenous populations. Furthermore, he argued that the history of the Americas showed that a nation could be built on Biblical principles and sola scriptura, ignoring the absence of both concepts in the United States’ founding documents. The fingerprints of God, he argued, are all over the history of the New World.

“God planned the location of the continents, the direction of the sea breezes, the theology of the explorers, all in such a way that America, the America we know, the United States of America, could be developed a few hundred years later.”

In conclusion, Marshall Foster’s account of history was one in which Christian proselytization, exploration, and colonization were all part of a divine plan. By holding up a Eurocentric, Christocentric narrative as the only valid one, Foster effectively erased Native Americans, non-Christians, and non-Protestants from the history of the New World. Foster’s version of history does not force us to wrestle with atrocities of the past, or face the effects of colonization and ethnocide that still linger today. In short, Foster’s history is a shame-free history that absolves us from having to learn from the mistakes of our predecessors.

Stay tuned for closing thoughts on the History of America Mega-Conference.

*****

To be continued.

Rewriting History — History of America Mega-Conference: Part Six, Doug Phillips Rages Against the 20th Century

HA Editorial Team7 Comments

Rewriting History — History of America Mega-Conference: Part Six, Doug Phillips Rages Against the 20th Century

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Ahab’s blog, Republic of Gilead. For more information about Ahab, see his blog’s About page. Part Six of this series was originally published on July 10, 2013.

*****

Also in this series: Part One: First Impressions | Part Two: Doug Phillips on God in History | Part Three: “Religious Liberalism” And Those Magnificent Mathers | Part Four: Kevin Swanson Is Tired Of Losing | Part Five: Messiah States and Mega-Houses | Part Six: Doug Phillips Rages Against the 20th Century | Part Seven: Christian Vikings, Godly Explorers, and Strange Bacon | Part Eight: Closing Thoughts

*****

On the evening of Friday, July 5th, attendees gathered in the Radisson’s grand ballroom for prayer, music, and videos. The evening began with a Puritan call-and-response song lead by Doug Phillips, followed by a benediction. Next, the ballroom screens showed short videos on Vision Forum’s latest projects. I distinctly remember the Hazardous Journeys Society, an all-male organization that seeks to explore the world through the lens of conservative Christianity. Hazardous Journeys Society presented itself as an alternative to National Geographic, which has allegedly interpreted the world through the lens of evolution.

After Danny Craig sang “America, America”, several young women performed haunting renditions of traditional American songs on violins and harps. After a mixed sex Civil War Choir performed in historical garb, Doug Phillips delivered a talk entitled “The Meaning of the 20th Century: A Providential and Theological Overview”.

The 20th century ushered in a new era, Phillips began, and to fully understand the 21st century, we need to understand the 20th. On the ballroom screens appeared a collage of 20th century images: Che, Einstein, Ayatollah Khomeini, a mushroom cloud, Earth from space, and many others.

Phillips recounted his time as a writer for the George Bush administration and a private driver for Billy Graham. While chauffeuring Billy Graham around Washington D.C., Phillips learned about history as Graham pointed out places where he met dignitaries and took part in events. Phillips used this story to explain that the best way to understand history is to study primary documents and meet the people who shaped it.

Phillips shared his version of early 20th century history, beginning with the revivalism of preachers such as Billie Sunday. However, the century would prove to be one of “God-hating nihilism” and genocide”, he said. For the first fifty years of the 20th century, he claimed, the church was silent and withdrawn from public debate.

Huh? I thought. That’s not what I remember from my college history classes.

Phillips had apparently forgotten Reinhold Neibuhr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Adam Clayton Powell Sr., Dorothy Day, the Catholic worker movement, the social gospel movement, Quadragesimo Anno, American preachers’ condemnation of Nazism, regional church roles in Europe’s anti-Nazi resistance movements, and countless other voices among the world’s Christians. If by “the church”, Phillips meant the global body of Christians, then “the church” was anything but silent in the early 20th century.

Phillips claimed that the 20th century church wasn’t prepared to deal with genocide and the Holocaust. For this reason, abortion and birth control have now spread through Christendom, he lamented. One third of the people who could have been at the conference that night were “killed by their parents” thanks to abortion, he fumed.

In effect, the 20th century forgot God and turned against him, Phillips told listeners. He depicted the 20th century as an era that saw the rise of “rationalism” and the rejection of God as a higher authority. Enlightenment thinking had given rise to 19th century movements such as Marxism, feminism, socialism, and evolutionism. Then, despite the “restraining” influences of the British Empire and the Christian Queen Victoria, the 19th century’s “compromises” produced the 20th century, he argued.

Phillips held considerable scorn for Sigmund Freud and Margaret Sanger. Freud introduced people to psychology, and today, every single branch of psychology is saturated with “anti-God” ideas and “evolutionary scientism”, he claimed. Like many other anti-abortion activists, he blasted Margaret Sanger as possibly the most dangerous person of the 20th century, more dangerous than Stalin, Hitler, or Mao. Satan seeks to foment racist extermination efforts, convince people to see babies as dangers to be eliminated, and make parents hate their children, he claimed, seeking to literally and figuratively demonize Sanger. Phillips accused Sanger of embracing eugenics, branding her “the killer angel” who spawned the modern abortion movement and allegedly fueled the ideology of Hitler and Stalin. “The death count is in the billions!” he grieved.

Belief in the state-as-God gave rise to 20th century totalitarian leaders and their genocides, Phillips claimed, pointing to the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and Japanese atrocities during World War II. A century of supposed enlightenment produced barbarism, thus showing the failure of societies that reject Christ. (Phillips conveniently forgot that Germany was solidly Christian during the Third Reich, that some Nazis wove Christianity into Nazi ideology, and that earlier Christian anti-Semitism set the stage for Nazi racial policy.)

