Education

Since the 1960s, a growing number of American evangelicals have withdrawn their children from “government schools,” seeking alternative provision either in private Christian day schools or in parentally provided education within the home. Over two million American children are being home educated, and in the last few years, the number of children involved in home education has grown at a rate around twelve times that of the number of students entering public schools. Across the United States, but especially in north Idaho, an increasing number of believers are turning to several varieties of Christian education to dispute the minoritarian and subcultural assumptions of those believers who have conceded to liberal expectations, and to educate a generation of the faithful that will work to reclaim and eventually control the cultural mainstream. The influence of conservative religion on the public school system has never been greater, but in home schools, private schools, and liberal arts colleges, education has become a vital weapon in strategies of survival and resistance in evangelical America.

Introduction

The Introduction describes the revitalization of one of the most controversial religious and political movements in recent American history. During a period of significant demographic and cultural change, a large number of religious and political conservatives have migrated into the Pacific Northwest. Many of these migrants are influenced by the claims of Christian Reconstruction, or “theonomy.” From their base in northern Idaho, these latter-day theonomists are developing the work of R. J. Rushdoony, Gary North, and others of the first generation of the writers of Christian Reconstruction, reiterating their optimistic view of the future, an eschatological position known as postmillennialism, as well as their expectation that the expansion of Christian influence around the world will be marked by changes in government and by a widespread return to the demands of Old Testament law.

Conclusion

Paradoxically, the failure of the first generation of Christian Reconstructionists to cohere, either personally or ideologically, has worked in the movement’s favor, creating an internal marketplace of ideas by means of which competing groupings within political and religious conservatism have been able to appropriate and adopt their central arguments. Recognizing that a “moral majority” does not exist, and therefore abandoning the top-down political strategies of earlier evangelicals, the believers who participate in the migration to the Pacific Northwest work to build communities that will expand organically and over time to renew America and to replace the supposed neutrality of its legislative base. The project is working. But it is not clear whether the integrity of these ideas will continue as their audience base grows. Mass culture routinizes what was once regarded as radical, with effects that may not easily be predicted at the “end of white, Christian America.”

Eschatology

The migration to the Pacific Northwest is driven by hope. This hope is controversial because eschatology, insofar as it imagines a better world, involves critique of the present. Recognizing that dispensational premillennialism continues to dominate American evangelical rhetoric and institutions, this chapter describes the reification and recasting of evangelical eschatological narratives in the 1970s. Tracing the emergence, evolution, and effect of a new and radically political postmillennialism, which now circulates widely in north Idaho, this chapter will consider the formulation of the new eschatological style that characterizes the social engagement and political disengagement of a growing number of American evangelicals, explaining their aspiration to survive and resist an impending crisis in society and culture, and to build community in the Pacific Northwest in order to rescue the world beyond. This chapter describes the varieties of hope that sustain strategies of survival and resistance in evangelical America.

Media

The community at the heart of the migration to the Pacific Northwest was formed around a coterie of writers, whose distinctive arguments had come to prominence in a self-published magazine of theology and cultural criticism, Credenda Agenda (est. 1988). Over the last thirty years, the status and influence of this group has grown to warrant their working with major publishers, such as Random House and HarperCollins, and prominent writing partners, such as the late Christopher Hitchens, while also producing video productions on Netflix and Amazon Prime. This publishing program has been central to the community’s growth, advertising their key ideas while inviting readers and viewers to participate in the society that they established. Surveying this media culture, this chapter describes a well-resourced and increasingly influential conservative cultural movement that is preparing for survival, resistance, and the possibility that, as materiel for “God’s emerging army,” pens may be mightier than swords.

Migration

The political and religious migration to the Pacific Northwest that has continued for forty years has recently picked up speed. In the last few years, media reports have suggested that a significant number of individuals have heeded the call to migrate, driving up local property prices and reprofiling political participation, especially in areas such as the north Idaho panhandle. The strategy of religious migration is gaining momentum, as the values and arguments of the migrants and those who identify with them make an impact on local political and economic life, while being repackaged for a wider audience in publications by a broader coalition of conservative commentators. These believers who are moving to the Pacific Northwest recognize that they have lost the culture war—despite or sometimes even because of the election of Donald Trump—and that another kind of conflict is beginning.

Government

Driven by new hope, those born-again Protestants who expect to contribute to the long-term reconstruction of the United States of America agree that this renewal will have significant implications for government. This chapter will survey a variety of evangelical responses to recent trends in American government. It will argue that the large pan-denominational and politically pragmatic religious coalitions that dominated an earlier phase of evangelical political engagement have fractured, and have given way to a much more vigorous, variegated, and entrepreneurial evangelical political landscape. These believers are not sure how best to respond to their sense of marginalization, but many among their number are returning to and developing the arguments of earlier Reconstructionists. This chapter will explore the complexity of political thinking among those born-again Protestants who embrace their marginal status in order to propose strategies of survival, resistance, and reconstruction in evangelical America.