From Burning Crosses to Burning Books: How the Religious Right Leverages Book Bans and Censorship to Build a Christian Theocracy

Introduction

Public schools in the United States have long been heralded as institutions with the capacity of realizing a more equitable, just, and reified democracy. And while public schools, as an institution, have the capacity to foster democracy, the achievement of equity, equality, and democracy still remain out of reach for all Americans along racial, gender, and class lines (Berliner, 2013; Carter & Welner, 2013; EdBuild, 2019; Frankenberg & Lewis, 2012; Jencks & Phillips, 1998; Jencks et al., 1972; Kozol, 1991; Labaree, 1988; Ladson-Billings, 2006; Orfield, 2013; Saltman, 2015). Further, in some ways, the current manifestation of public schooing in the United States is specifically designed to foster inequity (see, for example, Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Labaree, 1988, 1997, 2010; Spring 2012). Yet, despite the historic and contemporary shortcomings of public schools to help realize equality, if operated in a socially just manner, the public school stands as not only integral towards promoting social mobility and facilitating democratic aims but, conversely, as the very institution that hampers efforts to stifle learning while promoting intentional segregation. Said another way, schools with a broad and diverse array of representation in curriculum and wide and unhampered access to literature undermine nefarious efforts at maintaining racial and class hierarchies as well as stand in the way of a newly resurrected, and overt, desire by the religious and political right to facilitate the spread of a Christian nationalist theocracy that runs counter to conceptions of a democratic and multicultural society.

Conservative activists seeking to reinforce racial/class disparities, as well as proselytize a Christian nationalist political ideology, have turned to dismantling access to books and curriculum that are, from the far-right Christian view, anathema to their personal religious traditions. While much of the uproar over “wokeness,” “CRT,” and “DEI” in public schools is a manufactured crisis (Berliner & Biddle, 1995) seeking to undermine public support of public institutions for the purpose of pushing school privatization (Nartowicz, 2022; Potts, 2023), a central aim of the Christian nationalist movement under the “Seven Mountains” theology is to gain control over education for the purpose of “advancing God’s kingdom (Wermund, 2016)” The increase in education policies that seek to ban books and leverage censorship represent an existential threat to the very nature of public schools and a conception of a public/common good within a democracy. Further, these forms of banning of books and limiting curricula represent a direct threat to the conception of students realizing self-actualization and accessing a holistic education.

Animating much of the vitriol surrounding the manufactured crisis over curriculum and books is White Christian nationalism, which has a long history of seeking to ban, or burn, books that do not align with the ideology of the political right. In the most extreme cases, members of the KKK have burned books and crosses as a means of intimidation, as did the Nazis. Politicians and political movements of the 1950s sought to root out communism from the curriculum, books and the teaching force as part of McCarthyism (Goldstein, 2014; Tiede, 2017). More recently, White students at Georgia Southern University burned books that explored White privilege and diversity (Vera, 2019). Further, groups such as Moms for Liberty (M4L) have experienced a meteoric rise to power through their concerted effort to ban books exploring race and gender/sexuality while some of their local chapters have called for the segregation of LGBTQ+ students and others have quoted Hitler in reference to controlling youth to realize a desired future (Bollinger, 2022; Joyce, 2022, 2023; Mitsanas, 2023; Tagami, 2022).