Tolerancemongers Attempt To Dictate Worldviews Of Home School Curriculum
Whether he said it or not is not the issue, but a truism attributed to Abraham Lincoln observes that the philosophy of government in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next. As such, for several decades concerned Christian parents have attempted to both protect the minds of their offspring from the corrupting influences of the secular humanism rampant throughout the public education system while enriching young minds in the great ideas inherent to the Western intellectual tradition. This endeavor was undertaken in large part through the formulation and distribution of a variety of curricula disseminated via textbooks utilized in both private and homeschool contexts reflecting a perspective most would consider Christian and traditionalist in nature.
The assumption was that, if children were educated in an alternative setting other than public school, there was not much the reprobate secularists or apostates could do about it. For while the state might dictate that students must be objectively schooled in subjects such as grammar, history and science, the boundary has been crossed over into tyranny when a government demands that a particular spin be placed on the facts of the disciplines in question.
However, it now seems such a spiritually protective liberty might no longer be the luxury that it once was. For the discerning cannot help but notice that the philosophical and ideological groundwork is being established where not only will the aspiring totalitarians control what is taught in the statist schools provided by the taxpayer but also what is taught in homseschools from the standpoint of parents hoping to avoid punishment for themselves and more importantly their children.
This mentality that what is taught in the privacy of the home not so much in terms of facts but rather the perspective with which these informational formulations are spun could be clearly seen in a 12/23/22 Washington Post article titled, “How Christian nationalism seeped into schooling: Some educators who produce home-schooling materials are trying to change that.”
For daring to indoctrinate their offspring in anything other than the trash America/blame Whitey mentality inherent to leftist ideologies such as Critical Race Theory, Doug Pagitt, credited in the article as “an evangelical pastor in Minnesota (traditionally about one of the Whitest states in America) and the executive director of Vote the Common Good (a progressive voting rights organization) laments of the alleged Christian nationalism perceived as infiltrating conservative Christian curricula, “The ideology has been taking root for at least a generation ... [Christian nationalist ideas are] all over the place in the materials of Christian education companies. It's there in theology. It is there in history. It's there in current events.”
A rather ironic statement made by Pagitt given who he is and what he is known for. Along with the likes of Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt is considered one of the foremost theological luminaries of the Emergent Church Movement.
For those that don't recall, the Emergent Church was an ecclesiastical response that arose in the opening years of the twenty-first century to what was perceived as the moral stridency, judgmentalism, and over-politicization of conservative Evangelicalism as embodied by figures such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and even James Dobson. Emergent Church pastors and theologians claimed that their desire was to re-embrace the authentic simplicity of the New Testament church characterized by the transformative power of Christ through the Holy Spirit that stood firmly on the Word of God without the stifling tendency of organized bureaucracy that all too often has crushed the individual throughout much of church history irrespective of where one found oneself in relation to the assorted interpretative traditions and ministerial alignments.
However, upon closer inspection, it is revealed that the proponents of the Emergent Church and those that identify with it actually advocate something quite different. For what these clanging symbols really mean in all their posturing about getting to the centrality of the Biblical message and remaining above the political fray is that conservatives sit down and shut the Sheol up even though these same thinkers will virtue signal regarding how much they disbelieve in the concept of a punitive realm of the eternal Afterlife. These leftwing religionists, however, will continue with the liberal and progressive activism with a renewed ferocity to the point of totalitarian revolution in terms of the policies advocated.
There is perhaps no better example of this than Doug Pagitt of the Vote Common Good podcast who in the Washington Post article kvetched about Christian Nationalist ideas being “all over the place” like it was canine dung smeared all over the carpet in the middle of the night. Yet his podcast, even if it stays within the technical boundaries of tax code regulations regarding partisan politics, promotes a worldview or ideological agenda inclined towards those originating from the left side of the political spectrum.
For example, on the 4/21/22 episode of The Common Good podcast, Pagitt from a non-critical sympathetic perspective, interviewed Professor Randy Woodley of George Fox University and the ELOHEH Indigenous Center for Earth Justice. Those thinking that such a discussion would be about how Evangelicals might be able to help those sorts of communities and individuals that often experience a variety of socioeconomic hardships are in for a rude awakening and likely to learn an institution of higher education that purports to be Christian can just as much be out to subvert the minds of your offspring for the purposes of toppling the American way of life as any secular state or ivy league university.
To his credit, in the interview Professor Woodley astutely observed that the crisis that society currently finds itself in is rooted in the concept of worldview. However, that is about the only thing this alleged Indian likely about as much an actual Native American as Elizabeth Warren and Ward Churchill got right. For the prescription he offers would result in a socio-philosophical disaster of unprecedented magnitude if allowed to be implemented.
