"Let
My Children Go":
A Christian Exodus from Government Schools?
A.
In
an era when many freedom-believers of various shades and stripes
often bemoan how terrible things are, it is always refreshing to
encounter someone who has a definite plan and the will to pursue
it. That someone is E. Ray Moore, who founded and developed the
Exodus Mandate Project
(formerly known as Exodus 2000) under the auspices of his Frontline
Ministries based in the Columbia, South Carolina area. Exodus Mandate,
like the name suggests, proposes something no one has previously
attempted on any large scale: inspiring a mass departure on the
part of Evangelical Christians from the government-controlled "public
school" system or, as Moore frequently calls it, Pharaoh's
school system.
Moore
is calling for something more radical than mere reform. Government
schools, he maintains, cannot be reformed. Moreover, they have an
origin that differs markedly from what the Framers wanted, and from
the beginning were on collision course with the principles of a
Constitutional republic. Finally and most importantly, government
schools violate Biblical principles that place responsibility for
educating children on the family, not the government. Moore recently
told me: "We believe that from Scripture and theology, God gave
education to the family with assistance from the Church, and that
the State has no legitimate authority over what we call K-12 education."
He added, "The State is in fact violating God's law. You can't reform
something that shouldn't exist." In his opinion, we should not be
surprised that government schools, in addition to their failure
to educate, have nurtured attitudes and points of view resolutely
hostility to Christianity and Christians. Moore therefore argues
on Biblical and not just on political and economic grounds that
instead of trying to reform government schools, Christians ought
to abandon them in favor of private Christian schools and homeschooling.
E.
Ray Moore has an educational background and career trajectory perfectly
suited to his vision. He graduated from The Citadel with a B.A.
in political science and went on to earn M.Div and M.Theol. degrees
from Grace Theological Seminary in Winona Lake, Ind. Since then
he has been involved in pastoral ministry for almost 25 years, as
a congregational pastor, a U.S. Army Reserve Chaplain (Lt. Col.,
Ret.), and then as a director of a Christian ministry. He was in
the Gulf War, where he won a Bronze Star Medal. He and his wife
Gail Pinckney Moore, from Charleston, South Carolina, successfully
homeschooled their own four children from 1977-1994. The Moores
were among the first few dozen pioneering families in homeschooling
(it is hard to know how many families were homeschooling then).
The
Moores' children are now grown. Their successes validate the skills
and methods of their parents. Their oldest son was both Regimental
Commander and Valedictorian at The Citadel; he is now an attorney
in Columbia. Their second son is a youth minister in a SBC Baptist
Church. Their daughter is a writer and copy editor for The State
newspaper in Columbia. Their youngest son is a college freshman
also preparing for the ministry. With these powerful credentials
and successes under their belts, the Moores were
selected as South Carolina Parents of the Year for 2000 by the Parents
Day Council.
B.
Exodus
Mandate grew out of a Goals 2000 briefing in Washington, D.C., that
Moore attended in 1997, presided over by Phyllis Schlafly of Eagle
Forum and Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill). Sponsoring groups included the
Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, the Home School
Legal Defense Association, the Heritage Foundation, the Christian
Coalition, the American Family Association, the American Association
of Christian Schools, the American Conservative Union and Traditional
Values Coalitions, as well as Eagle Forum. The main topic was the
danger posed by Goals 2000, and the School-to-Work agenda, for faith
and freedom. There was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth and
calls for "conservative reform of the public schools," but as Moore
described the meeting to me, "These people had no real plan except
to try and repeal Goals 2000 legislation."
He
left that meeting determined to formulate a plan. The result was
Exodus 2000-a name chosen as a deliberate counterpoint to Goals
2000. Exodus Mandate-the name was changed in January, 2001-became
an organized effort to withdraw several million Christian children
from government schools. According to the Exodus Mandate vision
statement, "Exodus Mandate is a Christian ministry to encourage
and assist Christian families to leave Pharaoh's school system (i.e.,
government schools) for the Promised Land of Christian schools or
homeschooling. It is our prayer and hope that a fresh obedience
by Christian families in educating their children according to Biblical
mandates will prove to be a key for the revival of our families,
our churches and our nation." In other words, the Exodus Mandate
plan, like the name suggests, is to solve the problems of Goals
2000 and other such agendas by taking as large as possible a number
of children out of their reach.
