Chapter 3: The Beginnings of the Religious Authoritarian Parenting Movement
How the 1960s and social progress movements sparked a long-term backlash that continues on to the present day.
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In our previous posts, we talked about what Religious Authoritarian Parenting is and the four common goals of this particular movement. Krispin then shared his personal story of the RAP-based pressure he experienced as a child growing up in a "model" evangelical family. In this post, D.L. unpacks the historical factors that led to these broader pressures being put on white evangelical parents (and their children) as a whole.
“Permissiveness and disobedience breed unhappiness for all concerned, perhaps more for children and young people than we dream. Many disobedient and lawless acts are actually pleas for strict discipline.” -- pro-segregationist and white supremacist L. Nelson Bell (father-in-law to Billy Graham) from an article in Christianity Today in 1968.
To understand the pressure around parenting in white evangelical communities in the United States is to understand the history of white, patriarchal backlash to a changing political landscape starting in the 1960s. A culture war was just beginning, as conservatives saw that their carefully constructed and controlled worlds were at risk of crumbling. Feminism, civil rights, bodily autonomy, anti-militarization attitudes, racial and ethnic and religious equity were all direct threats to the status quo of white patriarchal power and privilege in the United States. And not only that, the 1960s saw more and more young white people joining these progressive movements and taking to the streets in protest of the oppressive laws and actions of the United States.
James Dobson refers disparagingly to the Civil Rights era as a time period when rebellious young people disobeyed “unpopular laws,” threw “tantrums” in the streets, distrusted the elder generation, and believed “that their country was unworthy of allegiance or respect.1” He witnessed a generation that refused to accept the status quo of what he referred to as “Judeo-Christian ethics'' and it shook him to his core. What was happening to the young white Christian children of America? Why were they so angry at the older generation—and why were they protesting in the streets against the Vietnam war, for the civil rights of Black people, for women’s liberation, and for sexual freedom? Dobson and other Conservative leaders had an idea that it had something to do with uptick in “permissive” parenting philosophies that impacted politics, and so they began warning parents that the future of America (at least according to conservative ideology) hinged on spanking their children, and responding swiftly to childhood rebellion. Dobson believed that if you could train children to accept being controlled in the home, they would grow up into adults who would accept the “loving authority [that is] the glue that holds society together.2”
It was two decades prior, in the 1940s, when child rearing experts started to encourage parents to show more affection and understanding to their children. People became hesitant to hit their children or to demand immediate obedience. One scholar writes that the new attitude was best summarized by, “Talk It Out with Your Child,” (a chapter title in a parenting manual of the time). Parents were encouraged to use a variety of means of disciplining their children, negotiate with their children on solutions that work for both parent and child, and also to reduce the demands on their behavior, letting go of expectations like “proper posture.3”
Psychologists and pediatricians (like Dr. Spock, Erik Erikson, and Margaret MacFarland) had been advocating in the public sector for a wildly different approach to raising children since the 1940s. Instead of corporal punishment and coercive control these experts were looking at healthy patterns of child development and pointing out how damaging authoritarian parenting methods were to the kids themselves (and society as a whole). It was a marked departure from authoritarian parenting styles of the past, which used phrases like “children should be seen and not heard” and relied on corporal punishment, fear, and harsh disciplinary methods to control children and force them to behave and obey authority. As less harsh methods of parenting became more popular, it became easy for conservatives to blame “permissive parents” for the rapid social change America was experiencing in the 1960s. Dr. Spock, a well-known pediatrician and author who encouraged parents to be more flexible and affectionate with their children, also openly opposed the war in Vietnam. To people like Dr. Dobson, Billy Graham, and J. Edgar Hoover, this lack of respect for American authority was unconscionable.
Conservatives blamed this shift toward permissive parenting models for the success of the civil rights movement, feminism, and a growing anti-war sentiment. But mostly, they were fixated on the idea that they were losing their hold over their children. In June of 1968, Billy Graham’s father-in-law, L. Nelson Bell wrote an editorial for the premier evangelical magazine Christianity Today on these “disobedient” young people: “America is suffering from a generation of permissive parents who, by not requiring obedience from children, have produced teen-agers and young adults with little respect for either God or man. These undisciplined young people are proving themselves a disruptive force on many school campuses, and they are a source of embarrassment and great concern to the nation. Although they are only a small minority, they are jeopardizing the entire structure of society.4” Nelson Bell, who wrote about the dangers of integration from 1944-1966 in his own publication, partly blamed parenting practices for the rapid social changes America was experiencing5.
