These are serious challenges we all face on a personal level and one wonders if many parents caught up in the movement missed the trees for the forest. They saw the big sweeping picture in terms of goals and aspirations for their children but missed the nuts and bolts, the essential parts that require so much time and attention.
Others are starting to reflect on so-called Generation
Joshua. Those who are simply opposed to homeschooling or dismissive of it – or
those who don't understand the underlying doctrinal ideas that drive and shape
many of these people are not going to produce any kind of analysis of value.
It's those near the movement, but a little distant from it who are most likely
to understand what has happened.
As mentioned, I have no doubt there are many who have
followed the path and have entered adulthood meeting the expectations of their
parents. They want them 'successful' – a culturally derived notion that
overlaps with middle class values and therefore rests on the premises of
financial security and social respectability. The movement has always paid a
great deal of lip service to the Magisterial Reformation's idea of 'Vocation' –
an extra-scriptural notion that seeks to Christianize and sanctify all mundane
tasks. As such, the movement offers praise and validation to those who work in
Blue Collar and working class circles but in reality that's not what the
movement wants to produce. There are some exceptions found among those who have
embraced certain agrarian narratives but in almost every case there's a degree
of self-deception at work as most of these so-called Dominionist farmers are
little more than gentleman farmers who earn their middle class incomes by other
means or are independently wealthy to begin with. The farming angle is tied to
a narrative but it doesn't actually produce an income they live on or the kind
of standard of living they've come to expect and believe to be morally
respectable.
For the most part these folks want to produce professionals
and people who will move in white collar circles – the movers and the shakers
of culture. And yet I've also seen a real struggle as many of their children do
not possess the discipline or demeanour to do so. Some have and have been
successful but I've also seen many 'embarrassments', adult children who are
struggling into their late twenties and thirties and who are still basically
being supported by their parents.
All of these thoughts and many more circled in my mind as I
watched Madison Cawthorn during the Republican National Convention in 2020. Embarrassed
by his silly antics I was more disturbed by his speech and his weaving together
of American idealism and Christian phraseology. The romanticism and historical revisionism
(including a deceitful evocation of Martin Luther King) are all par for the
course in those circles – a script written by FOX. I was far more disturbed
when I discovered that he was a serial liar and of morally dubious character,
and as such he completely discredits his narrative, claims, and the Christian
testimony he attempts to link to his story and person.
I was not terribly surprised to find out he was a product of
Patrick Henry College and the larger movement. Despite his failures and
personal failings it's apparent that those within the GOP and Trumpite
movements saw marketing possibilities with him and he was propelled into
Congress filling the seat once inhabited
by another Dominionist, deceiver, and criminal – Trump's Chief of Staff and one
of the architects of the January 6 coup attempt, Mark Meadows.
Since then Cawthorn has supported the Trumpite insurrection,
and his rhetoric has exceeded most associated with those events. Earlier
generations of conservatives would have decried his Right-wing rhetoric as
treasonous and in Christian terms his ethics are more akin to Cain and Lamech
than Christ.
I doubt Patrick Henry College would want to own Cawthorn and
indeed he dropped out before graduation. His conduct demonstrates that he's
basically unrepentant of his past behaviour. He continues to lie and rather
than repent he has simply deflected and sought to change his story and re-frame
the narrative. This is a tactic in keeping with Trump and the ethos of FOX. It
isn't Christian in any way but it has formed deep inroads into the Christian
community. It's one thing to err and sin and then to own it – but the cost
would be an end of his political aspirations and so like almost all politicians
he refuses to admit to what he's done and take responsibility for it. The power
and prestige he has found in holding office is clearly the most important thing
in his life and overrides any commitment he might have to Christ.
He purports to stand for conservative values but his life
tells a different story – his recent divorce only emphasizes this point.
Twenty years after the founding of Patrick Henry, Generation
Joshua, and the coming together of a doctrinally minded and deliberate sector
of the homeschooling movement – what is the harvest? How many narcissists like
Cawthorn have they produced? An entitled brat, he allied with lawyers in the
aftermath of his car accident and extorted millions of dollars, his conduct has
been deplorable and yet he continues to lie and deceive. His message in the end
is one of violence and power and his theology, ethics, and sense of history is
such that he has aligned himself with what is essentially a fascist movement.
I'm not surprised as I've watched other Christians flirt with
fascism, parents proudly posting on social media their children at Right-wing
protest events standing alongside paramilitary extremists with guns. I've seen
other families homeschool their children only to send them off to join the US
military and become stormtroopers for the US Empire. I'm not sure why they homeschooled
their children to begin with – antithesis and a moral environment was certainly
not the goal if they sent them off to the military. In other cases I've seen
homeschooled daughters married off to Right-wing zealots who speak of militia
musters on their Facebook pages.
Is this what it was all for? Riches and power, and
increasingly an embrace of extremism and violence? In every case these goals
produce rotten ethics and rotten fruit. These people decry the entitlement
attitude of the Millennials and Generation Z and yet it would seem in many
cases these are the very types of children they are producing and in the case
of Cawthorn (and others I've seen) what they're producing are sociopathic monsters
– or to utilise an old but in this case appropriate term, a gang of scoundrels.
I'm afraid the great irony here is that foundation stones are
being laid, not for future cultural conquest or the flawed goal of cultural
Christianization – but for apostasy. They would build the Kingdom but when the
clouds clear, all we're seeing is another Tower of Babel with a cheap and tacky
cross stuck on the top – a Bride turned whore, a poignant and painful
fulfillment of Biblical typology.
See also:
https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-healthy-response-to-duggar-scandal.html
https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2016/11/homeschooled-stormtroopers.html