One of the most quoted reports of modern history is the often cited survey concerning the top ten problems in public schools in modern America compared to the similar list a few decades ago.  Supposedly the list years ago includes such issues as shirt tails hanging out and chewing gum in class.  The current list was to include arson, rape, assault with a deadly weapon etc.  The truth of the matter, after researchers ran down the list, which had been quoted from the Whitehouse to local school board candidates, found it was based on a rumor.  No such survey was taken.  1
     A few years ago I took the time to sit and listen to what was being presented at Second Baptist Church in Houston, Texas regarding the needs of the modern family.  The event featured many leaders in the Religious Right.  Among them was Pat Robertson and radio talk show host,  Marlin Maddox.  Robertson and Maddox both told the audience that the United Nations was working secretly with public education to brainwash American children in the state schools to succumb to the secret new world order which would establish the anti-Christ.  National Christian Coalition rallies were often filled with vocal exclamations of rejection of the idea of Outcome Based Education and the idea of having a National Secretary of Education.  Tim LaHaye, in his often cited book on public Education, believes that a secret society has been at work with public education attempting to destroy American culture.  2  At the Houston area meeting of the John Birch Society I attended, leadership hit upon the idea that public education is a bad idea.  The group expressed sentiments that were active in the state Republican Party concerning the topic.  Donna Ballard, who was on the State Board of Education in Texas, is a case in point.  Donna home schooled her own children much like our region's candidate for Congress.  The fact that Donna is a home schooler, similar to many other Christian Coalition candidates for school boards, is a cause for concern among public educators.  The March 2, 1997 issue of the Houston Post cited an immigration lawyer's charges of racism because Ballard objected to history books depicting Mexican cowboys.  The Coalition often taught candidates how to win school board contests across the state.
     Christian academies, thriving in the old South, have competed with public schools since the integration of Southern schools took place in the sixties.  Some historians believe the entire Religious Right movement was a result of organizations seeking government money for these segregated schools.  Secret agendas that public school education would impose on innocent children is part of the common folklore.  Louisiana Supreme Court decisions eroded the wall keeping public education from becoming sectarian.  National attempts at gaining access to federal money for private academies takes place in every state.
     Billy Hargis placed public education along side of demonic Communist networks during the sixties.  Hargis said, "The liberals have devastated the American education system.  America's 100-year experiment with government schools has been a shocking failure."3  Hargis, from Oklahoma, had a huge following.  Billy, like LaHaye, have ties with John Birch Society leaders who denounce public schools.  Hargis proclaims, "...the forces of evil which control the schools are well entrenched.  They are determined to control and intimidate our local school boards."
     Another group with Bircher ties is the Christian Reconstructionist movement.  This peculiar branch of the Presbyterian church, is a philosophical leader in the Religious Right with influential  members on boards around the nation's Religious Right agencies including Pat Robertson's, James Dobson's and Jerry Falwell's.  Their Chalcedon Report once stated, "The modern state is now trying to use the government school system to predestinate all citizens into good little socialists."4
     A group who billed themselves as the Separation Alliance hosted a meeting in 1997 proclaiming the need for the separation of school and state.  Listed as speakers at the event were R. J. Rushdoony, founder of Reconstructionist and hailed as the founder of the home school movement.  Jim Woodall of Concerned Women for America was there.  The head of this women's group was Tim LaHaye's wife.  The John Birch Society Magazine, the New American, bragged on the Separation Alliance claiming they have
the backing of Ron  Paul a former Presidential candidate from Texas.  Other Texas connections include
David Barton who is on the National Platform Committee for the GOP.  Barton is a national leader in the move to denounce the idea of separation of church and state.  Barton advises  public education was set up in the nation to promote the Christian faith.7  Some of his followers have gotten the message in Fort Myers, Florida where a group of board members has set up a curriculum to use the public schools as a Sunday school class.  8
     The best handle to grasp to understand Religious Right concerns about public education is the conspiracy theory.  Religious Right activists thrive on the idea of a national conspiracy using public education.  Tim McVeigh sat on death row for his bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City.  Tim adhered to many of the peculiar theories about dangerous secret cartels who actually ran the country.  He asked for the Bircher magazine to read while on death row.  At our counties' local Christian Coalition voter education drive for school board members a few years ago, several Coalition members arose to denounce the state mandatory test given to high school students.  Because these tests were secret, (it is obvious why) Coalition parents feared tests were part of a secret conspiracy being used to brainwash their innocent children.  To the Religious Right, public education is a dangerous thing.  They have given their willing support to defeating issues like school bonds and Robin Hood rulings on sharing public money.   The schools definitely ain't what they used to be.

