As is widely reported, the Southern Baptists are currently pondering this resolution, put forward by T.C. Pinckney (Brig General USAF retired) and Houston Attorney Bruce Shortt:
that the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention encourages all officers and members of the Southern Baptist Convention and the churches associated with it to remove their children from the government schools and 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
The problem as they see it is that too many teenagers are dropping out of church, and they cite a study by the Nehemiah Institute which shows that “student attitudes and beliefs that acceptance of a secular humanist worldview by Christian children attending government schools has increased dramatically over the last fifteen years”.
The Nehemiah Institute’s website is currently down, but one of its studies is available from this Creationist website. Here Institute President Dan Smithwick (who has links to Christian Reconstructionism) tackles the subject of violence in schools. Could school shootings have something to do with gun laws and unhealthy weapon fetishism? Naah…
We find violent actions as a result of God bringing judgment upon disobedient people who failed to heed His warnings…”I sent a plague among you after the manner of Egypt; I slew your young men by the sword along with your captured horses, And I made the stench of your camp rise up in your nostrils; Yet you have not returned to Me,”(Amos 4:9)…Is God using violence in our public schools to get our attention? Have we so disobeyed God and spurned His warnings of idolatry such that all there is left for Him to do is bring violence upon our children’s lives to see where we have missed the mark? I believe so…The schools in America were once Bible-based, openly Christian, and under local control…For most schools the biggest discipline problem was chewing gum in class. All of this began to change 150 years ago through the efforts of two key men- Horace Mann and John Dewey.
With Dewey and Mann running education, it was only a matter of time before children would begin to think it was OK to blow away their classmates with guns, but with, err…a wrathful God egging them on.
In a 2001 article on Exodus Mandate (run by another military man), Pinckney delves further into the anti-theistic conspiracy, involving “wealthy Unitarians in Boston”, Auguste Comte and humanists:
And the American Humanist Association understands the importance of capturing the children for they have written: “In order to capture this nation, one has to totally remove moral and spiritual values and absolutes from the thinking of the child. The child has to think that there is no standard of right and wrong, that truth is relative, and that diversity is the only absolute to be gained.”
(Unfortunately, he doesn’t tell us where this was written or in what context, and the only references to it that come up on the web are from sites much like his.)
But will his Christian schools be biased? No:
Note that they should also teach about evolution, about humanism, about post-modernism…but in a balanced way, giving the evolutionists’ arguments fully and fairly, but also demonstrating their weaknesses, the mythological presuppositions upon which these lies are based, and the disastrous consequences for those who choose to live without God. Our children must be prepared to live among, confront when necessary, and triumph in debate with secularists. This is one area where ignorance is NOT bliss.
UPDATE (19 May): See today’s post.
UPDATE 2 (23 May): More again!
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