Moore
first publicly announced his plans during the week of the Promise
Keepers meeting in October, 1997. Then he began organizing a volunteer
network, first in South Carolina where Exodus Mandate is based (here
in Columbia), and then in other states. Since its beginning, Exodus
Mandate has received favorable coverage in the Wall Street Journal,
the Washington
Times, the Dallas Morning News, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
and the State.
Even the Southern
Baptist Convention has given Exodus Mandate more than a passing
look. Christian radio, obviously, has been instrumental in bringing
Moore's ideas to a wider audience: Moore has done hundreds of interviews
on radio networks and has been heard on over 4,500 radio stations
across the country. He has worked with Marshall Fritz of the Alliance
for the Separation of School and State and the Nehemiah
Institute. Exodus Mandate has been endorsed by Dr.
D. James Kennedy, pastor of Coral
Ridge Presbyterian Church and President of the internationally
known Coral Ridge Ministries,
which has an audience of several million people monthly. Exodus
Mandate has also received support from major Christian leaders such
as Dr. Jerry Falwall of Liberty University. Recently, Moore outlined
the Exodus Mandate strategy on Beacon Hill in Boston, participating
in a forum entitled "Can
Christians Continue to Use the Public Schools?" As this article
appears, Moore will have been Keynote Speaker for the Christian
Home Educators Network in the State of Maryland, addressing
that group's 2001 Convention (June 8-9). "It is my belief," he told
me, "that a fresh obedience by Christian families concerning the
education of their own children according to Biblical mandates will
prove to be a key to the revival of our churches, our families and
our nation."
C.
Understanding
Moore's case against government schools calls for a brief excursion
into their history. Originally, during the first 220 years of colonial
and then U.S. history on the North American continent, there were
no state-controlled "public schools." All education was basically
private-in the hands of families, churches and local communities.
There was some tax subsidy for New England schools at the city level.
Puritan New England had no concept of separation of church and state,
but their schools were not unlike our Christian day schools of today.
The town schools were basically church schools. Home schools and
dame schools were common. (Dame schools were small, private schools
with one teacher, or dame, hired by a small group of three or four
rural families to educate their children.)
Government
schools are not mentioned in either the Declaration of Independence
or the U.S. Constitution. There is no evidence of Constitutional
room for any federal role in education-whether to set up and run
"public schools" or regulate other people's schools. In 1786 (the
year prior to the Constitutional Convention), the State of Virginia
passed what became known as the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.
It disestablished the Church of England, and this did away with
"public churches" there. Thomas Jefferson wrote: "To compel a man
to furnish contributions for the propagation of opinions which he
disbelieves or abhors is sinful and tyrannical." While the Statute
dealt with churches, the same kind of argument could be made for
schools, which in Virginia were all private and church run. In other
words, "public schools" were not a part of any original American
educational model. They were not consistent with what was believed
by the majority of the Framers. The government-run K-12 school system
is a fundamentally renegade educational model-illegitimate in a
Constitutional republic.
Taking
over education is a major temptation for those who want power. There
were early warning signs. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the
Declaration of Independence, was sympathetic to the idea of government
schooling as necessary to produce responsible citizens. The Prussian
government in Europe was already developing a highly centralized
state-controlled educational system. It stressed not intellectual
development but obedience and subordination to the collective life
of society run by the state; it compartmentalized ideas into "subjects,"
and divided up the day into "periods" to create constant interruptions
and discourage sustained thought in any single area. It wasn't long
before this model came to the attention of would-be education elites
in this country, who found it extremely attractive. The word kindergarten
is Prussian, not English, and expresses the Prussian idea of cultivating
children, as in a garden. This offers evidence of the grip the Prussian
model eventually exercised.
Government
schools did not begin to catch on here, however, until around 1840
when Horace Mann began to develop what was then called the common-school
movement. Mann was a Unitarian, based at Harvard during the period
when Unitarians came to control that institution. He had been to
Europe and had studied the Prussian model. As such, he believed
in the redemptive power of the state, and in its capacity to create
and run "common schools." He provided the bridge from the Prussian
model to the state-run government school as it finally developed.
Mann's influence led to the first state-government controlled educational
system, in (where else?) Massachusetts. The idea quickly spread
to other states in New England, and then to other parts of the country.
