Baptist Leaders Urge Christian Exodus from Public Schools
by Jim Brown
January 11, 2005
(AgapePress) - Southern Baptist advocates of Christian education are pointing to a rash of religious censorship incidents in Plano, Texas, as indications that local Christians are having little influence on the public school system there. Four families have recently sued the Plano Independent School District over its ban on traditional Christmas colors and on students handing out religious-themed gifts.Plano is the home of Prestonwood Baptist Church, a "megachurch" pastored by former Southern Baptist Convention president Jack Graham. Although Graham declined to comment for this story, some SBC members have been eager to address what they see as an epidemic of anti-Christian discrimination in the public schools.
According to Houston attorney and Baptist activist Bruce Shortt, the recent censorship attempts in Plano can be added to the mounting pile of evidence that U.S. public schools are hostile to Christianity and no place for believers' children. He asserts, "The shameful behavior by the Plano ISD conclusively demonstrates that Southern Baptists and other Christians who deny that government schools are aggressively anti-Christian are deluding themselves."
And Grady Arnold is a Southern Baptist pastor who heads "GetTheKidsOut.org," a group that advocates a Christian exodus from public schools. He is openly critical of what he sees happening but says, unfortunately, many Christian pastors are afraid to speak out against anti-Christian discrimination in government-funded schools.
"I think it all boils down to feeling like you're going to offend somebody who's a public school teacher or public school administrator who does attend your church," Arnold says, "and so it's easier to avoid offending them than to attack the problem head on. I wish it wasn't so."
And despite repeated incidents of anti-Christian bigotry such as the Christmas colors restrictions and gift bans at Plano ISD, Arnold says most Southern Baptists are still reluctant to pull their kids out of public schools, causing the Christian education advocate to wonder whether local Christian parents have any idea what is going on in the school district.
GetTheKidsOut exists to help Christians work within their own denominations to alert parents of "the staggering loss of faith and morals in children who attend the 'officially neutral' public schools," and assist them in finding ways to move children into Christian schools or home-schooling situations. "Certainly, God's called us to give our kids a thoroughly Christian education," the group's executive director says, "and doing that in the public school is nigh to impossible."
Although Arnold says he would not argue that there is no way for parents to provide their children with a Christian education while keeping them in the American public school system, it is "next to impossible," he says, "simply for the fact that you're teaching subjects in the public school -- whether it's math, science or history -- that have been cut off from Jesus Christ, who is the source and ground of all truth."
Arnold notes that most parents in the U.S. are probably aware of the devastating tsunami that has recently ravaged a vast expanse of Asia, sweeping away homes, families, and lives in what is being called one of the worst natural disasters in known history. However, he says more Christian parents need to awaken to the danger of an even larger and more devastating disaster going on in their midst -- a wave of secularism, humanism, relativism, and other spiritual toxins that is daily consuming thousands of children on a continual basis in the public schools across America.
