Those who think the links between Southern Baptists and theocratic Christian Reconstructionists are tenuous need to look inside the front cover of the current issue of the Chalcedon Report. There the chief publishing house for Dominionist thought, Chalcedon, announces that it has published Bruce Shortt's book, The Harsh Truth About Public Education. Bruce Shortt, along with T.C. Pinckney, leads the movement against public schools within the Southern Baptist Convention.
Pinckney, who led SBC Fundamentalists to leave the moderately controlled Baptist state convention in Virginia, wrote a forward to Shortt's book. Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson, who organized the Fundamentalist takeover of the SBC, endorsed Shortt's book.
We've read this script before. First they attack the schools, then they organize a movement to take them over, and then they take them over. They did that in the Southern Baptist Convention.
Now they are taking on the public schools. When they are done, we will have a system of religious schools and home schools, paid-for at public expense, that will dutifully indoctrinate children in their theocratic ways.
For all those school teachers who are fed-up with the bureaucracy in public schools, you are going to love working for these autocrats.
For all those moderate realists and pragmatists who think this scenario is a little far-fetched, all but a few Baptists thought the same thing about the SBC twenty-five years ago.
3 comments:
I would hope that taking over the public schools will a much tougher assignment than taking over the SBC. But I think you are correct to point out the parallels with the SBC takeover. If more Southern Baptists had listened to people like Cecil Sherman and Kenneth Chafin, the fundamentalists would have had a harder time taking things over. Thanks for monitoring the reconstructionist press and letting us know what is going on.
Carlos
Carlos,
It won't be as hard of an assignment as you might think.
President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" is designed to create the impression that the public schools are failing. It will siphon money away from public schools until they do fail.
My best guess is that a voucher program that will give public funds to theocratic religious schools and theocratic home schoolers is less than five years away.
Dr. Prescott, your assessment of the objective of Mr. Shortt's book is amiss. You claim, "When they are done, we will have a system of religious schools and home schools, paid-for at public expense, that will dutifully indoctrinate children in their theocratic ways."
In no way does Shortt or Chalcedon advocate tax-funded Christian education whether at home or in a Christian academy. Shortt is admonishing Christians to remove their children from public schools. My children do not attend public schools yet I still pay taxes utilized for funding public education.
So it seems the opposite is true. "We have a system of HUMANISTIC schools, paid for at public expense, that dutifully indoctinates children in SECULARIST ways."
Rev. Christopher J. Ortiz
The Chalcedon Foundation
Editor, Faith for All of Life
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