School choice to religiously discriminate: religiopolitical activism and secularism in public schooling

ABSTRACT This paper traces the influence of failed Christian organisation Logos Foundation on Australian secular schooling debates across the 1970s and 1980s. Concerned with the changing nature of secular schooling in the 1970s and 1980s, religiopolitical organisations lobbied for increased parental choice in the ethos of education for their children. Logos, a Christian Right group connected to US think tank of the religious right, The Chalcedon Foundation, concentrated their activism on the right to religiously discriminate in schools. Through developing political arguments to justify the formation of Christian schools, pedagogy, teachers, and support for home schooling, Logos developed argumentation for religious discrimination that can still be seen in contemporary legislative debate and Christian schooling policy. This paper argues that far more attention must be paid to the failed political manoeuvrings of the religious right to better understand the secular education policy concessions being made in the second and third decades of the twenty-first century.