However, Phillips assured the audience that God uses such horrors as part of a larger plan. One of those who fled the Armenial genocide was Christian Reconstructionist author R. J. Rushdoony, for example. Amidst the events of World War II, the hand of God was upon Winston Churchill, he claimed, who was used for a “godly” purpose. Phillips described Churchill as an “indefatigable” and “indomitable” man who stood up against evil.

Tell that to Dresden. And Poland, I thought. Wasn’t Churchill allied with Stalin, that tyrant you condemned a few minutes ago? The problem with seeing the “hand of God” on political leaders is that it makes it difficult to acknowledge their morally ambiguous choices. I realize that Churchill fought the Nazi regime — a noble and necessary task — and had a net positive impact on the world. However, I also believe that lionizing political leaders as “godly” is highly problematic.

Phillips blasted 20th century “statism”, condemning Roosevelt’s New Deal as a means of making government a “parent” and overriding the family and church. He similarly slammed Johnson’s Great Society programs as “leftist propaganda” that funded abortion and feminist movements.

Predictably, Phillips seethed at the thought of feminism, which began with Eve and exploded in the 20th century, he claimed. He was particularly livid at the thought of women working outside the home. For six thousand years, he insisted, children were raised in the home by mothers, but 20th century women working outside the home changed that. (Actually, women have been working outside the home for centuries. Slaves of both sexes were hired out to work outside the home in Roman times. Plenty of women worked in factories and textile mills in the 19th century. This is not a new phenomenon.)

Decade by decade, the U.S. plummeted into confusion, he explained. He tried unsuccessfully to bring up an image on the ballroom screens, then told listeners that the picture was of the size of babies who never made it into the world. When we reflect on Hitler, we should also reflect on the “abortuary” down the street, he instructed the audience. Phillips lamented the current state of the church, disgusted that even Christian women were having abortions.

Phillips did not want to end on an ominous note, however. He celebrated Christian publishing, apologetics, teachers who have inspired “men of action”, and preaching that creates “warriors for God”. He also held warm sentiments for the Christian homeschool movement, which sprang from the 20th century’s apologetics and activism, he said. The 20th and 21st centuries are times of antithesis, Phillips preached, a time of abortion, evolution, and totalitarianism versus you, versus people who want Christ to be king in their home. The task before Christians, thus, is to choose between death or life, Phillips concluded.

Phillips’ talk was laden with the usual Religious Right chestnuts: abortion and the Holocaust as morally equivalent, disdain for feminism, and historically inaccurate caricatures of prominent figures. Behind the chestnuts, however, was a glimpse at how the Religious Right views the present. For right-wing Christians such as Phillips, the present is a time of barbarism and delusion, which Christians must struggle against. This distrust of the present era and refusal to recognize complexity and nuance in the 20th and 21st centuries reveals a great deal about the Religious Right mind.

More to come soon on Vision Forum’s History of America Mega-Conference. Stay tuned!

*****

To be continued.

Rewriting History — History of America Mega-Conference: Part Five, Messiah States and Mega-Houses

HA Editorial Team14 Comments

Rewriting History — History of America Mega-Conference: Part Five, Messiah States and Mega-Houses

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Ahab’s blog, Republic of Gilead. For more information about Ahab, see his blog’s About page. Part Five of this series was originally published on July 9, 2013.

*****

Also in this series: Part One: First Impressions | Part Two: Doug Phillips on God in History | Part Three: “Religious Liberalism” And Those Magnificent Mathers | Part Four: Kevin Swanson Is Tired Of Losing | Part Five: Messiah States and Mega-Houses | Part Six: Doug Phillips Rages Against the 20th Century | Part Seven: Christian Vikings, Godly Explorers, and Strange Bacon | Part Eight: Closing Thoughts

*****

On Friday, July 5th, I observed an afternoon workshop entitled “The Rise of the Messiah State: From Wilson to Johnson”. Geoffrey Botkin of the Western Conservatory of the Arts and Sciences delivered a talk on the supposed ills of social safety nets and the evolution of the so-called “Messiah state”. Botkin, a long-time ally of Vision Forum, has a controversial history with Great Commission Ministries, according to commentaries at Under Much Grace (see here and here).

At the start of his workshop, Botkin explained to his audience that a major challenge is to communicate how society should be organized to a culture unused to thinking theologically. “All history is theological,” he insisted, echoing the sentiments of other speakers at the conference.

Botkin complained that the U.S. is comfortable with a “Messianic state” now. Quoting Christian Reconstructionist thinker Gary North, he claimed that the “welfare state” died when the Roman Empire fell in 400 AD, but reemerged in the 20th century. From 1913 to 1973 — from the Wilson administration to the Johnson administration — America’s social order changed theologically to a “welfare-warfare state with fiscal and moral deficits of crushing … consequences,” Botkin claimed.

Botkin understood the state, church, and family to be God-created institutions, each with their own sphere of influence. However, the modern American state is so divorced from God’s will that its power to do good has decreased, he said. Over the span of a few decades, “the power of the state to do evil” allegedly grew.

Botkin shared quotes from Christian Reconstructionist authors on the alleged evils of an overbearing state. One quote from Gary North claimed that the “welfare state” is defended as a network of social safety nets, in which business profits are seen as a tax base for the welfare state. Another quote from R. J. Rushdoony caricatured humanists as revering the state as their lord and savior. Revealingly, Botkin’s presentation shared another quote from Rushdoony which accused society of succumbing to the “heresy of democracy”. In Botkin’s eyes, “statists” cannot revere God because they revere the state instead.

“Messianic statism”, as Botkin defined it, is an organization of men who provide answers to all of humanity’s problems through reorganization of society under the scientific/secular/socialist state, rather than Christ. The state, in effect, replaced God in people’s minds, he explained. Changing, man-made laws result in society’s “moral dissipation”, he claimed, making the state a “maternalistic necessity”. As a result of Messianic statism, men become “emasculated”, unable to take responsibility in their lives, Botkins claimed. A cycle of dependency emerges, where the more men descend into moral dissipation, the more they need a “nanny” or “mommy” state to care for them.

