WHEREAS, Subtle pressure eroding the freedom of religious conscience has dramatically increased with campaigns for tax money for parochial elementary and secondary schools in more than forty states as well as on a federal level, and
WHEREAS, The President of the United States has appointed a panel on financial problems of private church-related elementary and secondary schools largely composed of persons committed to such schools, and without a balancing representation of persons committed unalterably to keeping public money in public channels, and
WHEREAS, The American public schools system has had the historic support of Southern Baptists, and
WHEREAS, Some private church-related schools are being formed simply as a strategy to avoid racial integration, and
WHEREAS, A number of congregations are in the process of debating the wisdom of forming church-sponsored elementary and secondary schools or of allowing their facilities to be used for such purposes by private groups.
BE IT RESOLVED, That the Southern Baptist Convention:
Vigorously oppose every effort to open channels for tax money to support private church-related elementary and secondary schools, and
Call on the President of the United States to appoint persons on his Commission on Private School Finance who are committed to the constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state as a balancing factor in this strategic study, and
Caution congregations allowing or considering the allowing of private groups to use their facilities for elementary and secondary schools of the grave danger of losing their tax exemptions of facilities for religious worship and caution congregations using or considering the use of their facilities for private elementary and secondary schools of the possibility of contributing to a rising pressure to break down Baptists’ historic opposition to tax funds for any means of support for parochial elementary and secondary schools and,
BE IT ALSO RESOLVED, That the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs be instructed to make every possible effort to communicate the opposition of Baptists to tax money for private church-related schools under any guise whatsoever to every appropriate public official.