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America’s Providential History: Dominionsim, Totalitarianism, and Fascism
“Throughout this book,” the authors of America’s Providential History write, “we have seen that we must take action to assure that America is re-established on a firm Christian base, and hence, secure our God-given liberties and provide a free and prosperous platform from which we can go and make disciples of all the nations.” America’s Providential History is a Christian textbook used in homeschooling and elsewhere. It has gone through numerous editions, with the latest, America’s Providential History: A New Diverse and Expanded Education on the 400th Anniversary of the Pilgrims, published in 2020. I came across the textbook while reading Chris Hedges American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2006) for my Lillian E. Smith Studies course on Christian Nationalism. As we discussed Hedges’ book in class, we decided to look up America’s Providential History, and we found a 1996 edition online, so all quotes come from that edition. We looked, specifically at a section from chapter 18, “The Power for Reforming America,” and it is this section that I want to look at some in this post.
The chapter begins by presenting an argument that since the Civil War “federalism and a limited small national government has largely passed away,” leading to state governments becoming “mere administrative extensions of…