By
the final quarter of the 19th century, government schools had become
dominant. They had already taken over in the North, and were imposed
on the South during the Reconstruction period. Many leaders of various
Christian denominations inveighed against them, sensing danger in
turning over education to government. Leading theologians such as
Archibald Hodge, R.L. Dabney, Gresham Machen and later, Gordon Clark,
all tried to warn the various Christian communities of their times
about government schools. Hodge wrote, "I am sure as I am of the
fact of Christ's reign that a comprehensive and centralized system
of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly
proposed, will prove the most appalling engine for the propagation
of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief and anti-social nihilistic
ethics … which this sin-rent world has ever seen." The issue was
debated by Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans and others. The
Catholics had long since formed their own schools in response to
what had been one of the rationales for state-run schools: converting
the children of immigrant Catholics to Protestantism.
Moreover,
the Morrill Act had been signed into law by Abraham Lincoln as a
wartime measure (his predecessor, James Buchanan, had vetoed it
on Constitutional grounds), creating a network of federally funded
"land grant" colleges. The previous conception of a college was
of a place where liberal arts learning was stressed, the purpose
being to produce thinkers and leaders. The purpose of this new higher
educational model was not education in the liberal arts but the
production of skilled workers. This is reflected in the fact that
most were originally called "A & M" (agricultural and mechanical)
colleges; some of them still are. Initially these institutions lost
enormous sums of money, with many forced to close their doors. Few
members of the public believed they were needed. But eventually
they, too, caught on. Increasingly run as one branch of secular
government, "public schools" at all levels were ripe for a large-scale
takeover by a thoroughly materialist philosophy of nature and secular
view of society, with all the political and economic mischief to
which these are vulnerable. When John Dewey appeared as one of the
voices of Progressivism shortly before the turn of the century,
the takeover began.
D.
John
Dewey is one of the best-known figures in the history of American
philosophy and education. In philosophy, he is usually grouped with
the so-called pragmatists (a label finally rejected by that movement's
supposed founder, Charles Saunders Peirce). In education, of course,
he founded the so-called progressive education movement. Although
considered a quintessential American philosopher, the three main
influences on his thought were all Europeans: G.W.F. Hegel, Karl
Marx and Charles Darwin. Dewey became a socialist who wanted to
see a radical transformation of American society. He essentially
agreed with Marx's well-known remark that "philosophers have only
interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however is to
change it." He saw the government schools as the primary vehicles
for bringing this transformation about. From Darwinian evolution
he borrowed the idea that progressive change was a natural state
of affairs, that a socialist society was more highly evolved than
a capitalist one, and so would be inevitable even if it occurred
without the kind of violent revolution classical Marxism had predicted.
The core principle here is the materialist one that what we call
reality is just physical reality. Christianity is mythological,
therefore, because God does not really exist. In the universe so
conceived, the foundations of morality because a serious problem.
No one could discover higher moral principles than the "good of
society," personal pleasure and self-esteem, etc. Various forms
of ethical relativism and subjectivism became fashionable. In practice,
however, what was "good for society" was eventually to be determined
by cliques of scientific "experts" who were just beginning to explore
technologies of behavior.
In
this context, the "public schools" began to develop around the idea
that the purpose of education is to "socialize" children-to enable
them to fit into a changing society, one where there are no objective
religious or moral truths, only the truths of natural science. Dewey
rejected the idea that knowledge is valuable as an end in itself.
He believed that what counted was problem-solving, and that children
should "learn by doing," by being given projects to work on. Dewey's
early experiments, in the early 1900s, were abject failures. Students
didn't learn anything. Progressive education nevertheless slowly
gained ground, helped along by Dewey's growing stature as a professional
philosopher of education. Dewey had taught at the University of
Chicago and at Columbia University. He had written a number of well
received articles and books with names like Democracy
and Education, Experience
and Nature and The
Quest for Certainty.
He became the first president of the American Humanist Association
and co-author of the first Humanist Manifesto. By the 1950s, his
progressivism had become the dominant philosophy of education in
academia, and it soon became dominant in the "public schools." By
the 1960s, it was supplemented by the feed-them-if-they-cry philosophy
of Dr. Benjamin Spock (also a socialist), author of the celebrated
Baby and Child Care which advocated giving children whatever they
wanted to make them happy. Finally came the rising influence of
pioneer sex researcher Alfred Kinsey. Sex education reared its head,
and as a product of science without objective morality, the Kinsey
model merely delineated the possibilities of sexual experimentation
with no Biblical or familial restraint.
E.
Even
assuming that the government school was a viable concept to begin
with, these philosophies ruined its embodiments within a generation.
By the 1970s, the effects of Dewey's progressivism, Spock's ideas
on child-rearing, and Kinsey-style sex-ed were becoming evident
with the rise of a generation whose members saw themselves as entitled
to pleasure, happiness and security-however these were to be furnished.
