From “The Seven Mountains Mandate: Exposing the Dangerous Plan to Christianize America and Destroy Democracy” by Matthew Boedy
For decades, education has been a “long game” for White evangelicals. Many have seen their purpose as being “salt and light” in a dark culture of public schools, perhaps saving a few from within or outlasting its influence using Christian private schools as a bulwark. But there has also been another strategy. In her 2015 book about Christian nationalism, scholar Julie Ingersoll named this strategy as one “designed to build a thoroughly Reconstructed society.” This type of society is based on the theology of Christian reconstructionism. The father of that theology, R.J. Rushdoony, laid the foundation for its educational aspect in the ‘60s through his expert testimony in early lawsuits advocating for what is now known as “school choice.” After Brown v. Board of Education ordered the desegregation of schools, White conservative Christians created a parallel education system to avoid integration. Even as these people led an exodus from public schools, however, they targeted those same schools, seeking a diversion of public funds into vouchers that could be used for tuition to private schools. As White evangelicals lost their privileged status in public education, some “began to reexamine the foundations of public education,” many concluding that “public education is, by definition, unbiblical.” Ingersoll notes. In Rushdoony’s “reconstructed” society, the government should have no role in education. Instead, it should remain under the auspices of parents and churches. Anything else, he said, would “violate biblical law.” This is why Ingersoll wrote that homeschooling is seen as the “single more important tool” for the reconstruction of society.