Communicators for Christ: How Homeschool Debate Leagues Shaped the Rising Stars of the Christian Right
Note to readers:
The text below is an excerpt from an article written by published by Religion Dispatches. The theme of the article is training homeschooled children to defend Christian Nationalism doctrines.
For most students, debate serves an academic purpose. For Christian homeschoolers, however, debate serves both a spiritual purpose and a sociopolitical purpose.
The spiritual purpose is evangelism. Sarah Pride, a homeschool alumna and daughter of homeschool leader Mary Pride, explained in an article for Practical Homeschooling that debate “prepares young communicators for the specific purpose of serving Christ.” Debate thus becomes a means to accomplish the Great Commission—the idea that Jesus tasked Christians to make disciples of all nations. As a pseudonymous alumna of homeschool debate once wrote, “The larger purpose of all of this was to… eloquently and winsomely communicate a ‘biblical worldview’ in the culture at large—we were supposed to become world-changers and culture makers.”
The sociopolitical purpose is dominionism. Christian Right expert Frederick Clarkson* describes dominionism as “the theocratic idea that… Christians are called by God to exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions.” Debate is seen by the Christian Right as a powerful tool for equipping young people with the skills necessary to take control of these institutions. Former Florida debater Kieryn Darkwater states, “They want to create articulate teenagers to take over the world.”