The
Growth of the Christian Counter-Culture
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As the Christian Right has become significant
in mainstream politics and government, it both stimulates and benefits
from a growing conservative Christian counter-culture. This counter-culture
takes many forms and its growth contributes to the institutionalization
of the Christian Right. Christian schools and colleges are experiencing
unprecedented growth. Membership in conservative evangelical churches
is growing, partly at the expense of mainline Protestant churches,
and Christian publishing, epitomized by the best selling apocalyptic
novels of Tim LaHaye, is experiencing explosive growth.
The rise of the Christian counter-culture
may be seen most dramatically in the separatist Christian home schooling
movement. The "right" to home school children, part of the
Republican Party platform since the 1980's, provides support for Christian
Right legislative efforts to allow home schooling at the state level.
Estimates of the number of home schooling families vary wildly, but
may be a million. Many states have little oversight, let alone scrutiny
of home schools or home school materials. The absence of state oversight
has shielded some of the extreme antiabortion militants who home school
their children, notably convicted murderer Paul Hill and militia proponent
Matt Trewhella. Thousands of children are being raised to be Christian
theocratic revolutionaries. While there is no guarantee that these
children will turn out as their parents may hope, there is no question
about the intentions of their parents.
The home schooling movement, (like the
rise of private white Christian academies as a backlash to the integration
of public schools) is quietly led and informed by the Christian Reconstructionist
movement. For example, one large purveyor of home schooling materials
and services is the Christian Reconstructionist-oriented Christian
Liberty Academy, headed by Rev. Paul Lindstrom in Arlington, Illinois.
Reconstructionism is a politically oriented theological movement that
provides the ideological catalyst for the Christian Right. Reconstructionism
has played a central role in politicizing conservative evangelicals.
Before the 1980s, conservative evangelicalism
generally steered clear of politics because it was dominated by the
pre-millennial view that the world cannot be significantly changed
or "saved" until the Second Coming of Jesus. This view has
been transformed by an extraordinary theological shift, catalyzed by
the profoundly theocratic political vision of the Christian Reconstructionist
movement, and its variants, which we may broadly call "dominion
theology." Dominion theology shook the evangelical church off
the political sidelines in part by arguing that the apolitical views
of most of evangelicalism in the 20th century was a betrayal
of what has been called the cultural mandate, or the dominion mandate
found in the book of Genesis. The compromise ultimately struck during
the 1980s among conservative evangelical factions was that Christians
are obligated to build the kingdom of God in so far as that is possible.
This compromise has allowed evangelicals to agree to disagree about
the timing and political significance of the Second Coming, while uniting
over a general political mandate to "Christianize" government
and public life along conservative lines.
The doctrine of "compassionate conservatism" popularized
by Marvin Olasky epitomizes the percolating influence of this theocratic
strain, even as it seeks to take the edge off traditional, uncompassionate
business conservatism. Joe Conn, editor of Church & State magazine
demonstrated that leading Reconstructionist writers and thinkers have
influenced Olasky's thinking about compassionate conservatism.49 Olasky
is an elder in the Presbyterian Church in America, (PCA) a conservative
splinter denomination and home to a number of Reconstructionist leaders.
While some scholars continue to dismiss Reconstructionism as a "fringe" element
within conservative evangelicalism, in fact, the movement has been
consistently, albeit quietly, integral to the genesis, ideological
formation and maturation of the Christian Right.50
The home schooling movement made a significant
advance in the Fall of 2000, when Patrick Henry College in Purcerville,
Virginia opened as a four-year college with the explicit purpose of
training home-schooled children in politics and government. There are
plans for a law school, and possibly undergraduate programs in journalism,
computer science and business. Located just outside Washington, DC,
the school emphasizes hands-on experience as interns in government
and advocacy organizations so students can jump-start their careers
in the Christian Right.51 The
college is a "ministry" of the Home School Legal Defense
Association headed by Michael Farris. Farris follows in the footsteps
of fellow Virginians Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell who established
and still lead their own and much larger institutions of higher learning,
Regent University and Liberty University.
The growth of home schooling reflects the
increased popularity of separatism among conservative evangelicals.
In 1999, Paul Weyrich, President of the rightist Free Congress Foundation,
argued that conservative Christians have
essentially lost the culture war and issued a provocative call for
Christians to separate from secular institutions.52 The
separatist nature of the home-schooling movement is consistent with,
and predates his view. Weyrich called for "building our own schools,
media, entertainment, universities, every institution that people need
in order to lead good lives."53 Weyrich
was attacked for what he later gently called his supposed intention
to "give up the fight." Writing in the Olasky-edited World magazine
in response, Weyrich explained, "Instead of relying on politics
to retake the culturally and morally decadent institutions of contemporary
America, I said that we should separate from those institutions and
build our own."54 In
many respects, Weyrich was actually issuing a call for support for
a well-established trend-the institutionalization of the Christian
Right in all of its manifestations, with politics as a secondary aspect
of the movement.55
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