Pastor Challenges Plan to Eliminate Judeo-Christian Culture From Classroom
A Barton, VT pastor is challenging a new plan being proposed to the Vermont school board that seeks to eliminate the influence of Judeo-Christian values in the classroom.
The “Task Force Report on the Recommended Strategic Plan for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the Burlington School District,” is a document that Pastor Larry Czelusta, of the Solid Rock Assembly of God Church in Barton believes is hostile to Christianity and biblical values.
Czelusta highlighted a specific part of the plan that openly objects to the Christian faith and states that Judeo-Christian culture creates inequality in the classroom.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
The excerpt from the document reads, “Traditional educational practices maintained with no critique of existing inequities in any aspect of the school or the education system. Curricula, pedagogies, counseling practices, and all other aspects of education continue to reflect primarily White, male, upper middle class, Christian, and other privileged perspectives and approaches.”
The pastor sees the task force report as a statement that seeks to hurt the reputation of the Christian faith in the state.
“I grieve over the dismantling of our society here,” he said to World Net Daily. “This task force report throws everything in the past away and blames Judeo-Christianity for all the ills. Most of Vermont will either agree of be silent.”
St. Johnsbury, Vt., educator Bernier Mayo also sounded off to WND over the new document as well as touching on the Task Force’s main target in the plan citing it as the “white, middle-class, Judeo-Christian culture.”
“Further down the page it is the ‘white, able bodied, heterosexual, middle class students’; later in the text it becomes the ‘white, middle class, Judeo-Christians,’ a few paragraphs later it is ‘conventional, white upper middle class, Judeo-Christian values and beliefs,” Mayo added.
He goes on to explain page 31 in particular and how it focuses on the Judeo-Christian culture, restating the documents request for the superintendant and the school board to erase negative stereotypes.
“The Task Force recommends that the school board and superintendant infuse the district with the message that the social and educational climate in our schools requires urgent attention to erase many negative stereotypes, subtle and overt behaviors, assumptions, and decisions that favor conventional, white upper middle class Judeo-Christian values and beliefs through the following recommendations for the first year of Strategic Plan implementation,” read the report.
The attempt to liberalize the school system is a result of the “back to nature” people who moved to Vermont in the 60s and 70s.
The state used to lean more towards conservative values, but today, places such as Burlington will gladly embrace the new ideology that is included in this Task Force document, according to Czelusta.
“Burlington will applaud this task force report. According to the school’s website, the entire council approved the report-unanimously!” he said.
Burlington Superintendant Jeanne Collins also spoke to WND regarding the new plan.
“The report is the work of a task force of community members,” she said. “The task force was appointed by the school board and charged with the requests to identify and research and provide best practices around being an inclusive and welcoming environment in the schools.”
Collins also told the publication that the report was received by the school board, but not completely adopted “lock, stock and barrel,” and that a new committee was formed to begin to implement some of the report’s findings into the school system.
The task force was disbanded, and now the new diversity equity committee will begin to work on the sections highlighted in the original report.
“This coming Tuesday, that committee is taking one section, the section on leadership section, and going through that section and making recommendations. They’ll do the same thing with other sections,” Collins said.
