I would like to respond to Dr. Harris’ editorial calling into question Mr. T. C. Pinckney’s resolution evidently encouraging “Southern Baptists to remove their children from public schools.” While I personally have no knowledge of this resolution nor of Mr. Pinckney’s educational theory at large, my comments are directed toward Dr. Harris’ rebuttal of Mr. Pinckney’s alleged proposition.

Let me say at the outset that both Dr. Harris and I have not a little in common. We both have three children who are the product of combined private and public education (overwhelmingly public in my case). I too have been pastor of a church who operated a rather large Christian academy (700-900, K-12).

First, Dr. Harris uses as an analogy the supposed withdrawal of our Europen missionaries on the one hand with the exodus of all Christian children from the public schools on the other. He then instructs “We are to be salt and light not retreat into some idyllic sanctuary.”

I would raise the question, if it is even remotely fair to liken seasoned, matured, advance-educated, God-called Christian adult missionaries to school children who are at the mercy of an educational paradigm that is thoroughly secular from the get go. We are talking about our children, whose mind has been not wrong-headedly characterized as “mush to be molded,’ not our theology-trained missionaries thoroughly equipped to handle various worldview challenges.

But even more pointedly, Dr. Harris’ argument undermines the very premise upon which we Southern Baptists build our private colleges and seminaries. It even calls into question the Conservative Resurgence (with which both Dr. Harris and I are a part, I presume) we are currently celebrating in our convention.

After all, why would we want to purge our seminaries of liberals if worldview did not matter? It seems to me, we, as seasoned, adult Christians could survive a Fletcher-loving professor in seminary better than an eight year old could survive being taught that it’s perfectly normal for Debbie to have two mommies.

If Dr. Harris encourages parents to send their children to public rather than Christian elementary/secondary schools, would he also discourage Southern Baptists from sending their children to Baptist colleges? Why not? Why not also send our up and coming churchmen to Union Theological Seminary in New York to be trained in theology and Bible rather than Southwestern in Ft. Worth?

Wouldn’t we be “salt and light” there? Would it not be just as wrong to retreat to our “idyllic sanctuary” to study Scripture in Fort Worth, Louisville or one of the other four?

Secondly, Dr. Harris mentions the godly, Christ-honoring public school administrators and teachers “who have accepted the public school system as their mission field.” I could not agree more.

But once again, Dr. Harris seems to have overlooked the difference between seasoned, well-educated saints with deeply established convictions (teachers) and vulnerable, unequipped children (students).

Thirdly, it is argued that “the home should always be the basic institution of learning” (Deut. 6.6-7). Frankly, I do not know of any Christian thinker who would challenge this proposition. After all, at least for evangelicals, Scripture is final.

However, the way Dr. Harris appears to apply this Biblical proposition argues against all public education, not just exclusively Christian education. Indeed, this very point has been successfully marshaled by the home school movement which pretty much dumps all public classrooms – Christian or not.

After serving as president of a Christian Academy, my own views regarding exclusively Christian schools have changed dramatically. Indeed there are serious questions the Christian school movement faces. Undoubtedly, some churches make grievous errors by flippantly starting a church school.

In closing, I doubt if there ever will be a mass exodus from public schools by Christian parents – unless, of course, the doomsday educators are correct and the public schools fall like a house of cards under the weight of its own failings. In the meantime, however, the decimation of the Christian culture, violence, drugs and the increasingly atheistic paradigm the public schools pursue are justification enough for parents to send their children to be educated by institutions seeded by the parents’ own worldview.