Christian homeschooling grew from marginal to mainstream through political mobilization by 2016
Evidence
THE CHRISTIAN HOMESCHOOL movement remained a steady source of teachings on militant patriarchal authority and Christian nationalism, but by the 2000s it was no longer the remote outpost within the broader evangelical movement that it once had been. Since the early 1980s, Christian homeschooling had been gaining in popularity and influence. In 1994, the movement received a boost when James Dobson joined forces with Michael Farris’s Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) to defend the rights of homeschool parents. What sparked Dobson’s interest was an amendment to an education bill introduced by a Democratic congressman that would have required homeschool teachers to obtain state certification in each subject they taught, a requirement that would make homeschooling prohibitively difficult. Hosting Farris on his show, Dobson prompted one million callers to contact their representatives in Congress; not only was the proposed legislation defeated, but the House of Representatives responded by passing new legislation guaranteeing greater protections to homeschooling families. Dobson’s was “the biggest game in town,” Farris recalled, and he considered Dobson’s intervention a turning point in the homeschool movement. By 1999, 850,000 children were homeschooled in America; by 2016, the number was at 1.7 million, about two-thirds of whom were religious. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 428
Categorization
- XREF: Supports the book’s central cultural-apparatus thesis: militant-patriarchy teaching was transmitted through homeschool consumer/political infrastructure, not pulpit theology.
- CANDY: One million callers to Congress killed a certification bill — a neat, concrete political-mobilization anecdote.