“So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt . . . Are you sorry you bought the one way ticket?” title and lyrics from Keith Green’s album, circa. 1980
Author’s Note: This series is autobiographical to provide background for the books and articles you will find on this website. When the series is finished, I will provide a summation in a bio-page. Links to previous installments are found at the bottom of the article. –JWS, website creator.
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Dr. D. James Kennedy:”What will happen if this trend continues with the growth of Christian schools?”Rev. R. J. Rushdoony: “It means that by the year 2000, we will have a Christian republic.”
national television interview, Winter, 1980
My colleague, Randy Thiry, and I watched that interview live and were instantly electrified by the idea that America as a Christian republic was a possibility. It was from such inspirations that “The Wyoming Project” came to be.
The American Bicentennial Era brought a resurgence of patriotic books and literature. I have already cited Verna Hall’s and Rosalie Slater’s collections of early American documents. Gary DeMar’s audio production, The American Vision, 360 Years Later, was a sensation that launched his “American Vision” ministry which would later produce the God & Government books and study helps.
Pat Brooks’ The Return of the Puritans (1979, edition) was another. Cited in my very first Separatist Review, it had been a book promoted by Harry Conn. She, too, drew a distinction between the Puritans and the Separatists who would become the Pilgrims and the “First Comers” as American colonists.
Using Christ’s analogy of the salt and the light (Matthew 5), she said that the Puritans were the “salt people” who worked for reform from within existing institutions. The Separatists were the “light people,” the ones who were to become “the city on a hill” and to change the world by their example outside of existing institutions. With a geographical separation to start a new colony, the Mayflower Compact became the cornerstone of the new “American” system of self-government.
But I was moving past both Puritanism and Separatism to a new field of exploration: “Familism” and the Christian man as the agent of Christian Reconstruction from within his home.
Verna Hall’s diagram provided conceptualization of how it worked in “Puritan” New England:
https://2046ad.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/freeman1.pdf
How I eventually ended up in Wichita, Kansas was somewhat providential. We were on Interstate 35 near El Dorado, Kansas on our way to Kansas City, when my old 1957 Chevy pick-up truck died on the highway. Kay was following me in her car. So, we had the truck and U-Haul trailer which had all our worldly goods towed back to Wichita and I used some ITEX barter dollars to secure food and lodging while we waited for reports from the mechanic.
It turned out that ITEX had a strong chapter in Wichita, and we were befriended by one of its patrons who owned a lot of rentals in the city and happened to need a painter. We were able to rent from his company at half cash/half trade and to get settled. To me, Wichita was as logical as Kansas City, so I accepted the outcome as the will of God. Kay was late in her second pregnancy and we needed time to find a midwife.
During the following decade (1988-1998), I continued to publish more issues of The Family Spokesman and begin the new Biblical Terranomics, which replaced The Separatist Papers. Most of the material became the serial publication of books: The Westward March of Christianity & the Destiny of Nations; Restoring the Foundations; Biblical Midwifery; The Mother Heart of God, and so on. A few issues which contained stray articles can be found here:
And here:
I tried to develop a curriculum and ministry for friendly family-oriented advocacies. The home schooling movement began to mushroom. I added other planks of Family Worship, Cottage Industries, Home Health & Safety, and Family Government which became separate topic categories in The Family Spokesman. The integration of these planks became a manifesto of sorts in what I called the “Home Renaissance Movement.” My friend, Dennis Zwonitzer, would thereafter in a jocular vein call me “the Renaissance Man.”
I had moved beyond “revival and reconstruction” to “renaissance.” I met Phil Lancaster during his time in St. Louis. He, too, was exploring the idea of family-house churches. He promoted Kerry Ptacek’s book Family Worship. Lancaster published The Biblical Patriarch magazine. Early on, he published one of my articles from Biblical Terranomics: Gun Control Violates the Second Commandment.
I had the opportunity to teach various college-level courses for churches on these topics and others, such as Gary DeMar’s “God & Government” series, through whom I met Philip & Becky Elder and the fellowship which met at the Love Box Company in 1989. She organized a “Christian Worldview Library” (CWVL) which was housed at the factory complex and utilized the gym and meeting room facilities to offer educational programs for home educators. With her brother’s help it became a school which operates to this day.
In 1993 the Elder’s would bring David Chilton to town for an exploratory meeting on starting a new church to which I was also invited to attend. I knew I had aspirations to return to the land and declined to serve on the steering committee. Instead, Rev. George Granberry was recruited and he started Heartland Presbyterian Church on the eastside of town friendly to home schoolers which I attended with my family frequently. He and the people were always gracious, but no one ever sat down with me to ask me about my vision and how it could be integrated with the larger church mission. Why? Probably because it can’t.
Even though my training and experience were for the ministry, I could not go back to churchianity. Since Kansas, the only time I have ever been invited to give a sermon was for a Unitarian Church. Go figure.
Talent and scholarship are typically lacking in Evangelical leadership. Its form of religion is focused on the “experience” of worship and creating a positive “atmosphere” to encourage people to come back: Churchianity.
As I continued my research, I relied heavily on the writings of the early Church Fathers for understanding and taught a class on church history which was recorded on video at the evening classes at CWVL. The works of David Bercot were very helpful. It was during that period that I discovered the Celtic fathers and the tribal structure of the Celtic Church as opposed to the diocesan structure of the Classical Church (Greek, Roman and Protestant). It was a path I would explore for the next 25 years.
Summation of useful sources can be found in my study, The Holy Conspiracy, which was published first as Issue #10 of Biblical Terranomics, but was later published as a stand alone study.
My connections to Moral Government colleagues began to fade. I spoke to Harry Conn by phone for the last time in 1998. It was an endearing and memorable conversation.
But most of my colleagues in the movement were “city boys” and could not understand the value of farm living. A “back to the land” movement did not interest them, but it did interest Becky Elder because she was a graduate of The University of the South which at the time was still a bastion of the old Southern Agrarians. She knew what it meant to invoke the writings of Richard Weaver.
And it also interested Dennis Zwonitzer, who had been on a different path of discovery on America’s Christian roots which coincided with my research on the Common Law. The possibilities would bring him from Wyoming to Kansas for several years of collaboration.
It is difficult to capsulate the productivity of that period and why I ever forsook a ministry with such potential. That must be saved for the next installment.
(to be continued)
James Wesley Stivers, 7/29/23