     Famous radio preacher Carl McIntire, often claimed his friend Billy Hargis was the modern founder of the Religious Right.  Hargis was full of conspiracy theories regarding Communism's link to integration.  Billy said that the National Education Association promoted Communism and a one world government.  9   One world government systems to establish an anti-Christ are a staple in these circles.   Fellow Bircher Dan Smoot echoed Hargis' sentiments claiming that Federal Judges prohibit free exercise of the Christian faith now in government schools.  10   The concept that government might be neutral to religion in public education is foreign to the concepts in these circles.  Either the government is to promote the Christian faith or it wars against it.  
     The late James Kennedy was a national leader in the Christian nation movement bent on destroying the false idea of a wall of separation between church and state.  Kennedy used his pulpit on July 4ths in the last years of his ministry to bash separation.  His sermon on public education is not only alarming but hard to believe it was uttered in public.  One must recall his church gleaned a great deal of membership from his own private school and his congregation spent a great deal of money  on such and needed justification for their position.  Kennedy said in his message:  "It is unlawful for public school children to read the Word of God.  Public education destroyed private Christian education with our tax dollars.  God was expelled from the public school and banished from the school yard.  Thus today we have no eternal truths; therefore, no moral absolutes.  I think the whole system should be abandoned and be allowed to sink in its own filth."  11
     As early as the thirties there was a growing mistrust of public education in far right circles.  The German Bund was an organization in America that supported Hitler's rise to power and wanted to keep America out of the war in Europe.  At a national rally the Bund held at Madison Square Garden in New York City, speakers commented on public schools.  The Bund advised public education was an assault on White virtues.   12  A view that would be multiplied across the South after federal court integration rulings.  While I served in Mississippi I quickly found out what private schools represented.  They were set up to keep black students from mingling with whites.  Early voucher movements for private schools were an incentive for the rise of the Religious Right according to prominent historians.  In my area  private Christian schools were euphemisms for segregation.  Getting federal money for these schools was paramount to government support of local segregated schools.
     In Longview, Texas there was a Gabler family that organized a think tank against schools.  This family thought the schools used faulty history.  They did not like textbooks blaming the depression on things that they suspected attacked free enterprise.  They also did not like negative statements about Presidents Washington or Jefferson mentioned in these books.  13   This movement would prove to be a forerunner laying the ground work for future state school board controversies over what was placed in history texts.   In the South, at the turn of the last century, most students at universities were in private schools.  The state universities were suspected of being Communists according to historian Kenneth Bailey.  14  
     Southern Baptists have turned sour on public schools, especially the fundamentalist version.  They host home school conferences and often attack public education.  One Baptist newspaper suggested that sending children to public schools was like sending them to the Chaldeans. New agencies are being set up in Baptist circles to provide homeschool and private school literature as well as training.  Christian Reconstructionist leaders recently hosted homeschool conferences in Southern Baptist summer camps.  Christian Reconstruction believes in applying the Old Testament law for today.  The most controversial portion of this ideology is the promotion of killing homosexuals as a Biblical mandate.  Reconstruction materials are popular at homeschool resource centers for school literature.  One of the Reconstruction writers stated that public schools are at war with Christianity.  15   Moody Press, a Chicago Christian nationally known organization, published a book claiming that public education now favors Islam over Christianity.  16
     Popular right wing radio host, Larry Bates claims the state schools are socialists.  17  The logical conclusion by these laissez-faire types is that government ruins just about anything it takes over.  Schools are not competing in the educational market place and are labor/socialist controlled and there is no fair market value or accounting.  Instead of calling it public education, these types tend to refer to schools as "government schools."  A derogative term by implication of the government's interference in a better free enterprise product.  A Virginia governor in early American history once lamented the idea of public education since it allowed any person who desired to learn a chance.  This was abhorring to those who considered not everyone was fit to be educated.  It was only for the elite to receive formal training.  
