The Christian Exodus from State Schools

The Unmasking of State Schools

The Southern Baptist Convention appears to be giving up on the public school system. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a candidate for the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention has been urging Christian parents to have an exit strategy from public schools. He argues that public schools are going to become more and more hostile to the Christian faith. Therefore, it is time for the Southern Baptist Convention to work to set up a competing education system of schools and home schools.

In a blog posting back in 2005, he reviewed the debate that was starting to emerge at the highest levels in the largest evangelical denomination in the United States, as a resolution calling for Southern Baptists parents to conduct an audit of their local public schools with a view to removing their children was under consideration:

Those who fear that a resolution calling the public schools into question would be seen as extreme have a powerful argument behind their concern. After all, Southern Baptists have been eager advocates for the public schools in the past, and thousands of faithful Southern Baptists serve as public school teachers, administrators, and board members. Beyond this, millions of Southern Baptist families send their children to public schools each year. A resolution perceived as opposed to the very idea of public education would offend many active Southern Baptists, some of whom would scratch their heads in amazement that the convention would even venture into this territory.

On the other hand, the momentum is clearly on the side of those pushing for this resolution. Every week, new reports of atrocities in the public schools appear. Radical sex education programs, offensive curricula and class materials, school-based health clinics, and ideologies hostile to Christian truth and parental authority abound. These reports are no longer isolated and anecdotal. Forces opposed to what Southern Baptist churches and families believe dominate the public school arena--especially at the national level where policies are made and the future is shaped.

There is more to this, of course. The crisis in public school education has prompted some to reconsider the very idea of public education. Some now argue that Christian parents cannot send their children to public schools without committing the sin of handing their children over to a pagan and ungodly system. Fueled by a secularist agenda and influenced by an elite of radical educational bureaucrats and theorists, government schools now serve as engines for secularizing and radicalizing children.

Albert Mohler, “Needed: An Exit Strategy,” http://www.albertmohler.com/commentary_read.php?cdate=2005-06-17

The mask of state education is being stripped off. Underneath is a face implacably hostile to the Christian faith.

For decades Christians have supposed that they can redeem or rescue the state education system. By working within it, they believed they could reform it from the inside. Such brethren (and, now, predominately) sisters need to be honoured and respected for their commitment, their zeal, their hope, and their tireless labours. Nevertheless, we have to say their hope and belief was naïve. It was never going to happen. Never.

State schools are founded upon the myth or lie of neutrality. Ostensibly the state education system favours neither one religious belief over another. It purports to be even handed and neutral towards all. This is what the state educational legislation and ideology means by education being secular. Of course in New Zealand, way back in 1870 the Education Act decreed that education in the state system was to be secular. This has never changed.

But here is the point: when the state education system set itself up to be secular or neutral towards all religions, it was in fact adopting a deeply religious position. It was thereby asserting that man is the ultimate determiner and final arbiter of truth. That religion is as old as the Garden of Eden. The Serpent of old persuaded Adam and Eve to step outside of God's pre-interpreting commands and look at the world with a different pair of spectacles in which man would be like God, knowing good and evil for themselves.

The essence of schooling is teaching and imparting knowledge. The secular school's starting point is that man is god over all knowledge and defines it for himself. This is a deeply religious conviction. It is a pervasive religion. It lies at the foundation of all state schools. The Christian faith can no more be built as a superstructure on this rotten foundation than the crippled Titanic could stay afloat in the North Atlantic.

Naturally, since there are billions of non-Christians on the planet, each believing at root that Man is the arbiter of truth, the result is every type and stripe of knowledge and belief, of religions and mythologies, of isms and idols. In the religion of unbelief this is to be expected. As each individual determines truth for himself, a million flowers will bloom, to paraphrase Mao.

Secular education, state education, in the end does not really care which flowers bloom—as long as they are the product of man measuring truth for himself. The diversity of flowers is a natural part of the rich tapestry produced by man as god. Debates amongst unbelievers are in-house discussions only. Secular education can thus make room for (tolerate) a reinterpreted parody of Christianity. As long as “Christianity” is promulgated as just one more interesting idea, that may be true or may be false it will be tolerated by unbelievers. They may regard it as primitive, quaint, unscientific, ignorant—but in the end, if it is true for you, that's all that matters, since you are the authenticator of your own truth.

But, the real Christian faith will never be tolerated by state educational systems. For the Christian faith alone cuts at the root of the humanist belief system—it cuts at the root of the myth of man as god. The Christian faith alone declares that God is the determiner and conditioner of all truth, all reality, every atom, every particle, every moment—of all existence. Man's fatuous claim to determine truth for himself is therefore both a nasty joke and a cruel lie.

To adopt a position of neutrality towards the God of the Scriptures is to take up a position of enmity toward Him. There is no middle ground. As our Lord says, “He who is not with me is against Me. He would does not gather with me, scatters.” (Luke 11:23) As time has passed, the mask of neutrality has been ripped away from the state education system. It is increasingly showing itself as the Great Deceiver. Its hostility towards the Christian faith and Christians is more and more overt.

Mohler points out:

In his book, A Common Faith, Dewey advocated a radically secular vision for the public schools and the larger public culture. His concept of a humanistic faith, stripped of all supernatural claims, doctrines, and theological authorities, would replace Christianity as the dominant culture-shaping worldview. "Here are all the elements for a religious faith that shall not be confined to sect, class, or race," he claimed. "Such a faith has always been the common faith of mankind. It remains for us to make it explicit and militant." (Ibid)

Dewey's objective is being realised. The common faith of mankind (that is, common to the Seed of the Serpent or, mankind-opposed-to-God) is set against Christianity. Dewey saw it, and grasped the nettle. Increasingly the false faith is becoming explicit and militant.

Christian schools alone can teach in a truthful construct. Christian teachers alone can teach children about the world that actually exists. Christianity alone deals with things as they really are. State schools peddle lies and errors. They cannot help it. Their animating spirit is the Father of Lies, who has lied to man from the beginning.