Chapter 3 -- School
Wars: Resolving our Conflicts over Religion and Values
The Great Conspiracy: Secular Humanism and the New Age
One theme seems to dominate the literature: that public schools are under the influence of a secular, liberal "religion" and are participating in a conspiracy to alter society by modifying children and their thinking.
It is alleged that the conspiracy seeks to subvert Christian values through often-subtle means within public education.
The So-Called Religion of Secular Humanism
What appears most objectionable to fundamentalist is not only than Christianity has been deemphasized in American culture but that it has been supplanted by a rival religion.
Battling the religion of secular humanism has long been the fundamentalist critic's pledge.
Definitions of humanism focus on the rejection of God.
Conspiracy theorists believe that virtually every sector of American society has been influenced by secular humanists in a great conspiracy.
A Deliberate Plan
Pat Robertson argues that a powerful group of liberal intellectuals began a deliberate plan in the early part of the 20th century to "undermine and to disassemble the entire fabric of Western society."
The Gablers maintain that secular humanists have drawn America away from its Christian heritage.
Critics fear that values and concepts once accepted as absolute and unchanging (parental authority, unquestioned loyalty to the United States, faith in a supernatural God, the six-day creation of the world by God and gender differences) are being undermined by the underlying philosophy of public education.
The New Age Religion
Critics claim that within the last decade or so the efforts of the secular humanists have taken on a new form which is a religion called the New Age.
Fundamentalists believe the New Age has overt religious characteristics.
The basis for the New Age religion is Hinduism involving the believe that the individual soul is equivalent to the universal soul.
This New Age religion is bent on rejecting the Judeo-Christian God and declaring that "Self is God."
Fundamentalist claim that children are the "key targets" of New Agers and that educators are knowingly and unknowingly part of this occult plan.
Although charges of conspiracy are abundant in much of the fundamentalist literature, not all writers subscribe to the theory.
Grady, B., Hall, T. & Marzano, R. (1996). School Wars: Resolving our Conflicts over Religion and Values. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.