Year In Review: Strategy for Exiting Public Schools Described as 'Call to Holiness'
December 20, 2006
(AgapePress) - - One of the authors of a proposed resolution urging the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) to come up with a plan to pull its children from public schools says the resolution is a "call to holiness" and a "call to obey God's Word."
A proposed resolution submitted for consideration at the denomination's annual meeting in June calls on the SBC to develop "an exit strategy from the public schools that would give particular attention to the needs of orphans, single parents, and the disadvantaged." The resolution is co-sponsored by Dr. Bruce Shortt, an attorney and author of the book The Harsh Truth About Public Schools, and Roger Moran, a member of the SBC executive committee.
Moran, a leader in the Missouri Baptist Convention, says he and Shortt want to stress the point that "biblical truth matters -- and it matters supremely."
"Somehow when we get to the issue of public education, truth doesn't seem to matter as much anymore," Moran offers. Members of the traditionally conservative denomination, he says, seem to be "okay" with the fact that their children are being taught such things as Darwinian evolution and that homosexuality is perhaps "an acceptable kind of thing," and that school officials can transport children to abortion clinics without the knowledge of the parents.
Yet "all of these things [constitute] just generally a worldview that is the antithesis of biblical Christianity," the SBC committee member notes.
In a recent interview with Associated Press, Dr. Shortt commented on the oft-heard argument that Christians should view their children as missionaries to the public schools. Shortt disagrees with that stance. Schools, he says, are "aggressively developing bad character" -- and that is having a detrimental effect on Christian students.
"[O]ur children are not evangelizing in the schools," he told AP. "The schools are evangelizing them out of Christianity."
The Shortt-Moran resolution asserts that recent federal court rulings have favored public schools "indoctrinating children with dogmatic Darwinism" and have limited parents' rights regarding what their children are taught, including what schools teach them on matters of sexuality. Moran says Southern Baptists need to be training up children in the ways of the Lord, not the ways of the world.
"I think [this tells us] we have lost, in large degree, our biblical understanding of the seriousness of sin," Moran says. "And because of that [I think] we have lost, in significant degree, our passionate pursuit of holiness and purity and obedience and faithfulness -- those things that matter supremely to God."
Fifty-six pastors and leaders from the Southern Baptist Convention and the theologically liberal Cooperative Baptist Fellowship recently signed a letter urging Southern Baptists "to speak positively about public education."
