Parental authority arguments let evangelicals defend segregated schools without defending segregation

Evidence

In the wake of Brown, for example, many southerners turned to private Christian academies to maintain segregation, and when the tax-exempt status of these “segregation academies” was revoked in 1970, evangelicals defended their right to whites-only schools by arguing for the authority of parents to make decisions about their children’s education, free from governmental “overreach.” Later, “forced busing” would offend these same sensibilities, in the North as well as the South. Although blatant defenses of segregation and racial inequality would be rare, many southern evangelicals and fundamentalists who persisted in their unreconstructed views of race would find common cause with more “tolerant” evangelicals on issues like social welfare policy and “law and order” politics that would carry clear racial undertones. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 92

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to secular histories of the school segregation academies and ‘forced busing’ backlash; also resonates with the moral-panic framing the reader knows from Cohen. — connects to: Forced desegregation of Christian schools, not abortion, sparked the Christian Right — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 530; Evangelicals’ turn against Carter was rooted in racial segregation defense, not abortion — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 138; Church-affiliated private schools outlasted public schools as refuges of segregation — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 405 (+2 more)