By Joshua Harris

A new generation is falling in love with the joys of publishing. Home-school students from across the country are starting their own newsletters and magazines. And they’re doing more than just meeting a credit requirement or making up for the lack of a school newspaper. In most cases, their ventures are self-motivated and extracurricular. They want to make a statement and reach out to others their age. These kids are on a mission.

From Beaver Falls to Redding, California

The focus of the periodicals vary as much as their geographic locations. Mart Rose and Jeremy Fisher, best friends who live in Redding, California, started their newsletter The Sending Voice to keep other conservative Christian teens up-to-date on current happenings. The two 16-year olds want to help other teens better understand and influence their country. And they don’t waste any time hiding their political bias. “We’re not going to cover what normal people think,” one promotional flier reads, “just radical, fire-breathing, right-wing Christians.”

On the other side of the country, another pair of best friends are entering their third year of publishing. Their magazine has a very different focus and a much softer tone. F. Meyer and Elizabeth McCarthy live on the edge of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. Their magazine HopeChest, “A Christian Magazine for Young Ladies”, doesn’t bother with politics. It reads like a chapter from an L.M. Montgomery book. F. and Elizabeth fit publishing HopeChest between knitting, canning, reading, and babysitting. Their hard work has paid off. They now have over 300 ‘kindred spirits” in other girls from across the U.S. who read their magazine.

The American Review gives a Christian perspective of American politics and society. It features the work of students from many states. The Review’s editor-in-chief, Jeannie Schindler, is proud of the fact that all of them are under 20 years old. Meaty articles on topics like the Contract with America and expositions on “Christianity and the State” accompany humor, often at the expense of the current administration.

Finding A Voice

But the periodicals are more than just soap boxes for conservative Christian rhetoric. Another key motivation for the upstart publishers is a desire for camaraderie with others who share their values. In essence this generation of home-school teens is beginning to dialogue with itself to find an identity. Though often defined by who they’re not, or what they won’t do, home schoolers are using their publications to define who they are.

The experience of home schooling has given them a different view of more than just education. These students want to return to a biblically-based pattern in politics, marriage and family.

Offering Alternatives

The publications share a level of urgency and weighty commentary that stands in stark contrast to today’s typical youth reading material. These publications aren’t driven by corporations using statistics to find out the latest youth trend. Instead, they’re run by students who feel the mainstream media has shut their value system out. They’re offering an alternative.

If the underground ‘zines of the 60’s were the voice of the “youth culture’s” break with traditional morality and the establishment, these publications are the voice of rebellion against the pervading materialistic, humanistic, and secular establishment.

Almost all of the publications being produced by home-school teens were started because of a dissatisfaction with status-quo teen publications. F. and Elizabeth remember feeling isolated and different from the lifestyles represented in popular teen magazines. “The contents of those glossy pages told us we were the only odd ones and tempted us to give up on our ideals.”

Titus Two for Teens

But instead of giving up on their ideals, they started HopeChest. For young women desiring to be “keepers at home”, magazines like HopeChest are a welcomed alternative to the likes of Sassy, Teen, and YM. Advice on boyfriends, birth control or pin-ups of the latest music or television star are conspicuously absent. In their place, readers share experiences from their lives and help each other develop homemaking skills. HopeChest is the perfect model of this genre of magazine—very traditional, very personal, very relational. Tips on baking, sewing, quilting and gardening fill the pages. These are skills, the girls point out, that are no longer being handed down from generation to generation. Teenage girls are using periodicals like HopeChest to hone their skills as future wives and mothers.

Somebody forgot to tell these girls about the women’s lib movement. And even if they did, the readers wouldn’t listen. Culture’s new ideal of womanhood holds no allurement for them. Lara and Lisa Bode, sisters in Colorado who publish The King’s Daughter, a magazine for Christian girls, feel pursuing a career in journalism would be unscriptural. They do hope, however, that it will be a part of their future family’s ministry.

Inspired in part by HopeChest, the Bode sisters started publishing The King’s Daughter on HopeChest’s off month so that a girl could subscribe to both and receive one every month. The idea worked. They share many subscribers with HopeChest and now circulate to almost 150 people.

Action Oriented

Publications like The Sending Voice and The American Review deal less with Christianity lived out at home and more on political and social involvement. The Review is the journal of The Young Conservative Council of America, a grass roots political action organization for students age 15 to 25. Though YCCA is still very small, the Review reflects the fact that the editors view themselves and their journal as a part of a political movement.

The Sending Voice is not as politically oriented as the Review. Its Winter 1994 issue featured articles on “Dating vs. Courtship” and “Why and How to Write Essays.” But TSV consistently encourages Christian activism and a “go forth and conquer” attitude. Their latest project is to push Christendom into the fast lane of the information super-highway. They’ve written a booklet about on-line communication and are bundling it with America On-line software to get people started.

Roots At Home

Though you won’t find many articles specifically addressing home schooling, all of the students feel their experience as home schoolers played a direct role in publishing. The flexibility home schooling provides is what made it a possibility. “If Lisa and I attended ‘real school’, we would not have time for a magazine,” says Lara Bode of The King’s Daughter. Jeannie Schindler concurs, citing the “gratuitous” amount of home work that would weigh her down in public school.

Heidi Reimer, the editor of Becoming Complete, a magazine for guys and girls that covers a variety of topics related to Christian living, believes home schooling gave her the character necessary to handle the job.  “Home schooling has made me an independent learner and an initiator, able to work on my own, to see a need and fill it,” she explains.

Growing And Learning

Each of the students, however, feels work on their publications has been a learning experience in and of itself. While they’re all intent on changing the world, they recognize that the interaction and exposure to others has changed them as well.

Though very conservative, HopeChest has managed to keep its standards high without an overly critical spirit. In her Dec/Jan editorial Elizabeth commented on her struggle with judging others by their clothing and not their hearts. As the girls’ ministry has grown, so has its focus. They write, “Although we began HopeChest largely because we wanted friends who shared our convictions and lifestyle, we’ve discovered a greater vision during the years we’ve been publishing. The girls we’ve met through HopeChest range from the daughter of Mennonite farmers to mainstream Christians from the suburbs, but our common love for the Lord and earnest desire to do His will unites us. The insights these friends offer from their diverse vantage points have been such a blessing to us.”

Becoming Complete only circulates to about thirty families presently, but Heidi Reimer has been stretched by the work. “Editing and publishing a magazine, even a small one, is tough,” she states emphatically. But she wouldn’t trade the learning experience for the world. “Computer problems, subscriber troubles, the scramble to fill an issue and to get it out on time, an occasional harsh letter...all are opportunities for growth,” she says.

Matthew Fisher is learning more than just the ins and outs of writing and editing. He and Jeremy are learning how to work as a team. “When working with your best friend in a partnership, your friendship is challenged,” he says. “If you do not put God first and your pride last, then it is impossible to work together.”

Only time will tell what the future holds for the magazines and newsletters. But the young editors are confident that the effort is worth it. F. and Elizabeth speak for them all when they write, “It is a lot of work, but as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said, ‘the heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.”