In Virginia, an evangelical church announced plans to open a new school. They claim that demand for private Christian education has soared due to controversies over critical race theory (i.e., teaching anything about racism, past or present) and masking during the pandemic (they refused to protect their children’s health). Will the new school indoctrinate children to be racist? To hate gays? To look down on other religions? One thing you can be sure of: it will seek government money for its tuition.
MIDDLEBURG, Virginia – Nestled in the rolling hills of northern Virginia sits a sprawling tree-lined campus. Classrooms inside this shuttered private school sit empty. Once-busy halls are eerily silent. Each room looks like a time capsule of better days. But not for long.
“After much prayer and discussion with our elders, and pastoral leadership, we will be launching Cornerstone Christian Academy,” said Senior Pastor Gary Hamrick.
Hamrick got a standing ovation after making that announcement during recent Sunday services at Cornerstone Chapel in Leesburg.
The campus is about 20 miles from Cornerstone Chapel the church that will open the school in the fall of ’23.
Initially, there will be enough space for 500 elementary and middle school students. “They have classrooms, desks, there’s a gym, cafeteria, down the hall. We’re going to repurpose it for the Lord,” said Hamrick.
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There are also plans to expand to high school and online learning.
“Our goal is to provide children an education where they have a biblical worldview. So they can go out into the world and be salt and light,” he said.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
yup
A wise move on their part. You have to get them young for them to grow up this stupid and ignorant because they are so superstitious and indoctrinated.
In other words, indoctrination in ancient superstition works best when it’s done quite young. If you get them you, then whenever, as adults, they start to deviate from the early indoctrination, they will feel extraordinarily uneasy. It will be much, much, much harder for them to think reasonably and clearly, in an adult manner, on their own. That will keep them stupid and ignorant.
I don’t agree with Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens about a lot of things, but about this they were right: early religious “education” is a variety of child abuse–teaching children falsehoods and instilling in them fear enough to last, for many, for a lifetime.
Funny thing: It never occurs to believers to observe that if they happened to have been born in a time and place where people worshipped, say, the Papuan Pig Goddess, then they would equally fervently cling to THAT set of superstition and mythology instead, and for precisely the same “reasons.”
And, ofc, if they grew up and encountered challenges to their early indoctrination, they would grow angry and defensive and attempt to rationalize their beliefs by various means, such as claiming that the old songs and stories about the Pig Goddess were not meant to be taken literally but were, you know, symbolic of moral and spiritual truths. There is, after all, that great tuskiness of experience, and those who root shall find.
The amount of racism linked to evangelicals and conservative Catholics should be the subject of research and the results should become widely known to the public.
The public knows about the overt discrimination against women and gay people so, the entirety of the prejudice should be understood.
Maryland, Va’s neighboring state, has a GOP candidate running who is a member of the League of the South. He was raised Catholic, graduated from a Catholic high school and attended a Catholic university. He currently attends an evangelical church. He’s opposed to free public education. Public education is the cornerstone of his campaign. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t think there should be a prohibition on discrimination based on gender identity.
and such frightening times to know that this type of thinking is growing across the nation
“Our goal is to provide children an education where they have a biblical worldview. So they can go out into the world and be salt and light,” he said.
Too much salt can destroy the earth needed for growth. Too much light can burn the life that should grow in the earth.
Too much biblical indoctrination has led to hate, division, racism, wars, sexism, etc. I think this world has had far too much religion of all kinds.
I think it is the fanatics that have given all religions a bad name. Lots of people practice religion and believe in a higher power without spreading hate and division. Many religious groups often help those that are less fortunate and try to be inclusionary, but I agree that religion, when poorly interpreted by certain people, can cause harm and dissension.
Will the school be co-ed? Thirty percent of Catholic schools are single sex. If there are uniforms, will the girls be required to wear skirts? Will the school have students recite an altered U.S. pledge of allegiance that incorporates the sect’s doctrine?
How can you say “alleged demand”? Haven’t you noticed all the disruptions in the worldwide supply chain? Sorry. It was sitting out there like a big matzoh ball, ready to be swatted. Another example of grifters using organized religion and “concern” for education as cover for their con.
“Our goal is to provide children an education where they have a biblical worldview.”
Really, what version of the biblical worldview is he referring to, the one that supports fascism or the one that follows the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus Christ?
There are a lot of choices when it comes to whatever biblical worldview an individual might have.
“As of September 2020 the full Bible has been translated into 704 languages, the New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,551 languages and Bible portions or stories into 1,160 other languages. Thus at least some portions of the Bible have been translated into 3,415 languages.”
I think it is safe to say that every translation comes with errors in translation.
“One basic problem inherent in Bible translation is that we do not have the original manuscript of the Bible, but copies of copies of copies… and this causes many problems because translators do not know which of all these copies is correct and which is not, since none of them are identical.”
https://translationjournal.net/journal/18bible.htm
I remember a former friend of mind who voted for Traitor Trump, and he once or more than once claimed that the hand of God guided those that translated the Bible (he was probably referring to the translation that he reads).
I’m delighted to know, for this is surely forthcoming, that tax dollars will pay for this cultivation of a “biblical worldview.”
Separation of church and state:
The state has to pay for the education of a few, while having no say on what is taught.
Pretty certain this is Senator Jill Vogel’s district, and rather certain she is pro-privatization of public education. This is an article that mentions both – but not related: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/for-both-sides-of-abortion-debate-unusually-high-stakes-in-virginia-governors-race/2017/09/11/d651a198-787d-11e7-8839-ec48ec4cae25_story.html. You can see what this school will be “teaching”. Should public funding go to it? Not at all. The irony is that they are using “anti-indoctrination” as a means to justify “indoctrination”.