Emasculation? “Maternalistic necessity”? Mommy states? Someone has masculinity issues, I thought.

Tastelessly, Botkins used natural disasters as an example of dependency on the state. When a hurricane causes devastation, everyone whines “Where is my Messianic state!?”, he sneered. His utter callousness to the suffering of disaster victims and disdain for any safety net to help them recover startled me.

Botkins proceeded to caricature the policies of U.S. presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Lyndon B. Johnson. He reserved special animosity for income taxes, Social Security, the New Deal, Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, and public education, which he derided as “free babysitting”.

His diatribe was peppered with fundamentalist commentary and disgust for real or perceived immorality. For instance, he described Woodrow Wilson as an agent of “totalitarian experimentation” who did not trust the authority of scripture. He defended Warren G. Harding as a president striving for normalcy in a country destabilized by jazz music, movies, and prostitution. He spoke approvingly of the Hays Code, claiming that it prevented entertainment from undermining society, as it allegedly does now. Tellingly, he painted women’s organizations lobbying for pensions for mothers and widows during the Coolidge administration as “less productive” people seeking to exploit the system by looking for handouts.

In his conclusion, Botkin likened the Messianic state to ancient god-kings and notions of divine kingship. He shared a quote from R. J. Rushdoony likening state worship to Moloch worship, calling both examples of “political religion”. Like the ancient god Moloch, the Messianic state demands total sacrifice from its subjects, he warned the audience.

I don’t think Botkin grasps the purpose of social services or a social safety net. Such measures are not the sinister tentacles of a “Messianic state”, but a means by which governments and communities help people in need. The mark of a civilized society is its willingness to help its most vulnerable members gain self-sufficiency. Frankly, I do not want to return to a society where the downtrodden are without recourse. A country without a social safety net, with charities in the place of fair programs, would have a devastating impact on the populace, as S. E. Smith recently observed. The callousness with which Botkin demonized the U.S. social safety net struck me as cold-hearted.

I also found Botkins’ workshop highly ironic. A man trumpeting Christ and scripture while ignoring Jesus’ teachings on compassion left me shaking my head. Whatever happened to “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me”? Whatever happened to “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me”? Matthew 25:31-46 is lost on such people.

*****

Later that afternoon, Vision Forum director Doug Phillips and Weir Capital Management founder Erik Weir spoke at a workshop entitled “How Architecture Helped to Shape the Character of the American Family”. Phillips posited that a symbiotic relationship exists between architecture and the family, influencing each other in countless ways. This relationship isn’t a function of income level, he insisted, but of vision, making it applicable for tents and palaces alike. Phillips listed three foundations — aesthetics, design, and architecture — for designing homes.

Phillips argued that modern-day architecture is diverging from the past, elevating form over function, often abandoning aesthetic principles, and neglecting to consider the family. He looked askance at the deconstructivist school of architecture, contrasting photos of eye-catching deconstructivist buildings with a photo of Monticello.

C’mon Doug. A little architectural experimentation is perfectly fine, I thought.

Phillips stressed the importance of bringing every aspect of the home into obedience to Christ. He asked aloud if a home is to be designed to unite families in common spaces, or to cocoon them in separate bedrooms. Colonial and frontier homes, he observed, were organized around a central hearth where the family interacted, for example.

Monticello held special appeal for Phillips, who praised it as a reflection of Thomas Jefferson’s worldview. Monticello functioned as a place to entertain guests, a site of industry and production, a personal study, and a setting in which the new American spirit would be modeled. I noticed that Phillips conspicuously left out Monticello’s underground slave areas, where unseen slaves produced food and sundries for Jefferson’s guests. This, too, was a reflection of Jefferson’s worldview (specifically, his acceptance of slavery), a stain that Phillips left out.

Phillips also praised Montpelier, the historic plantation of James Madison. He described Montpelier’s central core, in which children were educated, parties hosted, heads of state entertained, and the family business operated. Montpelier, like other estates of the era, was built with the assumption that future generations would live there an exert an ongoing influence on the area.

Phillips contrasted the communal homes of the past with the homes of the present, which he likened to “flophouses”. In the past, it was common for three or more generations to live under the same roof, either out of custom or necessity, he said. He contrasted such multigenerational homes to the dwellings of the “selfish generation” which segregates its elders. Today, families are getting smaller while houses are getting bigger, so families tend to share less space. By living and working near each other, families experienced less infidelity, closer ties existed between parents and children, and more economic incentives to perpetuate family life.

I chuckled to myself at Phillip’s assumption about infidelity, as the reality was far less pleasant. Less infidelity? Hardly. Slave owners sexually abused slaves in that time period. Plenty of men patronized brothels in that time period. There was plenty of infidelity.

Phillips stressed the importance of generational thinking regarding architecture and the home. For example, he encouraged listeners to avoid faddishness and cheap quality in home decorations and furnishings in favor of long-term, durable furnishings that will last for many years. In choosing and designing homes, Phillips encouraged listeners to consider multiple considerations: geography, climate, space use, flow, and many others.

It occurred to me through the talk that Phillips’ home advice, while well thought-out, would only be applicable for well-to-do families. If families are struggling economically, they won’t be able to afford the durable, long-term furnishings. If families are limited in what kind of housing they can afford, they may not be at liberty to base home or apartment choices on a wide range of considerations. In an ideal world, everyone could consider furnishings, geography, and flow in their home choices, but we do not live in an idea world.

