A new coalition of evangelical leaders in the education space just announced a campaign to promote Christian education, all while educating parents and pastors on the dangers that government schools present to children and the church. The effort, dubbed the Christian Education Initiative (CEI), seeks to facilitate a mass “exodus” of Christian families from the public-school system, among other goals.
“Now is the time for like-minded ministries to unite and promote a national movement to expand biblical worldview education,” said CEI Chairman Lt. Col. E. Ray Moore (Ret.), founder and president of Frontline Ministries and Exodus Mandate. “We are not government school reformers but are rather encouraging parents to provide a biblically based education for their churches and children.”
“Christian children need Christian education,” added Moore, a pioneer in the home-education movement who has been working to get Christian children out of government schools for over two decades.
CEI has six key objectives. These include rescuing Christian children from government indoctrination; promoting biblical education to churches; returning authority over education from government to parents; expanding Christian education options; training pastors, educators, parents, and others in a biblical philosophy, curriculum, and methodology of education; and helping parents of limited financial means provide a Christian education for their children without involving government.
Members of the initiative include leaders of Renewanation, Equipping Teachers International, The Foundation for American Christian Education (F.A.C.E.), The Providence Foundation, Frontline Ministries, Deconstructing the Coliseum, Constitution Leadership Initiative, New Geneva Christian Leadership Academy, Reformed Bible Church, Association of Principled Education Christian Schools (AECEP), Mission to Restore America, Planting Seeds to Renew America, Henricus Colledge, the Nehemiah Institute, The Old Schoolhouse, Family Renewal Ministries, American Transformation Company, and more.
“The worldview shift in America of the past 30 years is the greatest abandonment of the Judeo-Christian faith since our nation’s founding,” explained Dan Smithwick, president of the Nehemiah Institute. “Results of Nehemiah Institute’s unique worldview assessment, The PEERS Test, provides documented evidence that our nation’s government-run educational system is systematically and intentionally erasing our roots to the Christian faith.”
Smithwick said this represents the single greatest threat to the future of America’s free Republic. “It is time for the Church to make an unqualified decision that local churches will once again, in conjunction with parents, take on full responsibility for the education of their children,” he explained, adding that the Church must stop asking the de-Christianized government school system to educate her children.
Many in the movement feel it is way past time for pastors and churches to recognize the danger of allowing Christian children to be indoctrinated and discipled by an anti-Christian government “education” regime. The architects of America’s public-education system were openly hostile to biblical religion and the liberty that stems from it. Leaders in the movement say that Christians who participate in this dangerous system risk losing their children, their freedom, their churches, and their nation.
–Alex Newman | freedomproject.com
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