Ready for Real Life: An Investigative Series

The Ready for Real Life webinar series is a seven-part audio series hosted by the Botkin family.

Rewriting History — History of America Mega-Conference: Part Eight, Closing Thoughts

“Presenters understood children to be transmitters of fundamentalist Christianity unto future generations, and thus concepts such as ‘generational thinking’ often came up. The History of America Mega-Conference was a homeschooling conference, after all, and its revisionist ideas were intended for the curricula of homeschooled children. To boot, children are to be steeped in fundamentalist Christian thought and shielded from mainstream culture.”

Rewriting History — History of America Mega-Conference: Part 7, Christian Vikings, Godly Explorers, and Strange Bacon

“By holding up a Eurocentric, Christocentric narrative as the only valid one, Foster effectively erased Native Americans, non-Christians, and non-Protestants from the history of the New World. Foster’s version of history does not force us to wrestle with atrocities of the past, or face the effects of colonization and ethnocide that still linger today. In short, Foster’s history is a shame-free history that absolves us from having to learn from the mistakes of our predecessors.”

Rewriting History — History of America Mega-Conference: Part Six, Doug Phillips Rages Against the 20th Century

“For right-wing Christians such as Phillips, the present is a time of barbarism and delusion, which Christians must struggle against. This distrust of the present era and refusal to recognize complexity and nuance in the 20th and 21st centuries reveals a great deal about the Religious Right mind.”

Rewriting History — History of America Mega-Conference: Part Five, Messiah States and Mega-Houses

“Botkin likened the Messianic state to ancient god-kings and notions of divine kingship. He shared a quote from R. J. Rushdoony likening state worship to Moloch worship, calling both examples of ‘political religion.’ Like the ancient god Moloch, the Messianic state demands total sacrifice from its subjects, he warned the audience.

Rewriting History — The History of America Mega-Conference: Part Four, Kevin Swanson Is Tired Of Losing

“Kevin Swanson, host of Generations Radio, has a long history of eccentric comments documented by Right Wing Watch, and he was no different in person. I’m not sure what troubled me more: Swanson’s acidic tone, or the hyperbolic content of his talk. His seething hatred for The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, and other 19th century writers was both irrational and unsettling.”

Rewriting History — The History of America Mega-Conference: Part Three, “Religious Liberalism” And Those Magnificent Mathers

“I can accept the idea that the Mathers longed to do well by their children and grandchildren, striving to raise them well and encouraging other parents to do the same. Given Increase and Cotton Mather’s ties to witchcraft myths and the Salem Witch Trials, however, I draw a different conclusion from their lives.”

Rewriting History — The History of America Mega-Conference: Part Two, Doug Phillips on God in History

“As for the Christianization of Native Americans, Phillips conveniently forgets the dark side of those proselytization efforts, such as demonization of Native American religions, the 1883 Code of Indian Offenses, Indian boarding schools, and other chilling attempts at ethnocide. For Phillips to sugar-coat Christian history just a few minutes after discouraging hagiography struck me as darkly amusing.”

Rewriting History — The History of America Mega-Conference

Observations on Vision Forum’s History of America Mega-Conference at the Radisson Hotel Harrisburg in Camp Hill, PA.

Vision Forum and “Historical Revisionism”

“Did I mention that Vision Forum only sells a grey civil war cap, and not a blue one? Or that their description of a Civil War history tour is a bit, well, one-sided? And then of course there’s this picture of Doug Phillips’ son posing in front of a monument to the founder of the KKK and the racist blackface knickknack in the Phillips’ home.”