American Craziness Wasn’t Always This Crazy

Any time you see Idaho in the news, you know it’s going to be for the most batshit reasons. But while insanity has always been at the core of Americanness, it hasn’t always been this bad and it hasn’t always been this way in every state. Idaho is in fact a great example, as this ProPublica story discusses:

In Idaho, parents who say their faith prohibits lifesaving medical care for their children can’t be charged with child neglect or manslaughter. Supporters of this protection over the years have included lawmakers who voiced support for “traditional” Idaho values.

But from at least the 1880s through the early 1970s, it was illegal for parents in Idaho to choose prayer over medical care when a child’s life was at stake, newspaper archives and historical documents show.

“Every parent of any child who willfully omits, without lawful excuse, to furnish necessary food, clothing, shelter, or medical attendance for such child, is guilty of a misdemeanor,” reads the 1887 edition of Idaho territory statutes, published before statehood.

The statutes included no mention of spiritual belief as a “lawful excuse.” Three years later, the state constitution explicitly put limits on Idaho’s freedom of religion. It would not excuse “acts of licentiousness,” polygamy or other practices “inconsistent with morality or the peace or safety of the state.”

It wasn’t long before the law came down on members of the Followers of Christ, a faith-healing sect that arrived in Idaho in 1899 and remains active in the state. From 2015 to 2025, the sect’s congregations in Idaho experienced 15 preventable deaths of children, according to ProPublica’s reporting.

Pearl Annis was a 13-year-old girl whose parents had moved from Oklahoma to Idaho’s Magic Valley in the spring of 1915 with at least one other Followers family. The Annises and their 13 children shared “a two-room shack,” a local newspaper reported. An officer and a doctor visited the home after neighbors voiced concern. They found Pearl in bed, fully dressed and on the cusp of death.

Her father, Lurid P. “Lewis” Annis, was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of refusing to provide medical attention. Pearl was taken to the hospital, according to the news story, and died there with what today would be described as septic shock from a bowel blockage. The newspaper, which didn’t appear to follow up on Annis’ criminal charge, called the Followers church “a religious cult” and Pearl’s death a consequence of “religious mania.”

It doesn’t have to be this way. Until the 1970s, Idaho was a state with a fundamental conservatism, largely thanks to the Mormon farmers in its southern counties. But it also had a strong New Deal working class tradition in its northern counties. It elected Frank Church and Cecil Andrus over and over again. These were strong liberals on most issues. The story of contemporary Idaho, with its white supremacist groups and its faith healing and its Pete Hegseth cult pastors and its gutting of education and its Helen Chenoweths is a very late 20th century story. Someday, I might even finish my book on the Northwest since the 1960s that explains this in more detail. But short of that, understand that these are contemporary processes related to social and economic change, not inevitabilities. Theoretically, things could even get better!