A researcher has revealed some disturbing trends regarding the sets of beliefs Christian students in public schools have about the most important issues in life.
Dan Smithwick is the founder and president of the Nehemiah Institute, a group that provides a biblical worldview testing and training service to Christian educators. He is the developer of what is called the "PEERS test," a tool to assess the worldviews of young people, and says the majority of public school students from evangelical Christian homes consistently score in the "socialist" category on the test.
According to Smithwick, this outcome should come as no surprise, considering the fact that secular humanists are currently shaping America. He notes that socialism, a political and economic philosophy that commonly emphasizes government control and redistribution of wealth over personal responsibility and private ownership, often goes hand in hand with secularist attitudes and a generally non-biblical worldview.
Smithwick's worldview test consists of a series of statements carefully designed to identify a person's worldview in five categories: Politics, Economics, Education, Religion, and Social Issues (PEERS). Each statement is framed to either agree or disagree with a biblical principle.
When it comes to major moral and social issues, the Nehemiah Institute spokesman contends there is a dramatic difference in thinking between students in public schools and those in Christian schools. This is because, while Christian school students are generally taught curricula predicated on a biblical worldview, students educated in public schools, even when they grow up in Christian homes, tend to a very high degree to adopt the non-biblical and socialistic worldviews of the secular humanists in control of their education.
"In the last hundred years," Smithwick asserts, "and especially in the last 30 years, this is the audience that is shaping the public square in America, hands down. And they didn't really have to fight for it -- we [in the Church] gave it to them. Somewhere along the way we decided that the public square really wasn't our business. It wasn't our playground; they could have it, and they've had their way with it."
As a result, the Christian education advocate says, even Christian students are growing up to become a part of a society with an increasingly secular-humanistic and socialistic worldview. "Now we've got a mess on our hands," he says, "and it's really our fault. So we've got to change that. We've got to repent before God. We've got to go back and understand that worldview means God is interested in everything he created."
Undoing the Damage Done by Dewey
Unfortunately, Smithwick says, many Christian young people today are not being taught to think biblically in all areas of life. That is why he urges parents, pastors and Christian teachers to take advantage of the Nehemiah Institute's worldview testing, training, and resources. And this is why he has been promoting the Institute's programs this week at the Alliance for the Separation of School and State Conference in Washington, DC.
