From Ethics Daily

The call for an "exodus" from public schools continues to gain momentum in the Southern Baptist Convention, according to sponsors of a resolution being proposed at this summer's SBC annual meeting in San Antonio. Bruce Shortt, a representative of Exodus Mandate, a Christian ministry that urges parents to remove their children from "government" schools and educate them either at home or in Christian schools, announced today plans for the fourth straight year to introduce a resolution encouraging the expansion of Christian alternatives to public education.

Shortt, an attorney from Houston, is co-sponsoring the resolution with Voddie Baucham, an African-American author and conference leader who worked together with Shortt in 2005 in convincing the convention to adopt a resolution on Christian education affirming that parents, and not the government, are primarily responsible for educating their children.

The 2007 resolution seeks to build momentum on a comment made by SBC president Frank Page shortly after his election last summer in Greensboro, N.C. Page, pastor of First Baptist Church in Taylors, S.C., told Agape Press he is disturbed that many teenagers leave the church after graduating from high school and he hoped that more churches would begin offering Christian schools.

Bauchum said Page's call for more Christian schools reflects "an expanding debate" among Christians over public education. Seminary president Albert Mohler has called on Baptist parents to develop an "exit strategy" for their children from public schools.

"Dr. Page’s call for more Christian schools is the beginning of the 'exit strategy' that Dr. Mohler has urged be developed," Baucham said. "If the SBC and American Christianity are to survive in any culturally relevant way, we are going to have to repent of our unfaithfulness in the education of our children. And we need to do this sooner rather than later."

Shortt, author of The Harsh Truth About Public Schools, said Page's "bold recommendation demonstrates how far the debate over how we educate our children has moved since 2004." That is the year that Shortt and former SBC officer T.C. Pinckney introduced a failed resolution calling on all Southern Baptists to remove their children from public schools and instead see that they receive a "thoroughly Christian" education.

This year's resolution says the majority of Southern Baptist children are being discipled by "an anti-Christian government school system," that undermines values taught in church and home. "Continuing to fail to repent of our unfaithfulness in the education or our children will lead to justified charges of hypocrisy," the resolution says. KEEP READING