Mimi Rothschild - The Southern Baptist Academy Homeschooling Blog

By Mimi Rothschild

This month’s issue of the Heartland Institute’s School Reform News included an interesting article by Grove City College professor Michael Coulter regarding Bruce Shortt’s crusade against the public school system.

This particular piece takes note of an encouraging development in the movement.

The Rev. Steven Warhurst, associate pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Kingsport, Tennessee, has taken up a similar cause in his own denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). With more than 1,200 churches and 300,000 members, the PCA is the largest of the seven conservative Presbyterian denominations.

The two largest protestant church organizations now have factions pushing for a move away from government-run schools. At last year’s General Assembly, the Presbyterian equivalent to the Southern Baptist Convention, Warhurst and his supporters introduced the possibility of a church-wide push for homeschooling and Christian private schooling.

Advocates like Warhurst and Shortt have a long, hard road ahead. Because most Southern Baptists and Presbyterians still support the public school system, they are pressured by their “constituency” to maintain the status quo. By coming out against public schools, pastors will inevitably find themselves coming out against the members of their churches who work in the public schools. It shouldn’t be this way, but people have a tendency to take these conceptual arguments personally.

“We are not urging school reform, because public schools are unreformable,” Shortt explained. “You can’t do Christian education in a public school.”

Statements like this are sure to offend people. Then again, I’m sure that Paul offended some of the churches he visited in the New Testament!