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School Times for End Times

Part VI:
Conclusion
What now?

The evolution of Christian Nationalism and its engagement in public education over the past three centuries occurred at its intersections with several cyclical developments in U.S. history. The brief history presented in this report focused on four of these.

First was its intersections with White Nationalism, or the notion that Whites are to be the center of nation building, starting from colonial-era preachings of Whites as God’s chosen ones; to Christian justifications for the racial exclusiveness of Common Schools, the segregation of early public schools, and the colonizing mission of schools for Indigenous students; to Christian efforts through legal and social strategies to resist Reconstruction, the Social Gospel, the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, desegregation, immigration of non-Whites, Great Replacement, and race-conscious curriculum.

Second was its intersections with a militarized patriarchy and the policing of gender and sexuality, starting with colonial-era preachings of men as God’s chosen ones; to Christian justifications for the exclusion of girls from Common Schools and the moral panics about the possible queer gender and sexuality of women teachers; to the hypermasculinization of men and domesticization of women as part of Christian Nationalist efforts to resist communism and feminism as well as to build toward Christian Reconstructionism and theocracy; to culture wars about abortion, sex education, and LGBTQ+ rights as strategies to mobilize communities for political action.

Third was its intersections with technonationalism, or the notion that science and technology are to be the center of nation building, starting from the periods of Christian revivalism when confronted with the elevating of science and technology during the First and then Second Industrial Revolutions; to legal struggles to ensure that Christian teachings prevail over scientific ones like about evolution; to the recent embrace of advanced information technologies that can supposedly accelerate human progress toward the End Times.

Fourth was its intersections with conservatism and neoliberalism to bolster its two-prong strategies of deinstitutionalization and re-Christianization, starting with its leveraging of free-market academic scholarship to advance school choice and vouchers; to collaborating with other constituents to build a Conservative Movement infrastructure that centered on Christian Nationalism; to its central role in shaping public policy through the Republican Party, and most recently, the Trump Administrations.

Given all this, what is to be done? Social movements can learn much from this history of Christian Nationalist activism in education about how their current ascension was made possible. Three themes are worth highlighting. There has always existed much diversity among Christians, and even deep divides and virulent discrimination between groups, and yet, the varied groups found ways to work collectively toward shared goals. There have long been what some Christians considered to be attacks on them—attacks that have taken many forms—and yet, they found ways to set long-term goals and build movement infrastructure for advancing them. There have always been initiatives to change law, policy, curriculum, and institutions, but the work did not stop there—the political campaigns consistently went hand in hand with the social and culture projects of changing narratives, paradigms, and framings as ways to hook to the values and principles that ultimately were what could bring the masses into their movement. These themes of collective action, capacity building, and consciousness raising should sound familiar, since they are precisely what made possible the gains of any impactful social movement, including progressive ones throughout the past three centuries.[105]

I conclude with three reasons for hope. First, I recently heard two freedom fighters in their eighties who, when asked how they name this moment, both said something similar: that this incredibly difficult time that we are in is also the best time to be alive. They were partly being cheeky, since we don't really get to choose when we are alive. But their point was also that, at any given moment, the future has not yet been determined and that each of us can and does play a role in shaping what comes next. Life is impermanent, and they still want to be a part of building our world. Second, democracy too is always in-the-making, and the American project in particular has always been contested. It is true that Christian Nationalism, White Nationalism, imperialism, and militarized patriarchy have always been at the roots of the American project, and in this moment have ascended to great influence, but history shows us that, time and again, they were reactionary to the counter struggles for diversity, democracy, and progress that also lay at America’s roots and have always been in play. Finally, then, our role in this moment is to be part of the social movements for justice, peace, liberation, sovereignty, and freedom that are shaping the present and the future. I hope that this report helps us in that effort.

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[105] For more on movement building, see Kumashiro (2008, 2012, 2020).

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