Consider the drug culture. Whether one believes consciousness-altering
drugs should be legal or not, students who were "educated" to believe
that their only purpose in this life was to obtain personal pleasure,
the security of a well-paying job, etc., with religious observances
(if any) limited to Sundays, experienced a void in their lives.
Many filled this void with drugs. Others filled it with sex-of every
variety. Soon, we began to hear of epidemics of sexually transmitted
diseases such as herpes and, eventually, AIDS.
Students'
measurable cognitive achievements, meanwhile, had begun to slip
relative to those of other advanced nations. The first major warnings
were sounded in 1983 with the major study A
Nation At Risk. The facts and figures have been well
documented. More and more, we have seen the ascent of education
for self-esteem: good feelings about oneself as the barometer of
educational success. The Outcome
Based Education movement stressed what "educationologists" call
the affective domain, which emphasizes expressing feelings, doing
group work, obtaining group grades, cooperating, etc., over mastering
cognitive skills, working individually to achieve, competing and
thinking independently. American students at all levels consistently
report that they feel very good about themselves, even though many
are now graduating from high school and even college without basic
writing or mathematical skills or any understanding of science,
much less knowledge of this country's founding principles or historical
development. The response of the federal government to the increased
illiteracy of American students has been predictable: pumping ever
more taxpayer dollars into the government-school system. Our government
schools are now among the best funded in the world. Yet if we go
by the results, there is no evidence of a relationship between the
amount of money thrown into "public schools" and genuine educational
accomplishment. Rather, what the increasing failure of "public schools"
suggests is an educational philosophy that is wrong through and
through, from its foundations upward.
During
the 1990s, the period of the meteoric rise of political correctness,
matters have of course gotten worse. Teaching white children to
hate their race and reject their heritage because (some of) their
ancestors owned slaves, teaching boys to hate their own masculinity,
are all just part of an increasingly intellectually bankrupt and
politically corrupted package that has literally destroyed the innocence
of millions of children. This package includes components scaring
them out of their wits with aggressive propaganda for hard-left
environmentalism, using "global warming" as a focal point. This
transforms them into good little recyclers of waste paper, cans,
etc., under the ludicrous assumption that this would have an impact
on a large scale climactic phenomenon that may not even exist. More
and more, government schools openly promote homosexuality as normal
and acceptable-the now-infamous tracts Heather
Has Two Mommies and Daddy's
Roommate, written for the lower grades, are cases in point.
Children, it should go without saying, have not developed the cognitive
skills to identify and evaluate the claims implicit in these agendas.
This makes them age-inappropriate (to use the official jargon).
One need not have a Ph.D. in education to figure this out, either;
what it takes is common horse sense.
Even
more troublesome is the more recent School-to-Work
agenda. This movement, a product of the Clinton Regime, stresses
the vocational side of education more than ever. According to its
advocates, education is really just glorified job training, with
the training beginning as early as kindergarten. School-to-Work
ideology encourages rote conformity and training for the work force,
while discouraging independent inquiry and abstract thought. The
purpose of this movement is clearly to turn out the human-resources
equivalent of manufactured products that can service the global
economy-"droids" for the New World Order. Such products don't need
to know about the Bible, the Declaration of Independence or the
Constitution, of course.
F.
According
to Marshall Fritz of the Alliance
for the Separation of School and State, we can isolate four
basic errors in "public school" philosophy. These are presented
clearly in the video Let
My Children Go, which Moore wrote and which was produced
by Jeremiah Films. First,
there is paternalism, the idea that responsibility for education
can be shifted from the family to a governmental entity, and that
this somehow improves society. This undermines parents and the family.
"We have to get back to the root of good education, which is parental
love and responsibility, not politicians trying to acquire power."
Second is compartmentalism, the idea that life is divided up into
separate compartments (church, home, school, etc.), so that God
is taught about on Sundays, but not on any other day of the week.
"This is crazy," says Fritz. "We want the teachers to be instructing
the children in morals. We want them saying, No hitting, no cheating,
no lying." We can look at government schools, observe the violence,
the cheating, the lack of discipline, the blatant political agendas,
and so on, and see textbook illustrations of the fact that nobody
has ever discovered a practical basis for morality outside of the
internal constraints created by a strong religious tradition. Third
is the idea that welfare works: the idea that children have a "right"
to an education at the expense of taxpayers. "We need to return
to the American idea that responsibility works, and get away from
welfare in education," says Fritz. Fourth is the idea that socialism
works. Government schools fit the socialist model right down the
line. Fritz describes "government ownership and administration of
the means of production" as exemplified in the government school
model. Instead of continuing to employ this failed system, "[w]e
need to return to the quintessential American ideal that freedom
works."
