Trump education pick once touted school reform to ‘advance God’s Kingdom’

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of Education in 2001 described her work in promoting school choice as trying to “advance God’s Kingdom,” according to audio discovered by Politico.

{mosads}During a 2001 meeting of “The Gathering,” an annual summit for wealthy Christians, Betsy DeVos and her husband Dick DeVos were interviewed on stage about their work promoting the use of government funds on private and religious schools.

Betsy DeVos likened her work to the battles in the biblical region known as Shephelah, where David and Goliath were said to have fought.

“Our desire is to be in that Shephelah, and to confront the culture in which we all live today in ways that will continue to help advance God’s Kingdom, but not to stay in our own faith territory,” she said.

The DeVoses were explaining that they believe there will be a better payoff in the long run if they try to change the education system, rather than use their billions to finance Christian nonprofits.

“It goes back to what I mentioned, the concept of really being active in the Shephelah of our culture — to impact our culture in ways that are not the traditional funding-the-Christian-organization route, but that really may have greater Kingdom gain in the long run by changing the way we approach things — in this case, the system of education in the country,” she added later.

During the interview, DeVos was asked if she wanted to “destroy our public schools.”

“No, we are for good education, and for having every child have an opportunity for good education,” she responded.

“We both believe that competition and choices make everyone better and that ultimately if the system that prevails in the United States today had more competition — there were more choices for people to make freely — that all of the schools would become better as a result.”