Header image by Emmanuel Phaeton on Unsplash.
In a shocking series of articles for Chalkbeat Colorado, Ann Schimke (with Erica Meltzer) describes how Pueblo School District 70 approved a tax-funded Christian school, Riverstone Academy, partly to potentially generate a Supreme Court test case on public financing of religious schools.
The legal structure of the school is complicated. As Chalkbeat explains, the 30-student school “was authorized by Education reEnvisioned BOCES,” which is “one of the state’s 21 Boards of Cooperative Educational Services,” and approved by the Pueblo district.
Although “references to the school’s Christian character are absent or muted in Riverstone’s application materials and contracts,” as Chalkbeat describes, the school explicitly advertises its “Christian foundation.”
In an October 10 letter (provided by Chalkbeat) to representatives from the BOCES and Pueblo 70, the Colorado Department of Education questioned whether the school was eligible for public funding, noting, “public schools are generally required to be nonsectarian in nature.”
Chalkbeat also discovered a June 4 email from attorney Brad Miller, who represents both Pueblo 70 and the cooperative behind Riverstone, anticipating “that the cooperative would then work with Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based group involved in high-profile conservative legal causes, to test ‘the legalities around the issue of whether a public school may provide religious education.'”
Here I will focus on the educational aspects of the case, not the legal aspects. The Colorado Constitution is clear: Government may not finance religious schools. The legal question is whether, under the First Amendment, government may exclude religious organizations from programs that include other private organizations. Regardless, we can ask whether religious instruction constitutes a serious education. In this case, it does not.
In an informative article that partly draws on Chalkbeat‘s work, Hemant Mehta, who writes as the “Friendly Atheist,” points out that Riverstone publicly advertises that it uses “Master Books Social Studies and Berean Builders Science—both of which are faith-based companies that usually cater to Christian homeschoolers.” Insofar as the school relies on such materials, what it is providing is not so much Christian education as Christian indoctrination.
Here is how Berean Builders describes its offerings: “Acts 17:11 says the Bereans received gospel information with great eagerness and examined the scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. We think that is exactly what education should be. We help parents teach their children to become critical thinkers.”
A critical thinker is someone willing and able to independently examine the relevant evidence to evaluate claims and to reach conclusions grounded in evidence and logic. Obviously that is not what Berean Builders means by this term. The company instead focuses on helping Christians develop rationalizations for embracing their faith-based views while dismissing any rational challenge to them. This is Christian apologetics, pure and simple.
Here is how Berean Builders describes its “Science in the Beginning” set: “The beginning of history is given in the Bible’s creation account, and this book uses the days of creation as a way of introducing a wide range of scientific concepts including the nature of light, energy conservation, the properties of air and water, introductory botany, our solar system, basic zoology, and some aspects of human anatomy and physiology. As the students learn about these scientific concepts, they are constantly reminded of the Creator who fashioned the marvels they are studying.”
The main author of the Berean science books, Jay L. Wile, writes the books “from a young-earth creationist view.” He argues that young-Earth creationism — the belief that the Earth was divinely created within the past 10,000 years — is good for science because it “continually argues with the establishment about what we can learn from scientific data.” What scientists overwhelmingly agree geologic data tells us is that the Earth is around 4.5 billion years old.
Master Books also has an explicitly evangelical mission, stating on its web site: “Since 1975, the mission statement of Master Books has been ‘Ink on Paper to Touch Eternity.’ We publish Christian homeschool curriculum that will grow a student’s faith in their Creator and His Word in a way that will have a lasting and eternal impact. We know that when we place a Master Books title into someone’s hands, their faith in God and His Word is going to grow. We ensure that a biblical worldview is integral to all our curriculum. Our courses start with the Bible as our standard and are infused with the fact that all things were created and are sustained by the eternal, triune God of the Bible. … Biblical apologetics are embedded into each course.”
Riverstone does also incorporate some secular materials, specifically Saxon Math and Core Knowledge Language Arts.
Riverstone is, by design, as much an indoctrination center as a school. Government should not force taxpayers to fund the school’s narrow religious mission. Further, insofar as government spends tax funds for education, the funds should be spent for education, not indoctrination.
To a substantial degree, what Riverstone provides is not an alternative Christian form of education but the negation of genuine education and the stunting of children’s intellectual development, especially when it comes to fields such as evolutionary biology and history.
If parents wish to use their own resources to push their own children into religious indoctrination camps doubling as schools, although I think that’s a terrible idea, I agree they have that right, within certain limits. (Parents have a moral and legal responsibility to provide their children with a basic education, and parents may not subject their children to abuse. We need not debate here precisely where to draw the lines.) But government has no proper business getting into the role of promoting particular religious beliefs.
