Source of book: I own this.
This was this month’s selection for our “Literary Lush” book
club. One of the things I enjoy about this club is that I end up reading
interesting books that I never would have discovered on my own. This book is
definitely in that category as I would never have picked it up on my own. In
this case, however, my wife had wanted to read this book, which meant that I
might have read it after she did.
"In families like mine there is no crime worse than telling the truth." ~ Tara Westover
This book was a difficult one to read at times, because it
was a bit too familiar for comfort. I have spoken about my family’s time in
Bill Gothard’s cult, and the damage I have had to deal with from
Cultural
Fundamentalism in my upbringing. There were a lot of things in this book
that I recognized - and wish I didn’t.
***
Let me start, however, with some significant differences. My
family was never as crazy as the one
in this book. We never really went in completely for the lunacy, even as we
flirted with it. As I would put it, we dabbled in insanity, and were
“crazy-adjacent,” meaning that we knew and hung with some people who were this
crazy, and believed some of the poison, but we never truly left the mainstream
of normal 20th Century American life.
I also want to be clear that my parents are not mentally ill
like the father (and possibly the mother) in this book, and that they were not
abusive like the parents in this book. That’s an important distinction, and I
believe it is why we only dabbled, rather than following through on the worst
ideas. However, we knew people who did abuse their children (more about that
later), and knew plenty of mentally ill and damaged people within the Fundie
universe.
While we embraced a series of faddish “alternative medicine”
and dietary approaches, we never rejected Western medicine - and certainly
never went down the trail of “using Western medicine is rejecting God.” But
still, between the carousel of diet fads (from vegetarianism to high protein)
and the acceptance of long-debunked “cures” of various sorts, we dabbled in
some pretty silly stuff.
Our involvement in the anti-feminist Patriarchy side of
things was a bit deeper, although, again, we were more “normal” than most. It
was always assumed that girls be as educated as boys, and my parents never
mandated skirts. But of all the crazy ideas described in this book, I think
Patriarchy has made the most inroads into white Evangelicalism, and it has had
the most lingering effect on my birth family. I was also reminded by someone
who kind of stepped away from our family during that time that my parents said
that giving women the vote was a big mistake. So we might have gone over the
cliff in some ways. Of course, now this idea has gone
mainstream on Fox News,
so...
Likewise, it is important to point out that my parents took
academics seriously, and, even though we were homeschooled, we were not
“unschooled,” and we were able to go from homeschooling to college without any
more of a hiccup than any other normal kids. So the education part here was
very different for us. That said, we knew people whose kids were not educated,
and were - from what I could tell - significantly neglected rather than raised.
We are not Mormon. My parents are fairly conservative
Evangelicals who (as far as I can tell) went part way down the rabbit hole
because of our involvement in the homeschooling subculture - and with a heavy
assist from conspiracy theory authors (all too popular in Evangelical
subculture in the 1980s) like Larry Burkett.
Also, we didn’t know any Mormons like the Westovers. We knew
ones much more like the ones the Westovers condemned as “worldly gentiles.”
So, I do not want to create the impression that we were this
family. However, we did drink from the same poisoned well in a number of cases.
I hope to give a better picture later in this post.
***
Tara Westover is the youngest child of seven, in a Mormon
family living in the mountains of Idaho
- kind of the “ground zero” for Survivalists. Oh, I guess I should explain what
Survivalists are.
Survivalists believe that there is a coming breakdown of
society and government, and that the vast unwashed masses will have no way of
feeding themselves. Thus, those who wish to survive must be self sufficient,
able to feed themselves, and able to stave off an invasion of those not so
prepared. So basically, the zombie apocalypse, except with real human beings.
To this end, they buy land that they can farm, store vast quantities of
shelf-stable food and fuel, put together an arsenal and enough ammunition to
defend the place from starving people (or the government in black helicopters),
and focus on teaching the kids skills for an agrarian lifestyle, not the modern
era.
Going along with this is typically a deep distrust of
government; a distrust of modern Western medicine; a belief in conspiracy
theories (particularly about Jews, multiculturalism and globalism, the
Illuminati, Freemasons, Communists, the United Nations, the Trilateral Commission,
and Democrats); a worship of the supposed purity of the past; suspicion of
modern culture and technology; a belief that only they are the true [Christians, Mormons, intelligent people,
whatever]; a vicious tribalism - hostility to outsiders; obsession with guns
and other weapons; and a strong affinity for Patriarchy, White Supremacy, and
neo-Nazism.
