Southern Baptists adopted resolutions June 16 lamenting America’s “cultural drift … toward secularization” and urging Christians to engage culture and vote “biblical values.” But SBC messengers stopped short of calling for a withdrawal from public schools.
Eight resolutions were adopted, most with little debate or opposition, by the nearly 8,600 messengers attending the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Indianapolis.
The 10-member committee declined to act on a resolution proposed by T.C. Pinckney of Virginia and Bruce Shortt of Texas asking Southern Baptists to remove their children from “godless” and “anti-Christian” public schools.
A motion by Pinckney to add the anti-school language to the resolution on secularization failed on a show-of-hands vote.
Pinckney’s proposed amendment encouraged all Southern Baptists to provide their children with “a truly Christian education” through Christian schools and home schools and asked churches to “provide counsel and assistance” to help parents do that.
“Government schools are becoming actively anti-Christian,” Pinckney said from the convention floor.
Committee chairman Calvin Wittman of Colorado said the SBC did not want to “usurp” the responsibility of parents to decide how to educate their children.
“This is a responsibility that God has given to the parents of the individual child and we encourage parents to exercise their God-given responsibility,” he told messengers.
Wittman noted the SBC in recent years has spoken “sufficiently” on the issue of schools and Christian education, with 11 previous resolutions lamenting the secularization of public schools and supporting Christian public teachers, Christian schools and home-schooling.
Jim Goforth of Missouri, speaking against Pinckney’s amendment, said pulling Christian children out of public schools means “darkness will completely take over the schools. Teach them the truth. They’ll know it when they hear it, and they will reject the falsehood,” Goforth said.
Shortt, who spoke in favor of the amendment, said the belief that children will positively influence schools as “salt and light” is “misapplied theology.”
Childhood is a time of discipleship, he said, and placing children in an “anti-Christian” school will corrupt them.
After defeating the Pinckney motion, messengers passed the resolution on secularization unchanged. The statement said “the cultural shift in our nation toward secularism obscures moral absolutes under the guise of tolerance.”
Southern Baptists took blame and repented “for our part in the cultural decline that is taking place on our watch” and urged Southern Baptists to “aggressively engage the culture by speaking the truth in love concerning every aspect of life, public and private.”
But the statement added: “America’s only hope is a spiritual awakening by the power of God through the gospel of Jesus Christ.” (ABP)
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