Home-Schooled For Christ. And Pence. February 12, 2019February 12, 2019 Christ was one of the two greatest Jews who ever lived.* Though an atheist, I try to live by his teachings (which I’m pretty sure — in their judge-not-lest-ye-be-judged concern for the least among us — are embodied in the Democratic Party platform). I offer these thoughts because I just now stumbled across Kieryn Darkwater’s first-person account from a couple of years ago: I Was Trained for the Culture Wars in Home School, Awaiting Someone Like Mike Pence as a Messiah . . . I grew up in the far-right evangelical conservative (Christofascist) movement; specifically, I was home-schooled and my parents were part of a subculture called Quiverfull, whose aim is to outbreed everyone for Jesus. I spent my teen years being a political activist. I was taught by every pastor I encountered that it was our job as Christians to outbreed the secularists (anyone not a far-right evangelical Protestant) and take over the government through sheer numbers. I was part of TeenPact, Generation Joshua and my local Teenage Republicans (TARS). When the Tea Party rose in 2009, that was my culture. The Tea Party was step one. I was laying the groundwork for those elections in 2006. These people didn’t come out of the blue like it seemed. This plan, this Christofascist takeover of the US government, has been in the works for decades. When evangelical conservatism started becoming popular and more mainstream around the 1970s, the foundation was being laid for the tragedy playing out right now. Evangelical conservatives started taking over their local republican parties and founding organizations like Operation Rescue, Homeschool Legal Defense Association, Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, just to name a few. . . . . . . Generation Joshua, TeenPact and other organizations exist to indoctrinate and recruit homeschooled youth who have ample free time to participate in politics. The biggest resources for teaching civil discourse are the National Christian Forensics and Communications Association and Communicators for Christ (since renamed Institute for Cultural Communicators). Through these programs we learned how to argue effectively. As students, we were taught critical thinking skills but given only a narrow view of what was acceptable to argue for. We were, after all, being trained to take over the country for Christ, literally. We knew how to perform logical gymnastics about abortion, Christianity and any evangelical talking point you could throw at us. When we showed up to city council, local political party meetings and tours of the Capitol we asked intelligent questions, were respectful and had a vested interest in how our local political machine ran. We impressed every government official and staff member with our questions, earnesty and demeanor. In short, we were sneaky and polite Trojan horses; we had an agenda. Yes, even as 15-year-olds. It was forcefully handed to us by the adults in our lives who had been preparing for this since before we were born. I watched the Tea Party takeover and was surprised no one saw it coming. After all, this was part of the plan. Trump being elected is also part of the plan, although not Trump specifically; the true goal is Pence. . . . It’s a pretty scary story, and I like to think too gloomy when she says, later in the piece, that it’s impossible to change these people’s minds. Her mind changed, after all. With the right leadership from progressive clergy — e.g., the Red Letter Christians, the Sojourners, and the Pope — we could swell the ranks of those who see Christ’s teachings more as Martin Luther King, Jr. did — say — than as do the folks in khakis and polo shirts — “some of them very fine people,” we are assured, who marched in Charlottesville. *Really? You have to ask? Einstein!