PETROS, Tenn. (ABP) — While a proposed resolution asking Southern Baptists to remove their children from public schools is getting widespread media attention, another resolution is being proposed in support of public education.
The opposing statements will be considered by the Southern Baptist Convention's Resolutions Committee when it meets prior to and during the SBC annual meeting June 15-16 in Indianapolis. It is likely the committee will submit only one version to SBC messengers for a vote. And if recent history is any indication, public schools will not fare well.
Prior to the conservative shift in power that began in 1979, Southern Baptists were advocates of public education, passing seven resolutions in support of public schools or opposing government funds for private schools — the earliest in 1947.
But since the conservative ascendancy, now a quarter-century old, Southern Baptists have gradually shifted their loyalty to Christian schools and home schooling. More than a dozen resolutions passed since 1979 decry the secularization of public schools, denounce sex education and anti-Christian bias, or endorse government funding of private schools.
The resolution proposed recently by T.C. Pinckney of Virginia and Bruce Shortt of Texas goes further, asking Southern Baptists to remove their children from “godless” and “anti-Christian” public schools. “Just as it would be foolish for the warrior to give his arrows to his enemies, it is foolish for Christians to give their children to be trained in schools run by enemies of God,” the proposal says.
In pulling children out of public schools, Pinckney and Shortt's resolution encourages parents to “see to it that they receive a thoroughly Christian education, for the glory of God, the good of Christ's church, and the strength of their own commitment to Jesus.”
Although previous resolutions submitted to the Resolutions Committee have called for withdrawal from public schools, such a radical approach has not yet survived committee scrutiny for presentation to messengers. This year's proposal, however, benefits from widespread pre-convention publicity.
That publicity prompted Tennessee pastor Jim West to offer his own counterproposal, which calls for Southern Baptists to “affirm the American public education system and encourage its members to participate actively in the life of society so that they may indeed perform the dual functions of salt and light.”
West, pastor of First Baptist Church in Petros, Tenn., said he is concerned about the impression created by the Pinckney/Shortt resolution.
“The public at large will think that the majority of Baptists are thinking about removing their children from public schools,” he said. “I don't think a lot of Baptists will pull their kids out of public school just because a resolution is passed at the convention.”
Resolutions passed at the annual SBC meeting carry no authority over churches or individual Baptists, but they often express trends in Southern Baptist opinion and can influence SBC policy.
West's resolution hearkens back to pre-1979 SBC statements, affirming “the hundreds of thousands of Christian men and women who teach in our public schools” and encouraging “our youngsters to consider the teaching profession as a possibility that in it they may well be answering the call of God.”
It notes Southern Baptists “are devoted to missions and the call of Christ to be salt and light in a world desperately in need of both” and that “Southern Baptists take seriously the Great Commission and its requirement that we go into all the world.”
West told the Baptist and Reflector, newsjournal of Tennessee Baptists, his essential concern is theological. “Christians aren't supposed to withdraw from the world. They are supposed to minister to the world,” he said.
He said the resolution submitted by Pinckney and Shortt sends a sign of withdrawal to the world. “It says, 'We don't want to have anything to do with you.' You can't be salt and light if you are hiding behind the walls of the church,” West said.
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