The Y2K that never ended

A new documentary mini-series on Amazon Prime called Shiny Happy People tells the hidden stories of the Duggar family from 19 Kids and Counting, and it also draws attention to the problems with a particular type of cult-like homeschooling that became popular in evangelical communities in the 1980s and 90s – Bill Gothard’s Advanced Training Institute (ATI) curriculum. It used the Sermon on the Mount and other Biblical texts as a basis for every subject from Science to Math to Social Studies.

“There’s so many people who grew up in this educationally neglectful homeschooling program and are now struggling financially,” comments Brooke Arnold in the documentary. “I am a real Kimmy Schmidt,” Arnold elaborates, referencing a popular Netflix sit-com; “a woman who spent her adolescence trapped inside a metaphorical bunker, and then was thrust into a world that she had never been prepared to be a part of.”

Real-life left behind

Carly Butler can relate. As the year 2000 approached, her mom became increasingly paranoid about apocalyptic prophesies and eventually fled to Canada, where Butler was raised in an off-the-grid cabin 20 kms down a remote forest service road in Smithers, B.C. Before that, Butler and her mom had spent most of the 90s following the “March for Jesus” movement from Montana to Florida to California. They knew many families embedded in the ATI world. As for Butler, most of the textbooks her mom invested in came from Focus on the Family and Abeka. The Left Behind series formed the bedrock of her literary world.

“I was chopping wood and feeding animals and making food and practicing my shotgun,” recalls Butler. “I was homeschooled without actually being educated.”

“I couldn’t work or travel or go to school or drive,” explains Carly, since her mom didn’t follow any official pathways to gaining Canadian residency. “I didn’t exist. And I didn’t realize that so much of existing in a place means that you have to have proof in documentation.” As a teenager, Carly earned money house cleaning, babysitting and doing under the table jobs for about five dollars an hour. When she asked her mom how she was supposed to earn a living without any official papers, she’d reply “oh, you’re so creative. You’ll think of something. Maybe you can invent something.”

Fighting to go to school

When Butler turned 19 she insisted on enrolling in the local high school to get her GED.

“I just went and I basically lied,” recalls Butler, who told the school administrators that she was a foreign exchange student whose paperwork was in transit. They agreed that she could study and if the papers didn’t come, she could pay for the year and graduate with her class. “I recall that year as being one of the best years of my life. I was doing theater, going on choir trips to Edmonton, and learning how to sew. It was my first step into making a choice for myself.”

Butler spent her 20s trying to catch up to her peers. She convinced friends to help her get a driver’s license, finished her GED and worked hard at minimum wage jobs to pay the bills. “Being forced as a child into a belief of religious end times and government conspiracy theories set my whole life back about eight years,” estimates Butler, “Education, work, license, rites of passage. I was in the world but not of it and it was empty. Yet I beat myself up at 35 for being ‘behind.’” Butler is still trying to catch up on missed childhood vaccinations and paying for dental decisions that her mom made decades ago.

The parallels between Butler’s story and Tara Westover’s memoir Educated are undeniable. “I remember being devastated when that book came out,” says Butler, wondering if the world had space for two memoirs of Christian fundamentalist homeschooled girls. “I was so scarcity minded.” When Christian Courier asked her about the just-released Shiny Happy People documentary she admitted to feeling cautious about engaging with a story so similar to her own childhood trauma. “I haven’t gotten up the nerve to watch the show yet.”

Like many cult survivors, Butler’s story is one of displacement and searching for her identity.

For most of her life, Butler identified as Latina. Growing up, she remembers her mother, who was white, saying, “I love your olive skin. Oh, you look so exotic!” At the time she saw it as a compliment, a positive connection to the father she’d never met. But when Butler eventually gained brief contact with her birth father about 10 years ago, he told her the truth. She was Hiaki (Yaqui) – a descendant from a tribe indigenous to Mexico and parts of the southern USA.

“Once I had that name, I could go on Google and start researching, and I could see pictures of people. Oh, this is who I look like!” Butler says recovering that piece of her identity felt like being rescued. “Suddenly I felt like I had somewhere to settle roots into and to grow into.”

“This might sound kind of woo woo, but I remember being a kid and drawing these flowers that I thought I’d invented, like the style of the petals and the color and everything. I drew them everywhere, all the time,” recalls Butler. When she started researching Hiaki symbolism and spirituality, her jaw dropped. There was the desert bloom of her childhood imagination. “It’s one of the flowers in the desert where my people come from that I had never seen before.”

For Butler, divine-inspired moments like this help her sift through the artifacts of her faith-based trauma and figure out what to keep and what to toss.

“There are some days where I feel like I could just walk into a church and I could be a worship leader. I could sing and play music and totally feel God that way. And then there’s times where I’m like, ‘you know what? Just being outside and feeling the wind or seeing trees or seeing water, that’s church for me.’”

On Indigenous People’s Day, Butler posted the following paragraph online: “I am Hiaki (Yaqui). I am descended from people who cared for the earth and thrived in queer, women-led community. We were flattered and groomed, enslaved and relocated, separated and killed. But we are a resurrection people, a tree planted by water, where hummingbirds soar. I glow somewhere between the sunset and the moon, between death and life, hope and despair. I have much to teach and much to learn. And I have everything I need to keep going.”