FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 14, 2004
CONTACT:
T.C. Pinckney: 703-780-1566, bapa120@cox.net
Bruce Shortt: 832-483-8882, shorttnguyen@yahoo.com
E. Ray Moore, Jr.: 803-714-1744, moorefam4@juno.com
n NEWS
RELEASE n
Will Southern Baptists Abandon Public Schools?
If Well-known SBC Leader T.C. Pinckney And
Attorney Bruce Shortt Succeed
Southern Baptists Will Soon Embrace Christian Education
ALEXANDRIA, VA. - T.C. Pinckney, retired brigadier general and prominent
Southern Baptist leader and Bruce N. Shortt, a Houston, TX attorney and home
school father of three children have joined forces to ask the Southern Baptist
Convention (SBC) to consider a resolution urging parents to pull their children
out of public schools and provide them with a Christian Education.
Co-authors
Pinckney and Shortt submitted their April 26, 2004 resolution to the SBC
Resolutions Committee. The Committee will consider whether to present the
resolution for a full vote by the SBC Convention when it meets June 15-16, 2004
in Indianapolis.
The
strongly worded Resolution urges all officers and members of the Southern
Baptist Convention “to remove their children from the government schools
and see to it that they receive a thoroughly Christian education.”
It also
encourages SBC churches to ”counsel parents regarding their obligation to
provide their children with Christian education” and “to provide
all of their children with Christian alternatives to government school
education, either through home schooling or thoroughly Christian private
schools.”
Pinckney
was quoted May 6, 2004 in an Associated Press story saying “God gives the
responsibility of children to the parents, not to the government, and parents
should be taking responsibility, primarily through homeschooling.”
Pinckney
and Shortt cite numerous reasons for the need to remove Southern Baptist
children from “government schools,” including research from the Nehemiah Institute which “discovered
through its extensive surveys of student attitudes and beliefs that acceptance
of a secular humanist worldview by Christian children attending government
schools has increased dramatically over the past fifteen years.”
They
also cited research gathered by the Southern Baptist Council on Family Life
which reported in 2002 “that 88 percent of the children raised in
evangelical homes leave church at the age of 18, never to return.”
The resolution
also states that public schools are “adopting curricula and policies
teaching that the homosexual lifestyle is acceptable.”
Shortt
was quoted May 4, 2004 by World Net Daily: “The issue is this,” he
said, “the government schools are killing our children morally,
spiritually and academically. The question we confront as Christian
parents is, how dead do we want our children to be?”
Resolution
co-sponsors, Pinckney and Shortt are active members of Exodus Mandate (www.ExodusMandate.org); a national
organization founded by E. Ray Moore, Jr., a retired Chaplain (Lt. Col.)
USAR. Bruce N. Shortt serves as the Texas State Coordinator for Exodus
Mandate. T.C. Pinckney is a retired Brigadier General USAF, and former
second vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Pinckney’s three children home school his twelve grandchildren.
# #
# #
Additional
Media:
- Washington Times: Southern Baptists
Eye Exiting Public Schools
~ By Julia Duin,
(5/12/04) http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20040511-111759-5766r.htm
Resolution urges members to reject government education ~ By Ron Strom (5/4/04)
- Family News in Focus: Southern
Baptists to Consider Schools Resolution:
Is it time for Christian
parents to give up on public schools? ~ By Stuart Shepard (4/30/04)
http://www.family.org/cforum/fnif/news/A0031873.cfm
TEXT Of
the Proposed Resolution:
CHRISTIAN EDUCATION
RESOLUTION
Submitted Jointly by T.C. Pinckney and Bruce N. Shortt
To The 2004 Annual
Meeting Of The Southern Baptist Convention
April 26, 2004
Whereas, the Bible commands that fathers are to bring up their children
in the training and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4), and all parents have an
obligation to strive by all means to bring up their children in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord, and
Whereas, all authority in heaven and on earth belongs to Jesus, and He
has commanded us to make disciples of our children and teach them to observe everything He has commanded (Mt.
28:19-20), and
Whereas, teaching our children everything that Jesus commanded involves
their learning to think biblically about all the spheres of human thought,
activity, and life (Dt. 6:4-9) so that they take every thought into captivity
to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10:5), and
Whereas, our thinking is not to be conformed to this world’s
way of thinking, but our minds are to be renewed and sanctified by the truth of
God’s Word (Rom. 12:2; Jn. 17:17), and
Whereas, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (Pr.1:7)
and in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col.2:3),
any instruction that does not begin with the fear of the Lord, teaching the
centrality of Jesus Christ for understanding all of life cannot properly be
said to impart wisdom or knowledge to children, and
Whereas, Jesus said, “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he
who does not gather with Me scatters” (Lk. 11:23), the government school
system that claims to be “neutral” with regard to Christ is
actually anti-Christian, so that children taught in the government schools are
receiving an anti-Christian education, and
Whereas, the government schools are by their own confession humanistic
and secular in their instruction, the education offered by the government
schools is officially Godless, and
Whereas, the government schools are adopting curricula and policies
teaching that the homosexual lifestyle is acceptable, and
Whereas, homosexual organizations are present as approved student
"clubs" in thousands of government schools and are spreading rapidly,
and
Whereas, the Bible says, children are like arrows in the hand of a
warrior (Ps. 127:3-5), we must understand that children are weapons (arrows) to
be aimed for the greatest impact in the kingdom of God. 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 the enemies
of God, and
Whereas, training to be a faithful witness should be a vital part of a
Christian child’s education, and
Whereas, hundreds of thousands of parents who are members of churches
associated with the Southern Baptist Convention send their children to the
government schools, and
Whereas, the children of those parents are receiving a Godless,
anti-Christian education, and
Whereas, the millions of children in government schools spend 7 hours a
day, 180 days a year being taught that God
is irrelevant to every area of life, and
Whereas, many Christian children in government schools are converted to
an anti-Christian worldview rather than evangelizing their schoolmates, and
Whereas, the Nehemiah Institute has discovered through
its extensive surveys of 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, and
Whereas, the Southern Baptist Council on Family Life
reported to the 2002 Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention that 88
percent of the children raised in evangelical homes leave church at the age of 18,
never to return; and
Whereas, it is anti-intellectual to artificially divorce God from his
creation, and many excellent curricula are available that demonstrate the
beauty and working of God throughout His creation, and experience has proven
the superior intellectual accomplishments of children educated in such
curricula, and
Whereas, the Bible teaches that the companion of fools
will be destroyed (Pr.13:20), and that people are prone to be deceived into
thinking that evil company will not corrupt them (1Cor.15:33), it is incumbent
upon ministers of the gospel to warn God’s people that their children are
being corrupted by spending half of their waking hours instructed by teachers
who are required by law to inculcate a Godless education, and
Whereas, many adult members of our congregations teach in government
schools, this resolution should not be construed to discourage adult believers
who labor as missionaries to unbelieving colleagues and students; rather, they
should be commended and encouraged to be salt and light in a dark and decaying
government school system:
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED 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, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Southern
Baptist Convention encourages all churches associated with the Southern Baptist
Convention to work energetically to counsel parents regarding their obligation
to provide their children with a Christian education, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Southern
Baptist Convention encourages all churches associated with the Southern Baptist
Convention to provide all of their children with Christian alternatives to
government school education, either through home schooling or thoroughly
Christian private schools.