In some ways, one can see a pretty direct connection between
modern Survivalists and the sort that bought fallout shelters in the 1950s -
although nuclear war was definitely a possibility. And also a connection with
the John Birch Society, 19th Century conspiracy theories,
The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and 19th Century snake oil and dietary
charlatans like Kellogg. I would also note that there seems to be a lot of
overlap between Survivalists and groups like Militias, cultic churches,
religious fundamentalist subgroups, home birth midwives, and alternative
medicine scams. I might even say that Survivalism is practically a caricature
of every distinctively “American” brand of nuttiness, all rolled into one.
Tara was pretty young when
her family took this turn, so, unlike some of her older siblings, she didn’t
really remember life “before.” All she knew was isolation, conspiracy theories,
a controlling father, a lack of education, avoidance of medical treatment, and
deep rooted fears of the government.
The book appears to be based mostly on her compulsive
journaling (which I have heard is a Mormon thing) combined with her memories.
She notes that she considers her own memory to be flawed - the first chapter is
of a “memory” she knows is obviously false - that her mother was murdered by
the government in a
Ruby
Ridge type incident. Since her mother is alive, obviously this isn’t true -
but because of the way her parents freaked out about the incident involving
White Supremacist and illegal firearm seller Randy Weaver and his family, she
kind of internalized the case. (She was all of 6 years old, so this is not
surprising.) For many of the incidents, Westover checked with those of her
family that she is still in contact with (3 of her older brothers), and has
indicated throughout the text when their memories differ. To an attorney, the
differences are unsurprising. After all, witness accounts often differ,
particularly with regard to traumatic events.
The book follows Westover’s life from her earliest memories
through age 27, when she started work on the book. A substantial part tells of
her life at home, until she left to study at BYU (largely against her father’s
wishes.) After a couple years of struggle to overcome her utter lack of
education (she had never heard of the Holocaust, or learned more than
rudimentary math, let alone learned how to write an actual essay or use a textbook),
she eventually excelled, earning a PhD at Cambridge.
The education issue is rather fascinating to me. Westover’s
parents appear to be quite intelligent, although deeply deluded. Out of the
seven children, it appears that three, Tara included, went on to higher
education and excelled. The others never made the leap, and ended up working
for their parents and becoming trapped in their alternate reality. High IQ
seems to run in the genes, but not necessarily good judgment.
In an interesting twist, after struggling financially for
most of Tara’s childhood, her parents
eventually made it fairly big time with an essential oils business. As one of
our book club members noted, their success seemed to make Westover try to
compete with her family in the last part of the book. There is what seems to be
a bit of gratuitous bragging near the end, as if she is trying to prove that
she (despite her family’s warnings and censure) turned out just as well as they
did. Not surprising, considering their behavior toward her - including their
attempts to “save” her from the devil. (Because she left and got an education,
of course…)
There are a number of harrowing incidents in the book.
Before making the essential oils their business, her parents ran a junkyard which
was not (to put it very mildly) OSHA compliant. The safety risks they took were
pretty appalling - with the kids too. This, as well as their cavalier approach
to auto safety, led to a number of horrifying accidents. The number of serious
concussions that occurred is pretty high. Mom was never right after a car
accident that confined her to the basement for months and wrecked her memory.
(They never sought medical care.) There were several severe burns from
explosions, Tara got serious cuts and stabs as
a kid from equipment and metal pieces, and everyone seemed to have major scars
from avoidable injuries. As someone raised by safety conscious parents (another
way they differed from this family), I found it horrifying.
But worse was the fact that the family refused to seek
medical care. As the dad put it, “You can’t put your trust in a doctor, then
ask the Lord to heal you.” As I noted, my family didn’t go this far - although
there was an incident where a relative died of cancer, and I heard stuff about
how she should have just gone with alternative medicine. (I don’t think my parents still think this way,
because they have availed themselves of modern medicine...but still.)
