The 2024 election revealed that an increasing number of Americans realize that the woke, DEI, transgender, Marxist policies pushed onto the country by the Biden administration and Democrats over the last four years are destroying our nation. We want to return to common-sense policies that will end illegal immigration, human trafficking, and drug trafficking, lower homelessness and crime, and enable families to afford food, gas, and housing again.

Family Research Council’s Joseph Backholm recently talked on the “Outstanding” podcast about how Americans can achieve these goals with founder and president of TakeCharge, Kendall Qualls. TakeCharge is an organization committed to supporting the notion that the promise of America works for everyone regardless of race or social status. They advocate for faith-based education.

Get Back to the Roots of Faith, Family, and Education

Qualls says that the 2024 election results give us a political reprieve, but that the real onus is on us as citizens. Being American citizens requires active participation — especially from the church. He is calling on the church to wake up, saying, “I think for the last 30 to 40 years, we’ve been asleep at the wheel.”

Qualls knows the importance of faith and family first-hand, explaining, “Having grown up in a divorced family, a broken family,” he wanted “something different.” He didn’t know what that was, but, Qualls reiterated, “I just wanted something different. I had to take ownership myself. I had to take charge. And that’s the essence of our organization. And it is helping our … culture, especially in the black community, get back to the roots of faith, family, and education. That’s who the culture was before we had ‘help’ from the government.”

Men and Women, Take Charge

Qualls shared alarming data that “even in the worst of times in the black community in the history of our country … when I was five years old, 80% of the black community’s children were born in two-parent families. … Today, it’s approximately 80% fatherless homes that those kids are born in.” Sadly, fatherlessness is expanding in the Hispanic and white communities as well. These are not children in divorced homes — they never had married parents to begin with.

According to TakeCharge’s website, fatherless kids comprise 75% of children in substance abuse centers, 71% of high school dropouts, 90% of homeless and runaway children, 75% of rapists, and 70% of youth in juvenile detention centers.

In fact, the United States has the highest rate of children living in single-parent households among any country in the world. As Jack Brewer and others are pointing out, almost one out of every four children in the United States live in single-parent homes. This is the highest percentage of any country. The world average is just 7%. In America, nearly 24 million children live without their biological fathers in the home.

Qualls described a study in 2004 that ought to be shared all over the country. He said it “showed that even with economic disparities, when black and Hispanic kids are in two-parent families and there is a faith … component to that family, the academic disparities just disappear. … [T]hey graduate, they perform at parity of their peers as regular Americans because the formula works. … They’ve buried this data for literally years because they don’t want to promote the traditional nuclear family.” He went on to say, “Marriage rates within the black community and Hispanic community lowers poverty literally by 80%.”

Churches, Take Charge

“We don’t have a systemic racism problem, we have the fatherless home problem,” Qualls insisted. Thankfully, black communities and churches are heeding that warning, and more and more are waking up to just how devastating the consequences of fatherlessness is. Qualls explained:

“Look, my parents lived through the Jim Crow South. They would have loved to have grown up in the America I grew up in. And what I share when I go into the black community … is evidence. … Everything we’ve done [has] to be evidence-based, peer-reviewed journals. … Our prisons are full of young men [who] would love to have had a father growing up.

And when I … talk to women in our community, [I say], ‘God did not intend for you to raise children alone.’ They all nod their head up and down. They don’t know where to go [or] what to do next. Instead of the church embracing the whole social justice narrative, they said, ‘Yes, we do have disparities because we’re not living the way we intended to live. This is not who we are. … We have ignored the strength of the traditional nuclear family.’”

TakeCharge has an army of Christian black men and women who are going into churches across the country to share the message about the necessity of waiting to have children until marriage. They also offer a Fatherhood Impact Award, recognizing fathers in front of their church congregation on Father’s Day with a TakeCharge representative and the senior pastor awarding them certificates, prize money, a copy of their book, “The Man Code,” and featuring them in their local newspaper.

Schools, Take Charge

Another way that TakeCharge is helping to lower poverty in communities is by equipping churches to start their own schools through the Washington Academy. Qualls explained, “We have an arm of … generous benefactors … that are helping us to fund this. … We are going to churches and we’re leasing out their space that’s relatively empty or low-occupied during the week for these schools. … Our schools are called ‘Washington Academy.’ We named it after George Washington and Booker T. Washington.”

Washington Academy offers an affordable Christian classical curriculum with high standards. Their mission is to create a learning environment where faith and academics work hand-in-hand, laying a strong foundation for lifelong success. They have their own content and also partner with Hillsdale Academy and PragerU.

Thankfully, the Washington Academy is in high demand. Qualls is happy to report that “more people, more churches … are wanting to open schools than we have the resources for. To be honest with you, all of the praise to the Lord, if I could open them … today, we probably would have 20 churches … if I had the funding for it.” Churches in South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Nebraska, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona have all reached out, wanting to start a Washington Academy.

Pastors and Churches, Your Mission Field Is the Schools in Your Backyard

Qualls closed his discussion with Backholm by calling on pastors to lead their communities, saying, “You know, we need our pastors to step up to the plate. I mean … it’s not going to be solved only by politics. I think we got a reprieve from a political standpoint right now. But we need Christian Bible-centered pastors. This is a calling upon the church from a mission standpoint. … If you think you’ve got missions that are overseas, we’ve got it right here in our country and in our backyards, in our public schools. And that’s what we need to go into. Seminaries need to get on board with this too.”

AUTHOR

Kathy Athearn

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

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