Homeschooling Under Threat: Standing Firm in God’s Calling to Educate
Why Evangelical Christians Must Defend Their Homeschooling Rights
It is surprising how many evangelical Christians trust the state with the education of their children. I don’t mean parents who send their children to public school. I mean evangelical Christians who believe in the sinfulness of man and the doctrine of total depravity and yet believe that the state is best equipped to hold parents accountable for forming a child’s mind and heart.
And holding parents accountable is exactly what the state of New Jersey has in mind with a bill currently under consideration—a bill that would require homeschool families to submit their curriculum for state approval, including mandates to teach “equity,” “inclusion,” and other tenets of intersectional Marxist social theory.
The Growing Threat of State Control Over Christian Homeschooling
Homeschoolers cannot afford to let their guard down to the ever-reaching arm of the secular state.
The right of parents to educate their children at home, especially from a Christian worldview, is a hard-won freedom that remains under quiet but constant threat—and it is our duty to defend it. The threat against homeschooling is not an issue unto itself, but part of a larger move to deconstruct the Christian worldview. Deconstructionism has even found its way into churches and seeped into Christian worship.
The History of Homeschooling: From Frontier Challenges to Legal Battles
The early roots of the modern homeschool movement emerged in the 1970s and early 1980s. That time is often called the homeschooling frontier.
Much like the American frontier of the 19th century, the population was low and threats abounded. Almost no one homeschooled, and in some places, laws actually prohibited it. If you tried to teach your children at home, child protective services could take them away—or you could even go to jail. And some parents did go to jail.
Social Persecution of Homeschoolers in the 1980s and 1990s
From the mid-1980s throughout the 1990s, things were better in many places, at least legally. Homeschoolers still weren’t socially accepted by many in the community, but at least parents wouldn’t wind up in handcuffs.
It was more common for prejudiced neighbors to weaponize child protective services by making false claims. Children were torn from parents by scornful CPS agents and zealous judges bent on forcing parents into compliance. Much like the way early Christians were not persecuted in Rome for their theology but for their unwillingness to conform, 90s homeschoolers were not so much under official persecution as social persecution. It could all go away if they would just pinch incense to Caesar.
What It Was Like Growing Up Homeschooled in the 1990s
I grew up homeschooled during this era and experienced it firsthand. On Sunday and Wednesday nights, some older members of our church grilled me to make sure I was “on grade level.” They compared us to other children in Bible study and constantly asked why we didn’t attend school with our peers.
They would ask, “Why won’t your mother put you in school with everyone else?”
Homeschoolers were not only misunderstood—we were viewed with suspicion. My parents faced social pressure and scrutiny. All because they believed they had the God-given responsibility, and the command, to raise and educate their children according to Scripture.
The Current Landscape of Homeschooling and Ongoing Legal Threats
Today, more people accept homeschooling, and many new families enjoy freedoms that earlier generations fought hard to secure.
COVID-19 provided an unexpected boon to the homeschooling movement as the option became more popular.
While many second-generation and frontier homeschoolers welcome new families into the movement, we also want them to understand the ongoing challenges and threats to homeschooling freedoms.
New Jersey’s recent attack on Christian homeschoolers clearly demonstrates why believing parents must never back down or become complacent in defending their God-given right to educate their children.
Some have told me that I’m too defensive about a parent’s right to directly give their child a Christian education—that culture is not antagonistic anymore, like when I was a child, that no one is actively seeking to take those rights.
But the truth is, the nature of man doesn’t change apart from Christ.
If you allow the state to take your child’s mind and heart, it gladly will.
