Fourteen months ago I aired the first of my nine part series of podcasts on what I call patriocentricity, that is, the philosophy within some Christian homeschooling circles that teaches that the father is the center (prophet, priest, and king) of the home. In this paradigm, the father receives the only calling from the Lord and every family member is to seek to fulfill that calling. The response to this series continues to amaze me as these recordings are still the most often downloaded podcasts and most requested CD’s. Apparently thousands of homeschoolers share my concerns.
In putting together this series, I approached the subject with my guests from the standpoint that these teachings are extreme within the Christian homeschooling community and that they are arrived at through the eisegesis of Scripture rather than through proper exegesis of the Word of God. So that fact alone ought to give Bible believing homeschoolers great concern when they see the leaders of patriocentricity now rewriting the history of homeschooling and at the same time appointing themselves to “cast a vision” for the future of homeschooling in order to further prop up their extrabiblical agenda.
Last week it was announced that the Christian Home Educators of Colorado will be hosting a conference in Indianapolis in March of 2009. They state that the goal of this 2009 “leadership summit” is to “define a vision for the future of the Christian home education movement, (to) lay down a rock-solid, biblically-based vision for home education that will withstand the attacks of our current generation and preserve this precious vision for future generation.” In order to do this they are “assembling the key national leaders, authors, researchers, speakers and advocates who have framed the homeschool vision over the past generation (1979-2009).” Headlining this meeting will be Voddie Baucham, Doug Phillips, Kevin Swanson, and Brian Ray.
I found the time line they are using to be quite interesting. In fact, I found it interesting a few years ago when Doug Phillips stated that “home education began to emerge as a national movement” in 1983, remarkably the year Bill Gothard launched his Advanced Training Institute. Why did he choose that time in history as a starting point? Could it be that he equates the advancement of home education with the theonomic, patriocentric agenda that saw home schooling as an essential vehicle for promoting those goals for a Christian society?
My own first introduction to the idea of homeschooling came in the 1970’s when my oldest children were still toddlers. Having an interest in homesteading and organic gardening, Clay and I read books like Living on Five Acres and numerous back issues of Mother Earth News. The notion of homeschooling seemed to go along with some of the other ideas of self-sufficient living we were exploring and we began to consider it for our own family. And it was about that time that I heard an interview with a true leader in homeschooling, Dr. Raymond Moore, on Focus on the Family and we began to think seriously about teaching our own children. It was the book Better Late Than Early, co-written with his wife, Dorothy, that finally substantiated much of what we believed about children and that convinced us of the value of home education. It was also a book that was based on decades of research done by the Moores, including the educating of their own children which they began in 1944! (Doug Phillips’ father would have been 3 years old at the time!)
The announcement of this conference and the use of the word “vision” about a dozen times on the website should be concern enough on a variety of levels. Three of the four named speakers currently travel around the country promoting the Family Integrated Church agenda and the patriocentricity lifestyles that threaten the spiritual health of both church and family life. As I read through the website, I kept asking myself “Who appointed or elected these men as leaders? What makes them think they can speak for me or the millions of other Christian homeschooling families? Where are the voices of the mothers who are doing all the hard work of homeschooling in the first place? Why are they being excluded in this vision casting?”
It is obvious that this agenda is meant to be embraced all across the country within homeschooling support groups and at homeschooling conventions. They state that one of the objectives for the leadership summit will be the development of a Christian Education Manifesto statement which I assume will be written and men will be asked to sign, acknowledging the document as a statement of faith for all who claim to be Christian homeschoolers.
Then, last week I watched this trailer for a new film that is about to be released entitled “The Rock From Which We Were Hewn.”
Immediately I had three thoughts as I watched this. The first is that it appears that the true leaders and founders of Christian homeschooling are missing in this version of the history of this movement. The second is that some of the “leaders” shown in this trailer have serious charges against them and their reputations, in my mind, disqualify them from speaking for any of us. And thirdly, I find some of what they are saying to be unsubstantiated and questionable and, quite frankly, more of the same scare tactics I have seen used to promote and sell a paradigm to homeschooling families in the past. I see this conference as one of the Trojan horses that pose a tremendous threat to Christian homeschooling and I will present more about this in the months to come.
Any thoughts?
I had another thought after I wrote this article. R.C. Sproul Jr. set up a division between homeschoolers in his article about “movement homeschoolers” as opposed to the rest of us who don’t homeschool “by conviction.” I think it should be considered in light of this upcoming conference.
) The government is already taking our tax dollars for education so what is the big deal if some choose charter schools? 
Wow, some high drama in that film. I guess it would to far a stretch for them to realize that there are many homeschooling families that are not part of the Christian HS movment.
“The announcement of this conference and the use of the word “vision” about a dozen times on the website should be concern enough on a variety of levels. ”
Yeah, I run when I see the word ‘vision’ used by Christian leaders. We already have one laid out in scripture… given to us by our Lord. We do not need man made visions for our faith. And this is coming from a certified strategic planner who facilitated visioneering for companies for 18 years!
The real problem is that some homeschoolers have matured and no longer need the leaders. Therefore the fear mongering.