Op-Ed: Is It Time for Christians to Abandon the Public School System?
On Sept. 30, the Family Research Council’s The Washington Stand published Jay Sabatino’s article, “Christians Started Public Schools. We Should Not Abandon Them.”
Whoever reads Mr. Sabatino’s article will see that his article does little to support either the premise or the conclusion of his title; in that regard, it reminds me of the legacy media, which constantly writes articles with titles acting as clickbait and unsupported advocacy.
Sabatino’s article avoids any analysis of whether what the Pilgrims started were actually public schools, as they are today. Absent that analysis, it is equivocating. One would think an assertion as powerful as encouraging Christians not to abandon Satan’s dominion would deserve a few sentences dealing with the question of whether a public school then was equivalent to a public school now.
To wit: Were compulsory taxes involved? If so, what type of taxes were they? Who controlled the doctrine taught? Was attendance compulsory? What if someone could not pay? Was there even a civil government that claimed jurisdiction over thought during the Pilgrims’ day? And so on.
Sabatino spends about one paragraph (citing the Old Deluder Satan Act) tenuously supporting his title’s premise. This is telling, as he presupposes that since Christians (Pilgrims) supported public schools, it means public schools are proper. In other words, Sabatino is implying that Christians are the ultimate authority to be obeyed. Nay, God is — so even if Christians did start public schools, that does not dictate whether we should or should not abandon them.
What Christians do is not dispositive of what we should do. What is dispositive is the jurisdiction God gives to man in certain areas of life. It is true that Christians facilitated the development of public schools — what I call civil government schools — in the mid to late 1800s. But so what? That does not mean they should have.
I am a jurisdictionalist; that is, someone who acknowledges that God never gave the civil government lawful authority over man’s thoughts, whether in church or in class. To put it in Pilgrim terms, I am a Brownie.
Robert Browne was an original Pilgrim. He believed that England’s civil authorities did not have lawful authority over the Church of England. Thus, he did not believe the Church of England could be reformed while under the civil government’s power. Browne eventually returned to his own vomit in trying to reform the Church of England under the civil government, but he was correct in acknowledging that the civil government has limited authority. It does not have jurisdiction over church government, nor does it have jurisdiction over man’s thoughts in the form of education.
If the civil government can dictate the ideas your child is exposed to, what can it not do?
Sabatino wants us to be thankful to the Pilgrims for being able to read. Should we also be thankful to them for the 21 percent of Americans who are not able to read? Should we be thankful to the Pilgrims for critical race theory and “gender identity,” too — which Sabatino mentions pejoratively?
[firefly_poll]
I do not think the Pilgrims started “public schools,” nor am I thankful for their existence. The civil government school system doors are the gateway to hell, and I sleep well knowing I have done my duty in declaring so.
Sabatino, as a former civil government school teacher, has an interest in promoting the vain attempt to reform the civil government school system. And the Family Research Council — among other well-known Christian organizations — has skin in the game, for it enjoys being a beneficiary of the market for Christian outrage against civil government schools. If civil government schools went away, well… you do the math.
Causing me more disgust are Christian leaders who cling to the dilemma the poor, single mother is in. She has no option but to send her child to a civil government school, they cry. But liberalism (specifically humanism) has never solved one problem in history. Indeed, liberalism is the reason we physically die. It is also the reason we spiritually die. Arguing that the single mother, having no options, must send her child to a civil government school is nudging the child over the cliff.
According to Jesus, those who promote civil government schools, even in the narrowest circumstance, should be fitted for a millstone necklace. I would not be so concerned with the Family Research Council’s low editorial standards if they did not facilitate Christians encouraging others to play fast and loose with their children’s salvation.
Currently and promisingly, there is a larger force that is overtaking civil government school reformers and their enablers. The larger force is those rank-and-file Christians who, in opposing the Christian establishment, have achieved a tipping point in the Christian movement, causing Christian establishment organizations to become increasingly irrelevant.
No longer do Christians stand for the status quo. We want change and revival, and we are going to work around the Christian establishment and defeat it. That means abandoning the civil government school system.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