Despite his distress about integration, rights for women, and protests against US imperialism, Bell writes that there was some hope for the future he (and other evangelical leaders) wanted: “In past generations the Christian home was the bulwark of the nation. There, children were cherished, trained, and required to be obedient to parental authority. Have we drifted so far the other way that the future is hopeless? No, not if we are prepared to take a firm stand in training our children as they should be trained, rather than leaving them to their own devices.6” His plan was straightforward: raise your children to obey the Bible unquestioningly and obediently. And teach them to respect their parents, a word that came to mean, in evangelical circles, to obey a parent’s authority unquestioningly. Through strict child rearing, Nelson Bell believed, Christian parents would train their white children not to protest in the streets nor join the social revolutions being formed in the late 1960s7.
Less than two years later, Dr. James Dobson—a clinical child psychologist and devoted Christian—published his first book on parenting philosophies, titled Dare to Discipline. In it he writes, “During the 1950’s we saw the predominance of a happy theory called ‘permissive democracy’. This philosophy minimized parental obligations to control their children, in some cases making mom and dad feel that all forms of punishment were harmful and unfair.” He goes on to say “is it merely coincidental that the generation raised during this era has grown up to challenge every form of authority that confronts it? I think not.8”
To Dobson, a parenting philosophy that didn’t demand strict obedience was the gravest mistake a society could make—and was actively leading to the downfall of American society. He and many other conservative Christian men keenly felt the erosion of their place at the top of the social hierarchy of the United States and were looking towards the future. And to Dr. James Dobson and those like him, the key to getting their prominence and power back would rely on how well they could convince white people to raise their children to respect “godly9” hierarchy and authority figures.
Self-assured, smooth, and calm, Dr. Dobson promised parents that if they began discipline early in their child’s life—spanking as soon as they were beginning to walk and talk—their children would grow into adults who would continue to maintain their conservative politics, obey God, and find academic and financial success through their skills of submitting to the authority of teachers, employers and police. He created a parenting plan that aimed to produce adults who would accept the conservative values he promoted throughout his career—values that were very much at odds with what was happening in the United States in the late 1960s.
Dobson wasn’t alone in this endeavor. Others like him were teaching parents how to create a “delicate balance between love and control10” that promised to raise children who would grow up to maintain their conservative values in an increasingly pluralistic and progressive society. Others in this movement included John MacArthur, Bill Gothard, Tedd Tripp, Gary Ezzo, and Tim and Beverly LaHaye (yes, that LaHaye -- of the Left Behind Series fame). Beginning in the early 1970s, these parenting books served to coalesce white fears and white rage into a movement centered around parenting kids who would uphold conservative values and respect conservative authority for life. For Dobson, along with a whole host of imitators, religion was an essential element of his framework. God became the ultimate authoritarian and a means of coercing children into life-long obedience to the conservative values of their parents. Dobson became the spokesperson for a new way of advancing white supremacist political values through parenting books and a multi-media empire centered on growing and maintaining “godly” families. His skill was in convincing parents that religious authoritarian parenting was the only “right” way to raise children who would continue on conservative values and maintain their powerful position in the United States.
This is how the stakes of what conservatives eventually called “the culture wars” were set. Parents were under pressure, to raise children that would not only behave well in their church community, but that would grow up to save the soul of a nation. The future of a (white) Christian America was sitting on their shoulders, after all.
It is telling that it wasn’t always easy to get parents to be on board with these methods of discipline towards small and powerless children. So with the language and fervor familiar to American religious revivalism, conservative leaders used apocalyptic language to attempt to coerce their readers (and listeners on the radio or in the pews) to call for the return of strict physical punishments of children. John MacArthur, author of Successful Christian Parenting told parents: “Right now the outlook for the next generation is as bleak as it has ever been. And there will be no turnaround unless this generation of Christian parents resumes the full-time work” of strict religious parenting using corporal punishment11. The LaHayes compared the US to Greece and Rome “just before their decline,” and told parents that in order to bring our society back from the brink, this generation needed “to establish their home environment and child treatment based on biblical principles.12” Michael and Debi Pearl (whose parenting instruction was highlighted in the documentary Shiny Happy People) wrote in To Train Up a Child: “As agents of permissive parenting see the tide of of public opinion turning in their favor, they have gone into a feeding frenzy, devouring tradition and common sense, and they are popping out drugged children who are cutting themselves and killing one another, and committing suicide . . . Dr. Spock never imagined where [his] progressive philosophies would lead.13” In short, Christian parents were called to return to religious authoritarian parenting practices for the well-being of their children and society — would permissiveness or discipline win?