One
may look to the Columbine massacre, on April 20, 1999, as embodying
the direction to which the materialistic and compartmentalized philosophy
of "public education" has been heading. Moore has called Columbine
a "watershed event," triggering "a deep sense that there is something
badly wrong with our public school system." Columbine, of course,
was the bloodiest of a string of school shootings that took place
during the middle to late 1990s. Statisticians will try and reassure
us that such events as students bringing weapons to school and gunning
down their classmates are rare. This misses the point. As recently
as 30 years ago, such events were not rare. They did not happen
at all. Period. Students might have worried about getting caught
smoking in the bathrooms or with marijuana in their lockers; they
did not worry overly about their personal safety. And they did not
attend schools with metal detectors on the front doors, or with
police patrolling the hallways. One would have to be blind, finally,
to miss the metaphysical and theological as well as cultural implications
of the Columbine killings. After all, there is abundant evidence
that Christians were singled out by the two killers, whose personal
websites revealed hatred of Christians and Christianity as well
as fascination with Nazi themes (April 20 is Hitler's birthday,
after all), Satanism, the occult, violence, cruelty and suicide.
Their spare time was spent listening to heavy metal rock bands such
as Marilyn Manson, whose songs incorporate such themes. The Columbine
shootings did not happen in a cultural vacuum. Nearly all of the
above mentioned Let My Children Go was made before that horrible
event, but as Moore observes, "If you were to look at the speakers
through the video, you'd think they knew all about Columbine."
The
responses to the Columbine killings illustrate educational bureaucrats'
preference for cosmetic to substantive solutions. Their "zero-tolerance
policies" have led to ludicrous results such as children being suspended
or expelled from their schools for bringing knives to cut their
food or for pointing a finger and saying, "Bang, bang, bang." Apparently
a child does not even need a physical object to violate the new
rules; all he need do is pretend. This dovetails nicely with the
politically correct code which penalizes mere thought-and employs
its draconian measures on first graders! These are only the more
visible illustrations of how government schools now confront their
problems. (Closely related zero-tolerance drug polices, of course,
do not prevent bureaucrats from turning children into zombies with
government-approved drugs such as Ritalin.)
G.
The
question all believers in freedom, Christian or otherwise, are most
often asked (and most often ask themselves) is, What can we do?
The question is particularly acute in light of our limited resources:
it is also common horse sense that with fewer resources you can
do less. Pharaoh's schools and the large teachers unions are all
in bed with a centralized system manifestly hostile to both Christianity
and genuine freedom (the kind that recognizes and accepts moral
responsibility). They have at disposal a huge machinery that permits
them to extract resources from taxpayers. We have none of that-nor
should we want it, obviously. This means, however, that we will
never have the bottomless pit of wealth available through (for example)
the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations that have been bankrolling
leftist projects for decades.
But
we don't have to be stymied. There is still is a responsible course
of action that can be pursued. One can choose to get out of the
sphere of influence of a corrupt and unsalvageable system. That
is what E. Ray Moore is advocating regarding government schools.
As he metaphorically puts it, "Why fight the mosquitoes when you
can drain the swamp." "Public education" is a bad system. It cannot
be reformed, and we shouldn't try. Moore points out that every attempt
to reform "public education" over the past 20 years has ended in
failure. What we should do instead is remove our children from its
clutches, and take them out of Pharaoh's school system. The problems
of government schools are "terminal," Moore told the Washington
Times, "and the quicker Christian people realize it, the quicker
they'll be able to take action."
The
references to "Pharaoh's school system" illustrate another strategy
of Moore's that believers in freedom of whatever stripe need to
pursue: seizing the moral high ground by appealing to powerful and
evocative images. No movement has ever succeeded without doing this.
(The left understands this very well and has been exploiting it
for decades.) Down to its very name, Exodus Mandate invokes one
of the most powerful visions found in the Old Testament: that of
Moses standing alone before Pharaoh in the Book of Exodus and commanding
him to "Let my people go!" Following these words, in one of the
most moving accounts of all time, an entire people was led out of
bondage in Egypt and toward freedom in the Promised Land.