This realization grew stronger as I listened to Weir’s part of the workshop. Weir’s wealth was evident as he described his home, Magnolia Hall Plantation, inspired by the Oak Alley Plantation in Louisiana. His family chose a large property that would allow space for future growth, including a row of oak or magnolia trees and on-site housing for his children, he explained. Sharing photos of his home, he proudly pointed out the “manly” Doric columns they chose instead of “flutey” Corinthian columns. As photos from the inside of the home flashed on the screen, Weir explained that he wanted to create an inviting interior. (The foyer, while sleek and pristine, struck me as cold and a little too perfect, however.) Weir and his wife chose fine wood for their floors so that guests with children wouldn’t have to worry about sullying a carpet with spills.

This is great, but … how does this apply to middle and working class families? I thought. Most of the people in the audience probably can’t afford to make these choices.

In short, the workshop on architecture was a paradox, an example of intricate thought and little thought. On one hand, Phillips and Weir clearly spent time reflecting on aesthetic values and home functionality, demonstrating a level of forethought that I respected. On the other hand, they seemed oblivious to the fact that only well-off people could meaningfully apply these principles. Weir’s home, while lovely and well-planned, is the home of a wealthy man. How relevant would Weir’s description of his home be to a couple struggling to feed and clothe multiple children? After taking in Botkin, Phillips, and Weir that afternoon, I wondered how often they reflect on the middle and working class.

Stay tuned for more on the History of America Mega-Conference!

*****

To be continued.

Rewriting History — The History of America Mega-Conference: Part Four, Kevin Swanson Is Tired Of Losing

HA Editorial Team20 Comments

Rewriting History — The History of America Mega-Conference: Part Four, Kevin Swanson Is Tired Of Losing

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Ahab’s blog, Republic of Gilead. For more information about Ahab, see his blog’s About page. Part Four of this series was originally published on July 9, 2013.

*****

Also in this series: Part One: First Impressions | Part Two: Doug Phillips on God in History | Part Three: “Religious Liberalism” And Those Magnificent Mathers | Part Four: Kevin Swanson Is Tired Of Losing | Part Five: Messiah States and Mega-Houses | Part Six: Doug Phillips Rages Against the 20th Century | Part Seven: Christian Vikings, Godly Explorers, and Strange Bacon | Part Eight: Closing Thoughts

*****

After celebrating July 4th, I returned to the History of America Mega-Conference on July 5th to observe more workshops. On Friday morning Kevin Swanson presented a workshop entitled “Why 19th Century Literature Was at War with God”. Swanson, host of Generations Radio, has a long history of eccentric comments documented by Right Wing Watch, and he was no different in person. I’m not sure what troubled me more: Swanson’s acidic tone, or the hyperbolic content of his talk. His seething hatred for The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, and other 19th century writers was both irrational and unsettling.

Swanson began his talk by lamenting that America is not the Christian nation it supposedly once was and is not doing as well as it had in the past. The United States is breaking down, he claimed, because the Western world is slowly “apostatizing” as families and civilizations disintegrate.

Swanson reserved special rancor for liberal professors. Citing Ken Ham’s 2011 book Already Compromised, he told listeners that liberal arts professors in Christian colleges are highly likely to believe in evolution because of their liberal leanings. Apostasy always begins in the liberal arts departments of Christian colleges, Swanson insisted, adding that many liberal arts colleges are “corruptible” because of their very foundations. Harvard and Princeton have already been “compromised”, and many professors at Wheaton College voted for Obama, Swanson said with regret.

Swanson further caricatured liberal arts studies with bombastic words. He sneered at liberal arts departments for their admiration of Karl Marx, whom he called a “Satanist” and “atheist” with an wrong-headed epistemology and a flawed view of history. Swanson also looked askance at liberal professors for their love of Harry Potter books and the gay Dumbledore character. Society is locked in a battle between worldviews, one with battle lines laid out in liberal arts departments where the next generation is receiving its education, he said.

“I am tired of losing!” Swanson shouted. “Is anyone else tired of losing?” The audience applauded.

Swanson proceeded to rant disjointedly against Catholics, LGBTQ persons, and other people he blamed for “apostasy”. The Roman Catholic church represents so much “apostasy” from the Christian faith is because of its liberal arts heritage, starting with Thomas Aquinas, he claimed. He wondered aloud how America went from the Christian primers of its early history to children’s books such as Heather Has Two Mommies.

Swanson seemed baffled that America has allegedly come to lead the “Neronic* agenda”, his term for the LGBTQ equality movement. Even “pagan” leaders in Africa were disgusted by the “hatred toward God” expressed by President Obama’s support for same-sex marriage.

The root of the present situation, Swanson posited, is that powerful intellectual men, “many of whom were possessed by the Devil himself”, introduced dubious ideas into universities. Swanson called these men nephilim (a reference to human-angel hybrids in Genesis 6:4 and Numbers 13:33) because they led to the destruction of the world through the Great Flood in the Bible, just as they are destroying society today.

Feverishly, Swanson launched a polemic against Thomas Aquinas. In Summa Theologica, Swanson explained, Aquinas separated sacred and philosophical knowledge, with philosophical knowledge based on human reason. This division of knowledge gives man the ability to “think autonomously” apart from God, which Swanson blasted as Aquinas’ greatest error. Over a span of 400 years, thinkers such as Locke and Descartes celebrated philosophical knowledge and the supremacy of the human mind, which Swanson branded as toxic to faith.

In the 1700s and 1800s, tension between the Bible and classical writings — the beginnings of “apostasy” — could be found in the writings of the Founders, Swanson asserted. By the turn of the 19th century, most Americans rejected the idea that God holds authority over human actions, Swanson claimed. Such was the idea undergirding 19th century “cults” that rejected the idea of the Trinity and embraced Arianism, he insisted.

Swanson was furious that in today’s world, science says that the universe is billions of years old, parents are discouraged from spanking children, and the Bible is being rejected because it doesn’t jive with humanism. Ethics, philosophy, and science have been divorced from the Bible, he lamented.