Dobson contributed to the apocalyptic framing of the world by patiently explaining to overwhelmed parents that the battle for the soul of a child begins in infancy. Dobson framed his books less about successful parenting strategies and more as a means of “winning” the war against liberals by asserting dominance over your own sinful children. His books became a magnet for white men and women looking to assuage their fears over losing cultural dominance in the near future, and he taught them that the instant and unquestioning obedience of their children was their most valuable battlefield.
Through the creation of Christian publishing networks and radio programs like Focus on the Family, from the 1970s on conservatives could mobilize a political movement in the form of authoritarian parenting practices. James Dobson’s parenting lectures (including talks about “daring to discipline” and “the strong-willed child”) were videotaped and seen by anywhere from 80-100 million people in the 1980s (according to Dobson’s own organization)14. At its peak, Focus on the Family had a global audience of around 200 million people in the early 2000s15. They taught parents that the mundane, day-to-day interactions between a parent and child had a direct impact on the future of the once-Christian nation, and whether it would return to its previous power structures.
The end result was that for most evangelical Christians parenting was no longer simply a path toward a healthy, well-adjusted adult (a task that felt gargantuan enough for most caregivers). Instead, thanks to conservative leaders, it was also a political duty in favor of a movement seeking to undo the changes to American civil society that had started in the 1960s. Social progress for marginalized people was seen as permissiveness, while conservative white patriarchal rule was deemed the only god-ordained path for America.
The country was at a crossroads — what were white Christian authoritarians to do?
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Knowing this history, and the political pressure behind it, can help those of us who were born into this reactionary political movement make sense of our childhoods. This political movement invaded every element of family life, deeply impacting those who grew up in it on everything from enforcing strict gender norms to encouraging purity culture. It piled the pressure on kids to obey, and on parents to enforce immediate obedience through strict and harsh measures.
Here are some of the questions we will continue to be asking and exploring here at STRONGWILLED:
What’s it like to grow up in a home where every day family life also functioned as ground zero for a culture war intent on reclaiming political power?
What happens to a family dynamic when domination, rather than understanding, is viewed as a godly and even patriotic act?
These parenting methods are billed as psychologically healthy and claimed to produce well-adjusted, self-confident and emotionally secure children — but what do the people raised under these methods have to say about these claims?
Next week, we’ll dive into the promises made to families, claiming that this sort of parenting was the only way to produce emotionally healthy adults who had close relationships with their parents.
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James C. Dobson, The New Dare to Discipline: Answers to Your Toughest Parenting Questions (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale Momentum, 2014), 129.
James Dobson, The Strong-Willed Child (Wheaton, Ill: Tyndale House, 1978), 178.
Peter N. Stearns, Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Child-Rearing in America (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 70.
L. Nelson Bell, “Discipline vs. Permissiveness,” ChristianityToday.com, June 21, 1968, https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1968/june-21/layman-and-his-faith-discipline-vs-permissiveness.html. Bell also has wrath for the ways the police refused to crack down on the civil rights protesters, writing: “Unfortunately, permissiveness is not confined to the home; it has also infected the attitudes of some who have been given the authority and power to control lawlessness. The failure of police officials to enforce law strictly during the April riots in Washington, so that in numerous cases looting continued unhindered, is a case in point.” It should be noted Nelson Bell is specifically referring to the riots that broke out in protest of Dr. King’s assassination.
I was introduced to Dr. L Nelson Bell and his segregationist viewpoints in the stunning book The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover by Lerone Martin. I highly recommend reading the entire book, but chapter 4 on Christianity Today and their relationship with the FBI is incredibly illuminating. For more information on L. Nelson Bell in The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover, see page 132.
Since Bell was an avowed and very public segregationist, we can assume he believed he was only talking about white families in his essay. Dobson and his fellow RAP authors also assumed they were writing to mainly white patriarchal audiences, and in future chapters we will address Dobson’s connections to a well-known eugenicist with white supremacist beliefs (which you can read about here — written by Audrey Clare Farley)
In the same June 21st 1968 issue of Christianity Today there is an editorial titled “Where is America Going?” that includes this choice line: “But what federal or state law in the United States, we ask, still seriously discriminates against a minority (particularly the Negro)?” It is easy to see how J. Edgar Hoover was hard at work getting his pro-authoritarian and anti-protester narrative out to the white Christian masses using Christianity Today. You can read the entire editorial here and see how similar it sounds to right wing conservatives rhetoric currently (especially all the hysteria about kids protesting at college campuses). We will unpack all of this information in later chapters of STRONGWILLED.