     Southern Baptist spokesperson Al Mohler, president of one of its seminaries, is a vocal opponent of government schools.   Mohler said these schools serve as a vehicle to radicalize and secularize children.  18     Baptist fundamentalists circles like to refer to lawyer Bruce Short's book, the Harsh Truth About Public Schools.  Short claims teachers are Marxists and pagans by the time they enter classrooms.   He wrote that public school teachers are the students who couldn't make it in the other professions.  Thus teachers are the lower end of the university graduates.  He collected a large number of strange and bazaar incidents from schools across the nation. 19  Short wrote the book to make these events appear as the norm in local schools.  I spoke with the late Phil Stricklin, a Christian activist in Texas about the allegations in the book.  Phil told me with the thousands of school districts you can find some that did some strange and far out things.  But presenting them as the norm is not journalistic justice.
     The Texas State School Board drew national attention by controversies that surfaced about its agenda.  There were some on the board who demanded the rewriting of text books.  Among the things this Religious Right wanted was to honor was the controversial Heritage Foundation and the Moral Majority.  They wanted to delete the mentioning of the accomplishments of civil rights justices and leaders.   They were greatly influenced by activist David Barton.  Barton claims he is helping rewrite history books across the nation to set the record straight.  Barton told an audience I was in that the greatest problems in America can all be traced back to public education.  All our moral, economic and family problems stem from public education.  The GOP platform in Texas was once dedicated to Barton.  Mike Huckabee, one time Presidential candidate, claims personal friend Barton is the greatest historian of our generation.
     A recent book was published by concerned parents comparing American Christians to the situation in Jeremiah chapter 35.  Christians are in exile in their home land.  Their rights and nation have been taken from them by infidels.  20   The author who wrote the book review stated from summation of the work, "You simply can't put your kids through public schools and reasonably expect them to grow up into solid Christians."
     Another prominent movement figure in the anti-government school movement is Bill Gothard.  The Gothard movement provided a spell binding adherence to seminars given across the nation to these followers.   Gothard taught followers how to dress, not borrow any money, and listen to music that helped them become more fertile as child bearing Christians.  Home school literature often promotes the idea that Christian mothers are to have as many babies as they can.  This is called the "full quiver" idea.  Recently Gothard has been accused of soliciting affection from underage girls he handpicked to be his secretary.  His influence still abounds with the concept that mothers are to stay at home to cook and raise the kids.  Gothard taught that public education led to rebellion in children.21    Followers actually thought their young daughters were safer with him than in the local school.
     Texas Religious Right leader James Robison gave up holding revivals and finds more of a following delving into social issues.  James claims he was instrumental in electing Ronald Reagan and recently sought to sway the nation to unseat Obama.  James blames the recent stock market crash on government regulation.  He doesn't like much of anything government does.  James has little formal education but writes that the Constitution has nothing to say about public education.  He notes that teachers unions are in the way of the class room.  22  Private schools appeal to James.
     Rick Joyner of the ultra-conservative, Oak Initiative, says that American students now graduate from high school without ever hearing a positive thing about America.  23   Like his fellow pilgrim Robison, he adheres to a free market concept that deplores government regulation or oversight.  Rick, like James, wants to let the market rule.  Robison even believed the Biblical story of Joseph using the Egyptian government to aid his brothers was evil.  Using government to aid citizens is seen as a vice to these mindsets.  Using government schools to educate citizens fits into this profile.
   Over 90% of American students attend public schools.  Few of us can afford the private schools let alone the universities.  Do citizens realize this anti- public school segment of our population wants to do away with the University of Oklahoma, Texas and Alabama?  After all, these are government schools.  Will we allow tax dollars to fund Christian education?  There is one case in Texas where tax dollars were  used to fund a private Muslim school.
    I end by the true story of Kim Fitzer's daughter. Kim sent her daughter to Trinity North West Catholic School in Milwaukee.  The child suffered from mental and behavior problems.  The private school expelled the daughter and sent her home.  The school had gotten tax dollars through vouchers to help fund the education of the young lady.  The private school kept the money and refused to refund it.  
It was the public school that had to take the student and with depleted funds, then educate her.  24  It reminds me of a local charter school.  It is housed in a church building.  Only the advanced learners are allowed to attend.  The school gets the cream of the crop as far as learners.  The students with learning disabilities and social problems are not welcome in Jesus' house to learn with the elite students.  Guess who has to pick up the pieces and teach whoever it is who comes through the doors....public schools.

