Baptists in America: A History

by Thomas S. Kidd

For much of the twentieth century, most Baptists opposed vouchers for private schools. But that was when most private schools were Catholic. Meanwhile, Catholics claimed that public schools were pervasively Protestant and that as a matter of fairness the state should assist Catholic schools at least indirectly through vouchers or tax credits. In other words, Catholics believed the state discriminated against their schools much as conservative Southern Baptists came to believe the state infringed the right of their children to have group prayer in public schools. The voucher debate broke down largely along Protestant-Catholic lines into the 1970s, with Baptists among the most vocal opponents of vouchers. This all began to change in the 1970s and 1980s as many conservative evangelicals, among them Baptists, came to the conclusion that the public schools were pervasively secular and hostile to religion. Desegregation compounded the problem in the South, as many white Baptist congregations started their own all-white academies rather than send their children to integrated public schools. As this happened, Baptists began to migrate toward a pro-voucher position.