There is also Tara’s
description of her mother trying to get birth certificates for the younger
children, who had been born at home. (Side note here: I was born at home,
although that was before my parents’ Prepper days, so it was more a hippie
thing. I got a birth certificate. However, I have done legal work for adults
who lacked a birth certificate because of kooky religious beliefs like the
Westovers’.) The problem was, in part, because Tara’s
mom didn’t remember her exact birth date. And neither did other family members.
It is both hilarious and...kind of horrifying.
The worst parts, however, involved Tara’s
brother Shawn, who, perhaps partially as a result of multiple traumatic brain
injuries, became violent and abusive to Tara and her older sister. Tara tells of some of the incidents, from holding her
head in the toilet until she “admitted” she was a whore, to later threats to
kill her for blowing the whistle on him. What Tara
doesn’t say, but strongly implies, is that he sexually abused her and her
sister. (There are a few incidents that go almost, but not quite, up to the line.)
I wonder if she decided that she had to pull that punch because she was
concerned that her now-wealthy family would sue her for defamation. In any
case, she scrupulously draws a hard line before anything sexual occurs. This
also includes her stories of her boyfriends. It is clear that she shared a flat
with one in Europe during a period of study - so one assumes they were sexually
active - but she never really lets us in on that.
Almost as bad, however, are the extended attempts she makes
to reconcile - even after her parents make clear that the cost of
reconciliation is that she accept their reality and agree that nothing bad ever
happened. The degree of gaslighting in this book is appalling. And a bit
familiar, not from my own family, but from others within the
Christian
Patriarchy community. (See, for one example, sexual predator Bill Gothard…)
I genuinely worried throughout the last 50 or so pages that she might actually
give in and go back to them. She didn’t but it was a close call.
One of the interesting things about our book club discussion
is that there was one person who had difficulty believing that Westover was
being truthful. And it is true, there are inconsistencies - particularly about
timing and some specific events. For the most part, Westover notes that
accounts differ, and she often doubts her own memories even as she reads what
she wrote in her journal and compares it with her memories and those of the
brothers who also escaped. For me, I found the story to be credible not just
because of the way that Westover did her best to admit the inherent
unreliability of memory, but because I
knew people very much like this. I can say that the conspiracy theories are
portrayed accurately. The subculture is portrayed accurately. The gaslighting,
the denialism about genuine abuse, the suspicion of government and outsiders -
she knows it personally just as I
know it from those I knew. This isn’t the sort of memoir one could write from
reading Wikipedia. You have to have experienced the subculture to be so fluent
in its idiosyncrasies and the depths of delusion.
One thing I wanted to point out about the book is this:
while Westover’s parents were over-the-top, they weren’t
that far out from a certain mainstream. Specifically, a lot of
these ideas - albeit in less obviously nutty forms - are endemic to white
Evangelicalism. If you look at this as a continuum, the average mainstream
white Evangelical subscribes to some forms of some of the nutty ideas.
(Typically some combination of distrust of government, patriarchy, tribalism,
and suspicion of other cultures and subcultures.) This is precisely why you get
80% voting for and supporting Trump, who kind of ran on an appeal to these less
than admirable human tendencies. There is also a strong apocalyptic streak in
white Evangelicals, whether it is the
Premillennial
Dispensationalism I was raised with (think
Left Behind) or the
Postmillennial
Dominionism/Theocracy pushed by the
Reconstructionists
of the
Christian
Patriarchy movement - that’s the one that Gothard and Rushdoony (hugely
influential in the homeschool movement) pushed. Add in a belief in
phony-baloney
persecution, and you get an interesting picture. So you can, unfortunately,
find a lot of the roots of what this book describes within mainstream
Evangelicalism. On a related note, the growing prevalence of these ideas was a
contributing factor in
why
we left organized religion two years ago.
However, it is best to think of mainstream Evangelicalism as
only a little way along the continuum of crazy. (Although it is rapidly moving
in that direction since they started following the Messiah Trump and the
prophet Ayn Rand…) Much further along that line is Homeschool culture. Just a
quick bit here - I need a full post to tell the whole story - my family didn’t
get into homeschooling for ideological reasons. I was sickly and missed so much
school my principal suggested we do it. However, while there were and are many
who homeschool for academic or other non-crazy reasons, there are also many who
do it for very ideological reasons - to keep their children culturally,
politically, sexually, and ideologically “pure.” I mentioned Rushdoony, who saw
homeschoolers as his future army to “take back” America and the world from...well,
liberals, advocates of human rights, abolitionists, gays, feminists...and
indeed anyone who disagreed with his Talibanesque vision for re-creating the
glorious past of the Iron Age.
