Examining Rhetorical Constructions of “Book Boundaries” in Michigan School Board Election Campaigns as Enactments of White Christian Nationalism’s Vision for Literacy Censorship

Across the United States, White Christian Nationalism (WCN) has emerged in public discourse, policy, and practice around literacy education. Examining varied localized enactments of censorship further nuances accounts of how WCN advocates for and enacts its vision for public literacy education. In particular, school board campaigns have become spaces of debate on the goals and contents of literacy education, as WCN candidates advocate for censorship of topics, materials, and pedagogies which they perceive as conflicting with their perspectives and label as causing harm to students. 

Ottawa County, in Western Michigan (US), is a significant site for studying WCN school board campaign rhetoric due to its settlement history involving intertwined ethnoreligious (Dutch Reformed Christian) and economic forces. In this paper, we examine data from school board candidates endorsed by Ottawa Impact (OI), a political action group in Ottawa County, MI that we interpret as radically WCN. We contextualize OI rhetoric regarding “book boundaries” (terminology from the data set) in the historical and theological foundations of the Dutch Reformed Christian population of Ottawa County. Through this contextualization, we examine how OI candidates’ perspectives on literacy censorship reflect their vision of God’s dominion over the US nation-state and lead to the enactment of policies that forward parents’ sovereignty over the contents of children’s education under the guise of protecting “childhood innocence.” 

Methodology

OI began making state and national news in Fall 2022 when it successfully endorsed nine new county commissioners who were elected in Ottawa County and promptly changed the slogan of the county from “Where you belong” to “Where Freedom Rings.” Ottawa Impact quickly extended its political action to local school board races, our focus here. This qualitative case study (Patton, 2015) examines Ottawa Impact-endorsed candidates in Ottawa County and two neighboring districts (n = 11) in the 2022 school board election cycle. We examined publicly available data sources from the OI candidates (i.e., candidate websites, social media pages, PAC documents, local news). Our team analyzed this data using inductive and deductive codes drawn from the data and the broader literature on White Christian nationalism and Christian theology. For this paper, we specifically focused on the implications of OI candidates’ perspectives in relation to literacy censorship and decision-making about what children should read in public schools and libraries. 

Findings

Extending Childhood (Innocence) through Age-Appropriate Content 

While there are certain contents that OI determines as never acceptable for students to encounter such as those which contrast with their vision of America or align with perceived liberal ideologies, there are other contents which OI deems are not, “age-appropriate” for children specifically. These topics (e.g., sex) may not directly challenge White Christian perspectives; however, they are conveyed as not being appropriate for children to encounter in the public school classroom. In these cases, OI argues that the decision should be left up to the parents of if, when, and how students encounter these contents. In order to preserve the power of parents to protect their children’s innocence from materials which are not “age-appropriate,” OI argues for the establishment of “book boundaries” which ban books that contain material that they determine children should be protected from until their parents decide that they should encounter them. 

Responding to Threats of “Woke Indoctrination” 

Throughout their campaign materials, OI candidates describe perspectives and ideologies which do not align with their own as “woke indoctrination.” These contents are presented as a threat to children and childhood innocence. Many candidates position themselves as protectors of childhood innocence from these threats. They tell stories of their recognition of the increasing presence of these types of contents and advocate for their election and leadership as a response to this perceived threat of “woke indoctrination.” This movement to identify contrasting perspectives as threats aligns with broader WCN movements which attempt to present WCN groups as a persecuted minority experiencing marginalization.

Replicating, Reinforcing, and Integrating Family Sovereignty and Economic Productivity 

Through their guidelines for the contents of literacy education and their emphasis on parental decision-making, OI presents a vision of public schools which replicate and reinforce Reformed Christian familial structures, patriarchal gender roles, systems of parental control over children, economic productivity, and a vision of an imagined and idealized past of what childhood has been over time. This includes a focus on economic productivity as moral strength and an emphasis on promoting American exceptionalism through teaching what OI calls America’s “true history.” Through books, OI seeks to replicate and reinforce their existing vision of the Reformed Christian family and the innocent child and their imagined ideals of US history and past generations. 

Discussion

Much of the current dialogue about WCN and literacy education centers on the contents banned or promoted in public school and library books and what they reveal about WCN’s aims for public education. OI’s approaches to literacy censorship are distinguished and shaped by the specific historical and theological context of the Dutch Reformed Christian community of W. Michigan, leading to a greater focus on sovereignty and parental decision-making in literacy education than the censorship or promotion of certain contents. This further nuances the dialogue about WCN and literacy education. In the context of OI’s “book boundaries,” the question is not about what is in and out of the boundaries, but rather who gets to decide and who holds dominion over where the boundaries lie and how they are enforced. 

As in our analysis of “book boundaries” in relation to OI candidates in W. Michigan, each localized enactment of ethnoreligious nationalism warrants contextualized examination to explore not only the present realities, but also the historical and theological underpinnings which support the advocacy for and enactment of actions such as literacy censorship in public schools and libraries. More rich and nuanced study of localized instances of ethnoreligious nationalisms offers the potential for the development of responses to the dangers of the oppressive policies and practices they inspire.