As a professor at a professedly Christian university, Woodley did not call for a return to a Judeo-Christian or Biblical worldview. Instead, Woodley called for the abandonment of western worldviews and the imposition of more indigenous ways of doing things. In other words, he pretty much wants all of civilization as we know it toppled and then reconstituted.
In his analysis, Woodley hypothesizes that Western civilization went awry in embracing the tendency of Greek thought that reasserted itself during the Renaissance and Reformation Era to emphasize the centrality of right belief in terms of theology. One does not have to be a Bible scholar or one of those irritating discernment types to see where this sort of thing ends.
It doesn't really matter all that much what you think about the personhood of God or the life, death, burial and resurrection of Christ. What matters is that you do as you are told by those threatening to burn society to the ground in terms of the likes of Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Think I am exaggerating?
These were pretty much the veiled threats out of Woodley's mouth in the interview by Doug Pagitt who was wringing his hands Phil Donahue style over conservative Christian parents daring to teach conservative Christian values in regards to Social Studies and History.
In his remarks, Woodley insisted that, instead of emphasizing a Western epistemology, indigenous approaches to knowledge should be highlighted. Yet the “indigenous ways” of a great many of the people in the United States are still going to be Western in terms of their classification. For like it or not, at least for a few more years, the majority are “European” in terms of their underlying ancestry. Yet Professor Woodley is as nearly an avowed racialist in terms of the implications of what he is advocating as any jackboot that marched the streets of Berlin in the mid to late 1930's. It's just that Professor Woodley is slyer in disguising the repercussions of the ideology he peddles.
It is not an exaggeration to assert that Professor Woodley holds to a number of presuppositions not all that different from those espoused by the wordviews in which the Third Reich took root and germinated into one of the worst regimes ever to plague human history. Foremost, Professor Woodley advocates placing a despised or held in contempt category of people in a place of subordination or even subjugation.
Granted, for this phase of the social engineering process what he proposes is not as shocking at the moment to current cultural sensibilities such as Kristallnacht, the seizure of private property, or the forced wearing of particular garments for the purposes of easily identifying opponents of the regime, or the corralling of those of certain extractions into designated areas. Yet the entire Covid Era debacle stands as irrefutable historical proof how quickly norms once thought to assure the proverbial “It could never happen here” are expediently set aside by opportunists consolidating the power they crave amidst crisis and confusion.
It will only be through such widespread deprivations of basic liberties that the sort of comprehensive revolution Professor Woodley advocates could possibly be implemented given that its objectives run so counter to the orientation of human nature functioning in beneficial to optimal circumstances. In the world envisioned by Professor Woodley, it is apparently not enough for individuals as individuals to strive to overcome hurt feelings of the past by valuing the image of God to be found in each unique human being. Rather, in his remarks to Doug Pagitt, he was quite explicit that, because the current crisis in which the world finds itself is rooted in the “European worldview”, the cure will require “humility” on the part of Whites. Woodley suggests this can be accomplished by encouraging individuals to embrace the indigenous aspects of their own respective heritages or to cultivate from the standpoint of a subjugated people practices of another culture since, in Woodley's own words, it is offensive for White's to directly incorporate into one's own social identity the cultural practices of another people group categorized as indigenous.
But what if, as stated earlier, your indigenous tendency, as in the case of the Greeks or even the Hebrews, is to scrutinize truth claims from a rational or critical perspective? More importantly, what if your indigenous lineage is of those known to loot, maraud, and pillage that which belongs to others? Dr. Woodley needs to be reminded that such bloodthirsty rapaciousness is not something limited to “pure blooded” Whites.
In the interview with Doug Pagitt, Dr. Woodley assures with a smile in his voice with the proverbial carrot that almost anyone can be cajoled into abandoning Western civilization as we know it for the sort of lifestyle he blesses with the categorization as “indigenous” through enough back to nature encounters and no doubt psychologically manipulative sessions of self-denunciation prisoner of war style around the old campfire provided his environmentalist allies don't consider that accoutrement of ambiance an unnecessary expansion of the carbon footprint. But what happens when most remain unwilling to abandon what is termed the modern or contemporary way of life with its advanced technologies that not only make life more comfortable or bearable but also prolong it as well?
The Antifa and BLM activists with whom Dr. Woodley would probably share a degree of affinity as an allied opponent of advanced capitalism and the free market system have proven themselves unable to resist the temptation to destroy property that does not belong to them when confronted with those unwilling to embrace the policy agenda of such radical activists. The question can be legitimately asked what is to prevent those indoctrinated by Dr. Woodley and by extension Doug Pagitt from doing the same?
