Thread by @harrisjalex

The response to Shiny Happy People, including the segment on the Joshua Generation, has been incredible, and a bit overwhelming.

After a few days to digest and process, it’s time for another thread. 🧵

To start, the primary focus has been and should remain on the incredibly brave IBLP survivors who shared their stories. In my TGC review, I talk about all the reasons people in the evangelical church might be tempted to look away—and why they should not: thegospelcoalition.org/article/shiny-…

I also really appreciated this thread by investigative journalist and pastor @joshuadpease, who appears throughout the docuseries and has done extensive work reporting on Gothard and IBLP:

https://twitter.com/joshuadpease/status/1666157581801226248

The short segment in Ep. 4 on the Joshua Generation has also struck a chord. Many people were shocked to learn about a plan to raise up Christian homeschool grads to assume positions of power and influence in government, law, and beyond.

People are interested in whether the Joshua Generation segment in Shiny Happy People is accurate, and they want to learn more... About where this plan came from, whether it's "succeeding," how it fits into broader political and religious trends, and more.

I spent a full day with the filmmakers and about 2 minutes made it into the series. That's okay! But it means there's a lot more to the Joshua Generation story. On this topic, Shiny Happy People tees up an important headline, it doesn't tell the full story.

Of course, Twitter isn't really the ideal place to tell the full (and complex) story. But I want to at least attempt to answer some of the major questions and address some common misconceptions I've seen.

This is going to be a long thread, so buckle up!

To start, is Shiny Happy People's discussion of the Joshua Generation accurate?

In general, yes. The Joshua Generation is a real thing, and it's been far more effective than most people realize. More about that later in the thread.

With that said, there are two caveats I think should be given, the first to avoid an inaccurate narrowing of the Joshua Generation story and the second to avoid a potentially misleading and unhelpful expansion.

The first caveat is that, while the documentary ties the Joshua Generation to IBLP and the Duggars, they're just one expression of a larger movement/idea within the Christian homeschooling movement… And not a particularly effective one.

So, for example, even before Josh Duggar's horrific crimes came to light, I wouldn't have considered him a major Joshua Generation "success story." And IBLP was never a primary conduit, in large part due to its opposition to higher education.

The second caveat is that the Joshua Generation is not some secret society with card-carrying members. As I’ll explain, it’s a powerful idea influenced by other powerful ideas that shaped homeschool leaders and resulted in mission-advancing institutions and ways of thinking.

But I want to be clear that not every person associated with these institutions or ideas is consciously pursuing the goals of the Joshua Generation. They are, however, part of a larger machine, being fed these ideas and goals, often as unquestioned assumptions.

So what's the bigger story?

The "Joshua Generation" was coined by Michael Farris, who began his career as a constitutional lawyer, state director for the Moral Majority, and protege of Tim LaHaye, a titan of the Religious Right best known for his apocalyptic Left Behind series.

Farris is one of the most influential leaders of the Christian homeschooling movement. In 1983, he founded the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) with a mission to defend homeschool parents against attempted interference by states, school boards, and social workers.

Together with my dad, Gregg Harris, Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute, and Sue Welch of The Teaching Home Magazine, Farris became known as one of the "four pillars" of the Christian homeschooling movement.

The Joshua Generation is an analogy to the Old Testament patriarch who led the children of Israel into the Promised Land after Moses led them out of captivity in Egypt. The Moses Generation takes the first step, the Joshua Generation finishes the job.

Side note: The Joshua Generation analogy is not unique to Christian homeschooling. Perhaps most notably, it was used in reference to the civil rights movement and President Obama's first campaign for the White House. You can find many other examples. newyorker.com/magazine/2008/…

Within the Christian homeschooling community, the Joshua Generation idea was explicitly about engaging in a battle to take America back for God. Some meant this culturally. Others meant it politically. Others weren't always clear about exactly what they meant.

As Farris described it, Christian homeschool grads, with our superior training and a thoroughly conservative Christian worldview, would disproportionately fill positions of power and influence. We'd be the senators, presidents, and justices of the next generation.

Farris most prominently used the term "The Joshua Generation" in his 2005 book of that title. A few years earlier, HSLDA launched Generation Joshua (a.k.a. GenJ) to train and mobilize homeschool students to campaign in key elections around the country.

Side note: A lot of people confuse the Joshua Generation movement with Generation Joshua the organization. That's a mistake. While GenJ was founded as part of the larger movement, it's at most only a part. The vast majority of Joshua Generation members never participated in GenJ.