Swanson pointed to Emersonian Transcendentalism as a powerful influence on 19th century American religion. Emerson’s aunt raised Emerson in the Hindu religion, Swanson claimed, describing Emerson as a pacifist who encouraged others to follow their hearts and make it up as they go along. Swanson further caricatured Transcendentalism as a system in which man allegedly defines his own ethics as he goes along and creates his own reality.

Swanson was especially livid over the popularity of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter in high school and college literature classes. He accused Hawthorne of hating his Christian heritage and dying a nihilist who allegedly saw no purpose in life. He further blasted Hawthorne for allegedly attending seances, marrying into one of the worst “progressive” families of his era, and having ties to Horace Mann, a supporter of public schools. Hawthorne allegedly mocked Christianity in his writings, referring to Cotton Mather as a devil. Finally, Swanson accused Hawthorne of allegedly doing enormous damage to America’s Christian heritage with his writings. Events such as the History of America Mega-Conference have such small attendance because people have read Hawthorne and become corrupted.

And here’s where things get … weird.

Swanson believed that Hawthorne’s sister was “demon possessed” and sought to see Hawthorne’s children possessed as well. He claimed that an unearthly force moved Hawthorne’s hand as he wrote The Scarlet Letter, a story “forged in Hell”. Outrageously, he claimed that both Hawthorne and Herman Melville admitted to being demon possessed (!?).

Swanson shuddered at the alleged power of The Scarlet Letter, warning listeners not to underestimate the ways that its “Satanic effects” can change nations. Attacking the novel as “stupid” and a “farce”, Swanson claimed thatThe Scarlet Letter represents two gospels. The gospel of Dimmesdale, he claimed, preaches repentance without faith in Christ, as Dimmesdale finds self-atonement rather than substitutional atonement for his adultery. The gospel of Hester, on the other hand, is one of love divorced from law, thus rendering love meaningless, he said.

Swanson’s wrath toward the fictional Hester was brutal. He called Hester a “prophetess” of adultery in a later age, when high divorce rates, premarital sex, and out-of-wedlock births would surge. Swanson also accused Hester of being the predecessor of Margaret Sanger, Margaret Mead, Gloria Steinem, and other feminists with “unyielding and rebellious hearts”. Hester, in short, was the harbinger of a “feminist world” in which the family is crumbling.

As the workshop churned on, Swanson’s gave voice to more visceral hatred ofThe Scarlet Letter. The moral of the novel, he insisted, was that witchcraft, homosexuality, incest, and feminism are better than Christianity. The Bible commands the death penalty for adultery, but Hawthorne and today’s average Christians loathe the death penalty.

Wait a minute. Did I just hear Swanson defend capital punishment for adultery? I thought. The audience sat rapt, apparently unfazed by Swanson’s rant. Are you people okay with this? Hello!?

Swanson observed that many Christians are embarrassed by what the Bible commands regarding adultery, homosexuality, and witchcraft. Such Christians love Jesus but hate his law, he said, and thus American religion is solidly anti-Biblical law.

Swanson lobbed similarly hateful accusations at Mark Twain, stunned that so many homeschooling families have Twain’s books in their homes. According to Swanson, Twain was an “apostate”, communist, atheist man who hated the Biblical God and was possibly possessed by Satan (!?). As proof of this, Swanson said that Twain allegedly acknowledged he was writing letters from Satan himself when he composed Letters from the Earth. Twain also encouraged women to commit adultery, Swanson asserted with no small amount of disgust.

Predictably, Swanson blasted Huckleberry Finn, criticizing the eponymous main character for not fearing God and mocking the notion of divine judgment. The novel, he explained, was about slavery, with Huckleberry Finn choosing to help his enslaved friend at the risk of his eternal soul. Rather than praise Finn’s moral courage, Swanson launched into a diatribe about vast numbers of Americans being “enslaved to the welfare state” today. He branded “Muslim” slavery, in which people are kidnapped and sold, as evil, but said that he wished he had time to discuss a Biblical view of slavery. 

Huh? I thought. Slavery is wrong, no matter who practices it. Full stop. I don’t care if there’s a “Biblical” form of slavery. It’s wicked. What is wrong with this man?

“Do not read the heathen stories to your children,” Swanson warned the audience. He urged listeners to teach their children the Bible first, instead of giving them a “Greek” education. “Give them the Bible! Let them know the book of Deuteronomy better than they know The Scarlet Letter,” he demanded, to which the room erupted in applause.

Deuteronomy? I fumed. You mean the Deuteronomy brimming with bloodshed and genocide? The Deuteronomy with guidelines for owning slaves? The Deuteronomy that allows warriors to take conquered women as sexual booty? The Deuteronomy that instructs communities to stone rape victims and women who don’t bleed on their wedding nights? No, Kev, I’m NOT teaching THAT to a child.

Swanson concluded by encouraging listeners to give their children a “war of the worldviews”, to give them Biblical context for supposedly ungodly classics they might read. A 14 year-old is not ready for Plato and Aristotle, he claimed; rather, parents should give their children Christian ideas and writers first, then expose them to “heathen” works in their late teens. That way, children will understand how evil such “heathen” ideas are.

In short, Swanson was advocating a closed information system for homeschooled children, in which parents shield their offspring from non-Christian ideas until they approach adulthood. In my opinion, this approach could only produce children who are utterly disconnected from their cultural heritage, from mainstream America. When such isolated children reach adulthood and leave their bubble, how will they navigate American culture if so many important ideas have been either demonized in their eyes or left out of their education altogether?

Then again, maybe I should be more optimistic. In an age of book stores, libraries, and the internet, young people are likely to encounter ideas outside of their upbringing and read books such as The Scarlet Letter.  Swanson and his ilk may find that creating a closed information system for children will be harder than they imagined.