According
to Moore, moreover, taking children out of government schools fulfills
a Biblical mandate. God, according to the Scriptures, assigned responsibility
for education to the family, not to the government. Deuteronomy
6:7 says, "Thou shalt teach [these words] diligently unto thy children…"
(See also Ephesians 6:4 and Matthew 28:18-20). With the assistance
of churches and other religious organizations, Christian parents
should undertake the responsibility for the education of children,
whether singly or in small, church-affiliated Christian schools.
"Perhaps the renewal of our culture could be as simple as the Christian
church renewing its obedience to the Biblical mandate," Moore said
recently.
Of
course, some readers might be asking: what about those who are not
Christians? What does Moore's proposed exodus offer non-Christians?
One may observe again that no one has been able to discover-or invent-a
nontheistic view of education or society that has proved to be workable.
Although materialist-leaning philosophers have spent centuries trying,
their results simply cannot command the allegiance of anyone except
handfuls of academic intellectuals. But never mind this now. Even
an atheist can look at the government schools, follow the commentary
triggered by events such as the Columbine shootings, and see that
something is wrong. Even atheists, presumably, want their children
in schools that are safe (and free of police patrols in the halls
and metal detectors at the entrances), and which actually educate
their children. There is nothing preventing non-Christians who are
uncomfortable with the Christian emphasis of Exodus Mandate from
pursuing their own version of the same strategy. I, for one, would
not stand in their way.
The
homeschooling movement is one of the fastest growing independent
educational movements in the country; private Christian academies,
too, are on the upswing. What E. Ray Moore doing is reaching out
to churches and denominations and working to equip them with a Christian
model of education that will result in still more schools being
set up and run through churches as well as in homes. But the project
has a long way to go. Moore estimates that roughly 80 percent of
all the children of Evangelical Christians are still in the grip
of Pharaoh's school system.
Having
spent a rewarding morning discussing the matter with E. Ray Moore,
I am convinced that Exodus Mandate's effort to get children out
of "public schools" may soon become the most significant of our
time. There are other battles, of course, such as the one over abortion.
But what if we raised a generation of children who simply did not
see abortion as a live option. Imagine such a generation, freed
from government schools as small children and either homeschooled
or educated in private Christian schools. During their teen years,
its members would be free of drugs. Their moral compass would equip
them to resist the temptations of premarital sex. They would never
be in danger of being shot by a crazed classmate. Finally, they
would graduate with a firm grounding in the Bible and in this country's
founding principles, as well as knowing some science and having
acquired some technological know-how. By the time they reached their
20s, say during the 2020s, their best and brightest will already
have begun taking the lead in reversing the cultural, moral and
intellectual decline of this country, as well as shrinking the reach
of the federal leviathan. Their priorities would be pleasing God
and supporting political leaders who pledge obedience to the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights. Businesses may find themselves seeking them
out; their employers will have far less worry about being cheated
or stolen from. And their new hires will be far better, far more
able employees than the drones the "public schools" had been turning
out. The latter, having failed all competitive tests, will soon
be on the way out.
Moore
believes that if these children were to leave Pharaoh's schools
and head for the Promised Land of private Christian schools or homeschooling
today, this would do more to undermine political correctness, secularism
and materialism than any other strategy one could pursue. In my
opinion, he is onto something. Christians-and any non-Christians
who are serious about reversing the political and cultural rot we
have fallen into during this past half-century-should consider what
Exodus Mandate
offers, and not waste any more time getting organized. This is the
sort of movement that, once it takes off, could quickly be seen
as a major threat to the educational bureaucracy and the powerful
teachers unions. There is no doubt that it will meet with opposition
down the road: rather like any effort pursued independently of the
Omnipotent State. Standing up to the potential hostility will require
organization as well as faith (Hebrews 11). But the potential payoffs
make it worth the risk. "We have seen the benefit that this kind
of education has had on our own family," Moore concluded. "My family
and I have been over in the Promised Land for 24 years, and now,
I'm calling on my fellow Christians to come over and join us. It
is a good land, flowing with milk and honey."
June
8, 2001
Steven
Yates [send him mail]
has a Ph.D. in Philosophy and is the author of Civil
Wrongs: What Went Wrong With Affirmative Action. He is presently
compiling selected essays into a single volume tentatively entitled
What Is Wrong With the New World Order and Other Essays and
Commentary and a work on a second book, The Paradox of Liberty.
He also writes for the Edgefield
Journal, and is available for lectures. He lives in Columbia,
South Carolina, and is starting his own freelance writing business,
Millennium 3 Communications.
Copyright
© 2001 LewRockwell.com
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Yates Archives
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