We all know polls can be deceiving; they can just as easily be used to distort reality as to clarify it. And so, we’re rightly cautious about reading too much into polls in general and any one poll in particular. But sometimes there are polling results that are simply too compelling … too important … to be ignored. The results of just such a poll were released on March 17, 2022* and they bear directly on one of the four main public policy issues the LCMS speaks: namely, that form of religious liberty called parental choice in education.

This particular poll was aimed at helping us better understand the magnitude of support (or lack thereof) for the greater empowerment of parents by allowing them greater control over their children’s education. And what did it reveal? Well, in a nutshell, it revealed that Americans have largely reached consensus in favor of doing what it takes to reestablish parents as the primary authority in the educational lives of their children. That is, there is now a general agreement that state-collected education dollars should be allowed to follow children to the school of the parents choosing, whether that school be secular or religious. Now that, in itself, is an important outcome, though, frankly, polls have consistently shown this was the majority opinion for the past 20 years. What’s more impressive, however, is magnitude of this majority and its consistency across all major political and demographic boundaries.  For example, fully 75% of respondents now agree that “parents should be in charge of decisions regarding their child’s education,” including 86% of Republicans, 65% of Democrats and 74% of Independents. More specifically, 77% of all respondents support the establishment of Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), a mechanism by which parents gain direct control over the dollars which the State has already allocated for their child. This includes 75% of Democrats, 85% of Hispanics and 84% of black voters. (See the attached infographic.) These are truly remarkable numbers.

Now, why should the Church take an interest in such polling? We take an interest in it because we are also well aware the content of a child’s education plays a critical role in that child’s future life of faith.  The Bible certainly attests to this when it says, “Train up a child in the way he is to go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6) Not only that, a recent secular study also powerfully documents the negative effect on religious commitment that occurs when secular governments are allowed to maintain a monopolistic control of education. Specifically, in an extensive 2020 study by the American Enterprise Institute**, researchers concluded that “expansions of government service provision, and especially increasingly secularized control of education … account for virtually the entire increase in secularization around the developed world. [Further,] the decline in religiosity in America is not the product of a natural change in [peoples’] preferences, but an engineered outcome of clearly identifiable [educational] policy choices in the past.”

      So, what does all of this mean?  What does it mean to have public opinion align so favorably with Scriptural wisdom? Well, of course, it does not mean the Church’s mission and ministry should, henceforth, be controlled by either polls or academic studies.  What it does mean is the Church and Christian parents have been given a tremendous opportunity to significantly impact and improve the way we educate our children by making it clear that parents, not governments, are the real “customers” to whom education providers are most accountable. It means there is now a real possibility of changing public policy so it becomes clear to all “stakeholders” that parents are the ones to whom the system must defer, and parents not only have the right, but the obligation to consider the impact of their child’s education on the whole child … body, mind and soul.

It is in response to this opportunity that we in the LCMS MN Districts have been working with many partners to help pass legislation that will allow for the empowerment of parents, not school systems, as is currently the case. It will allow for the empowerment of parents, not judges, as would be the case with a new proposed amendment to the Minnesota Constitution (the Page Amendment). In particular, we are advocating for the passage of legislation that will bring Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) into being in Minnesota as soon as the next legislative session in 2023.  ESAs are our primary focus because they will offer parents, all parents, the means to control their children’s education, either by giving them the financial ability to actually move their child to a non-public school which more closely aligns with their faith and values, or by giving them the “leverage” they need to strongly encourage public schools to be more responsive to parental concerns and preferences. Both for parents wanting to remain in a new, more responsive public system and for parents who prefer a non-public school, ESAs are the “tool” all parents need to better carry out their rights and responsibilities. In short, at a time when society is fractured in so many ways, ESAs represent a great opportunity for healing as they bring all parents together, regardless of what type of school they ultimately choose for their child.

And so, while this is surely a challenging time for both the Church and the nation, it is also a time brimming with promise; the promise of parents, once again, being shown ther respect their high office deserves, as they are set free to choose the school which best serves the temporal and eternal needs of their child, and therefore, the good of society as well.

·        * Poll by the American Federation for Children and Invest in Education, March 17, 2022

·        ** “Promise and Peril: The History of American Religiosity and Its Recent Decline, American Enterprise Institute, April 2020