Later, as I recuperated from the workshop in a nearby pub, I tried to digest what I’d just heard. Demon possessed authors? Capital punishment for adultery? Biblical slavery? A closed information system meant to stifle the minds of children? This is sick, I thought. This. Is. Madness.

Swanson’s feverish words, and the audience’s approval, impressed upon me a disturbing truth: Christian Reconstructionism and superstitious hysteria are alive and well in small corners of our culture. People like Swanson earnestly embrace a fundamentalist worldview, and have every intention of inflicting it on the next generation of homeschooled children.

Stay tuned for more talks from Vision Forum’s History of America Mega-Conference!

* A reference to the Roman emperor Nero.

*****

To be continued.

Rewriting History — The History of America Mega-Conference: Part Three, “Religious Liberalism” And Those Magnificent Mathers

HA Editorial Team12 Comments

Rewriting History — The History of America Mega-Conference: Part Three, “Religious Liberalism” And Those Magnificent Mathers

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Ahab’s blog, Republic of Gilead. For more information about Ahab, see his blog’s About page. Part Three of this series was originally published on July 7, 2013.

*****

Also in this series: Part One: First Impressions | Part Two: Doug Phillips on God in History | Part Three: “Religious Liberalism” And Those Magnificent Mathers | Part Four: Kevin Swanson Is Tired Of Losing | Part Five: Messiah States and Mega-Houses | Part Six: Doug Phillips Rages Against the 20th Century | Part Seven: Christian Vikings, Godly Explorers, and Strange Bacon | Part Eight: Closing Thoughts

*****

On Wednesday, July 3rd, I took in two workshops at Vision Forum’s History of America Mega-Conference: “The Rise of Religious Liberalism” and “Puritanism and the Multigenerational Vision of the Mather Family”. The first was a swipe at progressive Christianity and 19th century spiritual movements, while the latter praised Cotton Mather and his forefathers for their piety and devotion to family life.

On Wednesday morning, Col. John Eidsmoe of the Oak Brook College of Law and Government Policy presented “The Rise of Religious Liberalism”. The workshop was a polemic look at the rise of Unitarianism, Transcendentalism, and other forms of “religious liberalism” in 19th century America.

Eidsmoe spoke warmly of early Americans who celebrated Christianity. The Constitutional Convention, he claimed, had mostly Christians in attendance and involved God in their work. He dismissed the deist Founding Fathers in attendance as “outliers”. He discussed the message of 18th century preacher George Whitfield, who did much to unite Americans under a common faith, he claimed.

Eidsmoe also smiled upon Benjamin Franklin for praising Christian preaching and social endeavors, suggesting that the Founding Father appreciated Christianity. However, I found his portrait of Franklin to lack nuance. While Franklin did celebrate the Puritan virtues of his upbringing and respect preachers such as George Whitefield, he also referred to himself as a Deist in his 1771 autobiography, embraced Enlightenment ideas, endorsed religious pluralism, and spent time at a London Unitarian congregation.

In the 1800s, despite the Second Great Awakening, America sees the emergence of Unitarianism. Eidsmoe pointed out that 19th century Unitarians were different from today’s Unitarian Universalists, describing them as “strongly moral” people who revered the Bible but did not believe in the Trinity.

The 1800s also saw the emergence of Transcendentalism, which Eidsmoe described as a belief in God’s presence within nature and humans. Transcendentalists, Eidsmoe stated, believed that all humans have a divine spark within them, and that by getting in touch with that divine spark, they can become godlike. According to Eidsmoe, Transcendentalists rejected the idea of original sin and did not see the need for a savior, thus contrasting them to Christians.

Eidsmoe didn’t seem to think highly of Transcendentalists, sneering at failed Transcendentalist projects such as Fruitlands commune. He briefly discussed major Transcendentalist thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emmerson, who drew inspiration from German thinkers such as Friedrich Schleiermacher, Buddhism, and the Bhagavad Gita. Eidsmoe also discussed Henry David Thoreau in unfriendly terms, scoffing at Thoreau for trumpeting his return to nature inWalden while eating meals at his parents’ house and drinking coffee in town. Thoreau defended civil disobedience in his classic essay, but Eidsmoe claimed that this was actually a Biblical concept rooted in obedience to God over obedience to civil authority. (For a more in-depth, non-polemical look at Transcendentalism, click here.)

Practice eisegesis much? I thought.

Transcendentalism led to the rise of “religious liberalism” by leading Americans away from Biblical Christian principles, Eidsmoe argued. While he praised Albert Schweitzer for his scholarly and humanitarian work, he disagreed with his “liberal” view of Jesus in Quest for the Historical Jesus. Eidsmoe also disagreed with the work of Julius Wellhausen, who theorized that the Pentateuch was written by four authors in different time periods rather than Moses (later known as the documentary hypothesis or Wellhausen hypothesis). Wellhausen’s theory was rooted “squarely upon evolutionary thought”, Eidsmoe insisted, even though Wellhausen was not the first scholar to speculate that someone other than Moses penned the Pentateuch. Eidsmoe frowned upon the Wellhausen hypothesis, seeing it as an attack on the divinity of Jesus himself who acknowledged Moses as the author of the Torah. Finally, Eidsmoe was also disdainful of the alleged Darwinist worldview, which he caricatured as positing that humans started in the “slime” and evolved, rather than being created by God with moral responsibility.

These 19th century forces contributed to religious liberalism, which exerts influence even today, Eidsmoe argued. He criticized modern “open-minded” liberalism as being closed-minded to anything evangelical, and caricatured religious liberalism as having five characteristics:

  • Denial of absolute truth in favor of a view of truth as relative, subjective, and evolving.
  • Emphasis on man rather than God, with God as a servant of man instead of vice versa.
  • “Presumption against the supernatural” and miraculous.
  • Optimism about progress, public education, medicine, and democracy heralding a new dawn, before events such as World War I and World War II casts shadows on progress.
  • A belief that the Bible is accurate in its conclusions but not its details, or the belief that parts of the Bible are divinely inspired but not inerrant.

