'Un-Christian': Student 'nearly ruined' by evangelical education sounds alarm on public school trend

13 February

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The religious right is pushing Christianity into schools, and that can have serious repercussions -- journalist Josiah Hesse knows firsthand. In a piece at the Guardian published Wednesday, Hesse writes that “Trump’s promise to ‘bring back prayer to our schools,’ shut down the Department of Education and embrace ‘school choice’ fulfills an evangelical wishlist I’d heard about throughout my childhood.”

He attended Christian schools growing up. “The longer I stayed at the school,” he writes of the evangelical school he attended junior year, “the deeper I fell into a malaise of depression and self-harm. In addition to the stress of bullies, I had trouble getting my mind around the logic of these classes, and knew that if I didn’t understand it, and believe it, eternal torture awaited me.”

Besides, “the apocalypse was at hand, so who had time for algebra?”

He switched to public school for his senior year, where his credits didn’t transfer because the Christian school was not accredited by the government.

“Twenty-five years later,” Hesse writes, “Donald Trump and the Christian nationalist movement that put him in the White House (twice) are seeking to transform public education into something similar to what I was reared on, where science, history and even economics are taught through an evangelical conservative lens, while prayer and Bible reading are foundations of the curriculum.”

“These efforts test the boundaries of the constitution’s establishment clause, reversing a century of civil rights victories in public schools, and have the potential to fundamentally alter the way American children learn – and what they learn about,” he writes.

He explains that the indoctrination comes in two ways: putting Christian rhetoric into public schools, and using tax dollars to contribute to private religious schools through vouchers that cover tuition. A 2022 Supreme Court ruling allowed private religious schools to receive government funding.

Hesse points out that the top education official in Oklahoma, for example, has mandated that those teaching grades 5-12 incorporate the Bible into their classes. Louisiana passed a law that classrooms must display the Ten Commandments, although a judge blocked it. Back in 2012, Florida considered a constitutional amendment that would allow the state to fund religious schools, which is worth noting because it was supported by Pam Bondi, now Trump’s attorney general.

“Attempting to indoctrinate public school students into Christianity is not only unconstitutional and un-American, it’s deeply un-Christian,” Democratic Texas state representative James Talarico, a former public school teacher, told the Guardian. He has been fighting an optional new curriculum that would teach Bible stories in elementary schools. What’s more, the Texas voucher system can fund homeschool students. “So we taxpayers will be funding homeschool programs that teach students the earth is flat,” he said.

“Talarico views Texas’s efforts to create a voucher program for private Christian schools as not only bad for Jewish, Muslim and LGBTQ+ students, but also as stealing from the poor to serve the rich,” Hesse writes. A low-income student would not be able to afford $20,000 tuition with an $8,000 voucher, but a wealthy one could.

As for Hesse, he was able to get his GED. “Colleges and universities, I was told, were even worse than public schools in their liberal indoctrination, so I drifted through a decade of low-wage jobs in factories, restaurants and construction sites, as my fellow students who’d graduated from public school, then college, ascended the socioeconomic ladder.” Eventually, he began teaching himself, leading to a career in journalism.

“I have often felt a deep sorrow for students enduring the bubble of private Christian education – particularly the poor and queer ones. Now it seems that compassion must extend to those in public schools as well,” he writes.

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