Here's the real bigger story: Farris popularized the Joshua Generation idea, but its true genesis can be traced back to one of the most influential, problematic, and under-appreciated thinkers of the 20th century: Rousas John Rushdoony, the father of Christian Reconstructionism.

Reconstructionism is a particularly virulent strain of Christian dominion theology that teaches that Mosaic law should govern modern society, that God's kingdom must be established on earth through conquest, and that true believers should be working to make it so.

Most people publicly distanced themselves from Rushdoony's most repulsive views, but his rigorous core theology of Christian political engagement as a war of ideas where there can be no neutrality—and where dismantling state control of education is critical—was very influential.

As a consequence, Rushdoony has been identified by journalists and academics as one of the foremost patriarchs of not just the Christian homeschooling movement but also the Religious Right—one of the most influential thinkers you've never heard of.

In 1974, Christianity Today described Rushdoony as one of the "most impressive" political theologians of his generation. In 1981, Newsweek described Rushdoony's Chalcedon Foundation as *the* think tank of the Religious Right.

Reconstructionists became champions of the homeschool movement. To reconstruct the nation under God's law, Christians had to "infiltrate the existing institutional order," which made it of critical necessity to "capture the minds of a hard core of future leaders." Sound familiar?

To make a longer story short, I can confidently say that, if you grew up in the Christian homeschool world (or even just the Religious Right), you've been influenced by Rushdoony, whether you realize it or not.

So back to the Joshua Generation…

What made Farris singularly effective was his creation of institutions that helped turn a powerful idea into a reality. The most important of these were NCFCA, a speech and debate league, and PHC, a college for Christian homeschool graduates.

Other institutions included GenJ, originally directed by Ned Ryun, a one-time Bush speechwriter, who at a 2005 homeschool convention announced that homeschoolers would be "inordinately represented in the highest levels of leadership and power in the next generation.”

A similar organization, TeenPact, wasn't founded by Farris, but exists within the same overlapping networks, teaching homeschool students how to navigate the legislative process in state capitals.

Is the Joshua Generation plan working?

Over the past few years you could find PHC/NCFCA alums at the highest levels of politics, law, and media: SCOTUS clerks, senior White House and Senate staff, top reporters + commentators with major news outlets, nonprofit orgs, and more.

And then there’s Madison Cawthorn, who campaigned with GenJ in high school, briefly attended PHC, and filled the seat of his former NCFCA debate coach (and White House chief of staff) Mark Meadows.

He was also roundly opposed by PHC grads:

https://twitter.com/Sentinel_PAC/status/1322634709248212996

What does this all mean? It means this is real. It can work and is working. But here's the thing:

The vast majority of the Joshua Generation members I referred to above have, like me, abandoned the mission.

There are many reasons for this: Christian nationalism is bad theology (and often bad history). The world isn't the caricature we were taught. We read the Bible and see priorities that don’t line up with GOP policies. We’ve seen the hypocrisy and abuses of our leaders.

Some have deconstructed, leaving faith or evangelicalism behind. Others, myself included, have developed a more biblical view of political and cultural engagement, disentangling faith in Christ from the misguided project of cultural dominion we were given as kids.

This is because the Joshua Generation mission is ultimately not biblical! Among other problems, Scripture is clear that Christ's "kingdom" is not of this world, and that our hope is not in earthly power or influence. More thoughts in this thread and links:

https://twitter.com/harrisjalex/status/1660746747419959296

To me, these acts of rebellion + reform by members of the Joshua Generation are a beautiful irony and a reason for hope, as I discuss in the linked thread.

But we must name and explain the dangers and errors of the movement to avoid more Cawthorns.

https://twitter.com/harrisjalex/status/1414121637562097666?s=20

The hope and the danger are why I'm talking about this. I'm speaking to fellow members of the Joshua Generation, to encourage them to explore and find a better, more faithful path. I'm speaking to the church, because we have to reject faith hijacked by politics.

As I've said before, I'm also speaking to those outside the church, because people need to understand what's going on. And they need to know that there's more to true Christianity than the pursuit of power, more than blind allegiance to any political party or politician.

Jesus, too, was expected to be a "Joshua," a conquering hero who would restore God's people to earthly power and throw off Roman rule at the edge of a sword.

Instead, he was the "suffering servant" of Isaiah 53.

There is breathtaking beauty to the true story of Christ. It's a message that has repeatedly been co-opted for personal and political ends. Yet it has inspired some of the greatest acts of love the world has ever known—none greater than Jesus himself, hanging on a Roman cross.

We were never supposed to be like Joshua.

We're supposed to be like Jesus.