The fact that this does not accurately describe progressive Christianity, past or present, seemed to have escaped him. Progressive and moderate people of faith would not describe their beliefs as such, which also seemed to have escaped Eidsmoe.

Eidsmoe listed several alleged dangers of religious liberalism, including the supposed lack of a basis for morality, the supposed lack of basis for evangelism, and the reduction of Jesus to a mere man or to one path to truth among many. Religious liberalism supposedly leaves no room for freedom, he claimed, since it reduces humans to evolutionary animals rather than moral agents accountable to God. He accused religious liberalism of having no means of maintaining Christianity or perpetuating the faith, claiming that liberal Christian denominations are losing members. (Perhaps he forgot that many mainline denominations and religious schools are losing members too?) Germany serves as a model for what can go wrong with religious liberalism, he insisted, claiming that one-hundred years of liberal German thought gave rise to Hitler and the Holocaust. In short, Eidsmoe demonized religious liberalism, using straw man arguments to grossly misrepresent what liberal Christians actually believe.

Eidsmoe concluded the workshop by warning listeners that religious liberalism could seep into their churches. He urged the audience to stay alert for liberal trends in their churches and seminaries, and to stay faithful to belief in Biblical inerrancy. In short, his workshop was not so much a tour of 19th century religious thought as a polemic against non-fundamentalist Christianity, complete with caricatures, oversimplification, and fear.

*****

On Wednesday afternoon, Scott Brown presented “Puritanism and the Multigenerational Vision of the Mather Family”. Brown, a pastor at Hope Baptist Church in Wake Forest, NC and the director of the National Center for Family-Integrated Churches, praised the Mather family as a model of piety.

Brown’s workshop focused on three men in the Mather family — Richard, Increase, and Cotton Mather — whom he praised for the “fruitfulness”, citing John 15:5-8 and John 15:16-17. Three generations of the family “cried out for a rising generation”, Brown observed, celebrating the Mathers as a “beacon of light” for families.

According to Brown, the Mathers resolved to bring everything into obedience with the Bible. Every member of the family was dedicated to God and lived for something beyond themselves, he claimed. By looking to scripture alone, the Mathers knew who they were and what role they were to play in life, rather than asking “who am I?”

Brown delved into the individual histories of Richard, Increase, and Cotton Mather, with emphasis on their religious lives and concern for the next generation. I noticed anti-Catholic bias in Brown’s description of Richard Mather when he noted that Richard’s father almost allowed Catholic merchants to fund his education. The Catholic merchants “coveted” Richard’s gifts, and Brown considered it pivotal in Richard’s development that he was not educated by Catholic. Brown then drew parallels to modern times, when “great pagan institutions” allegedly “pickle” children’s brains by pouring “paganism” into them.

Okay, you guys keep throwing around the word ‘pagan’. I don’t think it means what you think it means, I thought.

Brown observed common themes of moral decline in the preaching of Increase and Cotton Mather. For instance, Increase scoured the Old Testament for patterns among the prophets regarding God’s blessing and judgment, Brown said. Increase was reportedly concerned about the “onslaught of wickedness” in his society, and preached sermons on the importance of teaching piety to the next generation. Likewise, Cotton Mather was said to be watching his society decline, and encouraged cultivation of piety in children, Brown stated. Cotton Mather taught parents that children belong in church and are part of the congregation, a belief that Brown seemed to admire.

Brown devoted much of his discussion to Cotton Mather’s admonishments for parents on the spiritual upbringing of children. According to Brown, Cotton urged parents to set good religious examples for their children, concern themselves with their offspring’s spiritual state, and “plead God’s promises” to their children. Moreover, Cotton penned a list of twenty-one resolutions for fathers, including praying for their children, preaching to the family, encouraging children’s self-reflection on their souls, and “marrying” their children to Christ.

At the conclusion of the workshop, Brown listed six lessons that families can derive from the Mathers’ example. Modern Christian families, like the Mathers, must strive to be families (1) dedicated to future generations, (2) possessing clear visions of home life, church life, and civil life, (3) aware of the times and responsive to them in both public and private ways, (4) dedicated to the prosperity of the church, (5) determined to honor each other even as they disagree, and (6) crying out for their sons.

In his haste to praise the piety of the Mather family, Brown ignored the dark side of that piety. He neglected Cotton Mather’s Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions, a 1689 treatise on the dangers of witchcraft and demons that was widely read in late 17th century New England. Some historians speculate that Cotton Mather’s writings on witchcraft contributed to the anti-witchcraft hysteria that spawned the Salem Witch Trials. He ignored Cotton Mather’s zeal to convert black slaves to Christianity in The Negro Christianized: An Essay to Excite and Assist that Good Work, the Instruction of Negro-Servants in Christianity. The 1706 treatise encouraged slave owners to convert their black slaves to Christianity, assuring them that Christianity permits slavery and will not bring about slave’s liberty. The transmission of piety to young generations must be done in a spirit of self-reflection, lest that piety lead to destructive ends as it did with Cotton Mather.

I can accept the idea that the Mathers longed to do well by their children and grandchildren, striving to raise them well and encouraging other parents to do the same. Given Increase and Cotton Mather’s ties to witchcraft myths and the Salem Witch Trials, however, I draw a different conclusion from their lives. When parents teach their children spirituality, that spirituality must also include empathy, humanity, and critical thinking. Piety without these elements can devolve into fanaticism, with unsettling results.

Stay tuned for more on the History of America Mega-Conference!

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To be continued.

Rewriting History — The History of America Mega-Conference

HA Editorial Team7 Comments

Rewriting History — The History of America Mega-Conference: Part One, First Impressions

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Ahab’s blog, Republic of Gilead. For more information about Ahab, see his blog’s About page. Part One of this series was originally published on July 3, 2013.

