The fate of a resolution pending at the annual gathering of the Southern Baptist Convention that urges church members to remove their children from government schools likely will be known today as the Resolutions Committee refers measures to the floor of the conference.
As WorldNetDaily reported, the resolution, written by Baptist activists Bruce N. Shortt and T.C. Pinckney, calls on the millions of members of the denomination to pull their kids out of public schools and either homeschool them or send them to Christian schools.
Shortt tells WND there are a few options for the resolution. One is that the committee would refer it out as is, or it could refer it to the floor after having watered it down. A third option would be for the committee to refuse to act on the proposal in any way.
Based on what happens, Shortt says he and his allies will decide what action to take. If the resolution is altered too much, for example, supporters would oppose it when it gets to the floor.
Since WorldNetDaily reported on the resolution, it has gained considerable nationwide attention.
Shortt says his opponents within the Southern Baptist Convention scolded him for sharing the resolution with the media.
“I’m sure they thought they could have buried this and nobody would have ever heard of it,” Shortt said. “Then suddenly it’s in the press.”
Contineud Shortt: “After [WorldNetDaily] printed that article, the whole thing just exploded.
“I hadn’t seen any formal rules that people aren’t allowed to say anything contrary to what the leadership wants,” he said.
The authors of the resolution use Scripture to argue those Baptists who trust the public-school system with their children are being disobedient to God.
“Government schools are by their own confession humanistic and secular in their instruction, [and] the education offered by the government schools is officially Godless,” the measure states.
Noting that “the millions of children in government schools spend seven hours a day, 180 days a year being taught that God is irrelevant to every area of life,” the resolution says, “Many Christian children in government schools are converted to an anti-Christian worldview rather than evangelizing their schoolmates.”
Shortt told WND last month: “At this point, there are many, many pastors and parents who need to be educated about our obligation to provide a Christian education to our children. In time, most [SBC members] are going to understand better that the little red schoolhouse has really become the little white sepulcher, and it’s a seething cauldron of spiritual, moral and academic pathologies.”
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