The religious-right group Family Research Council promoted an excited letter to supporters Thursday saying that President Donald Trump’s dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education could be a “game-changer” for FRC’s efforts to “bring faith and the Bible back to public schools.”
In her recent book “Money, Lies, and God,” Katherine Stewart wrote about the ways that “privatizers and proselytizers” work together to delegitimize and undermine public education. The right-wing funded Moms for Liberty demonstrates this dual strategy, urging activists to take over public school boards while advocating for “school choice” laws to divert funding away from public schools. FRC President Tony Perkins’ letter showcases such a two-front strategy to push religious indoctrination into public schools and shift more students (and education dollars) into religious schools that are free from public oversight.
Perkins begins by criticizing Supreme Court rulings upholding church-state separation, and moves quickly to Christian nationalists’ favorite target: LGBTQ people: “With God, the Ten Commandments, and biblical truths out of the way, the Left had ample room to push their radical indoctrination plan onto our children.”
Perkins’ letter praises recent actions by state officials to turn public schools into de facto Sunday schools, beginning with a 2024 Louisiana law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom. “Louisiana’s spark became a flame as other states – including Texas, Oklahoma, and South Dakota – have now taken steps to reintroduce biblical teachings back into their schools,” Perkins writes.
But even that is not enough, Perkins continues, calling on every church to start a Christian school in which the Bible “is more than historical context of our nation's founding or a general ethical context -- it is the complete worldview in which reality and life itself are grounded.”
Perkins’ letter comes in the context of Christian nationalist activists urging state legislators to take advantage of right-wing Supreme Court rulings and go “on offense” to dismantle separation of church and state, particularly where schools are involved.
Oklahoma’s Christian nationalist Superintendent of Schools Ryan Walters last year ordered public schools in the state to teach the Bible, which may have been an effort to keep him from being upstaged by Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law, which has been promoted as part of “Project Blitz,” a campaign to promote Christian nationalist legislation at the state level. Walters' plan to buy Trump Bibles for classrooms was put on pause by the state supreme court this week.
Trump chose his billionaire backer Linda McMahon to oversee the dismantling of the Department of Education. McMahon has chaired the America First Policy Institute, a MAGA think tank that promotes right-wing education policies as part of its agenda for “restoring a nation under God.” AFPI promotes so-called “school choice” laws that divert funding from public schools to unaccountable religious schools.
“AFPI has specifically taken credit for lobbying for the expansion of this approach in Arizona—over the objection of voters—where it has become an expensive ‘handout to the wealthy’ that has forced cuts in programs that serve needier families,” Right Wing Watch reported in February. “Pro Publica has reported on the lack of accountability in the program; a failing charter school shut down by regulators simply reopened as a private religious school funded by taxpayers.”
