We’re currently in the midst of another full-throated attack on public schools by conservatives who treat them as godless hotbeds of liberal insanity. If you believe their lies—and you shouldn’t—public schools are where young furries need litter boxes in the classroom, where teachers encourage kids to be LGBTQ, where sex education promotes risky behavior, where “Critical Race Theory” and “Common Core math” and unpatriotic history are regularly preached, and where pandemic-related mask mandates are suppressing student development. Conservative Christians have also attempted to censor books in school districts under the guise of protecting kids.

Underlying all of that is this belief that public schools are somehow anti-Christian, which also explains why football coaches can’t pray at midfield after games and why teachers can’t push Creationism on kids.

All of these things are lies or exaggerations.

The rumors are routinely debunked. Conservatives mistake the requirement of government neutrality with the loss of their own privilege. But trying to talk sense into them is futile when their false beliefs are just amplified in right-wing media.

That’s why we should give credit where it’s due: Christianity Today recently published an essay by Ericka Andersen (who’s hardly a liberal) saying in no uncertain terms that “Public schools aren’t godless.” Andersen spoke with a number of Christian parents whose kids are in public schools as well as Christian teachers who work in them, all of whom push back against the myth that public schools are hostile to their faith. ...