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Also in this series: Part One: First Impressions | Part Two: Doug Phillips on God in History | Part Three: “Religious Liberalism” And Those Magnificent Mathers | Part Four: Kevin Swanson Is Tired Of Losing | Part Five: Messiah States and Mega-Houses | Part Six: Doug Phillips Rages Against the 20th Century | Part Seven: Christian Vikings, Godly Explorers, and Strange Bacon | Part Eight: Closing Thoughts

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On the evening of Tuesday, July 2nd, I observed the History of America Mega-Conference at the Radisson Hotel Harrisburg in Camp Hill, PA. The event is sponsored by Vision Forum, a ministry with a strong Christian Patriarchy slant that focuses strongly on “Biblical education” for children. The History of America Mega-Conference features workshops on the past four-hundred years of American history, filtered through a conservative Christian lens. (More here.) The description of the event at the Vision Forum website left no ambiguity about the conference’s agenda.

“Are you and your children equipped to answer the politically-correct, historical revisionism that dominates higher academia and the mass media today — to defend our nation’s godly heritage with nuance and precision against the fierce onslaught of secular skepticism?

Antagonists to the Christian faith are stealing our history, and it’s time we take it back. The engaging messages given at this conference will arm your family with the truth to combat the lies of the Left — to have a sure foundation for the 21st century.”

This week marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, and given the proximity of Camp Hill to Gettysburg, many attendees dressed in Civil War era costumes. The costumes, while lovely, made navigation tricky. I almost fell over a woman’s enormous hoop skirt, then got accidentally whacked in the knee by a scabbard swinging from a passing man’s belt. When did Religious Right events become this hazardous!? I thought.

"The New Geneva Christian Leadership Academy table was stocked with books by Christian Reconstructionist author R. J. Rushdoony."
“The New Geneva Christian Leadership Academy table was stocked with books by Christian Reconstructionist author R. J. Rushdoony.”

About a dozen vendors were manning tables at the conference — mostly books, DVDs, and homeschooling curricula — and their titled amused me. The National Center for Family-Integrated Churches seemed keen on gender roles, judging by book titles such as Preparing Boys for Battle and Feminine By Design. At the Vision Forum merchandise table, alongside toy guns, toy swords, and books such as Large Family Logistics were DVDs with titles such as Tea with Michelle Duggar and Birth Control: How Did We Get Here?, a video on the evils of “child prevention”. I chuckled at the title of a video on food culture, Food Heresies: How to Reform Our Theology of Food Without Becoming a Selfish Marxist, a Radical Environmentalist, or an Imbalanced Vegan.

The New Geneva Christian Leadership Academy table was stocked with books by Christian Reconstructionist author R. J. Rushdoony, such as the colorfully named Noble Savages: Exposing the Worldview of Pornographers and Their War Against Christian Civilization. 

However, one display made my blood run cold. In the hotel’s grand ballroom was a display from Heritage Defense that read, “NO, YOU MAY NOT TAKE MY CHILDREN!” Sitting in the display were free DVDs such as CPS vs. the Family and How to Handle a Social Worker Visit. Upon reading the flyers at the foot of the display, I realized that Heritage Defense was casting child protective services as an opponent to Christian families. On its flyer, Heritage Defense claimed that it empowers Christian families by “uncovering social services abuses” and “holding abusive social workers accountable”. The flyer also celebrated the organization’s efforts to protect families from the following “threats” from social services:

  • Corporal Punishment
  • Sanctity of Life Decisions
  • Medical Choices like vaccinations and midwifery
  • Mandatory Reporters such as doctors, nurses, dental care providers, law enforcement, child-care services, nursery workers, coaches, counselors, and others…
  • Accidents in which children are injured
  • Premature Births or special-needs children
  • Anonymous Tips by those who wish to harm families
  • Harassment by extended family, neighbors, or mere acquaintances regarding disagreements concerning philosophical/religious direction and training of children
  • False reports generated by rebellious, disobedient, or indiscreet children within the home
  • Targeting of Profiling of Christian families because of faith, number of children, or other family dynamics
"Heritage Defense was casting child protective services as an opponent to Christian families."
“Heritage Defense was casting child protective services as an opponent to Christian families.”

Suggesting that mandatory reporters and anonymous tipsters are “threats” casts child abuse reporters as troublemakers rather than responsible citizens. To boot, the branding of children who seek help from CPS as liars or “rebellious, disobedient, or indiscreet” made me shudder. When child abuse occurs in fundamentalist families, where can victims find refuge if they’ve been taught that CPS is monstrous and that those who report are wrongheaded? When fundamentalists witness or suspect child abuse, could rhetoric like this make them reluctant to do the right thing? CPS is by no means perfect, but it does protect children from abuse and neglect, and thus this kind of demonization benefits no one.

Opening ceremonies for the conference began at 6 p.m., and hundreds of participants streamed into the grand ballroom. As the crowd filed in, I noticed several things about the attendees. First, the gathering was overwhelmingly made up of white families. Second, practically all of the women were wearing casual dresses or skirts, which I assumed had something to do with Christian patriarchy subculture. Finally, many of the families I saw had at least three children, often more, and babies were a common sight.

To be fair, everyone I met was gentle and helpful, and the families I observed treated their children with warmth. I struggled to reconcile these kindly people with the jarring messages I would hear from workshop speakers. It wasn’t just the workshop content that gave me pause — although polemic workshop titles such as “Why 19th Century American Literature Was at War with God” and “The Rise of Religious Liberalism” left me scratching my head — but the presenters of those workshops as well. I wondered how the women felt about a conference with only male presenters, or how anyone felt about a conference with all white presenters.

Stay tuned for posts on Doug Phillip’s opening speech and Wednesday’s workshops!

For more information on Vision Forum’s History of America Mega-Conference, visit the conference’s website.

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To be continued.