They call it Christian education, but there is not much I identify as “Christian” in these schools. You certainly don’t see the compassion of Christ for the poor, sick, and downtrodden that is portrayed in the Gospel of Luke.
Christian Academies require that their students to read the Bible, but the meaning they impose, literal interpretations that deny evolution and claim some people are destined for servitude because they are descended from Noah’s cursed son Ham, are restrictive and racist. Every Christian is not a racist, but the academies, in effect, become training grounds for the next generation of rightwing ideologues and white nationalists. Enrollment in these “schools” has expanded as they push a rightwing agenda, rallying people to oppose “Critical Race Theory,” the latest code phrase for denying the history of the United States and African American rights, and vaccination and mask mandates. Unfortunately, there is fertile ground for a rightwing revivalist movement in the United States where spokespeople like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) announce they do not believe in evolution and a 2019 Gallup poll found that 40% of Americans still believe the biblical story of Genesis that on the sixth day of the universe God invented human beings in a separate creation.
Republicans have been quick to jump on the Christian Academy movement to garner votes. In December 2020, the First Amendment religious “freedom” of Christian schools was championed by three dozen Republican Senators. They filed a legal brief with the Supreme Court demanding that the Danville Christian Academy be granted a religious exemption from Kentucky school coronavirus guidelines. The Senate group included Mitch McConnell (Rep-KY), who was the Senate Majority Leader at the time, and Ted Cruz (Rep-TX) and Josh Hawley (Rep-MO). According to McConnell, “Courts have repeatedly had to defend Americans of faith from overzealous officials who have tried to treat religious institutions in a uniquely disfavored way relative to other parts of society. Enough is enough.”
The political journal The Hill and the New York Times identify the Christian school movement and Senate Republicans as conservative, but I see little that is “conservative” in their positions. American conservatives traditionally identified with support for limited government and the defense of individual rights. But these so-called “conservatives” have no problem forcing their values on others, including their opposition to reproductive choice for women and full civil rights for people whose sexuality and gender identification they reject. Traditional conservatives have a sense of obligation to the poor and under-privileged. These “conservatives” oppose taxing the wealthy and expanding the social safety net. They also are tying to force their agenda on public school curriculum and some rightwing Republicans are using the phantom menace of Critical Race Theory to win local elections and take over school boards.
Conservatives have no justification for opposing vaccine and mask mandates. Medical mandates are as old as the United States. In 1798, President John Adams signed a law that authorized the federal government to order quarantines following a yellow fever epidemic. During the 19th century, states and localities began to require small pox vaccination. Court cases that challenged quarantines and vaccine requirements were dismissed because of the constitutional obligation of federal and state governments to “promote the General welfare.” In 1905, in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the Supreme Court upheld a Cambridge City law requiring smallpox vaccination because someone did not have the right to put others at risk. In 1922, a unanimous court upheld childhood school vaccination mandates as settled law. Because of vaccination mandates, small pox was officially eliminated in the United States by 1952. The polio vaccine mandate in schools was implemented during the conservative Eisenhower administration in the 1950s and polio was virtually eliminated as a childhood disease by the mid-1960s. Laws mandating vaccination for measles, mumps and rubella were soon added by states and localities as public health measures.
I identify the Christian school movement, which had its previous big boost in the 1960s in opposition to the racial integration of schools, as a white rightwing reaction to the demographic and political changes in the United States enflamed by ratings-hungry media and cynical politicians who are primarily interested in implementing pro-business, pro-wealthy, economic programs. The terms “left” and “right” have their origin in the French Revolution of 1787. In the new French delegates assembly, the more radical parties were seated on the left and the more conservative parties on the right. Many actual conservatives and some Republicans in the United States have distanced themselves from extreme rightwing spokespeople and actions like the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. To the best of my knowledge the people who are disrupting at school board meetings do not identify themselves as members of any political party. On Long Island in New York State they call themselves the Loud Majority, which they clearly are not. I think it is accurate to say that at least some of the pronounced anti-vaxxers and anti-mask people at school board meetings are also part of the anti-CRT movement. I think every one of them imagines that their outlandish behavior will make them the next Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The current Supreme Court is likely to expand rightwing efforts to channel public money to private and religious schools. In its 2017 Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer decision, the Court ruled it was unconstitutional for a state to deny aid to religious organizations when making grants to non-profit organizations for non-sectarian purposes. In 2020, the Court ruled in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue that if states fund private school scholarships they must include religious schools. These rulings could become the basis for an even more right leaning court to insist that religious groups be permitted to operate publicly funded charter schools.
Christian Academies, with Republican Party support, may well be training the next generation of rightwing white nationalists to rip the United States apart.
Follow Alan Singer on twitter at https://twitter.com/AlanJSinger1
