Don't Abandon Public School System, Urges Christianity Today.

The prominent evangelical Christian magazine Christianity Today has editorialized against recent appeals for conservative Christians to pull their children out of public schools, calling instead for parents to work with educators to strengthen and improve the system.

The editorial, which appeared in the Sept. 6, 1999, edition of the magazine, says Religious Right leaders like Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation and Robert Simonds of Citizens for Excellence in Education are wrong to suggest a total disengagement from public schools. It also criticizes movements like Exodus 2000, whose founder, E. Ray Moore, had hoped to spur a massive exodus of conservative Christians from public education by the year 2000.

"Unfortunately, these groups have taken the hyperbolic rhetoric conservative Christians have used against public schools to its illogical conclusion," asserts the editorial. "If public schools are as evil as some talk-radio hosts would have us believe, drastic action would be warranted. But the situation is not that dire."

The editorial goes on to say that public schools are improving "academically, socially and even religiously--often due to Christian involvement." It calls on conservative Christians to remain engaged with the public school system and calls the religious diversity of public schools a good thing.

"In fact, public education's greatest asset, the diversity of its student bodies, will help students' evangelism as they grow older," asserts the editorial. "Having grown up with people of various ethnic, social and religious backgrounds, these believers will know how to relate to non-Christians. Importantly, they will understand that non-Christians are people created in the image of a God who loves them, not monsters out to do Christians in."

Concludes the editorial, "School reformers aren't out to create promiscuous gay atheists who have trouble fitting in seances between having abortions and shooting up. But one could get that feeling from some of the horror stories passed around evangelical water coolers. There are valid reasons for educating children at home or in private schools, but fear is not one of them. Education decisions should be based on local choices, not stories about events that happened in one classroom in one school 1,000 miles away five years ago.... Voices of parents are often listened to in public schools. Our options to better our children's education and the education of all children are not exhausted." The full text of the editorial may be read on-line at www.christianityonline.com/ct/9TA/9TA040.html.