Exodus Mandate

Exodus Mandate, American group founded in 1997 that calls for Christian families to withdraw their children from public schools in favor of private religious education. Fueled by its mission statement that “Christian Children Need Christian Schools,” the group rejects the premise that the public school system is an acceptable alternative for the education and nurture of Christian children. Its headquarters are in Columbia, South Carolina.

Beginning in the 1970s, a number of conservative Christian leaders and advocacy groups in the United States—such as James Dobson’s Focus on the Family and Beverly LaHaye’s Concerned Women for America—launched attempts to combat secularism in the country’s public schools by reintroducing Christian practices and perspectives to the classroom. In the late 1990s, Exodus Mandate and several other Christian organizations changed tactics, urging Christian parents to remove their children from American public schools altogether.

Exodus Mandate was founded by E. Ray Moore, Jr., a retired U.S. Army chaplain, to encourage Christian parents to remove their children from “Pharaoh’s school system”—the organization’s term for public schools—and place them in the “Promised Land” of Christian schools or in home schools. The group’s leaders hope that educating children according to “biblical mandates” will facilitate the revival of Christian values. Because of its commitment to the belief that parents, not the state, are responsible for the education of their children, Exodus Mandate eschews mechanisms such as school vouchers and tuition tax credits.