History, Homeschooling, and Religious Persecution

Posted by Lorren on November 8, 2008

I just started re-reading Faithful Baptist Witness. It’s a book that I often refer to when I run into people who claim that Baptists are Protestants (we’re not). It’s a pretty quick read, I started it this morning and I’m already halfway through.

The book is a pretty interesting read, especially in light of all that’s been going on recently in politics. There are so many questions of what is going to happen, and whether our way of life will be preserved. Society in general is becoming more and more hostile to Christian principals, and of course, there are those that wish for churches to be burned and for Christians to be murdered, which I wrote about a couple of posts ago.

The churches in the dark ages that were independent, that would share a lot of similarities with the Baptist churches of today, were often persecuted. They were persecuted by not only the Roman Catholic Church, but later even by some of the Protestant churches. During times of persecution, they often retreated into the mountains of the Alps. Oddly enough, similar actions might be the only way of survival if Christian persecution takes hold in the United States.

One particular group that shared a lot of commonality with the Baptists of today were the Waldenses. They believed that “we ought to obey God rather than man.” Even still, they strived to live peaceably with the government and paid their taxes, even when they were persecuted.

One thing that I found particularly interesting when reading about the Waldenses is that they had their own schools. They believed that education was inherently religious and that they had the responsibility to teach their own children. They thought that it was important that all children learn how to read in order to be able to read the Bible for themselves. This was during a period of time when much of the population was still illiterate. People became jealous of their success and even set about to destroy their schools. (Faithful Baptist Witness, chapter 16)

The Waldenses seem to share commonality with many homeschoolers today, all around the world. Many homeschoolers are Christian, and include Bible teaching along with all the other subjects. Students that have been homeschooled often are better educated than their public school counterparts. In some countries, like Germany, homeschooling has been declared to be illegal, and homeschooling parents have been thrown in jail for not complying and sending their children to state schools. Why is that?

None of us know what will happen in the next few years. Will our economy enter another great depression or will we recover quickly? Will hate crime laws be expanded? Will homeschooling be declared illegal? Not enough is known about how Barack Obama will govern to tell.

What I do know, is that if the economy is great, and religious freedom and homeschooling freedom remains in tact, all is well. But if not, we can look to the millions of people before us that continued to do what was right despite the earthly consequences.