Baptist 'exit strategy' means get kids out of public schools
Pastor Dale Morgan
Baptist 'exit strategy' means get kids out of public schools
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Groundswell of support building in 16 million member group for homeschooling
Posted: October 20, 2006
Baptist News
By Bob Unruh
If you like sexually transmitted diseases, shootings and high teen
pregnancy rates, by all means, send your children to public schools.
That's the word from a leader in the fast-growing movement within the 16
million-member Southern Baptist Convention for parents to pull their
children from those schools in favor of homeschooling.
The program is called Exit Strategy and Pastor Wiley Drake, whose home
state of California has done some things especially offensive to
Christians this year, is a leading promoter.
In an interview, he said that those problems and others are prevalent in
public schools, and some Christian leaders even have said it could be
considered child abuse just to register children in such a facility.
That's why resolutions encouraging members of the nation's largest
Protestant church organization to exit public schools have been
submitted in every SBC state and regional convention in the U.S., he said.
"Basically, (the education system) has been saying, 'You have to let us
teach your kids anything we want,'" said Wiley, citing some of the
pro-homosexual material being required in public education.
"Well, we don't like it and we're not going to put up with it," he said.
The "Exit Strategy Resolution" is based on Albert Mohler's
recommendation in 2005 that, in light of the "spiritual, moral, and
academic decay in the government schools, Southern Baptists develop an
exit strategy from the public schools." It also coordinates with work
done by ExodusMandate.org, which works to have parents move children to
Christian teaching.
Mohler is president of the SBC's flagship seminary, Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary in Louisville and one of the SBC's leading theologians.
"Dr. Mohler is right, Southern Baptists, and Christians generally, need
to plan a Christian educational future for our children," Wiley said.
"First, Christian parents are obligated to provide their children with a
Christ-centered education. Anyone who thinks that a few hours of youth
group and church will have more influence on a child's faith and
worldview than 40 to 50 hours a week of public school classes,
activities, and homework is simply not being honest with himself.
"Second, the open collaboration between homosexual activists and many
school districts, together with the overall level of crime and violence
in the public schools, make the public schools an unsafe place for our
children," he said.
"Although changing the hearts and minds of people is often a slow
process, attitudes about how we educate our children are changing within
Southern Baptist life," said Roger Moran, a member of the SBC's
executive committee. "Increasingly we are recognizing that if we are
going to profess the name of Christ, then our lives should be a
testimony to authentic Biblical Christianity. Yet, how can we expect our
children to have that testimony when they are 'trained up' in secular
public schools to have a secular mindset that excludes the
acknowledgement of God and the Word of God at every point?"
"The experiment with government schooling has failed," said Bruce
Shortt, a co-sponsor of the "Exit Strategy" resolution. "What Baptists
need to do now is create a new public education system, a system that is
public in the sense that it is open to everyone and that takes into
account the needs of orphans, single parents, and the disadvantaged.
With our existing buildings, our talented people, and the educational
technology available today, it is now possible to create rapidly an
affordable, effective Christian education alternative to the government
schools."
There are numerous estimates that homeschooling in the United States,
already one of the fast-growing segments of education, involves 2.5
million students. The nation's largest home educator's organization, the
Home School Legal Defense Fund, has more than 80,000 member families
alone. It's estimated that the curriculum, materials and supplies for
those students already surpass $1 billion a year.
But if, in fact, a large-scale movement within the SBC would develop,
its 16 million members could double or triple or more the size of the
homeschool community literally at will.
Those families belong to 42,000 churches in 1,200 local associations and
41 state conventions and fellowships.
Drake said the call for abandonment of government-run secular
institutions didn't develop overnight.
"We've been hoping against hope that somewhere along the line we could
wake them up and get their attention," he said. "We did our best, we
hung in there with them as long as we could. We just can't put up with
them any longer."
"All of this is based on the fact that schools have been teaching a New
World Order rather than an Old World order, a Biblically-based world
order, as it applies to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
"We finally had to do something," he said.
College-level education also needs to be addressed, because 50 years ago
when chewing gum and spitwads were the problems in school, Princeton,
Yale and Harvard essentially were seminaries where students would learn
the Bible, and then move into politics, medicine and the law.
The decision follows by a year a resolution in the SBC Annual Meeting
urging churches and parents "to investigate their public schools to
determine, among other things, whether they are endangering children in
their care by collaboration with homosexual advocates."
Rick Scarborough, founder of Vision America and author of "Liberalism
Kills Kids," said schools have long since stopped providing positive
reinforcement of traditional values.
"In fact, they are not even neutral on many crucial issues which are
important to people of faith. Unfortunately, public education has been
hijacked by people who reject Biblical teachings on man's origin, the
proper role of sex and the acceptability of homosexuality. These are
non-compromising issues for Christians."
The resolution notes that federal judges have allowed that "parents have
no constitutional right … to prevent a public school from providing its
students with whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or
otherwise …" and specifically permitted government schools to teach
Darwinism and the acceptability of homosexuality.
Since the convention already owns buildings that could be used, has on
staff many teachers who could contribute, and can take advantage of
satellite and Internet technologies, there should be no major obstacles,
officials said.
Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., is
in a state where the problem probably is more easily defined, because of
issues addressed by the most recent state Legislature.
That group approved several different plans that would have required
local public schools to teach sensitivity to the "discrimination"
against alternative sexual lifestyles and integrate "tolerance training"
into history and social science curriculums. A required program would
have forced students not only to learn a "new definition" of tolerance,
but would have required them to accept and advocate for homosexuality,
bisexuality and transgenderism.
Another plan would have prevented any school teaching materials or
activities from "reflecting adversely" upon homosexuals, bisexuals or
transgenders.
Former Assemblyman Larry Bowler, R-Elk Grove, said in his six years as a
member of the Assembly Education Committee, "Never, never, in all the
thousands of bills that I voted on in that committee, did I ever see
anything even close to the destructive decadence of these three bills."
These three were vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, but family
advocates believe there will be similar proposals in the future. The
governor did sign into a law a plan to force Christian colleges – if a
single student is attending on a state grant – to promote transexuality,
bisexuality and homosexuality.