This is where I can say that our family brushed up against
the crazy.
I think, perhaps, the best way to describe it is this:
eventually, as you follow this path, you come to a high cliff. You have the
choice: back away, or throw yourself over it. My family approached the cliff on
a few occasions, and backed away. Not always far enough in my opinion, but they
backed away.
***
Let me talk about our “Prepper” experiences. We lived in the
San Fernando Valley - part of Los
Angeles - during the Rodney King beating, the trials,
and the LA riots. The beating took place only a few miles from where we lived -
I know that place well - and we could hear gunshots during the riots. A few
days afterward, my dad was accosted by an angry African American guy, who
threatened him at a gas station, and then chased him in his vehicle some 20+
miles before giving up. (
You
can read more of my thoughts on the riots in a long footnote to this book
review.) I don’t think he was ever the same after that. I feel kind of bad
about sharing this, but I think it is a key to understanding our journey.
We moved out of LA soon afterward, and it was sometime
around that time (my memory of the sequence is a bit fuzzy) that we started
seriously exploring Prepping. Some friends of ours from church (who weren’t
exactly Preppers, I don’t think) had bought some cheap land out somewhere east
of Lucerne Valley that they rode their ATVs on. We
went out there to check it out. It was not, shall we say, suitable. In addition
to being in the driest part of the Mojave Desert,
it had what seemed like a rattlesnake for every 10 square feet of land. (I am
an avid hiker and am used to sharing the trail with rattlers, but this was
freaking scary.) But even worse than the rattlers were the Desert Rats - the
people who lived there literally would steal anything that wasn’t bolted down -
and even what was. On the plus side (if that is what you would call it), they were
largely Preppers with large arsenals, so a white family like ours might have
been able to fit in and survive after a fashion.
After that, we looked near one of our favorite destinations,
Zion
National Park in Utah.
Specifically, near Kanarraville, in the Escalante Desert.
(See a pattern? Cheap land is in the desert...but it isn’t exactly good for
farming. Which I guess is where the 100 years of food storage comes in.) Utah had a lot to
recommend it, such as towns like La Verkin, who back in the 1990s had a big “UN
Free Zone” sign at the city limits. However, we weren’t Mormon, so we might
have been treated with suspicion. Particularly by the FLDS people…
In what strikes me now as either a weird coincidence or
possibly a case of fortunately divine interference, on the day we were set to
have a realtor show us some land in Utah, our
alternator went out as we reached Mesquite,
Nevada. (Seriously, we broke down
there several times, and I still get a bit of a flinch every time we travel
through there on the way to Utah.)
So, we missed our chance, and we never really tried after that, although I
think we explored at least buying a food cache from a Mormon company. We
stepped away from the cliff.
So that part of the book felt uncomfortably familiar. But
there were others. All of the conspiracy theories involving the Jews
(specifically the Rothchilds and a few others I forget), the belief in an
imminent future meltdown of society, the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission
and the UN - all these conspiracy theories are familiar from shit my dad read
during my mid to late teens. To see them in the book brought back some memories
I hadn’t really thought about in a while. I think my parents don’t really
believe all that crap anymore. I think. But every so often, something comes up
in a conversation that makes me wonder if a bit lingers.