In his remarks, Dr. Woodley hinted that your well being and perhaps even your continued existence is not all that much of a priority to him. In his conversation with Pagitt, Woodley articulates his disapproval of the Western worldview to value humanity over nature. One might argue such a presupposition was drawn from Christianity's Biblical foundation that elevated those early Greeks and Romans that Professor Woodley verbalized flat out racist hostility towards if the remarks had been targeted at one of the more faddish ethnicities Professor Woodley has managed to carve out a comfortable living for himself pandering to and agitating on behalf of about the sort of paganism this academic seems to become intellectually aroused over.
But to just what extent does Professor Woodley oppose this elevation of man beyond what he deems the natural, but probably categorized more accurately as primitive, state? Does he intend to forsake the advanced technologies that allow him to propagate his spiritualized Ludditism around the world in minutes in favor of the smoke signals preferred by those of his mythologized ethnography? Does Woodley intend to renounce the comfortable modernized homes Americans have grown accustomed to in favor of more “indigenous” modalities of shelter preferred by his alleged lineage that empowers him to eke out a prosperous living by, to paraphrase a line from an episode of the comedy “Parks and Recreation”, playing White people like a fiddle in favor of tepees, wigwams, or even an igloo?
It must also be asked just what aspect of nature does Professor Woodley believe should be elevated to a status equal to that of humanity and thus devalue human beings as a result? Does that include viruses? Ironically, Professor Woodley and the university that employed him during the Pandemic are likely so given over to the woketopian agenda that they not only probably backed mandatory vaccinations in the name of science (not as an epistemological methodology but rather as an unassailable authority one might point out as the epitome of a Western civilization unmoored from its Judeo-Christian foundations to the point of absolutized secularity) but also likely condemned as unChristian anyone refusing to acquiesce to the alchemical molestation of their bloodstream and cellular structure.
Defenders of Doug Pagitt cannot be held responsible for the viewpoint of a single guest on his podcast. And fair enough. However, there seems to be a pattern of this sort of leftwing hooey on the part of this religionist outraged that you as a Christian conservative would dare to assert the right to educate your child in a protected environment.
In another episode, despite Pagitt insisting upon his right to have a say on the way things are taught in the privacy of your own home, he would undermine your right to voice your concerns before and exercise influence over the government institutions to which you are compelled to surrender financial resources under threat of violence (commonly referred to as taxation). On the 2/11/22 episode, Doug Pagitt discussed the issue of public education. In his remarks, Doug Pagitt assured listeners that it is often only a single voice that shows up at these school board meetings to express disagreement. Doug Pagitt even invoked the phrase “with no dog in the fight” meaning that this theoretical scold has no children in the school system to oppose a book that no one else apparently has a problem with.
In other words, Doug Pagitt holds to shut up and leave the pedagogy to the professionals. All you are to do is to continue to joyfully pay increasingly high tax assessments used for the purposes of denigrating your values, undermining your liberty, and (in the case of critical race theory) your very existence if you happen to be a straight White male.
If you are a propertied taxpayer or even a mere citizen, by definition, you do indeed have “a dog in the fight”. As to whether or not you have children is also a moot point. Neither in many cases do the activists and social engineers bent on revolution that have infiltrated the public school system. At best, these subversives hope to warp young minds into deficient ratiocination and moral degeneracy. At worst, they hope to be the ones to prey upon the innocence and virtue of those with whose care they have been charged.
Perhaps Pastor Pagitt should listen to an episode of the program “Now The End Begins” titled “A Lost World Prepares To Welcome Antichrist”. In the broadcast, the host exhibited Holy Spirit boldness by stating in some detail what sort of linguistic and literary debauchery America's school children are being subjected to in the name of public education. Too often propagandists on the left conceal from the public just what is described in the books in order to protect these publications from removal or restriction in library collections and conservatives refuse to make the content available out of a legitimate concerns about being tossed off the airwaves as part of a virtue signaling ritual where the hosts congratulate themselves as to how ethically upstanding they are by refusing to bring before the public attention evidence as to just how shockingly filthy that the content presented to young minds just happens to be.
The episode detailed in one school alone books available that contained accounts of how sex apps worked, how to do handjobs, what exactly constituted oral sex, a young woman being carnally split in half, and about mouths around shafts. As in this instance, it is interesting how the parents presenting the fruits of their research are verbally shamed for publicly presenting this information often ironically by the ones authorizing that this sort of smut be made readily available for young eyes and minds unaware of the sorts of topics and scenarios about to confront these pupils as the pages are turned.
Yet if it is acceptable for this content to be discussed in classrooms between adult teachers and students often below the age of consent, why do the elected officials, bureaucrats, and academics that taut these publications as so enlightening that the nation's children will be intellectually stifled unless exposed to these narratives become about as embarrassed and flustered as if one of these mothers conveying their justifiable outraged proceeded to do the full Monty and gratuitously flash their bosoms during a solemn public proceeding? If Pastor Pagitt is not sympathetic to the plight of these concerned parents, perhaps he is not the sort of upright man of God he has duped his congregation and the general public into believing he is.
