BUILDING GOD’S KINGDOM: Christian Reconstruction’s Influence on Homeschooling and More

Record: Julie J. Ingersoll, Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015) [Available Here]

Summary: Ingersoll is in a unique position to write a book like this.  As a young woman she was married to one of the sons of prominent Reconstructionist Bob Thoburn and was very active in several Religious Right organizations.  She and Mark Thoburn divorced in the early 1990s and Julie spent most of that decade earning a Ph.D. in Religious Studies, eventually becoming a professor at the University of North Florida.  Her dissertation was published in 2003 as Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles. This is her second book.

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Modern Girls, Pioneer Spirit, and Patriarchy

This post reviews Susan A. Miller,Growing Girls: The Natural Origins of Girls’ Organizations in America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007)

Miller, a lecturer in the history department at the University of Pennsylvania, here writes a detailed and fascinating account of organizations created in the early 20th century to help girls maintain continuity with the frontier past even as they prepared them for the modern future–organizations like Camp Fire Girls, Girl Scouts, Girl Pioneers, and many more. 

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