The firearm stuff was also familiar. I’m a gun owner (but
not
that kind…), and grew up - at
least since my Jr. High years - with guns in the house. Some of this made sense
in the neighborhood we lived in. There were some gang bangers around, and
things happened. It wasn’t a bad idea to be able to defend one’s self, although
we never really had to. So I am pretty dang good at the mechanics of reloading
ammo, target shooting, and all that. Again, we stepped away from the cliff, but
in Prepper world, you mentally prepare yourself to murder a
lot of desperate people who might want
your carefully hoarded food. Ultimately, that is one reason I couldn’t really
buy into the Prepper lifestyle. And, I often suspect, why we stepped back from
the cliff. To quote J
ohn
Michael Talbot, “But when every nation has crumbled to dust / will you
still reach to give the Lord’s mercy, or will you kill if you must?” (John
Michael Talbot was one of the most influential musicians of my childhood -
The Painter was my favorite album at age
9 - and this song really seems prophetic these days. It illuminates why Trump
support is actually Anti-Christianity…)
I have discussed at more length elsewhere the issues we have
had with other political/cultural issues. I try not to talk politics too much
with my extended family because there are too many land mines. Some of these
definitely stem from our Gothard years, and others from the overall
Fundie/Homeschooler culture. Just to name a few, a belief that Theocracy is
superior to Democracy and pluralism (Hi there, Rushdoony and other Dominionists!);
an opposition to Feminism (tough since me and my wife are both feminists); and
suspicion of immigrants and refugees (to be fair on that one, I pretty much
cannot talk racial politics with
any
white Evangelicals anymore. We do not share the same understanding of reality
or a common morality.) I won’t get into it more here, but I have specifically
blogged at length about both
Modesty Culture
and the
worship
of gender roles. These two issues have caused unnecessary conflict, and
have resulted, unfortunately, in irreparable damage to relationships. Sure, my
parents “stepped back from the cliff” and thus are not completely estranged
from me like Tara’s are from her. But I had to
draw some hard lines - and some damage just can’t be fixed.
***
I also want to mention something the book alludes to here
and there, but isn’t always clear to those outside the subculture. Within both
Prepper culture and Christian Patriarchy (and to a large degree, homeschool
culture in many places), there is a strong undercurrent of White Supremacy. In
the Prepper culture, here is the form it often takes: when the US government
crumbles, all those “inner city” people will lose their welfare checks, and be
furious, and go loot and pillage all the “real Americans” who have prepared.
It’s not that difficult to see the link between this and the terror of slaveowners
that their chattel might rise up and kill them. (One suspects that if we had
paid real reparations in 1865 - the proverbial 5 acres and a mule - it might be
the African Americans who owned our farmland today - and the whites who would
starve in that scenario. )
Ditto, though, in Christian Patriarchy and Homeschool
culture. The point for many in leaving the public school system is to avoid
sending their kids to school with “those people.” Meaning poorer people, of
course. But also brown skinned people. I remember my dad commenting on one of
the Gothard seminars where a bunch of the teens did something or other about
all the “clean cut, middle America” kids they
represented. F-ing damn. I still remember that 25 years later, after we joined
ATIA (against my wishes). It is hard to escape the conclusion that the desire
to see us marry good 1950s white middle class conservative spouses was a factor
in why we joined. Hmm, apparently that didn’t work out so well when I married a
feminist with a career. But don’t underestimate the degree to which the Culture
Wars™ are really about race. Because they are so about race. And, while
obviously not all homeschoolers are that way, a heck of a lot are, which is one
reason we haven’t really ever participated in our local homeschool groups.
Between the patriarchy and the barely veiled racism, it’s not a good place for
our kids.
***
One final thought here: the abuse in this book is pretty
clear-cut. That much is obvious. But I very much get why it was so hard to
address. First of all, the theology of Patriarchy is powerful, and it makes it
really difficult for victims to break free. Tara’s
psychology was all too familiar. But there is another factor. While there was
sibling to sibling violence here, the parental abuse was essentially
psychological and verbal abuse - not something that is easy to prove legally. I
have seen this one too, including in a situation I personally experienced. When
parents are not physically abusive - something which leaves evidence - but just
verbally and psychologically abusive - there is often not much outsiders can
really hope to do. In the situation I am speaking of, my birth family had a
tough choice. Even if we thought CPS involvement would be a positive (something
I am not sure of even now - and our subculture feared above all else), it is
unlikely they could have done anything. Even with a mentally ill and horrible
parent, I don’t think a removal would have happened. So what is one to do?
Cutting off contact was an option, but that would have left the kids (and one
kid in particular) with one less outside influence and respite from the abuse.
What would have been the right choice? God only knows.
