The religious right has so many targets for their hatred, it’s hard to count them all. But over the years, public schools have always been near the top of the movement’s hit list. There’s something about a secular learning environment in which kids learn objective history and quality science that really seems to bug them.
Occasionally, one of these guys will slip and admit that they’d like to do away with the public school system altogether. Jerry Falwell, in particular, has said:
“One day, I hope in the next ten years, I trust that we will have more Christian day schools than there are public schools. I hope I will live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!”
More recently, Focus on the Family head James Dobson drew some attention two years ago for encouraging California parents to abandon public schools completely, because “homosexual propaganda” was harming students.
Apparently the nation’s largest Protestant denomination is prepared to do the same thing.
As my friend Sam Felder noted yesterday at Americans United’s blog, two prominent Southern Baptist leaders want SBC parents to pull their children out of all public schools.
Thomas C. Pinckney, a retired Air Force brigadier general and former second vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Bruce Shortt, a Houston lawyer, have submitted a resolution urging all Southern Baptists to “remove their children from all government schools and see to it they receive a thoroughly Christian education.” It also instructs the denomination, which is the nation’s largest non-Catholic religious group at 16.2 million members, to “counsel parents regarding their obligation to provide their children with a Christian education,” according to The Washington Times.
First, it’s unlikely the SBC will adopt the resolution. Second, even if it does, I really doubt millions of parents will abandon a system that provides their kids with a quality education. But in either case, this effort is yet another example of how extreme the Southern Baptists have become.