Fearing the Anti-Christ: Christian Objections to US Public Schools.

In a recent article at HuffingtonPost, Frank Schaeffer, son of evangelical pioneer Francis Schaeffer, notes that much of the credit for the rise of the 9/12 marchers, tea-baggers and like-minded subversives can be credited to the increase of Christian schools and the home schooling movement. Schaeffer explains:

A big part of the answer to understanding the heightened climate of outright hate and fear of the "other" is the home school and Christian school movement. It is a modern incarnation of the anti-federal government ideology of earlier firebrands such as John Calhoun who was the 7th Vice President and a Southern politician in the 19th century. Calhoun embraced slavery, states' rights, limited government, and said that Americans should secede from the union if it went against their wishes. (See: "Calhoun Conservatism Raises Its Ugly Head" by Mike Lux in the Huffington Post Sept 11/09.)

In the early 1970s the evangelicals like my late father and James Dobson decided that the our society had fallen so far "away from God" and so far from "America's Christian history" that it was time to metaphorically decamp to not just another country but to another planet:. In other words virtually unnoticed by the media and mainstream political operatives, a big chunk of American society seceded from the union in all but name.

What they did is turn the white race-based in "Christian school" movement of the 1950s into a countercultural phenomena. As tens of thousands of new Christian schools opened, it was no longer just about "protecting" white kids from minorities and African-Americans. It was about protecting your children from Satan in other words the United States government's long reach through the public school system.

To protect your children from Satan -- in other words mainstream, open patriotic and pluralistic America -- you either kept them at home where mom and dad could teach the children right from wrong or sent them to a cloistered private evangelical/fundamentalist school. At home or in school you used curriculum prepared by the likes of James--beat-your-child-and-dare-to-discipline-Dobson, RJ-slavery-was-a-good-thing-Rushdoony, or many and other right-wing anti-American activists. That curriculum presented "secular America" as downright evil. Hating the USA became next to godliness.

Yesterday's post by Carl Sterling Parnell at TheRealityCheck clearly demonstrates Schaeffer's point that education is dividing the country. Titled "The Real Reason for the Meltdown of America's Schools," Parnell's article sums up what is wrong with our public education system and why Christians fear their child's education by the government (aka the National Education Association):

The solution [to fixing our public school system] lies within the realm of a spiritual renewal in America as a society, another Great Awakening. Then, ultimately, public schools would return back to godly principles and ideals in the halls of academia. But, at present, public schools have become a breeding ground for subcultural groups to join mainstream America. As a result, true academics have been placed on the back burner. Therefore, the time needed to prepare students for the educational challenges of the 21^st century is already included in the daily public school schedule. The problem is that the time is being misused to promote the agendas of different ideological and subcultural groups, some of which promote un-American and ungodly ideals and principles.

What exactly are these un-American and ungodly ideals? Explains Parnell, secular humanism, "a subtle yet extremely injurious cancer eating away at the moral health of society," and the New Age Movement, "an occult socio-political movement that is attempting to bring about the Biblically-predicted world order ruled by Satan."

The secular humanists are evil because they are trying to undermine capitalism, save the planet, promote peace, usher in equality and do other Satan-motivated stuff:

Politically, the New Age humanists have four goals. Their ultimate goal is to create a one-world government. Secondly, they want to stop the rapid population growth in the world in order to avoid the depletion of our natural resources. Thirdly, they want to cut military spending, to stop the production of all nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, and to redistribute the wealth of the world more equally. Fourthly, humanists want to free mankind from all superstitions and restrictions. Ultimately, man will never achieve peace of mind until he stops believing in a God. Man’s peace will come only when he accepts that it is his own abilities that generate happiness in his life.

How do such seemingly positive objectives translate into damaging our children and our country?

Spiritually, the New Age agenda requires the desecration of the Ten Commandments. According to New Age beliefs, the elimination of God’s laws would be necessary in order to promote world peace and human progress. Humanists blame Christian values for the divisiveness of people around the world. However, they desire to replace the Ten Commandments with perverted sex, abortion, birth control, suicide, euthanasia and divorce. Ultimately, a new utopian society would bring tolerance and peace to the global community. Occultism would become the one-world religion. Satan would become the god of the universe. (1) The anti-Christ of the Book of Revelation could be ready to establish his kingdom. If New Age disciples and secular humanists rid the universe of the God of Heaven, there would be nothing left except Satan’s representative on the earth-THE ANTICHRIST.

The entire article smacks of racism, xenophobia, hyper-nationalism, intolerance, greed, and most of all, fear.