Christian and Independent Schools Under Assault

The escalation of Federal and state pressure against the Christian school movement is reaching a crisis stage. Day after day, some pastor or headmaster is put under new bureaucratic regulations. No longer is the battle against the independent schools being left to amateur state attorneys. The big guns are being aimed at the schools, and even at the churches. Today, under 27% of the school children in the Los Angeles schools are white; four years ago, the proportion was about 40%. The busing of children across the city (and Los Angeles, geographically, is second in size only to Jacksonville, Florida, and has a huge population) has created an exodus from the public schools. Within a decade, the public schools of urban America will be overwhelmingly composed of minority students, whose academic talents will not be developed to maximum potential by the disintegrating academic standards of the humanists’ educational philosophies. To stem the bloodletting, the cities are desperate. Who will continue to vote for more bond issues, higher teacher salaries, and higher costs per pupil, when the majority of the taxpayers are Yet the enemy has problems, too. First, the religious traditions of this country stand against them. So do the legal traditions. Second, there are only so many top-flight prosecuting attorneys. The state’s men, especially at the lower levels, are not usually the brightest, most effective graduates of the best law schools. If they were really good, they would be in private practice making three times the pay. Third, the states still face the threat of jury trials, and juries are composed of people who are being threatened by busing and other bureaucratic horrors. They are often ready to fight back by scuttling the state’s bureaucrats. So the war is not over. The Christians and independent school supporters have the law and the principles on their side, but the statists have the organization and the money.

The court system is vulnerable. Courts are clogged up today. It is becoming very expensive to prosecute successfully these days, which is why plea-bargaining has become the way of life in criminal prosecutions. But the Christian pastors and headmasters are less willing to play this game. Therefore, we can tie up state resources by standing firm and not capitulating. If we can find a way to reduce our costs of self-defense, we can force the state to spend millions to shut us down. How, then, can we do it?

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