***
This has ended up a bit confessional. My intention here
isn’t to throw my parents under the bus. They, like most white Evangelicals,
had good intentions, but were the victims of a few hundred years of bad
theology and spiritual malpractice. I am glad we have a relationship, even if
things will never be the way they might have been had things been different
over the last three decades. They are not and will never be Tara’s
parents - or I would have left as she did. My intention, rather, is to shine an
uncomfortable light on the dark and ugly corners of the subcultures that I
experienced in my youth and have rejected as an adult and as a parent - even
though it has cost me some degree of family relationships. The point isn’t to
go after the individuals who have swallowed the poison - but to warn about the
poison.
Because, as Tara Westover shows all too well, there is a
deep and deadly poison at work in these subcultures. There is a tremendous
amount of denial right now in conservative religious circles about just how
widespread the poison is, and how deeply they have drunk of it in recent
decades. Some of us have left - and are now speaking out about about what we
experienced and the damage we have sustained as a result of theological and
cultural poison.
The ultimate problems go a lot deeper than just the
lunatic fringe of
conservatism, Evangelicalism, the homeschool movement, and Prepperism. The
problems are more endemic. A belief in Authoritarianism, an opposition to
tolerance of other viewpoints, a paranoia complex, a deep hatred for those
outside the tribe, a pathological lack of empathy, and a willingness to accept
delusion as a substitute for objective truth have so putrefied American white
religion and white conservatism that it is nearly impossible to have a
meaningful dialogue anymore. Looking back, the fact that otherwise intelligent
and decent people like my parents actually approached the cliff of Prepperism
and all that entails is worrisome. In fact, I can see now that there was a
straight line from Prepperism (and the racial fears that fed it) to our embrace
of Gothardism immediately thereafter. They were different facets of the same
fears and hopes. The inability to engage with modern society, the unwillingness
to face the consequences of centuries of white supremacy, and the desire to
protect the next generation from the world as it actually exists, with all its
complexity and messiness, the quest for certainty and formulaic answers.
Chris Stroop has written some great stuff lately about the
“exvangelical” phenomenon - those of us who have left (white) Evangelicalism as
we have realize just how t
oxic
and hateful the theology, culture, and politics of that subculture truly is.
One point he makes is one that is illustrated by
Educated: no more will these various authoritarian religious
subcultures be given a free pass. People like Tara Westover and others
(including me) will be there to shine that uncomfortable light of truth on the
toxicity and abusive nature of these philosophies. I know this had made people
(including those in my extended family) deeply uncomfortable - but this is
necessary. We can no longer afford to let this evil go unchallenged.
As we have seen all too often in the last few years, there
are a lot of angry paranoid white guys with guns who see those outside their
subculture to be a threat - and then go shoot people up. As the world continues
to become more global and less white-dominated, I am concerned that this will
accelerate - and it will be the Preppers and the adjacent subcultures all too
willing to kill in the name of their delusions.
Prepperism and violence are just symptoms, however. The root
cause has been a long time in the making. The need to theologically justify
genocide, colonialism, conquest, slavery, segregation, and social darwinism has
made it necessary to create and protect a theology which is wholly divorced
from empathy, reason, and even reality itself. In that kind of environment, where
paranoia, authoritarianism, and tribalism are cultivated, that kind of
strange fruit will
inevitably grow.
***
There are two quotes from the book that I definitely want to
mention. Westover is a good writer - she didn’t end up a Gates Scholar
accidentally. I found these two particular insights to be perceptive.
These come when Tara is at Cambridge, and is discovering ideas that were
considered evil anathema by her parents. One of these is Feminism - the early
feminism of
Mary
Wollstonecraft and
John
Stuart Mill.
“I read through the afternoon and into
the evening, developing for the first time a vocabulary for the uneasiness I’d
felt since childhood.”
In her case (as in my wife’s), she was a smart and strong
female - and capable of making her own decisions - and even leading. And this
was viewed as a defect within Patriarchy.
Going beyond the specifics of Feminism, however, I really
resonated with her description of finding a vocabulary to describe her
uneasiness. It has been a long deprogramming process for me since my Fundie
days. As a first born who was so square my violin teacher teased me about it, I
really wanted to make my parents happy. I tried so hard to believe as they did, and to embrace what they wanted for
me. I am embarrassed by a lot of the things I said back then, and the things I
convinced myself were truth. The uneasiness remained, though, and I pushed back
in little ways since I couldn’t on the big ones. Looking back, I realize that
much of my uneasiness was the result of doing violence to my better nature,
trying to silence that part of me that doubted all women liked being wives and
stay at home moms, or that poverty was the result of people having sex.
