The Southern Baptist Exit Strategy

Federal circuit court judges held in November 2005 in Fields v. Palmdale that "parents have no constitutional right ... to prevent a public school from providing its students with whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual, or otherwise, when and as the school determines that it is appropriate to do so."

In December 2005, a federal judge ruled in favor of government schools indoctrinating children with Darwinian dogmatism. It is self-evident that secular humanism and its concomitant moral relativism has become the official state sponsored religion in government schools.

Enter the Southern Baptists.

Last year at the 2005 SBC Annual Meeting, the messengers adopted a resolution urging churches and parents to investigate their public schools to determine, among other things, whether they are endangering children in their care by collaborating with homosexual activists.

Dr. Albert Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, weighed in on the controversy stating that "We have no reason to believe that next year will not bring even more urgent concerns related to public education" and declaring that it is time for responsible Southern Baptists to develop an exit strategy from the public schools.

Roger Moran, a member of the Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee and a leader in the Missouri Baptist Convention, and Dr. Bruce N. Shortt, co-sponsor of the 2004 and 2005 Christian Education Resolutions and author of The Harsh Truth About Public Schools, have submitted a resolution for consideration at the 2006 SBC Annual Meeting urging churches to heed Dr. Mohler's call to develop an exit strategy from the public schools that will give particular attention to the needs of orphans, single parents, and the disadvantaged. This year's SBC Annual Meeting will be held June 13-14 in Greensboro, North Carolina, and indeed all eyes will be on Greensborough.

This issue alone could be powerful enough to split this denomination. A resolution to the state Convention of Southern Baptists in Ohio in December of 2005 was presented, urging pastors to encourage parents to remove their children from public schools. There was a debate between those who could see the spiritual danger being wrought upon our children, and those who felt that "their schools were different." The Ohio resolution passed but stopped short of calling on parents to withdraw their children and instead urged parents, "to embrace their responsibility to educate their children by choosing a means of education that would "ensure their physical, moral, emotional, and spiritual well-being, with a goal of raising godly men and women who are thoroughly equipped to live as fully devoted followers of Christ"

Are the schools to blame if children don't become "fully devoted followers of Christ"? No one expects public schools to be teaching Christianity. At SBC's own 2002 annual meeting, the Southern Baptist Council on Family Life reported, that 88 percent of the children raised in evangelical homes leave the church at or about age 18. It that the fault of the schools or the church?

We all must fight for our children. The question is do we defend them through isolation and withdrawal, or engagement and confronting the problems even non-Christian children face?