Secular Homeschool groups for a Christian person

So this may make me loose followers (all 3 of them) but these are two things I feel very strongly about. I am on the board of a secular homeschool group, I’m one of the founding members and I have been a part of it’s leadership since it was a facebook post and an idea. I am also a person who does her best to follow Jesus and teach my children to do the same. I believe these two things are not mutually exclusive and I recognize that I am in the minority.

So here’s why I am not here for most of the Christian homeschool groups/co-ops that I’ve experienced. These groups are doing good work, they are teaching interesting classes and the people are kind and hardworking and lovely. I have friends who are in these groups and I’ve even helped to lead one. I am no longer here for Christian homeschooling groups because of the required statement of faith.

Here’s one example of why I’m not down with the SOF (Statement of Faith is long). I have a good friend who is Mormon and is homeschooling her 5 kids. She is smart and kind and willing to take on all kinds of grunt teaching that most moms don’t want to do (I’m looking at you Math). She also takes her faith seriously so she could’t sign the SOF at a Christian homeschool group and thus her whole family was barred from this group and they lost out on an excellent teacher. She couldn’t agree to a minor point of trinitarian doctrine so they wouldn’t let her teach math. Let that sink in.

I also know many homeschool families who have been burned by church or church people. It sucks but it’s real. They don’t want anything to do with church but they still feel that homeschool is the best option for their kids. The homeschool world is still dominated by Evangelical Fundamentalist Christians, so much so that before we started our group, the nearest secular group was an hour away. That means that if you’re one of the many people who have been hurt by church or just aren’t a Christian, you are on your own.

The SOF becomes a gatekeeper blocking you and your children from having access to all the great things that homeschool groups give to us. I am not here for the gatekeeping when it means people doing a lonely job have even less access to support.

And this is the crux of why I think a secular, inclusive homeschool group is so freaking important. Homeschool can get really, really lonely for you and your kids. Having access to a group gives you an outlet for socialization, a place to ask questions, a way to share experiences and examples of what all this looks like. That is a terrible thing to deny someone simply because they don’t share your religious beliefs.

Furthermore, I speculate that this is not how Jesus would run a homeschool group. Jesus didn’t require full agreement from the crowds before he let the children come through. He didn’t exclude people from his life who didn’t meet his standard. I can’t imagine that would have changed had he been a parent.

In the old testament it says to teach children the way they should go, and when they are old they will not depart from it. I want my children to follow Jesus AND welcome people of different faiths as friends. I want them to see people as bearers of the image of God even if those people don’t believe in God. I don’t ever want them to use religion as a barrier to full fellowship and love between them and someone else because I don’t think that’s what Jesus intended us to do. It certainly isn’t how he lived.

Many Christian parents start out homeschooling because they have this strong urge to shelter their kids from the crappy parts of the world. I share that impulse, I totally get it. You have these sweet, innocent little people and you don’t want them to ever know about things like school shootings or child predators. You don’t want those things to ever be a part of their world. But when we tell our kids that we stay away from the world because it is evil, they will think we have lied when they go out into it and find good.

I have many friends who would make jokes about lightening striking them should they ever cross the threshold of a church and I have seen unspeakable kindness come from them. I’ve seen my non believing friend care for the sick, clothe the naked, feed the poor and comfort the lonely. I would have missed out on the beauty of their friendship had I stayed in the bubble my well meaning parents wished for me. We do our children a disservice when we shelter them from the world. There is too much good out there and we don’t want them to miss out on it.

It is so much easier when we can separate things out with clear lines. Christians=good, everybody else=not as good. But we all know those lines don’t work and you don’t need to look very far to see examples. It is so much harder to teach our kids to analyse character when they are choosing friends, it’s harder to teach them to walk back a friendship that has become negative, it’s harder to hold beliefs that differ and to co-exist. It creates a cognitive dissonance that is uncomfortable but it’s something that we must get used to because the world we live in requires it.

So, if I am the representative of Jesus in this world, I want people to see me loving and supporting anyone who needs it. If they ask me why I will tell them (or maybe just direct them to this post) but otherwise I will love them as I have been loved and leave it up to Jesus to fill in the details. Loving and supporting people has a domino effect just like gatekeeping and exclusion. If I am wrong, let me be wrong on the side of loving and serving my fellow (wo)man. I will take that risk, I hope you will too and I hope our kids are watching.