SBC Pastor: Biased Mission Board Ignores Public Schools' Reverse Evangelism
by Jim Brown
December 22, 2005
(AgapePress) - - A Southern Baptist pastor says the Southern Baptist Convention's North American Mission Board (NAMB) is demonstrating a strong bias against private Christian schools and home-schooling families.At issue is a section on the website of the NAMB called "Choosing a School for Your Children." The site provides a list of advantages and disadvantages to public and private schools and home schooling; but Grady Arnold, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Woodville, Texas, and head of the group "GettheKidsOut.org," believes NAMB shows decided preference in favor of public schools. In fact, he contends the mission agency shows "not only that but, I would say, an anti-home school stance and an anti-private school stance."
The NAMB website suggests private school students are more likely to have the disadvantage of being isolated from children "who are different from them but could contribute to their broader education" and these home-educated students also may suffer from a want of discipline and adult contact.
Additionally, the website says home-schooled students are more likely to exhibit "lack of socialization." But while the NAMB site observes that "public schools have produced leaders in every arena of public life," its Internet pages do not go on to make the same positive observation about private schools and home schooling.
See cached version of this page on the NAMB website
The NAMB's apparent bias is not surprising, Grady asserts, especially "seeing as oftentimes the Southern Baptist Convention in the past has been pro-public school." However, he adds, "I think that tide is changing."
One reason Pastor Arnold is concerned, he asserts, is because the NAMB holds to the mistaken notion that most Christian students are functioning as "salt and light" in public schools. However, he believes Christian parents and educators frequently make this claim but fail to "look at the other side of that coin" -- that is, the schools' negative influence on students.
In 2002, for instance, Arnold says the Family Life Research Council found that after students graduated from public high school, "some 88 percent of their kids were leaving the church and not returning." Public school supporters missed that, he says, so "they feel like they're evangelizing, but actually what's going on is reverse evangelism -- but they don't realize it."
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
