21AR26-04
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AR 26:4 - The homeschooling boom
In this issue:
BIBLICAL VALUES - are nuclear families the cause of suffering?
HARRIS, KAMALA - her religious orientation and background
HOMESCHOOL MOVEMENT - experiencing "explosive growth"
NEW AGE MOVEMENT - Aldous Huxley and his "esoteric milieu"
Apologia Report 26:4 (1,509)
January 28, 2021
BIBLICAL VALUES
The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism's Politics of the Family, by Sophie Bjork-James <sophiebjorkjames.com> [1] -- the publisher explains this book "provides an account of how a theology of the family came to dominate a white evangelical tradition in the post-civil rights movement United States, providing a theological corollary to Religious Right politics. This tradition inherently enforces racial inequality in that it draws moral, religious, and political attention away from problems of racial and economic structural oppression, explaining all social problems as a failure of the individual to achieve the strong gender and sexual identities that ground the nuclear family. The consequences of this theology are both personal suffering for individuals who cannot measure up to prescribed gender and sexual roles, and political support for conservative government policies. Exposure to experiences that undermine the idea that an emphasis on the family is the solution to all social problems is causing a younger generation of white evangelicals to shift away from this narrow theological emphasis and toward a more social justice-oriented theology. The material and political effects of this shift remain to be seen." Any questions?
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HARRIS, KAMALA
"Observers of religion say Harris looks like the future of the nation" by Yonat Shimron (Christian Century, Sep 9 '20, n.p.) -- reports: "She embodies the future of American religion: in a time of expanding religious pluralism.... a kind of multifaith and spiritual belonging unfamiliar to the mostly white Christian majority of past decades.
"Harris, who was born in Oakland, California, to a Jamaican immigrant father, Donald Harris, and an Indian immigrant mother, Shyamala Gopalan, is both black and South Asian. She grew up in a home that accommodated both Christian and Hindu religious practices.
"As an adult, she married Douglas Emhoff, a Jewish, Brooklyn-born lawyer. ...
"To be sure, Biden and Harris identify as Christian - he a Catholic, she a black Baptist. But the ticket represents a stark contrast to President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, who are both white, Protestant, and male.
"Harris ... is a member of Third Baptist Church of San Francisco...." <www.bit.ly/3nCJ2Xl>
As for possible confusion the above may cause when comparing the two tickets, Christian Century also reports, in a later issue (Sep 23 '20), that Pence is "a self-described 'born-again, evangelical Catholic.'" <www.bit.ly/2K8sZTn> But a January 2021 article in The Conversation reports that Pence "has tended to avoid labeling his religious views when pressed, referring to himself as a 'pretty ordinary Christian' who 'cherishes his Catholic upbringing,'" and notes that he "has attended nondenominational evangelical churches with his family since at least 1995." <www.bit.ly/3iRcwzX>
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HOMESCHOOL MOVEMENT
Given the Left's tireless efforts to indoctrinate children in public school, it makes sense that conservative parents are pulling their kids out of that environment. However, as the quality of education in state school systems continues to decline, a growing number of non-religious parents have discovered the potential value of homeschooling.
"COVID-19 Concerns Accelerate Homeschool Movement's Growth: Continues to trend more secular, as safety and flexibility are given top priority" by Paula Ramirez -- "Homeschooling numbers were rising before 2020. The percentage of school-age children taught at home in the United States rose from 1.6 in 1999 to 3.3 in 2016, the most recent numbers available from the US Department of Education. Much of the growth has come from 'urban secular families . . . who want more freedom and flexibility,' according to Kerry McDonald, senior education fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education. While evangelicals remain a significant part of the homeschool landscape, today only 16 percent say the most important reason to homeschool is religious instruction...."
Ramirez also notes: "A national poll conducted by RealClear Opinion Research <www.bit.ly/2YhLUib> found 40 percent of families are more likely to homeschool because of their experiences during the pandemic. At the National Home School Association (NHSA), the phone hasn't stopped ringing since June, and the email inbox has been hitting its capacity daily.
"'It has just been explosive growth,' said NHSA executive director J. Allen Weston." Christianity Today, Sep '20, n.p. []
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NEW AGE MOVEMENT
Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality, by Jake Poller [] -- the review by Benjamin D. Crace in Nova Religio (24:1 - 2020, pp126-8) tells us that Poller reads Huxley (1894–1963) - perhaps best known for his 1932 novel Brave New World [] - in "a New Historicist fashion while remaining sensitized to the Western esoteric milieu in which Huxley played a key role ... within the context of the academic investigation into the development of the contemporary New Age through twentieth-century esotericism - occupied by such luminaries as Wouter Hanegraaff and Jeffrey Kripal...."
One tidbit we glean is Poller's definition of alternative spirituality: "[W]hat it represents was crystallizing out of the cultic milieu of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and includes spiritualism, Theosophy, the Arcane School of Alice Bailey, psychical research, astrology, Eastern religions and philosophy, the new physics, G. I. Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, Jiddu Krishnamurti, and so on." Poller proceeds to his first chapter in which he gives "a broad biographical overview and the main spiritual influences on Huxley over his long career - D. H. Lawrence; Gerald Heard, a polymath and public intellectual; and Krishnamurti, the early 'world teacher' for Theosophy who later withdrew from the movement.
"Chapters 2 and 3 chart Huxley's movement from science to his Perennial Philosophy. Poller argues that he 'attempted to find a synthesis between science and alternative spirituality, and was an early adopter of the idea that the 'new physics' of relativity theory and quantum mechanics supported an idealist worldview.' This chapter also takes a closer look at Huxley's interest in the paranormal through his association with the Society of Psychical Research and Duke University's J. B. Rhine, a key figure in the field of parapsychology. In the third chapter, Poller spends too much time for the general reader on minutiae about the various Buddhist sects that inform Huxley's position [in contrast to] the broader study of mysticism, flagging notable figures such as William James, Rudolf Otto, William Stace, and Steven Katz.
"Chapter 4 more closely examines Huxley's mystical/pacifist turn through his relationships with Heard, Krishnamurti, and the Peace Pledge Union ...
"Chapter 5 is almost a stand-alone essay that analyzes Huxley's 'representation of sex and body in relation to his changing spiritual convictions ... taken directly from Huxley's fiction career: 1) a romantic phase, 2) an ascetic phase, and ending with 3) a Tantric phase, 'in which Huxley embraced the life affirming philosophies of Tantra, Taoism, Zen and Mahayana Buddhism' [and] requires quite a bit of familiarity with his fiction....
"Poller concludes with a look at Huxley's legacy [and] underscores the strong associations between Huxley and the beginnings of the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, the Human Potential movement, the New Age, and Deep Ecology. ... Poller's construal of Huxley's mystical reading of the psychedelic experience is particularly apropos, as is his framing of Huxley's agnostic mysticism as a precursor to the spiritual-but-not-religious emergent category." <www.bit.ly/3qWDwkf>
For more on Huxley from our past issues, see <www.bit.ly/3opQS6U>
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism's Politics of the Family, by Sophie Bjork-James (Rutgers Univ Prs, March 2021, paperback, 198 pages) <www.amzn.to/35CYjky>
2 - Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality, by Jake Poller (BRILL, 2019, hardcover, 368 pages) <www.amzn.to/3bwlf8W>
3 - Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley (Harper, 2006, paperback, 288 pages) <www.amzn.to/2YhYeyH>
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