Government School Sin

From Chalcedon...

Exodus Mandate’s 10th Anniversary Lee Duigon

I think this country has no good future apart from Christian education. Unless we get our children out of the public schools, I think we have a very sad and tragic future.
—Rev. Joseph Morecraft III...

In February 1997, Moore attended a national conference in Washington, D.C., chaired by luminaries of the Christian Right like Phyllis Schlafly and Congressman Henry Hyde, dedicated to revealing the flaws in the federal government’s “Goals 2000” project for improving public education.

“The only plan they had was to repeal bad legislation,” Moore said. “I was thinking, ‘These are the good guys, and they don’t have a clue.’...

“A friend warned me, ‘You’ll become one of the most hated men in America,’” he said. “‘Christian parents will hate you because they don’t want to obey God.’ But it hasn’t been that bad. After all, everyone agrees the public school system is in terrible shape. They find it very hard to counter the case we’re making.”...

“Lincoln once observed that the philosophy of the classroom is the philosophy of the government in the next generation,” Shortt said. “In fact, the importance of education is even more fundamental than that—it is the single greatest determinant of what sort of culture we will have.

“This is why the Left has worked so hard over the last 100 years and more to expand government education and control it. If tomorrow Christians were to refuse to hand their children over to the government schools, the government school system would collapse, the NEA [teachers’ union] and a whole host of liberal organizations would be largely defunded, delegitimized, and deprived of most of their political and cultural power. This would also set the state for a renewal of our culture, and true revival...

But the Mandate’s biggest challenge in the future, Moore and Shortt agreed, is the church itself.

“Bad habits and weak theologies die hard,” Moore said, “and most Christians have a poor educational theology. But we’ve helped reframe the issue, among the Christian community, away from public school reform and toward Christian education. This has helped spawn many new homeschooling and Christian education ministries.

“We don’t tell people to ‘take back their schools,’ get themselves elected to their local school boards, or anything like that. We don’t want those schools. We just want our children out of them.”

“Our greatest challenge is to get parents and pastors to be honest,” Shortt said. “They need to give up the ‘our schools are different’ and ‘our children are salt and light’ lies and repent of their disobedience in education that is destroying our children, families, churches, and culture. We also need to find a way to get those who are faithful in the education of their children to find the courage to confront other Christians about their government school sin.”...
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