Christian Leaders Seek
'Exodus' From Public Schools
By Robert Stacy McCain
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Aug. 26, 1999

Christians weary of efforts to reform public schools are now spreading a new message: Get out.

"Christians have got to come to grips with the fact that the government is not going to fix the schools. The government is causing the problem," says the Rev. E. Ray Moore Jr., national director of Exodus 2000, an organization formed in 1997 to encourage parents and churches to choose Christian education instead of public schools.

"Each effort to fix [public education] makes things worse," says Mr. Moore, an Army Reserve chaplain who served in the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The problems of the "government school" system, as Mr. Moore calls it, are "terminal, and the quicker Christian people realize it, the quicker they'll be able to take action."
Exodus 2000 -- taking its name from the Bible book that describes the Israelites' journey out of Egypt - uses the slogan "Every Church a School, Every Parent a Teacher."

Based in South Carolina, the organization has a Web site and has made headlines in publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal to the Dallas Morning News. Last year's shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. -- which sparked increased interest in home schooling, according to Colorado officials -- may serve as a catalyst for a Christian exodus from public schools, Mr. Moore says.

The Columbine massacre "embedded itself in the psyche of the American public," he says. "I think it took away the naivete or innocence of many Christians that the public school system could be fixed. It was a watershed moment -- that something was terribly wrong with the schools."

The shootings, which left 15 dead and 23 wounded, form the introduction of "Let My Children Go" a new video produced by Exodus 2000 and California-based Jeremiah Films. "We had just finished the video when [the Columbine massacre] happened, and we had to go back and add that on," says Mr. Moore.

"If you were to look at the speakers all through the video, you'd think the speakers all knew about Columbine, but it was completed before that happened." Jeremiah Films co-founder Caryl Matrisciana, who narrates the introduction, said the Colorado shootings "bring out the whole atrocity [of how] schools can be the killing fields."

Mrs. Matrisciana and her husband home school their own children, she said, and "the biggest marketplace" for their Christian videos "is the disillusioned parents who have been working within the home-schooling movement for the last 20 years."

The video features conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, authors John A. Stormer and Judith Reisman, and the Rev. Joseph Morecraft, a Presbyterian minister. It quotes 16th-century Protestant reformer Martin Luther: "I am much afraid that schools will prove to be great gates of Hell unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures, engraving them in the hearts of youth."

"We hope over the next three to six months that several million Christians will see this video," Mr. Moore says, explaining that about 80 percent of evangelical Christians still send their children to public schools. "That's 12 to 15 million children. If they were to leave and go . . . to Christian schools and home schooling, it could seriously cripple the grip that secular humanism holds over our culture now."

Exodus 2000 is one of a growing number of groups and activists who are calling for Christians to abandon a public school system they see as beyond hope of reform. Among them:

-- Rescue 2010, a project of California-based Citizens for Excellence in Education (CEE). Its goal is to remove 20 million children from public schools by the year 2010. Christian activist Bob Simonds founded CEE in1983 to encourage Christians to "take a stand" in public schools, but now has begun to call for them to leave the schools, where he says their children are being "spiritually raped."

-- Paul Lindstrom, founder of the nondenominational Christian Liberty Academy in Illinois, who argues that the "very concept of public education is fatally flawed.”

-- The Exodus Project, led by Brannon House, president of the American Family Institute, who co-authored the "Emergency Education Resolution of 1997" declaring that the problems of American education can only be solved by parents withdrawing their children from public schools.

-- The Separation of School and State Alliance. Headed by Marshall Fritz, who appears in the "Let My Children Go" video, this libertarian organization was founded in 1994 and aims to eliminate all government involvement in K-12 education.

Exodus 2000 has gained support from D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries in Florida and other Christian groups, but Mr. Moore admits his movement faces challenges. One of the biggest obstacles, he says, is that Christian parents believe sending their children to public school fulfills the traditional "salt and light" doctrine, based on Jesus' teaching that his followers should testify to others as "a light unto the world."

Among the groups that continue to seek opportunities for Christian outreach in public education is James C. Dobson's Colorado-based Focus on the Family, which made "Rebuilding Hope for Public Schools" the cover story of the August issue of its magazine. The article by Cheri Fuller said that "as more and more Christian parents get involved and pray, rebuilding is taking place in public schools."

But Mr. Moore cites a 1998 study by the Kentucky-based Nehemiah Institute showing that public schools substantially erode the faith of Christian students. He says public education has become "thoroughly humanistic, pagan and anti-Christian" in recent decades, and that attempts to reverse the trend are doomed.

Christians "haven't won any important battles over the public-school system. It's time people get smart," Mr. Moore says. That belief has recently gotten a boost from the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination.

Glen Schultz, director of Christian school resources for the SBC, told the Baptist Press, "We're fooling ourselves to think we can overcome what's done [in public schools] in six hours a day, five days a week, in one Sunday-school class."

"Historically, Southern Baptists have been strong supporters of public schools, but that seems to be changing in recent years," Mr. Moore said, noting that the SBC passed a resolution at its recent convention in support of Christian education.

Understandably, teachers unions are hostile to a movement that would deprive their schools of revenue: Tax funding for public schools is based on average daily attendance.

Lee Berg of the National Education Association told the Dallas Morning News that it "is dangerous hogwash" to say public schools are anti-Christian. Public education "happens to be the foundation of democracy," he said.

But Mr. Moore says Exodus 2000 is only "saying publicly what a lot of people are thinking privately. We're giving voice to the secret concerns, anxieties and hopes of many Christian people and pastors."

So far, Mr. Moore has promoted his ideas mainly through talk shows on Christian radio stations, and is "trying to build a national field organization" that he says is active in about 15 states.

"I do believe we're having impact," he said. "We should have done this years ago."
© 1999 News World Communications, Inc.

r.s.mccain@worldnet.att.net

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