Endnotes:
l.  Barry O'Neill, "History of a Hoax,"  Church and State, April 1994, pg. 17.

2.  Tim LaHaye, The Battle for the Public Schools, Fleming Revell & Co., Old Tappan, N.J., 1983, pgs. 58,68.
   
3.  Billy Hargis, "Liberals have Devastated America's Public Schools,"  Christian Crusade, June 1997, pg. 1.
   
4.  Ibid. pg. 14.
   
5.  Jack Kettler, The Church and Politics,"  Chalcedon Report, Aug. 1997, pg. 25.
   
6.  "Private Education Champions,"  The New American, Feb. 3, 1997, pg. 33.
   
7.  David Barton, The Myth of Separation, Wallbuilders Press, Aledo, Tx., 1991, pgs. 46,47,92.
   
8.  Lori Rosza, "Board Oks Bible Class for Schools,"  Houston Chronicle, 1997.
   
9.  Gary Clabaugh, Thunder on the Right, Nelson Hall, Chicago, Ill., 1974, pg. 7
   
10.  Dan Smoot, People Along the Way,  Tyler Press, Tyler, Tx., 1993, pg. 55.
    
11.  James Kennedy Sermon 1999, Coral Gables Florida.
    
12.  Speeches of American Bund, Madison Square Garden, 1939, From Truth at Last, Marietta, Ga.
    
13.  Russ Bellant, Coors, Connection, South End Press, Boston, Ma.  1988, pg. 96.
    
14.  Kenneth Bailey, Southern White Protestantism, Harper and Row, N.Y.,N.Y., 1964. pgs. 26-27.
    
15.  Bret McAtee, "Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me,  Faith for All of Life,  Jan./Feb. 2009. pg. 28.
    
16.  Erwin Lutzer,  When a Nation Forgets God, Moody Pub.  Chicago, Ill., 2010,  pg. 113.
    
17.  Larry Bates,  The New Economic Disorder,  Excel Books, Lake Mary, Fla.  2009, pg. 52.
    
18.  www.ethicsdaily.com  May 12, 2010.
    
19.  Bruce Short, The Harsh Truth About Public Schools,  Chalcedon,  Vallecito, Calif.  2004.  pgs. 1-300.  
    
20.  Ray Moore,  The Promise of Jonadab,  Ambassador International,  Greenville, S.C., 2010.
    
21.  Bill Gothard,  Institute of Basic Youth Conflicts,  Oak Book,  Illinois,  1986,   pg. 351.
    
22.  James Robison,  Indivisible,  Faith Works,  N.Y., N.Y.,,  2012,  pgs. 136-137.
    
23.  Rick Joyner,  I See a New America, The Oak Initiative,  Fort Mills, S.C.,  2011, pg. 188.
    
24.  Church and State,  Oct. 2013, pg. 7