In my previous post, I pointed out that Christian indoctrination was more important than what we might learn at a regular school. Furthermore, they wanted to isolate us from outside influences that might make us question what they taught us to believe.
Public school was demonized in our Christian conservative homeschool circles. We were constantly told stories about how Christianity was “under attack” in those places. In a twist of grandiose projection, our parents insisted that schools were sources of atheistic indoctrination. They taught that evolution was true. They punished prayer. They tried to take the phrase “under god” out of the American Pledge of Allegiance.
My parents thought they could give me everything I needed to know because they thought their own set of values was supreme. They wanted to restrict me to a life of submission to their patriarchal subculture.
Most people raised like this do not escape that world. They end up marrying other people from the same conservative Christian subculture. Today, second- and third-generation homeschooled kids are being raised to believe that Christian conservative standards are not just adequate, but superior to standard education.
Their children have no access to clear understandings of core subjects: reading, writing, mathematics, history, science, civics, and health. In all of these areas, ignorance leads to distrust of our modern societal advances in medicine, scientific discovery, literature and history, equity, and civil rights.
This matters on a broad scale because it influences our political landscape. Across the United States, Christian conservatives are politically active and have disproportionate power. Conservative Christian homeschool parents actively cultivate isolation and ignorance. This causes bigotry to thrive, because bigotry is rooted in ignorance. These children grow up with a distrust for general education, suspicious of scientific facts.
I know all this because I was one of them for a long time. When I started college, I thought the entire academic establishment was in a war against my faith. I thought it was my responsibility to serve Jesus by being a good Christian influence to my peers on campus. I also thought I would make a difference doing undercover journalism for Project Veritas. I was fully prepared to spread my bigoted beliefs through what I thought was “godly love.”
The conservative Christian world wants to normalize itself, but the fact is that they hate anyone who does not conform to their way of life. Racism, antisemitism, transphobia, homophobia, and ableism run deep in these circles. This hate is rooted in ignorance of science and human empathy, and I will not hold back in calling their bigotry precisely what it is.