Dr. Bruce Shortt and I have submitted another education resolution to the Southern Baptist Convention.   This year we are tackling California’s SB777, and other efforts to indoctrinate California Children in the acceptance of homosexual, bisexual and trans-gender lifestyles.  This resolution represents another step in an ongoing effort to bring the issue of government education (and its adverse effects on children) to the forefront.  We want people to understand that the school is the frontline of the culture war.

The result of our efforts has meant, in part, that both Bruce and I are considered agitators, troublemakers, and a whole host of other names I cannot print here ;-)  I have lost preaching opportunities, had events cancelled, been censured, berated, and throttled (you should hear what Youth Ministry professors say about me in their classes).  I have gone from being a regular at the SBC Pastor’s Conference, to being a Pariah that no one would dare invite.  Why?  Because I have denied the deity of Christ?  Have I committed some heinous sin?  Have I abandoned my wife?  Have I denied the faith?  No.  All of this due to the fact that I have taken stances on two “Sacred Cow” issues (Youth Ministry and Education) that are considered off limits.  Just like scientists who question anthropogenic global warming, I have raised an issue that is supposedly ‘settled’ in the minds of everyone who matters. 

I do not say all of this to invite you to my pity party.  On the contrary, I consider the opposition from the powers-that-be evidence that I’m on the right track!  I also take great solace in the fact that I am not alone from a historical perspective.  Many stalwart voices throughout the history of the church have shared my conviction that Christian parents are obligated to see to it that their children have a Christian education.  Recently, I read a sermon by John Wesley entitled, “On Family Religion,” wherein he said some things that resonated with my soul.  I am delighted to share them with you here:

13. Let it be remembered, that I do not speak to the wild, giddy, thoughtless world, but to those that fear God. I ask, then, for what end do you send you children to school? “Why, that they may be fit to live in the world.” In which world do you mean, — this or the next? Perhaps you thought of this world only; and had forgot that there is a world to come; yea, and one that will last for ever! Pray take this into your account, and send them to such masters as will keep it always before their eyes. Otherwise, to send them to school (permit me to speak plainly) is little better than sending them to the devil. At all events, then, send your boys, if you have any concern for their souls, not to any of the large public schools, (for they are nurseries of all manner of wickedness,) but private school, kept by some pious man, who endeavours to instruct a small number of children in religion and learning together.

14. “But what shall I do with my girls?” By no means send them to a large boarding-school. In these seminaries too the children teach one another pride, vanity, affectation, intrigue, artifice, and, in short, everything which a Christian woman ought not to learn. Suppose a girl were well inclined, yet what would she do in a crowd of children, not one of whom has any thought of saving her soul in such company? especially as their whole conversation points another way, and turns upon things which one would wish she would never think of. I never yet knew a pious, sensible woman that had been bred at a large boarding-school, who did not aver, one might as well send a young maid to be bred in Drury-Lane.

15. “But where, then, shall I send my girls?” If you cannot breed them up yourself, (as my mother did, who bred up seven daughters to years of maturity,) send them to some mistress that truly fears God; one whose life is a pattern to her scholars, and who has only so many that she can watch over each as one that must give account to God. Forty years ago I did not know such a mistress in England; but you may now find several; you may find such a mistress, and such a school, at Highgate, at Deptford, near Bristol, in Chester, or near Leeds.

16. We may suppose your sons have now been long enough at school, and you are thinking of some business for them. Before you determine anything on this head, see that your eye be single. Is it so? Is it you view to please God herein? It is well if you take him into your account! But surely, if you love or fear God yourself, this will be your first consideration, — “In what business will your son be most likely to love and serve God? In what employment will he have the greatest advantage for laying up treasure in heaven?” I have been shocked above measure in observing how little this is attended to, even by pious parents! Even these consider only how he may get most money; not how he may get most holiness! Even these, upon this glorious motive, send him to a heathen master, and into family where there is not the very form, much less the power of religion! Upon this motive they fix him in a business which will necessarily expose him to such temptations as will leave him not a probability, if a possibility, of serving God. O savage parents! unnatural, diabolical cruelty. — if you believe there is another world.