Dr. Brian D. Ray Recipient of the 2009 Dr. Robert Dreyfus Courageous Christian Leadership Award

COLUMBIA, SC, Dec. 16 /Christian Newswire/ -- Frontline Ministries and the Exodus Mandate Project ( www.Exodusmandate.org) announced today that Dr. Brian D. Ray, Ph.D., is recipient of the 2008 Dr. Robert Dreyfus Courageous Christian Leadership Award. Established by Frontline Ministries in 2007, this award honors and recognizes a Christian leader who has exhibited moral courage while advancing Christianity in the culture and life of the nation through his unique contribution to the Church. This contribution and ministry may be in the face of opposition or run counter to the prevailing culture of church and society. Chaplain Moore said of Dr. Ray, "Through his extensive and methodical research, Dr. Ray has done more than anyone to give both home school families and society confidence that home schooling is not only an academically but also a socially sound approach to education. He is respected in both the Church and academia for his thorough research and writing."

Dr. Ray is recognized as a premier researcher, writer and demographic analyst on home schooling in the US by both the Christian and secular world. He is president of the National Home Education Research Institute (www.nheri.org), Salem, Oregon, and is the founding editor of the quarterly academic journal Home School Researcher. Dr. Ray is the author of several books (e.g. Worldwide Guide to Homeschooling: Facts and Stats on the Benefits of Home School; Home Educated and Now Adults; Home Schooling: Parents as Educators; Strengths of Their Own-Home Schoolers Across America). He has also been published in Educational Leadership, Peabody Journal of Education, Education and Urban Society, Christianity Today, Homeschooling Today and The Teaching Home.

He has appeared on the NBC Today Show, National Public Radio and has been quoted or cited in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, New York Times, Washington Post, TIME and US News and World Report. He has testified as an expert witness in numerous court cases and before state legislatures and has appeared at homeschool conferences as a conference speaker.

In accepting this award, Dr. Ray said, "I am happy to receive the Dr. Robert Dreyfus Courageous Christian Leadership Award as it also gives recognition to this growing academically, culturally and morally transforming movement in society. I have only researched and reported on what is happening in home schooling across the land and now around the world with hundreds of thousands of families."

Dr. Robert Dreyfus, for whom the award has been named said, "Dr. Ray is a worthy recipient and has done singular work to advance and report on this culture-transforming movement. Home schooling is one of the most hopeful signs for the eventual recovery of the lost American dream." Dr. Dreyfus, a prominent retired Florida dentist and inventor of a device to relieve neuromuscular pain for medical uses, served as a president of the Florida Dental Society of Anesthesiology. He has a 45-year history of volunteer work on behalf of family values and K-12 Christian education in Florida and is now the Florida State Coordinator for the Exodus Mandate Project.

Chaplain Moore noted that the 2008 award is the second to be presented and that the 2007 recipients were Dr. Bruce Shortt and Brigadier General T.C. Pinckney, USAF Ret, honored for their unique joint efforts to advance K-12 Christian education and home schooling in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Since 2004 the several K-12 Christian education resolutions offered before the SBC annual meetings have become national news stories. These resolutions have helped to generate a debate in many churches and denominations over K-12 public education vs. Christian education and home schooling as a norm for churches and families in the education of their children. Shortt is author of The Harsh Truth About Public Schools, and Pinckney, a retired USAF Brigadier General, is past Second Vice President of the Southern Baptist Convention and editor of the theological magazine, The Baptist Banner.

You may contact Dr. Brian Ray at the National Home Education Research Institute (www.nheri.org), PO Box 13939, Salem, Oregon 97309 or by phone at (503) 364-1490 or by email at bray@nheri.org.