So when did it all start to go wrong? At what point did the last tattered remnants of normalcy unravel in my family, revealing the rot and decay that festered beneath? As I reflect on my childhood, I think the potential for and the early growth of the spiritual and emotional canker that plagued us was established long before my family joined the fundamentalist Baptist community, but becoming fundy and moving into the homeschooling universe certainly accelerated the decay.
I need to detour for a moment to explain something: I'm a visual thinker, so the inside of my head is full of graphics and animations representing the abstract concepts that other people are able to think about in more literal or systematic terms. When I struggle to find precise and denotative words to convey my ideas and thoughts to others, I often resort to descriptive imagery instead. And when I think about my family over the years, I visualize its dissolution in terms of necrosis, tissue death, systemic infection. It was a horrifying, painful, and frightening process. Of course, the last-resort remedy for gangrene is amputation, and sadly, that's the cure I turned to as an adult. But that's for another post and another day.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled blog entry. I was nine years old in 1984, the year my family exited mainstream culture and entered fundamentalism. (It may be a coincidence that the novel 1984 is one of my favorites; the story of one man's rebellion against a repressive, totalitarian machine reminds me of my experience in fundamentalism.) As I wrote in my previous post, this first year out of the public school system was in an ACE school environment, in the back room of our little Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) church that sat off of a narrow farm road, many miles outside of the small town we lived in. This church was isolated and separated from the world both physically and spiritually--once my family enrolled in the ACE school, I was forbidden contact with my public school friends because they did not belong to our church, even though several of them lived within a few blocks. The two girls in the church and school who were close to my age were already lifelong BFFs, but I tried to work my way into their clique, so desperate for companionship that I often created more conflict than friendship along the way.
Still, I was a conscientious kid who wanted nothing more than to please my parents and the other adults in my life, so I diligently followed the new rules: I tried to obey right away, every time; I prayed earnestly every night even though I suspected that I didn't feel the same way about God as the other kids did; I did all my PACE schoolwork and tried to be a cheerful, kind, submissive, meek Christian girl like Christi Lovejoy in my workbooks. Mr. Gothard's teachings convinced me that I needed to give up my Cabbage Patch doll, Care Bears, "worldly" books, TV shows and movies, shorts and tanktops, and demonic pop music. My mother constantly reminded me to say "ma'am" and "sir," and on a few occasions I even remembered to do so. In some ways, I missed going to public school, but I told myself that the transition to the big, loud middle school in our town would have been overwhelming for me, anyway. I was determined to be happy and grateful for the Godly, protected life my parents created for me.
Then our neighbor, also a church member and a trusted family friend, molested me. To answer my opening question, this is when things started to go frighteningly wrong for me.
You may be wondering, But what does that have to do with homeschooling? Bear with me as I work through some thoughts. Maybe a visual will help: there exists within chaos theory a concept called the butterfly effect, which posits that the motion of a single butterfly's wings can influence the development of a hurricane many weeks in the future. In human terms, a million little events and choices go into shaping your minute-to-minute and long-term realities, and one seemingly-insignificant decision or change in your environment can radically alter your life path. Combine multiple unusual or unfortunate factors, and your butterflies may send your hurricane off course, or you may end up with a Category 5 storm rather than a tropical depression.
I wonder, for example, if my family and church had not been so completely separated from the world, could my parents have developed a variety of friendships with other adults? In reality, this man and his wife were my parents' best friends and social lifeline. They spent time together every day, and he had frequent unsupervised and unrestricted access to me because they trusted him as a fellow Christian.
If I had been in public school, maybe I could have told a friend or a teacher or a coach. But I never told anyone as a child, including my parents, because I was sure they wouldn't believe me.
If I hadn't been indoctrinated with Gothardism, maybe I would have understood that the pain this man inflicted upon me was a result of his own evil, not mine. Instead, I believed the tenets of Gothard that he describes in his document titled, "Counseling Sexual Abuse" (thanks to Recovering Grace for finding and posting a copy). Gothard instructs the victim to think about what role he or she may have played in bringing on the abuse (such as immodest dress, being out from the protection of parents, or being with evil friends), then to confess any guilt the victim may have as a result of failing to report the abuse, and finally to put away any bitterness and forgive the offender. Of course this material was not preached verbatim on Sunday mornings--probably because sexuality in general was taboo--but our pastor and leadership absorbed these ideas through the Institute in Basic Principles seminars, and those ideas shaped the church's teachings and practices.
If, if, if. Homeschooling may have been only one factor in the abuse, but one that was inextricably linked with other harmful influences within the greater fundamentalist subculture.
See, homeschooling is much more than simply deciding not to enroll your children in the public school system. In many ways, it's a statement that you are deliberately turning away from any and all things perceived to be part of the world. In my experience, this black-and-white thinking and secondary separation is often part of the parents' larger ideology that may include a variety of fringe religious movements. Gary Ezzo and Michael Pearl's baby beating guides, the Botkin stay-at-home-daughter syndrome, the dominionist and complementarian movements, Young Earth Creationism, nouthetic counseling, and even shunning of modern medical treatments are just a few of the wackier belief systems that permeate the homeschooling community.
Many homeschoolers will protest this characterization. They'll say, "Don't paint us with a broad brush. We're not one of those families. We're moderate, we belong to co-ops, our kids are socialized, they win the state spelling bee every year, they enjoy being homeschooled, we're doing this because we feel called by God, the public schools here are awful, we're just protecting our kids..."
But these concepts and beliefs are woven into many of the popular homeschooling curricula, in ways both subtle and obvious. They are also taught from the pulpit in churches in the IFB, the Southern Baptist Convention, and fundagelical churches around the world. These teachings are not uncommon or confined to insulated, backwards, KJV-only churches in rural America. They're also found in mainstream conservative churches where people sing praise music and women are allowed to wear pants. It happens in mega churches with hipster and celebrity preachers who publish popular Christian books, and it is taught in the seminaries that train those men. It may be diluted or sugar-coated for the masses, but it is pervasive and destructive, and while parents may have the discernment to spot extra-Biblical or abusive teachings, young children don't: they will accept what the pastor preaches as Gospel, because they are taught to respect authority without question. And chances are, their homeschooling curriculum isn't doing an outstanding job of teaching critical thinking skills. To deny that extremism is prevalent in the homeschooling subculture is like the Catholic Church denying Copernican astronomy. Eventually the deniers will have to admit defeat, but how many people must be persecuted and destroyed in the process?
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