James Dobson, Dare to Discipline (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1970), 22.
Much of James Dobson’s early books do not talk much about Christianity or Jesus at all—but instead assume that the reader agrees that America was founded as a Christian nation and needed to get back to that world (where only white land-owning Christian males had rights). When Dobson speaks of training kids to respect authority he means primarily of the parents—with the father getting the most respect. When he mentions that this respect will carry on for other authority figures—teachers, the police, bosses—he seems to be assuming all of these positions are god-ordained and are held by other conservative folks. Later on in his career, he would vilify public schools and the teachers there, but in 1970 he still believed they were a part of upholding authoritarianism.
James C. Dobson, The New Strong-Willed Child: A Completely Revised and Rewritten Guide Taking You from Birth through Adolescence (Carol Streams, IL: Tyndale Momentum, the nonfiction imprint of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2017), 100.
John MacArthur, Successful Christian Parenting: Raising Your Child with Care, Compassion, and Common Sense (Bedford, TX: Word Pub., 1998), 92-93.
Tim LaHaye and Beverly LaHaye, Spirit-Controlled Family (Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1980), 28, 32.
1Michael Pearl and Debi Pearl, To Train up a Child: Child Training for the 21st Century (Pleasantville, TN: No Greater Joy Ministries, Inc., 2015), 93.
The more I learn about this time in Evangelical history, the more I understand my parents. They were raised by racist, white supremacist parents who were deep into fundamentalism. It’s taken me years to detox from and undo my indoctrination. But I’m still shocked when I read the truth about how awful it was.
“What happens to a family dynamic when domination, rather than understanding, is viewed as a godly and even patriotic act?” One answer, I suspect, is that the use of authoritarian strategies to control and dominate backfires on those in power, be they parents or, as we are witnessing this week with the protests at Columbia University, institutional leaders, elected officials, and the police.
I read your third installment right after reading Judd Legum’s latest in Popular Information, “Columbia University protests and the lessons of ‘Gym Crow.’” He draws parallels between the unwise and unjust decision of arresting 108 pro-Palestinian protesters and suspending many of them and the protests of April 1968, when the then Columbia University president called the NYPD on student protesting the school’s planned take over of an adjacent park majoritarily used by the local black community and the school’s involvement with an organization fueling the war machine. In 1968, the result of using brute force to punish and quiet young people asking better of their leaders backfired on the administrators and the conservatives putting pressure on them as the school moved to democratize its policy making process and value political activism in the following years. Legum surmises that the involvement of the NYPD and the draconian punishment of those saying no to the genocide will probably backfire in a similar fashion and only foment solidarity and further action. I sure damn hope it does.
The part that angered me the most in the article was the Christian supremacist audacity of congressman Rick Allen of Georgia who asked Shafik, Columbia’s president (who is Muslim) if she wants God to curse Columbia, because apparently it is clear in the Bible that those who bless Israel will be blessed and those who curse Israel will be cursed. There is no difference between representative Allen’s use of religion to instill fear or conformity and what parents sold RAP in white evangelicalism did (and still do) to ascertain that their kids would be obedient to God, authorities, and never rock the boat of the patriarchal, racist, exploitative capitalist status quo.
Neale’s article followed William F. Buckley Jr.’s (father of modern neo-conservatism) own New York Newsday opinion piece in which he criticizes both the students for getting out of line (don’t they know Harlem is about as safe as the DMZ?) and the university president for perhaps being too permissive, or in his words, “too calm.” The hatred of young people claiming agency and a stake in local and global politics is evident by both. As it is in many opinion pieces produced this week by those who tow the Zionist and pro-American empire line or are ignorantly afraid of anything remotely connectable with antisemitism.
I don’t really have anything major to add to what is being stated, other than pointing out the connection between your thesis and current events. We see in real time the impact of RAP (and of expanding the police state). And it is odious. Time to abolish both.
Link to Judd Legum’s piece: https://open.substack.com/pub/popularinformation/p/columbia-university-protests-and?r=870yh&utm_medium=ios