Anti-Public School Proposal Will Not Go Away, Co-Sponsor Insists
by Allie Martin
June 25, 2004
(AgapePress) - A Texas attorney who was behind a failed attempt to encourage Southern Baptists to pull their children from public schools says the issue is far from over. Messengers to last week's Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Indiana soundly defeated a resolution by T.C. Pinckney and Bruce Shortt that would have asked Southern Baptists to take their children out of public schools and provide them with a Christian education. The resolution also encouraged churches to provide alternatives to the secular education provided by government schools.
Shortt, a Houston-based lawyer, says although his proposal failed, the issue will not go away because of the climate of America's public schools today. "Why would you be surprised that we're losing most of our children after they graduate from high school," he asks, "when we're educating them for 12 years in an institution that treats the name of Christ and even Christmas carols as if they were hate speech.
Likewise, Short wonders, "Why would you be surprised that the overwhelming majority of our children are turning into moral relativists when we're educating them for 12 years in an institution that long ago threw out the Ten Commandments?"
The Texas attorney says government schools cannot offer what children need -- a biblically sound education -- because secularist Constitutional interpretations and judicial activism have run the Bible underground and out of the schools. "Most of the things that govern what goes on in schools are not determined at the local level. It's determined by federal regulations and court decisions and state regulations and court decisions," he says.
Although the Southern Baptist messengers at the recent Indianapolis meeting rejected the anti-public school proposal, the messengers did adopt a resolution calling for increased Christian influence on American culture. Shortt expects a similar proposal to the one he co-wrote with Pinckney to be offered when the SBC meets again next summer in Nashville, Tennessee.
