The Christian Home School Movement

The Christian home school movement is one of the Religious Right's most durable institution-building projects: its leaders sought to form children's beliefs and loyalties outside public institutions, and channeled some graduates into the movement's political and legal organizations. The intellectual foundations were laid by R.J. Rushdoony, whose 1963 book 'The Messianic Character of American Education' argued that public schools were a form of secular state religion — in competition with Christianity rather than neutral toward it. For Rushdoony, placing children in government schools was an act of spiritual surrender. His Chalcedon Foundation promulgated this position through Reformed theological networks throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and Rushdoony personally provided expert legal testimony in early home schooling court cases, helping establish the legal precedents that later organizations would build on. By the early 1980s, a small but growing number of evangelical and fundamentalist families were educating their children at home — but they operated in legal jeopardy in most states. Homeschooling was not explicitly legal under most states' compulsory education statutes. Families faced prosecution, truancy charges, and threats of child welfare intervention. The founding of HSLDA in March 1983 by Michael Farris and Mike Smith transformed the movement from a scattering of legally vulnerable families into an organized force with legal representation, legislative advocacy, and communication infrastructure. HSLDA's membership model — pooling dues to fund legal defense — solved the collective action problem and created the organizational base for political mobilization. The movement's growth was rapid: by 1985 an estimated 50,000 children were being home schooled; by 1993, homeschooling was legal in all 50 states, a direct result of HSLDA's 50-state legislative campaign. By 1990, the movement's secular origins (associated with educational reformers like John Holt) had been effectively displaced. The Christian Right, through Focus on the Family's James Dobson (who promoted home schooling on his radio program) and HSLDA's ideological framing, had defined home schooling as primarily a Christian act of cultural separation. The movement's rhetoric explicitly positioned public schools as 'government schools' hostile to faith — language drawn directly from Rushdoony. The Christian home school movement created a closed educational ecosystem: curriculum publishers (Abeka, Bob Jones University Press, Apologia) teaching young-earth creationism and a providential view of American history; home school co-operatives providing community; HSLDA providing legal protection and political coordination; Generation Joshua providing teen political training; and Patrick Henry College providing higher education for the pipeline's graduates. The political results were measurable by the 2000s. Home-schooled graduates were visible on congressional staffs, in federal agencies, and in conservative legal organizations. Michael Farris founded Patrick Henry College in 2000 to prepare such graduates for government and public life.

Themes this entry appears in

• Christian Nationalism
• Dominionism
• Education
• Political Strategy

Connections from The Christian Home School Movement

• influenced → Patrick Henry College (2000) — Patrick Henry College was built to receive the graduates of the Christian home school movement — most of its students came from Christian home schools, making it, in Hanna Rosin's account, the terminus of an educational pipeline that began in early childhood and ended with placement in government and legal careers.

Connections to The Christian Home School Movement

• James Dobson influenced (1983) — James Dobson used his Focus on the Family radio program — reaching millions of evangelical households — to promote Christian home schooling as an act of faithful parenting. Sara Diamond argues Dobson's endorsement helped transform home schooling from a fringe practice associated with Reconstructionist theology into a mainstream evangelical choice, and his framing of public schools as hostile to Christian values drove family after family into the movement.
• Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) influenced (1983) — HSLDA converted the scattered Christian home school movement into a legally protected, organizationally coherent force. Its legal defense model, 50-state legislative campaign (achieving legalization in all states by 1993), and grassroots lobbying network turned a scattered practice — shaped for some families by Rushdoony's ideas — into a mass movement.
• Quiverfull Movement influenced (1990) — The Quiverfull movement propagated almost entirely through the homeschool and ATI/IBLP networks of the 1990s and 2000s. Large families were the norm in conservative homeschool communities, and the theological framework Mary Pride and Rick Hess provided — that birth control was a feminist rebellion against God, and that Christian families must bear maximum children as a spiritual and demographic weapon — was received as confirmation of practices already underway. Vision Forum's curriculum and ATI's homeschool materials reinforced Quiverfull theology in parallel. The result was a feedback loop: Quiverfull theology radicalized homeschool communities, and homeschool infrastructure distributed Quiverfull theology.
• R.J. Rushdoony influenced (1963) — Rushdoony's 1963 'The Messianic Character of American Education' provided the theological case for withdrawing children from public schools. He provided expert legal testimony in early home schooling cases and his Chalcedon Foundation argued home education was the only biblically sanctioned model — establishing the ideological and legal groundwork HSLDA built on.

Sources

• The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism — Katherine Stewart (2020), pp. 68–95
• Building God's Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction — Julie Ingersoll (2015), pp. 138–168
• God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America — Hanna Rosin (2007), pp. 10–45
• Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States — Sara Diamond (1995), pp. 288–296
• Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy — Frederick Clarkson (1997), pp. 155–175
• A Brief History of Homeschooling — Coalition for Responsible Home Education (2023)