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Friday, May 15, 2020

The War Against Christianity (Part I)


Dr. Glen Schultz is the founder and director of Kingdom Education Ministries, and author of Kingdom Education: God’s Plan for Educating Future Generations, a classic in the field of education. With his permission, we are posting an abbreviated version of his recent post, The War Against Christianity.

The most recent issue of Harvard Magazine [May/June] contained an article in which the author presented the views of Elizabeth Bartholet, a law professor at Harvard.  Bartholet views homeschooling as a threat and suggests that it be banned. 

The backlash from the article has been swift and strong. However, most of the responses to this anti-homeschool article have merely defended homeschooling. Please know that I also believe that homeschooling is a parent’s God-given right and should be protected.

What has alarmed me, however, is the fact that the article and Bartholet are attacking something much more important than the practice of homeschooling. This article is attacking Christianity. 

This is evident when Bartholet is quoted, (all emphases mine):

“Surveys of homeschoolers show that a majority of such families (by some estimates, up to 90 percent) are driven by conservative Christian beliefs, and seek to remove their children from mainstream culture…some of these parents are ‘extreme religious ideologues’ who question science and promote female subservience and white supremacy.”

This is the crux of the worldview battle that is intensifying throughout today’s culture. Christianity or a biblical worldview is the real focus of the article’s attack.

Bartholet and a professor from the College of William and Mary are holding a summit at Harvard, called, The Homeschooling Summit: Problems, Politics, and Prospects for Reform. The co-sponsor of this summit, Dr. James Dwyer, has made the following statements in interviews and written reviews:

“The state needs to be the ultimate guarantor of a child’s wellbeing. There is no alternative to that. The reason why parent child relationships exist is because the state confers legal parenthood on people through its paternal and maternity laws.  It is the state that is empowering parents to do anything with children – to take them home, have custody and to make any kind of decisions about that.”

“…the claim that parents should have child-rearing rights—rather than simply being permitted to perform parental duties and to make certain decisions on a child’s behalf in accordance with the child’s rights—is inconsistent with principles deeply embedded in our law and morality.”

I have been pounding the drum for years that education is never neutral. All education is driven by the desire of one group of people to instill certain beliefs and values into the next generation. 

Education isn’t about academics, athletics or fine arts. It is about worldview formation.


Next week, Part II.