Interestingly, it also seems that many of the Black agitators that would accuse homeschool parents of for the most part doing little more than staying to themselves of racial supremacism or ethnonationalism themselves engage in that very sort of ideology in their own right. For example, in the Bob Smietana and Emily Miller article is interviewed Tyler Burns, a graduate of Pensacola Christian Academy, the ministry in which the Abeka curriculum originated and developed. The history component is categorized by Washington Post partisans as “a form of Christian triumphalism, in which American society was at its best when it hewed to Christian faith.” Burns, who the article articulates an expressed need to categorize as a “Black American”, states, “It was just pure ...nationalistic propaganda. Former Republican President Reagan was treated practically as the fourth member of the Godhead.”
And Afro-supremacists and Black nationalists such as Tyler Burns felt any differently regarding Barack Obama? For if this critique of conservative Evangelical pedagogy is being justified on behalf of authentic accurate history, it must be recalled that Barack Obama was lavished with the Nobel Peace Prize for simply having emerged half Black from the birth canal of a mother substandard in terms of maternal inclinations having pawned him off to be raised in good measure by his White grandparents and Obama gave an acceptance speech at the Democratic convention before a backdrop of Grecian columns alluding to the Temple of Zeus at Pergamon like some sort of pagan deity. Spike Lee went so far as to suggest that, instead of the demarcation of history into BC and AD to situate a particular moment in terms of its chronometric relation to the first coming of Christ, temporal reckoning should be reformulated along the lines of “before” and “after” Obama.
The article was forced to admit that a number of homeschool families augment these niche curricula in regards to the assumptions that fall short for those infected by the ideological contagions of woketopian White guilt. However, it seems Tyler Burns --- who happens to be Black by the way the article just had to point out --- in terms of his comprehensive worldview and the activism he pursues to advance that agenda is not quite so magnanimous in endeavoring to bring about a world that strives to get beyond dermatological pigmentation as a determinant of human behavior and worth.
Besides being a “Black American” you know, Tyler Burns is noted as the president of Witness: A Black Christian Collective and, the article points out, “has spoken extensively about the ways Christian education affected his ability to embrace his Black identity”. This in essence means he is able to eke a decent living from the racial grievance racket as an itinerant victim. Think of him as a mini version of someone like Al Sharpton.
But whereas the White Christian parent is expected to imbue their progeny with such a sense of ethnic shame to the point where these youngsters will docily bend a knee in the future or more likely surrender their financial resources one day in the name of redistributive equity, Tyler Burns is all about (or perhaps better stated only about) bettering the breed of humanity he would identify with as his ethnic kinsman. A number of the statements at Witness: Black Christian Collective sound downright discriminatory and racist if the word “Black” was replaced with that of “White” when read allowed. For the remarks of this supposedly twenty-first century Christian ministry sound disturbingly similar to Klan promotional literature or something that may have been articulated at a Berlin party rally eerily enough in nearly the same decade as ours in a previous century.
For example: “If you are Black and Christian, there is room at the table for you.” But if you are White? Is your place presumably in a reeducation detention center or to be marched to the cotton fields Khmer Rouge style to be subjected to the rehabilitative properties of compulsory involuntary servitude whether you want to be or not?
The Black Collective continues, “We believe the Bible speaks to distribution of reparations for those that have been oppressed, which is why we fund Black folks.” This propaganda continues, “As a Christian foundation, we fund Black Christian leaders who we believe will see the best welfare for all the people they touch.”
In a free society, they are pretty much free to give their charitable dollars to anyone that they please. However, the thing about reparations is that these funds will not be voluntary. Those programs will involve the mandatory and compulsory seizure of resources most likely in the form of fines, fees, and taxes extracted from individuals through the threat of violence inherent to any confiscatory policy implemented by the state. If the likes of Doug Pagitt Tyler Burns, and Randy Woodley think racial tension and animosity are high now, just wait until those working their fingers to the bone see funds redistributed to those that will no doubt enjoy outlandish and profligate lifestyles who barely lift a finger.
It has been over thirty years since columnist Pat Buchanan eloquently addressed the nation from the floor of the 1992 Republican convention warning the American people of the culture war that the average voter might not have been aware of taking place around them or of what they could have done to take part in this conflict with the fate of an entire civilization hanging in the balance. In hindsight, at times it seems valiant patriots might have been too focused on winning positions at the highest levels of government such as the Presidency, the Supreme Court, and both houses of Congress when just as important were those such as school boards and even positions in non-elected institutions that set the foundations for entire societies and cultures. And in this failure, collectivist marauders now stand poised to intellectually beat down the doors of those that have done nothing worse than endeavored to protect their own children within the confines of their own homes from spiritual defilement as the tide inevitably slides ever closer towards Hell.
By Frederick Meekins