ALEXANDRIA, Va. (ABP) — Although a resolution urging Christians to pull their children from public schools failed to gain approval of the Southern Baptist Convention last summer, the issue is expected to come to a vote in as many as 10 state Baptist conventions this fall.
T.C. Pinckney of Virginia and Bruce Shortt of Texas were unable to muster support from their denomination's resolutions committee to bring their proposal before voting messengers last June in Indianapolis. Generating considerable pre-convention publicity, the resolution decried the secular condition of public or “government” schools, as Pinckney describes them. The measure urged parents to “remove their children from “godless” and “anti-Christian government schools and see to it they receive a thoroughly Christian education.”
The issue is expected to resurface at nine state Baptist conventions and one multi-state convention, according to Exodus Mandate, a group advocating a Christian departure from public education.
Those state conventions are in California, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. The Baptist Convention of New England, representing Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont, is also expected to have the resolution introduced at its annual meeting. The executive directors of three of these conventions — Illinois, Missouri and New England — were unaware of the movement to introduce the resolutions at their annual meetings.
Last June, the SBC resolutions committee declined to act on the anti-schools resolution, saying to do so would “usurp” the responsibility of parents to decide how to educate their children. Pinckney's attempt to add the anti-school language to an SBC resolution on secularization in America failed on a show-of-hands vote.
Pinckney, a retired brigadier general from the U.S. Air Force and a former second vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention, said recently he does not expect the resolution to pass in even one state convention. But raising the issue is necessary, he said, to build awareness for the cause. “To deal with an issue like this takes quite a while because you're dealing with basic assumptions that people have made,” he said.
Pinckney, who went through the public school system and sent his three children to public schools, said he used to be one of those people who saw no real harm in public education. He no longer believes that, he said, and his 12 grandchildren are all home-schooled. “We are criticizing the overall system of government schools as not being biblical,” he said.
Larry Reagan, a Tennessee pastor, said he and another co-sponsor are revising the language of the resolution so it's not as confrontational as the one rejected by the SBC. He will bring it the Tennessee Baptist Convention's annual meeting Nov. 9-10 in Sevierville. Reagan's goal is also to build awareness, with an eye toward encouraging more Christian churches to start their own schools.
Robert Dreyfus, who will introduce the resolution at the Florida Baptist State Convention's annual meeting Nov. 8-9 in Jacksonville, said public schools have failed on the academic, moral and spiritual fronts. He sees little hope for change, citing federal and state legislation, an educational bureaucracy and teachers' unions as factors hindering meaningful reform.
An exodus of Christian students from the public school system can keep those children from drifting away from their faith in their adult lives, Dreyfus said. He said research by pollster George Barna has shown that as many as 88 percent of children from evangelical families enrolled in public schools will drop out of church in the two years following graduation.
A survey of several executive directors from the 10 conventions found no one aware that the measure was heading their way.
“This is the first time I have even heard about such a resolution,” according to an e-mail response from David Clippard, executive of the Missouri Baptist Convention. “As far as I know, no such resolution exists.”
According to Exodus Mandate's website, the resolution's sponsor in Missouri is Roger Moran, an outspoken conservative and member of the SBC Executive Committee.
Jim Wideman, executive director of the Baptist Convention of New England, said he had been contacted by Jonathan Black, the pastor listed by Exodus Mandate as the New England sponsor, about how to present a resolution, but he “had no idea of the content of his resolution.”
Wendell Lang, executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association, said Oct. 6 he wasn't aware of the resolution. Pat Pajak, former IBSA vice president and past member of the SBC Executive Committee, confirmed earlier in the week that he intends to send it to the IBSA but has not done so. “At this point, I haven't made any kind of commitment to T.C. [Pinckney],” Pajak said.
The Illinois resolutions committee did briefly discuss the resolution Sept. 14 but at that time “did not feel they could recommend it to our messengers for consideration,” according to Bill Weedman, the IBSA's senior associate executive director. It's not clear if the committee will reverse course before the Nov. 10-11 annual meeting or if someone will introduce the resolution from the floor.
Whether it results in a vote or not in any of these conventions isn't most important, Pinckney said. Just discussing the proposal will cause some Christians to think through the issue and realize, as Pinckney sees it, that sending their children to “government schools” is not what God has directed parents to do.
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