When I moved out and started exploring other viewpoints,
discussing things with those dreaded “liberals,” and - this was a crucial step
- working at Legal Aid assisting low income people - I started to find a
vocabulary for my uneasiness. This process continued through marriage to a
strong leader who happened to be a woman, parenthood of strong willed and
skeptical children, and continued reading, of course.
This leads me to the next one, which I think encapsulates
the problems I have outlined with the religious tradition I was raised in.
Westover describes learning about
Isaiah Berlin’s two concepts of
liberty. The book greatly simplifies the concepts (for obvious reasons - it
isn’t a philosophical treatise), but she distills them down pretty well. We are
all familiar with “negative liberty,” which is a freedom from external
obstacles or restraints.
But positive liberty means a freedom from internal
restraints. Specifically, as Westover describes the lecture she attended, “To
have positive liberty is to take control of one’s own mind; to be liberated
from irrational fears and beliefs, from addictions, superstitions, and all
other forms of self-coercion.”
These two concepts of liberty are both vitally important to
understanding Fundamentalism and why it is such a force for evil in the world.
As anyone who spent time in Dominionist circles knows, the goal is theocracy.
Plain and simple. And the totalitarian power to eliminate the freedom to
disagree with the Fundies. So Fundies most assuredly do not believe in external
freedom for anyone else.
The other part is important too. The goal of all the
isolation, the endless culture wars, the paranoia, the fears of outsiders, the
whole edifice - is to prevent people from exercising positive liberty. From
actually thinking for themselves and coming to their own conclusions rather
than endlessly defending the theological edifice. Tara
was specifically raised to guard her mind from any true inquiry or questioning
of the dogma. And it is in this that
I recognize my own upbringing the most. (This goes for a LOT
of us ex-fundie homeschoolers, by the way. We were raised to be that
Dominionist army - except we were given the tools to think for ourselves...and
we did.) We were trained that we couldn’t trust our minds or our hearts - they
were irredeemably evil - so we had to believe the dogma NO MATTER WHAT. Thus we
were hardened against empathy - don’t trust your heart. We were hardened
against reason and evidence - that was just worldly wisdom. We were hardened
against listening to those outside our tribe - they were of the devil because
they didn’t share our beliefs. We were hardened against listening to other
Christians - we were the only ones with “true” doctrine. We were hardened
against participating in our own culture - modernity was all of the devil, and
the past was when people were truly “godly.” We were hardened against reality
itself - only those of us with correct theology could understand reality
correctly.
The problem is that reality doesn’t give a shit about your
theology. Faced with reality, there are really only two choices. One can
reimagine one’s theology in light of new information and understanding. Or one
can, as Adam Savage says, “
reject...reality
and substitute your own.” As reality and modernity kept pushing ever
harder, it became harder and harder to live in denial. Hence the increasing
paranoia, denialism, tribalism - and the ever more draconian attempts to
control the behavior - and thoughts - of the next generation. Charlatans like
Gothard,
Ken
Ham, and
David
Barton, along with others, fed on this paranoia, denialism, and tribalism
and sold it to my parents’ generation, who ate it up. Prepperism is just the
most extreme expression of this. As is Trump - the inevitable result of the
belief system. And thus, it what I hope is the last gasp of political power for
white Evangelicals, they are doing their best to burn our democracy to the
ground as they cling to power with bleeding fingernails.
Tara wavered between going
back and leaving for good numerous times in this book. She finally knew, when
her parents came out for their final “intervention” - the attempt to save her.
She finally looked them in the eyes and said “I love you. But I can’t.”
I have been there a few times. I have looked over that cliff
and felt the pull of gravity. At that point, the question has been, will the
other person or faith tradition back away from the cliff? Or charge on over
into oblivion? Ultimately, Tara and her parents remain estranged. And my family
has left Evangelicalism for good. Denial of reality and ever more draconian
attempts to isolate one’s family from it will eventually backfire in most
cases, sooner or later. Educated is
one of an increasing number of voices unmasking the disease that lies beneath
the surface of these movements, and those voices will continue to increase as
Millennials find their own voices. It’s time to listen.
