Position Papers
Position Paper #1: ACCS Statement on Vouchers
Approved: 9/20/01
Occasion:
As a matter of policy, ACCS requires schools seeking accreditation with ACCS to refrain from accepting vouchers. This has caused some confusion over the reasons for this stand, and so the board offers this clarification.
Definition:
For purposes of this statement, vouchers should be defined as a monetary payment made to or on behalf of parents of school age children by any agency of the civil government in the United States, whether federal, state or local, with that money to be used for tuition or tuition assistance in a private Christian academy.
Rationale:
The issue for ACCS is one of ultimate religious authority in our schools. It is not a concern about the proper relationship of the civil magistrate to a Christian school in an (ideal) Christian republic. Thus the question is not over the abstract question of "school and state" in an ideal setting. Rather, our concern is particular and relates to the current situation we find ourselves in. Every civil government in the United States is prohibited by law from acknowledging the Lordship of Jesus Christ in any way. Our schools, on the other hand, are seeking to acknowledge the authority of the Lord Jesus in every area of life.
Our concern over vouchers is that we do not want our schools funded by those who have shown themselves to be formally antagonistic to everything we are trying to do and teach. A response to this might be that Scripture allows for "plundering the Egyptians," and that the use of vouchers is just a modern-day example of this. The difficulty with this view is that the Egyptians are not being plundered, we are. We are not a victorious people being led away from the smoldering ruin that was Egypt; we continue to live in a culture and under a government characterized by unbelief.
In our view, the acceptance of vouchers would be a significant first step in bringing our schools under the direct control of an unbelieving civil magistrate. The proverb expresses the principle well: "He who takes the king's coin becomes the king's man." If we receive money from the government, we must know that the money comes with conditions. Today, the conditions might be tolerable. But if they are not tolerable tomorrow, e.g., the school may not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, we will discover that getting out of the trap is a lot more difficult than getting in. Our unbelieving government will argue (rightly) that our receipt of their money meant that we must conform to the public policy of the civil government. They have already successfully argued this way. In the Bob Jones case, argued before the Supreme Court, the benefit of tax exemption meant that Bob Jones could not have a dating policy that was contrary to the policy of the federal government. And the fact that the policy at Bob Jones was an unbiblical one is beside the point. In a free country, they would have had the right to be silly. Consequently, our current legal situation is such that institutions which receive money from the government had better be prepared to receive their overall marching orders from that same government.
One reply to this might be that if the government started requiring the hiring of homosexual teachers, then the school would begin to decline the vouchers at that point. But this ignores the nature of budgetary growth. It is possible that some schools will do this. But if the budget has expanded to accommodate the new voucher money, it will be very difficult for the school to return to its original size without firing staff, closing programs, dismissing a third of the student body, etc. In other words, there will be a great deal of immediate pressure, on the ground, to capitulate.
ACCS is not approaching this question in a perfectionistic fashion. We understand that children will be driven to our schools on roads paid for by this secular government. They will all have various entanglements with government money, whether it is parents on Medicare, surplus cheese in their lunch bags, or participation in parks and recreation athletic programs. Our concern is not to have every minor problem fixed instantly; rather, it is to avoid creating a new, significant entanglement, which would bring our schools under the authority of those who refuse to acknowledge our Lord.
It is quite true that although such things could happen it does not mean they necessarily would. But in the instances where it has happened, it has happened because the school set itself up for the problem and unwittingly invited the problem. In other words, the disaster need not be universal to be significant. We would be grateful for those instances where a school escaped losing their academic freedom. Occasionally, a school will not reap what it sows. But as a general pattern, it remains true that God is not mocked. If we sow government involvement, we must not be surprised at the (now unwanted) government involvement at harvest time.
We are seeking the freedom to teach our students that the Lordship of Christ is relevant in all that they do. One of the best things we can do in this regard is to set an example. The all-encompassing Lordship of Christ should affect how we decide to fund our schools.
Position Paper #2: What Constitutes "classical & Christian" for ACCS?
Position Paper #3: Computers and Classroom Instruction
Position Paper #4: ACCS Statement on History and Protestant Education